The Patriarchal
Instinct
My father-in-law, of blessed memory, was definitely of what one
would call the ‘old school.’ Immigrating
from Libya to Israel as a young man, he built for himself and his family a life
based on the values that he learned from his parents. And that were as natural to him as
breathing. And one of foremost of those
values was that a family is a patriarchy.
The pater familias was the undisputed head of the household. Does this mean that, when a man takes a wife,
she becomes his property and subservient to him? Absolutely not. I can tell you will complete confidence, that
my mother-in-law was never subservient to her husband. Oh, she didn’t disagree and dispute with him
as a matter of principle. But when
she disagreed with him, she was not likely to roll over and be a doormat – or
anything close!
But such is not
really the case in any culture that is, at least superficially,
patriarchal. Such as our friends, the
Greeks. Who can forget how, in the film My
Big, Fat Greek Wedding, Maria reacted to her daughter’s mocking of Gus’
mindset? The man is the head of the
family. Maria responded: The man may be the head, but the woman is
the neck. And she can turn the head any
way she pleases.
I can imagine my
mother-in-law, when her husband was still alive, holding such a mindset. Let the fool say anything he wants, then I
decide what to do. She is just that
kind of confident and assertive person.
As is her daughter, Clara. But
there were still conventions that supported the sense that the family was a
patriarchy. For example, how the
children were named. The first son was
named after the father’s father. The
second son, after the mother’s father.
The first daughter was named after the father’s mother. The second daughter, after the mother’s
mother. So in Clara’s family, every one
of her brothers – and she had five! – had a son named Tsur or some
variant. And a daughter named Mazal or
some variant.
Another element of
patriarchy that survives, is the sense that sons who marry, bring their wives
into their family. Meanwhile, daughters
who marry, join their husband’s family.
Now sometimes, my father-in-law wanted it both ways! He wanted his sons and their wives near him,
as well as his daughters and their husbands.
But at the end of the day, it was all good-natured. He never really gave Clara and me a hard time
if we weren’t in her parents’ home for holidays. Although if we were, Vito was a very
happy man. But we definitely were expected
for weddings and the like.
The patriarchal
urge, the instinct for a father to gather and keep his sons and their wives in
his orbit, is of course not a recent cultural phenomenon. We see it at work in this morning’s Torah
reading. With our patriarch Abraham who,
in his old age, is sending his servant Eliezer to find a wife for his son,
Isaac. Abraham has two big
concerns. First, he does not want his
son to marry a Canaanite girl. He wants for
him a marriage with a girl of his own people back in Aram-Naharayim. And he does not want his son to even consider
leaving him and travelling to find a wife, lest he not return.
Why the fear of
losing his son? Aside from the recent
incident where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac on an altar?
There seems to be a
natural order of things, that a son grows up resenting his father. At least, until his finds himself and asserts
his own dominance over his slice of the world.
I remember as a young man, needing to put some distance between my
father and myself in order to create my own family. And then, once I had created my own
family, I was happy to be around my father.
He was no longer a ‘threat’ to me, nor I to him. But I never felt I had to distance myself,
even temporarily, from my mother. There
was no sense of competition between her and me.
But there does seem to be such a natural competition for
dominance between fathers and sons. DH
Lawrence, whom I read as a teenager, certainly thought deeply about it. To him, it was about an essential sexual
attraction of sons for their mothers. I
have a feeling that Lawrence’s ideas were more than a bit overblown. Perhaps he had an attraction for his
mother and projected it upon all young men.
But there’s no doubt that fathers and sons compete with one another for
the wife-mother’s attentions.
And of course there’s
the idea of the father’s need for his sons’ nearness being rooted in the
pastoral economy. Only with sons, and
their sons, within the orbit can he significantly increase his herds and
flocks. But my father-in-law was not a
herdsman, or the son of a herdsman.
So my sense is that
this need by the traditional patriarch, to have his sons and their wives and
offspring added to the household, represents something far deeper. Something natural and desirable, not some
controlling and manipulating instinct as the non-traditionalist often thinks. Whether its root was primarily economic, or
social, or whatever, or whether Abraham simply feared he had driven a wedge
between himself and Isaac through his recent behaviour. Abraham was concerned that his son not leave
his side in search of a wife.
My own birth family
was small and we have not remained overly close over the years. Surely that reflects, in part the American
spirit that makes separation from one’s family by great distances, a ‘normal’
rite of passage. And of course, my
brother and I both chose to make our careers in the military where we were always
on the move…from one side of the world to the other. I wonder how it would be possible, given
changed circumstances, to live closer with a large extended family. Even so, I wonder what my children have
missed because of our peripatetic life.
I wonder if it would have been better for them to grow up with constant
access to their many aunts, uncles, and cousins. And if I’m being honest, I have to say…probably
so. My instincts as a modernist make me
want to think of ‘tribalism’ as a quaint relic of another time whose demise we
should celebrate. But my heart says that
connection to extended family is a desirable condition of life…not just a
quaint holdover. My guess is that just
about everyone listening to my words this morning has experienced some degree
of dislocation, some degree of separation from extended family. We can do little to change that. But we can, and aught to, recognise
what we have lost in the lives that we’ve lived. And thus celebrate the good intentions and
desires of Abraham to keep his own tribe intact. And in celebrating the Torah’s wisdom, pass
on this particular bit of wisdom to up-and-coming generations. Shabbat shalom.
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