Are we lost in the middle? – Vayyiggash
The Joseph story has so many heartrending verses. For instance: “We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one” (Gen. 44:20).
But what is in between the old man and the child? There seems to be a missing generation. Not only in the sidra, but in modern Jewish life. Decades of adulthood span the gap between the old and the young, and it seems they are spiritual wasteland.
What are our communal priorities? The senior citizen and the child. It is wonderful that it should be so. In ancient days some nations found old people a nuisance and left them to die in the open, while for Judaism old age was a crown to be treated with honour. Today some seem to think children can be left without protection, opportunity and love; whereas Reuben said, “Do not sin against the child”.
Without the middle generation, however, there is a gulf in Jewish life. Too many adults find excuses to stay away from the synagogue and Jewish study and observance. “I don’t have time, I’m off religion, I have other things on my mind…”
You know all the excuses. But the fact is that it is precisely when you are busy that you need the serenity of the synagogue, when you think you are off religion that you need to seek it all the more, when you have things on your mind that you need the wisdom of tradition to help you sort out your priorities.
More than this: whilst your children are still excited about the wonder of life, that’s when you need to find time to renew your own faith as you witness the purity of theirs. And for heaven’s sake, don’t imagine that you’ll always have time for those things somewhere in the future. As the Perek says, “Say not, ‘When I have leisure I will study’; perhaps you will have no leisure…”
