Being an only-child myself and having three children, it’s always amazed me how buttons pushed in childhood become the same buttons pushed when our kids are adults. Our kids are very tight with each other indeed, but it’s like déjà vu all over again when I see the same reel being shown in 2020 as it was in the late ‘80s. It drove them nuts then; it drives them nuts today. And at this point, we laugh. Family dynamics are the stuff life is made of.

As I’ve mentioned before, that’s the essence of the Book of Genesis. Parents and children, Patriarchs and Matriarchs, soon-to-be Patriarchs and Matriarchs play it over and over and over again. It’s phenomenal that I’m even able to write about it so many centuries later; how we survived with the antics of our ancestors is beyond me!

But we as a People did survive as do our kids with us as parents. We’re all a little fablunget(a technical term found in all the current psycho-babble manuals), but we muddle along, most of us successful in our lives, ready to see how our own children manipulate their offspring…and I say “manipulate” lovingly…and they, too, are mostly successful in their lives. It’s a cycle.

We see this in Tol’dot, this week’s sedra. Without going into detail, even a general description inasmuch as you can google Tol’dot and read it, let me offer a poem written by Nissim Ezekiel, a Jew from India:

Protect my children

from my secret wish

to make them over

in my image and illusions.

Let them move

to the music that they love,

dissonant perhaps to me.