Volume 30 Issue 25 20 Aug 2021 12 Elul 5781

From the Head of Jewish Life

Rabbi Daniel Siegel – Head of Jewish Life

Being our parents?

When discussing genetic engineering with our students, I asked for their thoughts about “designer children” and human “offspring” being brought into this world as clones of their parents. While recognising the determinative role of heredity, as disclosed by genetics, they agreed that no individual should be consciously designed by or be a reproduction of his/her parent(s).

This week’s parashah, Ki Tetsei, confronts us with these considerations long before science brought it to the forefront of debate within contemporary bioethics. Three passages, in Ki Tetsei, serve as an affront to the sensibilities of many and compel us to ask: “Are we our parents?”

The first text commands us: “No mamzer (a child born of an illicit union) shall enter the community of the Lord”. Today, in Israel, registries of mamzerim are being maintained lest one marry such an individual thereby ‘tainting’ the community.

 

 

Long ago, our Rabbis expressed bewilderment over a child categorised as being no more than (the misbegotten issue of) one’s parents:

“But I returned and observed all the oppressions that are done under the sun;
and behold the tears of the oppressed, and they have no comforter; but from the 
hand of their oppressors comes power, but they have no comforter” (Ecclesiastes)
“All the oppressions” this refers to what is being done to the mamzerim. “And behold 
the tears of the oppressed”, for their mothers transgressed, but it is these humiliated 
ones that are being marginalised. This one’s father had illicit sexual relations, but 
what did he (the child) do?! Why should it have consequence for him?! “They had 
no comforter” but “from the hand of the oppressor there comes power”- this refers to 
the Great Assembly of Israel which comes upon them with the power of the Torah 
and marginalises them in the name of “No mamzer shall enter the community of the 
Lord”. But, since “they have no comforter”, God says: “It is upon Me to comfort them”. 

Countermanding this biblical prescription, the Rabbis here present God as condemning a ruling body that would use “His” Law to aggravate rather than ameliorate the plight of the “mamzer”. By means of our evolving sensibility, our Jewish tradition here proscribes perceiving a child as solely an extension of parents and/or their actions rather than a being in his/her own right. 

The very next verse states “A Moavite shall not enter the community of the Lord”. Here too, the child is being marginalised as he/she is deemed to be no different that his/her parents who were not welcoming of the needy Israelites after they left Egypt. Remarkably, the biblical book of Ruth, tells us that this Moavite woman, reputed for her lovingkindness, not only entered the community of Israel (became a Jew) but was the great grandmother of King David and thus the progenitor of the Messiah, who comes from the House of David.

In this counter narrative, we are taught that we are not our parents, but we make our own way in this world, creating a life that may be radically different from our parents.

The final verse of our parashah commands us to “utterly destroy” Amalek for when our ancestors left Egypt they were attacked by this nation. Once again, our Jewish tradition argues against the contention “like father like son”. The Rabbis tell us that the descendants of Haman, an Amalakite, studied Torah with the Jewish Sages of Bnei Brak. Indeed, some contend that one of these Amalekites, who joined the Jews, was the convert Rabbi Akiva, considered one of the greatest Rabbis in our history.

Yet, this Rabbinic re-writing of our people’s sensibilities and of those whom we wish to categorise (thereby categorising ourselves) finds its impetus in this same parashah. “Children are not to be punished on account of their parents, but each is to be held accountable for his/her own actions”. 

Our Jewish tradition teaches that we are not to be cast in the mould of our parents, either by science or society.

The challenge is to be our best. No one else can.