The boomerang syndrome
Shabbat Shalom to all our readers. Here's the parasha for this week.
A mystery wrapped in an enigma. How is it that throughout Tanach evildoers sire superbly upright children – and vice-versa? How is it that a Lavan can father a Leah and a Rachel; a Bethuel a Rivkah? How can a Hezekiah who abolished cultic practices that had defiled the Temple spring from the loins of an Ahaz king of Judah who rejected the good example of his father Yotham; a Josiah who reintroduced forgotten religious practices from a wicked King Amon?
One answer is to state the obvious – that it takes a mother as well as a father to effectively raise a child. The influence of the mother in the formative years of a child is inestimable.
We don’t know much about Leah and Rachel’s mother apart from the fact that her name is listed as Adina (Sefer haYashar 30:13). However the fact that the name Adina is extensively used by Jews today appears to testify to a tradition that she was righteous.
Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky (Ta’ama d’Kara) cites from the Midrash Aggadah the tradition that Rivkah’s mother was none other than the righteous Devorah described in Bereshit. 35:8 as her “nurse”. Hezekiah’s mother was Aviya daughter of Kohen Gadol Zechariah “who understood the visions of God” (II Chronicles 26:5) and was the spiritual mentor of long serving king of Judah, Uzziah/ Azariah (Targum; Ralbag).
He was of the select band of prophets who understood the wondrous nature of his God-given prophecy (Radak) and, like Rabbi Akiva, he entered the highest mystical realms unharmed (Malbim).
Josiah’s mother was Yedidah (“beloved one”) following whose name Scripture writes that her son “did right in the eyes of God” (2 Kings 22: 1-2) suggesting that it was due to her nurturing influence.
As for righteous men siring wicked sons, it would appear that in these cases, like with King David (Absalom and Amnon) and King Solomon (Rehoboam), the maternal influence was negligible.
The tzadik-rasha-tzadik phenomenon that seems to particularly prevail in the era of the kings of Israel is symptomatic of what I would call the generational “boomerang” syndrome in Jewish history. Somehow Jews come back.
A contemporary interpretation sees the Four Sons of the Haggadah as four generations – wise and observant; lapsed and wayward but still knowledgeable; Jewishly simple and uneducated; and so disconnected it doesn’t even know how to ask.
But wait …! There is a fifth generation which boomerangs back and asks learned questions like “you might have thought we should start reading the Haggadah from Rosh Chodesh!” (the paragraph immediately following the fourth son). The “pintele Yid”, the indestructible essence of a Jew!
A prophetic hint of this phenomenon is already found in the Ten Commandments. God “visits the sin of fathers on (wicked) children to the third and fourth generation of those who continue to hate Me but shows chessed to thousands of generations of those who love Me!” (Shemot 20:5-6).
A question arises here. Why should generations upon generations of lovers of God need His chessed? Chessed implies kindness barely deserved! The answer may be: the thousands of good generations were not entirely uninterrupted. There were lapses along the way – but the boomerang syndrome kicked in. And God shows chessed and preserves us as a nation until the end of time!
When Jacob, dressed as Esau, entered for his father Isaac’s blessing, Isaac “inhaled the fragrance of his garments (begadav) and blessed him”. (Bereshit 27:27). But the pungent smell of washed goatskin is hardly fragrant! A remarkable Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni 115) declares: don’t read “begadav” but rather bogdav, his traitors! The reference is to two renegade Jews in the second Temple period who violated the Torah and betrayed their people but ultimately repented (Bereshit Rabba 65:22).
Isaac was inspired by a prophetic vision of these two Jews when Jacob entered. He saw that even Jewish traitors and informers had a pure soul albeit buried layers deep. The offspring of Jewish parents, like well-crafted boomerangs, are never irretrievably lost.
Rabbi Chaim Ingram is the author of a series of parasha books accessible via judaim@bigpond.net.au
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