Generation Gap - Toldot

"Isaac the son of Abraham, Abraham gave birth to Isaac"

 

What a powerful statement.

 

Often, we encounter a "generation gap"-parents and children in conflict with each other because they hold different worldviews and measure their lives against different value systems; or because they have emotional issues with each other.

 

At times, the mistrust is reciprocal. If you will talk to the son or daughter, he or she is embarrassed with their father. Nor can the father gaze at his son's behavior and take pride in the fact that he is his son.

 

In its less severe forms, it might be one-sided: the parents might be proud of their children's achievements, while the children scorn the "primitiveness" and "backwardness" of their parents. Mark Twain quipped: "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

 

Alternatively, the children might revere their parents, while their parents are disappointed in their children's behavior.

 

Sometimes, a son or daughter may take deep pride in a father, but the father is pained by the lifestyle of his kin. Or conversely, a child is embarrassed by his old man; but the father is so proud of his child!

 

So the Torah in this week portion tells us that, in the case of the first two generations of Jews, there was no "gap": Isaac had no reservations about being "the son of Abraham," while Abraham no less readily identified himself as the father of Isaac. Despite the fact that they embodied two very different approaches to life, Isaac sensed that everything he is and has derived from Abraham, while Abraham saw in Isaac the fulfillment and realization of his deepest self.

 

Isaac was super proud to walk around and say: look who my father is. He loved "showing off" that he is Yitzchak he is Abraham's son. He could not be prouder of the fact of who is the father is.

 

And Abraham? He could not stop kvelling from the fact that a boy like Isaac was his son. "Abraham fathered Isaac." He was so deeply proud that say that he is the father of Isaac!

 

As children of Abraham and Isaac let us each treasure the Jewish gifts we received from our ancestors and merit to lovingly transmit them to our descendants.

 

Fruma and our children - Malka, Yankele, Shimi, Mendel, Mushka, Riva & Rachmiel -join me in wishing you a Shabbat Shalom,