Parents, Spiritual Sukkah Builders

What is the role of a parent in a child’s spiritual life? The Jewish holiday season, from Rosh Hashanah through to Shemini Atzeret, employs the theme of the parent child relationship. Through psalms and prayers, we reflect on the spiritual challenges of being somebody’s parent or child.

Avinu Malkeinu, our Father our King, is sung throughout the High Holidays. Psalm 27 includes this verse: “though my parents have left me God will gather me in.”  Many spoke the yizkor prayers for parents.

Sukkot, for me, has been a parent-centered holiday. As a child, I asked my father to build a sukkah for me. He did despite having never had one himself.  After we moved to Maryland, my father would visit us every year for sukkot and build the sukkah for us, practically from scratch. Often it was completed early in the morning after Yom Kippur before we were awake.

While my father was not fully observant and had little Torah education, he was an eager participant in my spiritual life. What a blessing.

The sukkot holiday returns us to a Torah reading that begins with a symbolic animal relationship.  “When an ox or a sheep or a goat is born, it shall stay seven days with its mother, and from the eighth day on it shall be acceptable as an offering by fire to the Lord.”  I read this verse now with moral and spiritual angst. Seven days seems hardly enough for an animal to be with its mother.  In modern farming, newborn calves are taken from their milk-producing mothers even sooner, often to be penned in and later sold for veal.  I can’t help but anthropomorphize the animal’s capacity for feelings. Separation from a parent seems cruel.

While digesting Torah’s literal meaning, I pondered how long a human child stays with their parent before being an offering to the world. As a parent we prepare that offering with spiritual support. Not only can a parent can enhance a child’s spiritual life, Judaism understands that as an obligation.

My spiritual life has also been enhanced by the transcendent moments when my children participate in Jewish ritual and prayer.  Perhaps that is why I have made clear that being with family on Jewish holidays is so important.  My spiritual life is nourished by their involvement.

But my children have a different understanding of their spiritual life and obligations as Jews. Parents aren’t sovereign or godlike as they may have been in the past.  Whatever happened to the commandment to honor thy father and mother? As religious choices have become more expansive, as Judaism has become a choice rather than a given.

I worry about my children’s spiritual lives.  Will they observe the rituals that have grounded me and given me joy? Will we build a sukkah together in years to come? Will they connect with me after I am gone by saying kaddish and yizkor prayers?

My sukkah building skills will never match my father’s.  I’ve got the kit for assemblage. More important than the construction project of a sukkah, the spiritual charge of building the parent-child relationship is real and is potent. Whether my children participate in these rituals, holidays and prayers or not, I will keep up my end of the spiritual connection, even as they have left their mother and father to offer their wonderful selves to the world.

R’ Evan J. Krame