A Prayer for “The Son of a Preacher Man,” A Certain Fellow Turns Fifteen or . . . Public Reflections on a Personal Relationship

Rabbi David Wirtschafter,

FullSizeRenderIn the midst of rejoicing with family and friends last June at my nephew’s Bar-Mitzvah, I had a stunning realization: Rafi is the youngest of my brother Josh’s three children. According to tradition, there is a certain dance we do to honor a couple at the wedding of their youngest child, the Mezainka. Josh and his wife, Diane, are klezmer musicians and avid students of Yiddish culture, so naturally they appropriated this ritual to the bar-mitzvah rather than waiting for the wedding. Who says you can’t do both? As we danced around the two of them, it occurred to me with overwhelming force that my kids aren’t babies anymore! Come to think of it, they haven’t been babies for some time now. This dance of actively, day-to-day, raising our children under our own roof lasts only for so long. Two years from now it will be my daughter’s bat mitzvah and we’ll have finished the birth through b’nai mitzvah portion of our parenting “career,” just like my brother and sister-in-law have.

A few months have passed. My sister, Brooke, and her husband, Jonathan, have brought Leo, the first of their three boys, to the Torah and Emanuelle is now next. This month, Zachariah, our firstborn, turns 15. Fifteen! For heaven’s sake! If he’s 15, I can’t pass myself off as 21 much longer. I like to tease my kids that Zach is a belated birthday gift and Emmy (June birthday) is an early Father’s Day present. This month that marks the 15th anniversary of Zachariah’s birthday is also the 15th anniversary of our role as parents.

Parenting teaches, tests, humbles, enriches, excites, and exhausts us like nothing else. Nothing has been as fun, frustrating, and fulfilling than this. 

Zachariah, life with you is an adventure. When we say the blessing over our children each Shabbat, we finish it with an addendum from Marcia Falk. “Be who you are. And may you be blessed in all that you are.” It’s like the Hebrew song that you and Emmy learned at school, Ani Ne’Shar Ani, “I’m Always Me.” Delightful or difficult, sonorous or silent, playful or provocative, adventurous or anxious, you are always you. I can’t imagine it any other way. I’ll try harder to remember that your “blessings” are a blessing no matter how you’re behaving. “Be who you are. And May You Be Blessed in ALL that you are.”

Love,

Aba

Published by Rabbi David Wirtschafter

David Wirtschafter is the Rabbi of Temple Adath Israel in Lexington, Kentucky. Previously he was rabbi of the Ames Jewish Congregation in Iowa, while also acting as the Visiting Scholar in Jewish Studies and Rabbi-in-Residence at the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at St. John's University, the University of St. Thomas and the College of St. Benedict in Minnesota. Born in Lexington, and raised in Minneapolis, Rabbi Wirtschafter graduated from Brandeis University with a degree in English literature and was ordained by Hebrew Union College in New York. He has served congregations in New Hampshire, New York, California and Iowa. In his spare time, he enjoys playing mandolin, practicing violin with his daughter, following politics, and watching college basketball with his son. He loves the outdoors and whenever he has free time you can find him taking a run or enjoying a walk with his family.

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