March 11, 2023
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parshat Ki Tisa
March 11, 2023 — 18 Adar 5783
Knitted Together Forever
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
I recently heard a podcast featuring Andy Stanley–have I mentioned him before? He is a pastor in Atlanta–and his wife Sandra, and they were discussing a most compelling question: How do we parent our children so that when they grow up and grow out, they want to spend time with their parents, and with one another, even when they don’t have to? If this is our goal, our parenting north star, that should motivate all our parenting decisions along the way.
For example, they tell the story of the time their then teen-age son Andrew was extremely disrespectful to his mother. They could have chosen a severe punishment, grounding him, loading him up with extra chores. But they didn’t. They didn’t know what to do, at first. Andrew was expecting a punishment for his disrespect, but Andy and Sandra did not want to come down on him with a punitive move because that would have been counterproductive to their larger relational goal that in a few years, when he would be out of the house, that he would still want to spend time with them and his siblings. So they waited and thought about it and after several days came up with the right move. Andy Stanley said to his rebellious son: Andrew, you are going to take your mother out for a date. You are going to take her to a fine restaurant of her choosing. You are going to pay. You are going to drive her both ways, and over that nice dinner, you will find your way to apologize. Mother and son had their date; both of their hearts melted; he apologized, she accepted his apology. They grew even closer. He is now married, and a father himself, and he and his wife and child choose to spend lots of time with his parents and siblings.
I have been marinating on this podcast ever since I heard it because it has so many implications. The same question they ask about parenting we can ask in other contexts.
How can a synagogue inspire its people to want to come when they don’t have to?
How can a work environment be so joyful and inviting that employees want to come when they don’t have to?
How do we inspire our friends to want to spend time with us when they don’t have to?
Is there some elegant unifying hypothesis that can inspire the people in the various walks of our lives to want to spend time with us when they do not have to?
I had been carrying that question around when I came upon a poignant vignette in an unexpected place.
Recently a book came out that was of double interest to Shira. The book was written by a woman who grew up with Shira in Minneapolis. Same high school. Same shul. Same chevra. Her name is Peggy Orenstein, and she is a published author on a number of subjects. But the content of this book is particularly compelling to Shira because it is about knitting, and Shira is an avid knitter. The title of the book is Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World’s Ugliest Sweater. The book’s premise is that its author does not simply buy a sweater at the store. Rather, she starts by encountering a sheep, like an animal, a real sheep, shearing the sheep, dyeing the wool and doing the many technical and tedious things required to knit the wool into a sweater. This might sound like a book that only a knitter could love. But then there is this vignette about parents and children, and about life.
Peggy Orenstein is doing a particularly painstaking thing called carding the wool. That is basically cleaning the sheep’s wool from dirt, sweat, debris, grass, clumps of earth, anything that would get in the way of the material being amenable to knitting. Carding is super slow-going, hours and hours of tedium. She is doing this during the pandemic, and she comes up with an idea. She is in Oakland, her 95 year old father is in Minneapolis, she will FaceTime her father while she does this carding maneuver every day.
Peggy shares that she had been extraordinarily close to her mother. She writes:
A profound loneliness pierced me when my mother died. No one else could be so
invested in the minutiae of my life, so eager to hear every trivial detail. No one else
could provoke in me that volatile mix of irritation and adoration. It felt like a layer
of protection from this callous world had been ripped away, like I would never be fully
warm again.
By contrast, Peggy’s relationship with her father had been much more complicated. She writes:
Our relationship has not always been easy. He was a traditional guy who expected his
daughter to stay close to home, marry a solid breadwinner like himself (Jewish lawyer or
Jewish doctor, my choice), and raise children as my mom did. There’s nothing wrong with that dream,
but it wasn’t mine.
When Peggy graduated from college, she moved to New York City to become a writer, a move her father neither understood nor supported. His exact words, which she easily summons more than 40 years later, are: “That’s a pipe dream, Peggy. You can’t do that.”
Not surprisingly, after she left home, she very rarely chose to come back home.
Roll the film forward. Her Mom has passed. Her father has dementia. He is in Minneapolis, she is in Oakland, they are in the thick of the pandemic, he is in a residential care facility that will not permit family members to visit him, he is isolated, so she starts FaceTiming him every day, calls which would last a long time.
One of the charming eccentricities of these calls was that her father was a lifelong fan of the Minnesota Twins. She watches him watch baseball reruns, whose outcomes he does not remember from day to day. Like the classic Fifty First Dates with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, he experiences each Twin victory in these reruns anew. She writes:
There are Twins reruns every day during the pandemic, a fantasy season in which
the home team always wins. My dad doesn’t get that the games aren’t live; he
attributes their streak to something he does with his walker.
I ask what, precisely, that is.
He smiles slyly. “It’s a trade secret,” he says, nodding, and I laugh.
They continue these conversations every day, and then one day he says:
“I’m so glad you’re here, Peg. It brightens my day.”
I inhale. Deeply. “I love you, Dad,” I say.
“I love you more,” he replies.
He never said that in his younger years. But he said it now at 95. And it landed. Deeply.
Just then I realized that this story embodies the elegant unifying hypothesis to how to inspire our children and other people to want to spend time with us when they don’t have to: love them for who they are, and take a genuine interest in what interests them. When Peggy’s father imposed his dreams on her, that drove her away. When Peggy’s father criticized her life path, that drove her away. When he dismissed her dreams as a pipedream, that drove her away. But when he could let the judgment and critique go, and enjoy time with her as she was, and love her as she was, that kept her calling every day when she did not have to.
Now her father was 95, and he had dementia. The obvious pathos of this story is, why did he have to wait so long? The obvious message of the story is that we not wait. That we show that love, and that genuine interest, now.
That is not only the moral of Peggy Orenstein’s story. It is also the moral of the last five portions in the Book of Exodus. The Israelites start a building project today: v’asu li mikdash v’shechanti b’tocham, build me a sanctuary so that I might dwell among the people. This project begins in today’s reading which is called Terumah, a voluntary offering. The very title of our portion has an echo, a note, of what Andy and Sandra Stanley are talking about. The tabernacle is to be built by people who want to give an offering they did not have to give. Moses’s question, like Andy and Sandra Stanley’s question, is how do you motivate people to want to do what they do not have to do?
We know how the story ends. This project is successful beyond measure. The Israelites are super motivated to give their gifts that they did not have to give. It is the only time in the history of the Jewish people that a capital campaign was so successful that the organizers of the campaign said: stop giving. Everyone is bringing too much.
What was the secret sauce? How to explain this outpouring of generosity?
Simple. Every person was asked to give the gift that embodied who they were. The woodworkers were asked to give wood. The metal workers were asked to give metal. The tapestry people were asked to give tapestry. The jewelers were asked to give jewels. If Moses had said to the woodworkers we want metal, or to the metal workers we want wood, the tabernacle would not have been built. But when Moses said: what you have to offer, we value and need, that motivated lots of offerings.
In some ways, this feels obvious. But as our friend and teacher Gary Orren might say, that is common sense but not common practice. How often do we, with the best of intentions, without meaning any harm, do what Peggy Orenstein’s father did when he said to her when she was in her early 20s: Your dream is a pipe dream. Do my dream for you, not your dream for yourself.
If we want people to want to be with us when they don’t have to be, let’s see, value and love them for they are. Easy to say. Not always easy to do. But that is how you knit together relationships that last. Shabbat shalom.