\""A Jew today," someone wrote, "is someone who has Jewish grandchildren." The words sting, perhaps more than any others in our painful debates about Jewish identity.<\/p>\n
Of course, the definition is only metaphorical. Countless Jews are unable to have children; others have chosen not to. Many have married outside the Jewish community; others are unmarried by choice, or by fate. And many now openly prefer relationships with members of their own sex. Indeed, it is rare for a Jew today to be certain of having Jewish grandchildren.<\/p>\n
It is hardly news that "alternative lifestyles," assimilation, challenges to traditional Jewish authority, and demographic changes have taken their toll on the Jewish family. Now one hears the argument that the traditional Jewish emphasis on family is outdated because it excludes a significant number of Jews from Jewish life. Some feminists claim that the traditional nuclear family is a patriarchal and repressive institution whose ideology has helped to exclude women from full participation in Jewish institutional life.<\/p>\n
Homosexuals demand validation of their lifestyle. Single people often feel hurt and condescending from a community that sees them as dissatisfied and incomplete adults as long as they remain unmarried.<\/p>\n
The other side argues that the family is the foundation of Jewish life and the guarantor of Jewish survival; that the first commandment is "be fruitful and multiply"; and that attacks on the Jewish family do not stem from a deep, genuine Jewish commitment and understanding but from an overly Western ethic of self-gratification and narcissism. Being Jewish is not something to be defined by anything that makes one feel good or justified. The lifestyles of Jews should not determine the Jewish way of life.<\/p>\n
My aim here is not to delve directly into the Jewish perspective on homosexuality (which the Torah opposes), the challenges of feminism, or the problems of single people in the Jewish community. But these questions have sparked a deeper, underlying question in me: Beyond all the usual rhetoric, why is family so important in Judaism?.<\/p>\n
Defining a Jew as someone who has Jewish grandchildren\u2014with all its irony\u2014strikes me as something conceptually profound. It defines Jewhood in terms of family, but not immediate family. It validates not only biological self-reproduction, but a spiritual continuity beyond the immediate and across time. Jewhood is not defined by how Jewish he or she may "feel," by how many mitzvot (precepts) they may fulfill, or by how much money they contribute to community causes, but by their capacity to embody (literally, in children) and transmit Judaism with such vitality that those children choose to remain Jewish and can, in turn, pass that spark on to their own children.<\/p>\n
\""Three is a chazakah (certainty)," says Jewish tradition. In other words, only when something has been repeated three times does it possess the element of certainty, of durability; one can trust in its stability. Grandchildren are the third generation; they confirm the Judaism of the first. Transmission requires a biological next generation, but that is not enough; biology is shaped by spirituality, the self is impelled toward the other, the blindness of the present toward a vision of the future.<\/p>\n
This is not to argue that mere survival is all there is to being Jewish. That it's only about that. However, beyond all the obvious reasons for our contemporary emphasis on "survival"\u2014the annihilation of the Jewish population during the Holocaust, the ongoing threats to Israel, the declining birth rate, and intermarriage\u2014Judaism seems peculiarly obsessed with this theme and with the idea of family from the very beginning. Why?<\/p>\n
Our God's Interest in History<\/p>\n
The Book of Genesis, for example, is entirely about families, barren wives, sibling rivalries, destruction by flood and fire, and constant threats to the process of transmission and continuity. These themes are narrated in part to demystify nature as an autonomous controlling force and to emphasize the then-revolutionary idea that a single God exercises control over both nature and history.<\/p>\n
And history is significant in Jewish thought precisely because God is passionately involved in it, not in a static, unemotional, and ahistorical way like the god of the Greeks. Just as God, the ultimate model, is intensely involved in family feuds from Cain and Abel to conflicts between the family of nations, so too are the biblical heroes and heroines deeply involved\u2014indeed, defined\u2014by the problems of their own families. Families are the grand stage for spiritual struggle; then as now, they are the paradigms of intimate connection and intense ambivalence. Unlike the Greek heroes, the biblical heroes do not achieve identity and glory in solitary combat far from their families; their problems are profoundly domestic.<\/p>\n
It is no accident that Abraham's critical test was precisely the commandment to sacrifice his son... and not be tempted in the desert or have to sacrifice himself. For the son was not his alone, and the crisis was not merely personal; it was collective. Abraham's call was to become a great nation; it was not a private covenant with a single person. Judaism, unlike other religions, does not advocate or promise "salvation" to individuals. The covenant was not made with Abraham alone, but with all his descendants, the family that would develop into the nation that Moses led to Sinai. And the Divine revelation at Sinai, again, was collective, to an entire people, not to individuals.<\/p>\n
Is this obsession with family a remnant of primitive tribalism? Is the focus on survival a result of the desert mentality and the tribulations of exile? And what does all this have to do with our modern need for individualism and self-definition?<\/p>\n
Family is central to Judaism, I believe, because it is central to Jewish ideas of God, Creation, covenant, and history. The biological family reminds us that we, like the world, are created; we are not inevitable, not necessarily autonomous. We are the effect of another's desire and, at best, someone's desire to give to another. We have a history. The creation of the world, too, is something out of nothing, an act of faith and hope.<\/p>\n
To refuse to give birth to the next generation is to refuse to continue God's creation, and therefore also to refuse to live within history, and thus also to deny the covenant. For the covenant is collective and historical. The Torah is a guide and inheritance for a people who would journey not only through space to the Promised Land, but also through time, through the turbulence of history. History, the physical upheaval of this world, its passions, its temptations. "The Torah," as the book of Deuteronomy says in a famous passage, "is not in Heaven.".<\/p>\n
\""Every descent," say the Jewish mystics, "is for the purpose of an ascent." The soul's descent into the incoherent physical world, the wanderings of people throughout history, allow for a great spiritual flourishing, and thus the Talmud compared the Jewish people to the olive: only when pressed does it yield its oil.<\/p>\n
This world, with its daily human relationships, is the stage for Divine action, both by God and by Israel. The world is not an allegory; spirituality is not found elsewhere. The Jew is committed to sanctifying this physical world and mundane historical time. This is why memory is so important to Jews: it is the sanctified and interconnected past, present, and future. In Jewish time, the past foreshadows the future. Memory, said the Baal Shem Tov, is the secret of redemption.<\/p>\n
Generation:<\/p>\n
Jewish responsibility<\/p>\n
And to put it simply, there is no physical future, no history, without physical reproduction. The family is the unit that creates life and is the most powerful agent for transmitting collective and personal memory. This is why there is so much emphasis on "generation" in the Bible, why teaching and learning are so highly valued: because they are acts of transmission to the next generation and of reception and renewal by that generation of the heritage, the gift. The threat to the covenant is that there may be no one, or the wrong person, to carry it forward into history. Perhaps this is one of the meanings of the famous Midrash that when God was about to deliver the Torah, He asked for guarantors who would safeguard it; it was not enough for the Jews themselves to promise to protect it. Only when they said, "Our children will be our guarantors," did God agree to reveal it.<\/p>\n
Just as children are ensnared before they have any choice in the matter, the self is not an isolated, autonomous, entirely free creation, despite the dogmas of American pop psychology. Family is a covenant. For in the family, we are continually reminded, obligated, involved, grieved, pleased, and gladdened by others. We are in constant dialogue, even if it is angry. True, one can divorce a husband or wife. But however severe the estrangement may be, the biological bond of a child to the parent is unbreakable. As Robert Frost once said, "Home is that place where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in." In this way, family relationships are a microcosm, a training ground, a reminder, and an enactment of the tempestuous and intimate relationship of the Jewish people with God.<\/p>\n
Why, after all, are we called "children" of Israel, "children of God"? The prophets, of course, exploit the full implications of these metaphors: In the book of Jeremiah, God may angrily "divorce" the Jewish people as his unfaithful "wife" who has acted as a harlot, but then impassionedly cries out for their redemption: "Return, wayward children.".<\/p>\n
The Integrity of Traditional Values in Sex<\/p>\n
Yes, I will speculate that one of the reasons Jewish tradition opposes homosexuality is that there can be no next generation from that kind of union; no biological child; therefore, no history, no future, no covenant. Now, of course, Jewish tradition holds that whoever teaches Torah to another's child is as if they had given birth to them. And that is a great value; but Judaism, unlike Christianity, does not reject the physical commandment of Torah with allegory and seek salvation in another world. The ideal Jewish saint is not an ascetic, or one who, as in other religions, achieves purity through distance from the community, or from the demands of family or the physical world. For these struggles are the deepest spiritual struggles. The secrets of Kabbalah were to be taught only to married men. And Kabbalah itself describes the various aspects of God's inner mystical being (the configurations of the sefirot) in terms of family metaphors: "father, mother, son, daughter.".<\/p>\n
Thus, the traditional Jewish defense of marriage, having children, and heterosexuality, I believe, should not be mistakenly viewed as repressive patriarchy, intolerance of lifestyles, primitive tribalism, or an outdated ideology. Jewish tradition clearly teaches that a Jew is a Jew no matter what, that every Jew is holy, and part of the Jewish community. I am by no means advocating the exclusion from the synagogue or the Jewish community of those with alternative views. Nor do I wish to minimize in any way the personal pain that this position might cause to homosexuals. But pain is not a persuasive argument for change.<\/p>\n
Our Jewish Duty Was and Is Clear<\/p>\n
The family can indeed be a repressive institution, as can any relationship that becomes distorted, but I have tried to argue here that the Jewish concept of family is different and an absolutely integral part of Judaism; it is not reducible to the bourgeois social arrangement or "lifestyle." It is profoundly theological.<\/p>\n
One is free to make other choices. But what will be the grounds and values upon which these choices are made? For the freedom to make choices should not be confused with the freedom to redefine Jewish tradition in order to conform to one's own image... with only oneself in mind. The ultimate ground of value in Judaism is not the autonomous self, but the personhood conferred by being and continuing God's creation and His covenant.<\/p>\n
Someone once told me that having children helped him relate much better to God. \"How so?\" I asked. \"Because now I understand what it means to create something over which you have no control,\" he replied. This is ironic and also very wise. Having children is certainly an aspect of being made in God\u2019s image. For God\u2019s creation as an act of His free will bestows free will upon us and thus makes our very actions in history meaningful\u2026 and makes the Torah ours, to be renewed in every generation. A child is, at the same time, oneself and entirely other. Similarly, in the process of transmission, the Torah is both the same and different: fully received, and also changed and expanded with the newness of the next generation. As the Talmud says: \"Even the innovations that a brilliant student will one day teach before his teacher have already occurred at Sinai.\" In this regard, the Latin American writer Borges said that only Jews produced grandchildren, while in the secular Western tradition of writings and texts, "The Nights of Alexandria, Babylon, Carthage, and Memphis have never managed to produce a single grandparent." Although no one can guarantee it, it is our duty to try to ensure that we, too, have Jewish grandchildren.<\/p>\n
Extracted from Chabad Magazine.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"Un jud\u00edo hoy\", escribi\u00f3 alguien, \"es quien tiene nietos jud\u00edos\". Las palabras pican, quiz\u00e1s m\u00e1s que cualesquiera otras en nuestros dolorosos debates sobre la identidad jud\u00eda. Por supuesto, la definici\u00f3n es s\u00f3lo metaf\u00f3rica. Innumerables jud\u00edos son incapaces de tener ni\u00f1os; otros han elegido no tenerlos. Muchos se han casado fuera de la grey mosaica; otros… Read More \u00bbThe Family<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2322,6],"tags":[1074,1075,954],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articulos","category-vida-judia","tag-familia","tag-identidad","tag-judio"],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/tuviaserber.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Familia.jpg","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/tuviaserber.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/avatar1400.jpeg","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"castbox":{"key":"castbox","url":"","label":"CastBox","class":"castbox","icon":"castbox.png"},"rss":{"key":"rss","url":"","label":"RSS","class":"rss","icon":"rss.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/tuviaserber.com\/en\/feed\/podcast\/rabino-tuvia-serber","embedCode":"La Familia<\/a><\/blockquote>