"Now Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons, for he was the child of his old age; and he made him an ornamented tunic. And when the brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers, they hated him so that they could not speak a friendly word to him." (Genesis 37:3-4)
We have seen this theme of a parent favoring a child before. Sarah wants her child, Isaac, to have primary status in Abraham's household, and so she has Hagar and Ishmael expelled. Rebekah teaches Jacob to deceive Isaac so that Jacob gets the birthright rather than Esau, who was not only the first born, but Isaac's favorite. One might think that Jacob should have learned that bad things happen to a family unit and to the individuals in it when one parent favors one child over others, but he behaves in the same way.
Given the harm that such parental favoritism causes in the families of all three groups of Patriarchs and Matriarchs, it seems easy to say that our ancestors were deeply flawed in behaving in this way. Some might even glory in the fact that the Torah does not flinch in describing our ancestors' faults so that there is no chance that they become gods - or even saints - for us.
Yes, they were flawed, but it is a flaw that is no easier for many of us to avoid than it was for Jacob and his ancestors. After all, each parent and each child is a unique individual, with his or her personality traits, likes, and dislikes. It is only natural, then, that parents in their heart of hearts may genuinely like one or some of their children more than others, just as they like some acquaintances more than others and some members of their extended family more than others. The very fact that the people in the Torah's stories favor some children over others makes the Torah's stories and their characters all the more real for us.
Although showing favoritism to one child over others may be natural, it is not wise. As we see in this story and its predecessors, doing this pits one spouse against the other, and it makes good relations among one's children almost impossible. After all, everyone wants and even expects to be loved by one's parents, and that love needs to be unconditional and unmitigated by comparisons to other children in the family.
It is precisely this insight that in the 1960s led Rabbis Shlomo Fox, David Mogilner, and Burton Cohen to adopt the suggestions of Professor Joseph Schwab of the University of Chicago for structuring the Ramah experience. As Professor Schwab pointed out, every child needs to learn that society will and should make demands, and that people will be measured and rewarded in accordance with the way they fulfill those demands. So the people teaching classes and running activities should definitely set goals and do their best to help children meet them, but in the end children need to learn that there are standards that they must strive to meet and that they will be judged accordingly. In this process they will learn that some people are simply better at some things than others; life is not fair in that way. So not everyone will make the team, earn the Red Cross card in swimming, get an A in the class, or star in the play.
At the same time, though, children and adults both need what Schwab called "a home haven," which, in camp, was the bunk. Demands can and should be made in the bunk as well - duties to clean the bunk on a rotating basis, for example - and counselors and campers alike can and should praise good behavior and identify unacceptable behavior. In the end, though, in one's home one needs to be accepted and loved for who one is as a person and as a member of the group, regardless of one's talents and abilities or lack thereof. Sure, everyone in the bunk (counselors as well as campers) may and probably will like some people more than others, but in the end everyone must accept and value everyone else as a part of the bunk's family.
If that is true for a summer camp experience, it is even truer for our real families. Children need to be appreciated and valued for the unique people they are. As in the bunk, so too in the family parents may and sometimes should get angry with children and discipline them appropriately and without violence when they behave badly, and parents should conversely praise children when they behave well; to fail to do that, in fact, is parental negligence. But creating a home haven requires that parents strive to identify their children's likes and dislikes - in food, clothing, activities, and patterns of interaction with others - and support them to the extent that they can. Moreover, it means that parents should resist any natural inclinations that they have to show favoritism toward any of their children. There are, after all, all kinds of natural instincts that we have that we need to learn how to curb or resist altogether as we grow up, and this is definitely one of them.
So as we celebrate Shabbat, arguably the quintessential contribution of the Jewish tradition to creating home havens, let us think seriously about how we can avoid showing favoritism to any of our children and instead interact with them in ways that value them as the unique individuals they are.
Shabbat shalom.
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For more on this theme, see Chapter 4, "Parents and Children," in Elliot N. Dorff, Love Your Neighbor and Yourself: A Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003).