We all know people who blame their every misfortune on their parents. Long after their teen years are over, often into their thirties, forties, and beyond, they continue to lay their own problems and their personal shortcomings at their parents' doorsteps.
To some extent, there may well be justification for their disappointment. None of us are perfect, and some of us have very little qualification for raising a child. It is, after all, one of the few jobs for which there is no lengthy graduate school training, no job application and interview process, and no continuing education requirements along the way. To become a gardener requires more preparation than parenting.
Given our own imperfections, it is only natural to pass them along (with a few extras) to our children. So blaming our parents for our own problems has its roots in the reality that our parents probably did stack the deck against us in some crucial ways.
But the story doesn't end there. While our parents may have, indeed, passed on their imperfections, most parents also try to do their best, to provide a reasonably stable environment in which their children can mature. While they may not be ideal nurturers, most of the time they are good enough parents.
In many cases, then, blaming parents is simply a way to dodge the responsibility of being an adult. No longer is there some all-knowing person to clean up after our mess, to straighten out a problem we have created, or to soothe away our fears in the dark of a lonely night. In a harsh world of competition and disappointment, we are very much on our own. Small wonder that it is more comforting to continue to condemn the previous generation, since the act of accusing implies that we can still look to them to set things right.
Rabbinic tradition offers an interesting alternative to this flight from responsibility. The rabbis of Midrash Bereshit Rabbah noticed a strange sentence in this week's Torah portion, "This is the line of Noah: Noah...Shem, Ham, and Japheth." Why, they wonder, in a verse that claims to list Noah's sons, does the Torah begin by repeating Noah's own name first?
The Midrash asks, and then answers its own question: "Surely Scripture should have written, 'These are the offspring of Noah: Shem, Etc.?' It teaches, however, that he was a comfort to himself and a comfort to the world, a comfort to his parents and a comfort to his children..."
In other words, Noah took responsibility for parenting himself.
No longer willing to cower in the shadow of his parent's supposed power or their failings, Noah knew that being an adult meant directing his own life, for better or for worse. Guided by the voice of God and his own sacred traditions, Noah could not avoid making his own decisions, living his own life. The Midrash reminds us that Noah became his own third (and final) parent.
That same challenge faces all of us. It wasn't so long ago that we were, ourselves, children. The distance we have traveled, professionally, geographically, and emotionally, may seem so large as to be unreal. Simultaneously, if may also feel that childhood was simply yesterday. No longer able to count on our parents to generate the right answers, no longer able to solve our problems by shifting responsibility on to our forebears, we must turn to ourselves, consult with our hearts, and seek guidance from ourselves. Just as Noah was "a comfort to himself" we, too, must learn to provide our own balance, wisdom, and direction.
None of us need do our self-parenting alone. Psalm 27 wisely observes, "Though my father and my mother leave me, the Lord will care for me." No Jew is ever alone. In the company of other Jews at prayer or at study, or while performing a mitzvah, we are always standing in the presence of God. Holiness bursts into our lives through the deeds and words of our sacred tradition--guidance and companionship are but a mitzvah away.
"A comfort to ourselves and a comfort to the world". Like Noah, we too can learn to hear God's word in a world gone mad, and can learn to embody that calming wisdom in the path of our own lives, in the security of our own ark.
There is no one to blame, and there is a great deal still to do
Shabbat Shalom!