Whose Children Are They? A Drash for Vayera, 7 November 2014

Kate Nelligan as Eleni

In 1985 the film Eleni, a screen adaptation of New York Times Athens Bureau Chief Nicholas Gage’s memoir about his mother, came out.  It was essentially a dud, getting poor reviews and not producing much box office revenue.  It quickly faded into the scrap heap of unsuccessful films.  But it was memorable to me, because I saw it whilst living in Greece.

          The film presents a true story about the Greek Civil War that followed the Second World War.  Gage, born Nikolaos Gatzuyiannis, was originally from a mountain village called Lia, in Western Greece near the border with Albania.  In 1948 Gage’s mother, Eleni, was executed by communist guerillas who controlled the village.  This, after four of her five children had been sent away from the village, eventually joining their father who had emigrated to America years earlier.  Gage spent some of his time during his Athens posting, working to get to the bottom of why his mother had been killed.

          The film came out almost 40 years after the events surrounding Eleni’s death.  Even so, in Greece it opened wounds that were barely scabbed over after all that time.  When I saw it in Athens, the audience walked out in a hush.  Most Greek villages have been depopulated, their younger inhabitants having moved to Athens in search of opportunities.  Therefore, it follows that for the much of the audience on the night I saw the film, it was their story.  The film was a dud to audiences and critics in the rest of the world, but for Greeks it was powerful.

          For me, a particularly powerful line in the movie was when Eleni stood up to a communist tribunal, which wanted to send the village’s children away to Czechoslovakia to be raised in a communist state.  The tribunal was trying to get the village’s mothers to voluntarily send their children.  Eleni faced the communists and declared:  They’re not the party’s children, not the Internationale’s children.  They’re my children!  Soon afterward, she managed to spirit four of her five children out of the village.  About to be executed by a firing squad for this act of sedition, she threw up her hands in triumph and shouted:  My children!

          When I saw Eleni, I had no children of my own.  But I knew enough about communism to find it distasteful.  And enough about family life to exult in Eleni’s triumph of the will.  When Hillary Clinton published, ten years after I saw Eleni, her book It Takes a Village to Raise a Child, I found myself as did many conservatives, repelled by the assertion.  I felt far more drawn to the triumph of Nicholas Gage’s mother, exulting even as she faced death because she had saved her children from the tyranny of the village.

          Eleni’s assertion that she alone was competent to decide her children’s fate, represents the best side of parents’ ‘ownership’ of children.  Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks teaches us in his drash on this week’s Torah portion, Vayera, that in the ancient world there was a sinister side to this mindset.  Up to the time of Abraham, Sacks asserts, fathers thought of their children as their own possessions, to be exploited for whatever end desired.  Rabbi Sacks argues that the lesson of the Binding of Isaac, contained in this week’s Torah reading, is that our children are not our possessions, but G-d’s.  And the G-d of Israel, in contrast to the pagan gods of the ancient world, declines the sacrifice of an innocent child for the benefit of its parents.  If we understand the pagan practices of the ancient world, and why they resonated for ancient man, then we can easily understand this principle.

          Or can we?  Many parents, even today, are unable to break away from the mindset of their children as their personal possessions.  And that mindset often produces behaviors that lack the nobility of Eleni’s defying the communists in her village, and accepting a death sentence, for daring to send her children to a better life in America.  An appalling example:  many countries including Australia know the phenomenon of Welfare Mothers.  These are women who keep producing child after child with any man who will provide the service, in order to increase their share of The Dole.  The good of the children is an afterthought at best.  Many such children grow up to be dysfunctional citizens, clogging the justice system and living a lifetime on The Dole themselves.

Another appalling example:  in the various wars against Israel including Hamas’ recent war in Gaza, the Palestinians have repeatedly used their children as shields to cover their aggressive moves against the Israelis.  This, 57 years after Golda Meir asserted:  Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.  Given the history of the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict since 1957, Golda’s words still resonate powerfully with us.

But other examples of the results of the mindset that our children are our possessions, examples that are less appalling than the above yet result in dysfunctional individuals and families, come to mind in great numbers.  It is painfully common for parents to unthinkingly push their children to make life decisions in line with the parents’ values and priorities.  This, regardless of the children’s own values and goals.  It is hard to argue that the sense of ownership of children by parents, can and does produce bad result where the parents use their influence without reference to the child’s desires. 

The slogan that it takes a village can seem laughable.  And I tend to deride the Nanny State as much as the next guy.  But the truth is that there are no exams that one must pass before becoming a parent.  One need only figure out how to make a child.  And as you know, that’s not too hard to figure out.  This reality does unfortunately lead to a profusion of incompetent parents raising future dysfunctional citizens.

Given all this, the lesson that our children belong to G-d and not to us, is a powerful, and necessary lesson.  The narrative in the 22^nd chapter of Genesis, the narrative of the binding of Isaac, comes to teach us that our children are not ours to sacrifice for our benefit.  Given his acculturation in the ancient world, Abraham would have needed to be taught this lesson.  Given the scope of human history since then, we clearly need the lesson as well.  Shabbat shalom.