Eldering
A few days ago, I was walking to preschool with my children. My five-year-old, who has been exploring friendship and playground etiquette (mostly in the breach), noted that one of his classmates had been encouraging others to do mean things. After participating for a while, my kiddo finally wised up and chose not to play with this classmate anymore.
“But,” he asked, “isn’t it mean not to play with someone?” I agreed that while generally social exclusion is not a nice thing to practice, sometimes there are good reasons for setting boundaries - especially if a “friend” is encouraging mean behavior!
After dropping the kids off, my mind continued to buzz with curiosity about human interaction, and the philosophical implications of how the same action can be mean in one context, and morally justified in another.
Later that day, while on the phone with my parents, I found myself in a discussion about the book of Job. My father mused about how the Torah seems to lay out an orderly view of the world, in which good is rewarded and evil is punished, but Job undermines that message - here is a book which adamantly demonstrates a good person suffering through no fault of his own. Life is complex and irreducibly mysterious.
But what a feeling to philosophize with my children in the morning and my parents in the afternoon! To try to guide my little ones into more clarity on the rules and systems of society, and to ponder the limits of what we can know with my elders.
These intergenerational conversations directed me to a verse from this week’s parashah (Kedoshim, Vayikra 19:32)).
מִפְּנֵ֤י שֵׂיבָה֙ תָּק֔וּם וְהָדַרְתָּ֖ פְּנֵ֣י זָקֵ֑ן…
Mipnei seivah takum, v’hadarta p’nei zakein…
You shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old…
On its surface, this is a straightforward reminder to “respect your elders.” Yet, there are important questions we must answer:
What does it mean to be an elder?
Why should elders be respected?
And what does that respect consist of?
Ramban (13th-century Spain) begins his commentary by quoting Rashi:
“I might think that one is to rise before an uncultured old man; Scripture therefore states, and thou shalt honor the face of ‘zakein’ (the old man). Zakein [from the root kanah, acquire] means only one who has ‘acquired’ wisdom.” This is Rashi’s language.
Who is an elder, according to Rashi? Someone whose years have brought learning as well as age. Don’t waste your respect on bumpkins, apparently! Luckily, Ramban has more to add:
The concluding opinion of the Talmud (Kiddushin 32b) is not so, for the Rabbis have said: “Isi ben Yehudah says: Any hoary head is included [under the terms of this commandment], and Rabbi Yochanan said: The final decision of the law is as Isi ben Yehudah interpreted it.” Thus Scripture is commanding [in the first half of the verse] to honor any old person, even the unlearned.
Age itself is worth respecting. And for all this talk of being “learned” or not, we know there are many ways of being wise. If you can’t learn something from a person, the issue lies as much with the student as with the teacher…
Ramban (quoting the Talmud) envisions a society where baseline respect grows for people over time, regardless of intellect, productivity, or any other way that we evaluate ourselves. Imagine a retirement account that was filled over the years not with money but with social regard, kindness, and connection.
However, Ramban has more to say!
And then [in the second half of the verse] it gives another commandment concerning the zakein, that is one who has acquired wisdom, even if they be young and learned.
As another Talmudic teaching suggests (Taanit 7a): “And this is what Rabbi Chanina said: I have learned much from my teachers and even more from my friends, but from my students I have learned more than from all of them.”
Norman Fischer, in his beautiful book Taking Our Places, spends time focusing on maturity, which I would connect to becoming an elder (of any age):
There are answers to life’s most important questions, but they are never final; they change as we change. Maybe true maturity is finding a way of keeping such questions alive throughout our lifetime. For when there are no more questions, we stop maturing and begin merely to age.
The potency of speaking across generations is not about giving each other answers (although sometimes those help!), but more about sparking the important questions. Who am I? Who are you? How should I grow? How do we live together? What gives you strength when life is hard? What brings you joy? Where do we go next?
Wherever you find yourself on life’s journey, we have so much to share with each other.
Shabbat shalom!
Rabbi Jay LeVine
