Years ago, a college student, a young woman who was in one of my first Confirmation classes, came up to me at an Oneg Shabbat, furious as can be. “Do you know, Rabbi, that after our year together I vowed not to date, let alone marry, someone not Jewish. I heard you officiated at a mixed marriage! I can’t believe it!” Well, she got her information wrong…I hadn’t. Clearing up the air, she lived up to the promise she made to herself. In addition, she and her husband are very much involved in the Jewish community in which they live.
The point is that while a rabbi doesn’t influence everybody – who does? – if we don’t start making our point when they’re in their youth, do we think children hear the message when they’re young adults? Yes, looking at the statistics I was lucky in this case, and while the point of all this has nothing to do with mixed marriage, it does have to do with the question: when do we begin to transmit to our children and our students values and expectations that are meaningful to us? Not soon enough, I believe.
Every one of us has the potential to influence others. Our kids look at us and to us for some guidelines. You and I might think they’re not paying attention and so will often quit our crusade if we believe our message is falling upon deaf ears. But as frustrating as their supposed disinterest is, I believe many, if not most, of them are indeed listening. What we said might have been filed somewhere “up there,” but it’s got a better chance of being “up there” if they’ve heard it…and not once either. I’m not so naïve to believe they won’t reject what we want them to accept, but how can they reject what they do not know in the first place?
Come to think of it, it’s a two-way street. Adults also have to open their ears and hearts to hear – and listen to – the voice of the young. Their youth doesn’t automatically negate the value of their thoughts, but how many of us assume we, the hoary-headed sages, know everything, and what we know is always right? I put myself in that category, but over the years I have come to realize that even my knuckle-headed kids are often less knuckle-headed than their old man! For sure it’s absolutely, positively true in the realm of technology, but all kidding aside, there are other areas of life in which I thought I had the upper hand in wisdom while in actuality, their wisdom overshadowed/s mine. Truth be told, at this writing I can’t think of a one (I hope you’re chuckling a bit), but they are there.
I fight like the dickens to prove my points (after all, I’m the FATHER, RABBI, YADA-YADA-YADA), but in the long run I have to remember the words of the great sage…Suzy…who once (maybe twice or more) said, “Rabbi, Schmabbi, take out the garbage.” The point is adults, regardless of their station in life, owe it to the young to pay attention just as we want the young to pay attention to us.