ESTABLISHING A LEGACY

Sidrah (Torah reading):  Genesis 23:1-25:18

Haftarah:  I Kings 1:1-31

For all King David’s wonderful qualities, he had a lot of problems as a parent.  Two of his sons, Absalom and Adonijah, tried to usurp his kingship before his death.  Absalom launched a revolt and was killed in battle.  As a commentator known as the Malbim (1) puts it, Adonijah was more cunning and waited until his father was advanced in years and failing in health before cultivating a circle of allies who would support him .   Fortunately Nathan the Prophet, never fearing to speak truth to power, warned Solomon’s mother Bathsheba of the plot and together they spurred King David into taking action. 

Abraham had a different task ahead of him.  He needed to find his spiritual and material heir Isaac a wife who would be both a life partner and a matriarch of the family charged with becoming a blessing to the nations of the earth.  Even though Abraham’s home city of Ur was considered a stronghold of idolatry, Abraham reasoned that a member of his own family, once introduced to the worship of Hashem, could work with Isaac to transmit the values of the family more successfully than a convert born in the land of Canaan.

Today we parents still have the responsibility to ensure that we hand over all the cherished lessons, experiences and spiritual as well as ethical standards our own elders entrusted to us.  Those wiser than I am have already recognized weaknesses in their relationships with their children very early on and smoothed them out, so that the next generation is willing and able to carry the legacy forward.  I see myself among those who discover cracks in the structure of relationships with our adult children and struggle to make repairs. Even those of us who are not parents have a connection to people who will remember us after we have left this world.  Just as it is never too early to start planning and working to pass on our legacies to those who come after us, it is never too late to begin examining and adjusting ourselves to develop better relationships with everyone around us, to make sure that our successors learn from our words and deeds so that we and they forge strong links in the chain of Jewish history.

(1)    MaLBiM:  An acronym of Meir Leibush Ben Yechiel Michel (family name Wisser).  The Malbim, who lived in the Russian Empire from 1809 to 1879, was an expert in Hebrew grammar and wrote commentaries on the Hebrew Bible.