Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Jennifer Rosenthal Bat Mitzvah
May 14, 2005
Between Mother’s Day and Lag B’omer – Two Love Stories
I am going to tell you two love stories this morning. I have three reasons for doing so. The first is that Jennifer’s Bat Mitzvah ceremony comes at the end of a week which began with Mother’s Day. These stories are about wives and mothers.
Someone asks me each year: "Are we Jews supposed to celebrate Mother’s Day?". My answer is: "By all means; of course we should." According to Jewish law, I believe we are supposed to observe Mother’s Day every day. Our tradition teaches that it is a mitzvah to honor parents, in fact, a mitzvah of the highest priority; it even makes the Ten Commandments. Parents are not pals; they are God’s surrogates here on earth. Jewish tradition claims that honoring parents is fundamental to human civilization.
The second reason for my stories is that we are now in the period of omer counting. From Passover to Shavuot, each day traditional Jews recite a prescribed formula for counting the day, and then read a Psalm and a special prayer. The 33rd day of this period is called Lag B’omer. It seems that during the period of the counting of omer a human tragedy occurred. The great Talmudic scholar, Rabbi Akiba, who lived in the first and second centuries of the Common Era, had a school in which thousands of people studied. For some unknown reason, a plague descended upon the students precisely at the time when the counting of the omer began. For more than four weeks the plague persisted and more than 10,000 of Akiba’s disciples died. Then, miraculously, the plague ended on the 33rd day of the omer – Lag B’omer. So let me share with you this very famous love story about Rabbi Akiba and his wife Rachel.
Until the age of 40, Akiba was an illiterate shepherd whose great dream was to someday be able to go to school and learn Torah. Akiba fell in love with Rachel, the daughter of Kalba Sabua, a wealthy man for whom Akiba worked. Rachel recognized the potential in Rabbi Akiba and she agreed to marry him, but only on one condition – that he would go to school, study Torah and let her support him while he studied.
Akiba agreed. He started in the first grade at age 40, learning the aleph bet together with young children. He was quickly moved up from grade to grade because his teachers saw how rapidly he learned. Meantime, Rachel lived in dire poverty. Her father cut her off for having disobeyed him by marrying an ignorant man. At one point, Rachel even had to sell her hair in order to raise money with which to support Akiba. After 12 long years, he came back, and she saw how much progress he had made in his learning. So Rachel persuaded her husband to go back for another 12 years to study more. At the end of these 12 years, Akiba was the renowned leader and teacher of all Israel.
When he came back this time, there was a great parade and thousands of people came out to welcome Rabbi Akiba, the now famous sage. Rachel was wearing a poor dress, and no one realized who she was; as she tried to get near his carriage, the students pushed her away. Rabbi Akiba spotted her, leaped off the carriage, took her by the hand, and lifted her to the seat of honor next to himself. The students asked him: who is this woman? And why does she deserve such a special place? Rabbi Akiba answered them: sheli, vishelachem, mishela – whatever I know, and whatever you have learned from me is thanks to her.
That is the famous story as it is told in our tradition. But the late Dr. Louis Finkelstein, who was President of the Jewish Theological Seminary and himself an outstanding scholar, noticed a nuance in the story which makes it even more meaningful. Dr. Finkelstein asked: How did Rachel know that Rabbi Akiba had such potential? If he was illiterate when she married him, she must surely also have been illiterate, for there were very few women in those times who knew how to read. How was this woman, herself illiterate, able to recognize the enormous potential in Akiba that made her willing to sacrifice so much so that he could study and become the greatest scholar of his time?
Dr. Finkelstein’s answer: it was not that Rachel recognized his potential. It was that when Rabbi Akiba realized how much of a sacrifice she was making for his sake, he felt that the least he could do was study as hard as he could in order to make sure that her sacrifice would be worthwhile. He accomplished all that he did out of gratitude to her, and out of recognition of how much she gave so that he could become the scholar that he did.
Then Dr. Finkelstein told a personal story, which I believe relates to Akiba’s. He said than when he was a child, he wanted to study Talmud with his father. But his father was a congregational rabbi, and he had very little time in which he could study with his child. Finally, they figured out a schedule. They would go to shul and study there before the morning minyan. The minyan was at 7:00 so they agreed that they would go to the synagogue at 5:30 every morning and study for an hour and a half each day before congregants arrived for prayer.
That seemed like a good idea at first, but you know how cold and how windy it can be during the early hours of winter. Sometimes the wind would howl and when that happened, his father simply did not have the heart to wake his child in time to get him to the synagogue by 5:30 in the morning. His father would say to himself: let him sleep a little bit longer; it is too cold to make him get up today.
But whenever his father did not have the heart to wake him up, his mother would. And he used to wonder when he was a child: how come my mother can wake me up when my father can’t? Does my mother not love me as much as my father does? As he grew older and wiser, he understood. His mother REALLY loved him, and therefore she wanted him to live up to his potential. She wanted him to become the great scholar that he was capable of becoming.
The habit of getting up before dawn remained with Louis Finkelstein for the rest of his life. Despite his heavy responsibilities as a fund raiser and the burdens of administration and everything else a seminary president had to do, Dr. Finkelstein continued the habit of getting up before dawn and studying for several hours in peace and quiet before the rest of the world got up. And he used to say: WHAT I know, I know from my father; THAT I know is thanks to my mother.
What do these two stories have in common? In both cases, a woman senses the potential for greatness in the one whom she loves, and she challenges and presses the person whom she loves to live up to that potential.
What both stories have in common is that they teach us that real love is not smother love. Real love does not spoil and shield our beloved; real loves does not cripple our beloved by doing everything for him or her. Real love draws out the potential in our beloved. Real love demands the best from our beloved.
This is the challenge that faces every mother and every father. It is tempting, sometimes almost irresistibly tempting, for a parent to over-protect the child. It is tempting for a parent to want to shield the child from hard work and from strenuous challenges. It is tempting to do for them, and to do instead of them. But that way does the child no favor. That way makes the child dependent and helpless all his or her life. A wiser way, a better way, is the way of Rachel and the way of Dr. Finkelstein’s mother, the way that demonstrates discipline and capacity to sacrifice, and thereby calls forth discipline and the capacity to sacrifice in the ones we love.
Parenting is surely the most difficult task that any of us will ever face in life. Children – unlike televisions, washers, dryers, and refrigerators – come without an owner’s manual or a book of instructions. And so we have to feel our way, and practice and learn together with our children til we figure out the way to parent. But sometimes, we find guides; sometimes we find role models, who can help us learn how to do our task.
I said at the beginning that I had three reasons for sharing with you these two love stories this morning, but I only told you two of my reasons. We are at the end of the week which began with Mother’s Day and in the middle of the period of counting the omer, which calls to mind Rabbi Akiba. The third is a very personal reason. Today, May 14, is my mother’s 35th yahrzeit. Today I want to salute three women: Rabbi Akiba’s wife Rachel, who lived many centuries ago; Dr. Louis Finkelstein’s mother, who lived a generation ago; and my Mother, Ruth Sherman – all good role models, extraordinary guides. I believe that they can teach us much about the art of parenting and the art of loving. May they help us and guide us in our efforts to learn how to become better parents and better children in the years to come. Amen
I am grateful to Rabbi jack Riemer for these insights.
