Spirit and Story Archive
Welcome to Spirit and Story, where you can find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the contours of our contemporary spiritual journeys.
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It's Fun to Pray at the Y-M-C-A, and Other Musings on the Patriarchy
By Daniel S. Brenner
Back when I was the lone Jew-boy at a YMCA camp (during the days when they still had daily worship), my fellow campers and I sang: "Father Abraham had many sons/many sons had Father Abraham/and I am one of them, and so are you, so let's just praise the Lord!" Then you'd move your right foot/left foot/right arm/left arm...imagine the G.I. Joe action figure trying to do Tae-Bo. What I liked about the theme of this song is how it linked me to all the Christian kids through the shared unknown patriarch. Though we sang "father," it was experienced more as a collective ancestor, one who requested silly dancing.
Though the song is rather benign, it relates to a powerful message contained in Genesis on the topic of family history. In Genesis 28:13 God says to Jacob: " I am the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac." What is so profound about this line? The problem with God's comment, of course, is that Jacob's father is not Abraham, but Isaac. In fact, elsewhere in the text, Yitzchak is explicitly referred to as Jacob's "father."
So why would God say "father" for Abraham and not for his actual father,
Isaac?The translation of this verse is key. The word "avicha" is both ancestor and father. In this verse, it might be read "your ancestor" instead of "your father." This is a fair read, in part, because it is quite possible that Jacob never knew his grandfather. Perhaps he related to Abraham as we do, knowing his ideas and life story but not his actual presence. But why not say "Abraham, your ancestor, and Isaac, your father"?
We might find an answer to this inquiry by fast-forwarding two biblical
generations, to the moment when Jacob as an old man sees his grandsons for the first time. Here we find a stirring scene of grandfather-grandson relations. Jacob, seeing the children, says: "Whose are these?" Joseph, falling into an old pattern of self-centeredness, replies: "They are my sons, whom God has given me.…" Jacob brings the two boys toward him and, as part of his blessing, he says: "Let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac"(Genesis 48:8-16). Here it is clear that he does not mean father, but ancestor, and he recalls two generations that have since passed. In blessing his grandchildren, through them he defines one of the central roles of grandparents to this day. He links his grandsons to the souls that went before them, the ones that they will only know through stories.Striking in this story is that Jacob, in his blessing, does not attach the name of Joseph onto the boys. This points to a phenomenon that has come to define generational shifts -- the great skip. Grandparents and grandchildren bond not only because they share a natural enemy (the generation in the middle), but because there is a larger spiritual cycle in play. This shared psyche is generally described as "One generation exiting, one entering. One looking back, one looking forward."
Biblically, the connection between the male generations of grandfather and grandson are the key to insure the perpetuation of the family, and ultimately of the tribe. Since Joseph is obsessed with building a foreign empire, Jacob sees the promise of his continuation in his grandsons Menashe and Ephraim.
Do these dynamics continue to work today between grandparents and their
grandchildren?I'd argue that with an increase in longevity (the 20th century saw a 30 year jump), and the emergence of childhood as a time of play and exploration, the bonds between grandparents and grandchildren are even more spiritually attuned.
To use a rather odd example, my father-in-law recently purchased an
air hockey table. He bought it after playing with my two sons at Chuck E. Cheese. Then his mother-in-law, who is ninety-one, started playing with my sons -- and they were complaining that she was hitting the puck too hard!Watching this scene unfold, I can understand why the 'skip' takes place.
Although I do play with my kids, my main function in the home is as a disciplinarian and tour guide. But when they play air hockey with their grandfather, they are with someone whom they see as a kindred spirit, a play-all-day kind of guy.The longer we live -- imagine an average age of a hundred and fifty -- the
longer, and perhaps more central, the role of grandparent-grandchild relations will become. Death will still be around, but once a parent or grandparent becomes an ancestor, we will be able to "know" our ancestors in new ways -- we will watch them on videos, read their e-mails, and maybe even preserve their DNA for a possible "re-appearance." And that will surely complicate the distinction between father and ancestor.
To read additional articles by Daniel Brenner, click here.
