Ain’t It Heavy: Parent-Child Presence during a Pandemic

My second-grade teacher, Sister Mary, instructed us, during one of our daily Religion classes, to “draw God.” <insert gasps of horror from some of my Jewish friends, family, and colleagues, for whom the idea of seven-year-old children being instructed to break the Fourth, depending on how you count them, Commandment — no “graven images” — is anathema>

Most of the other Catholic kids (for those not yet in the know, I converted to Judaism as an adult and subsequently became the queer rabbi I am today) drew a (inaccurate) light-skinned man with a long white beard (Santa?) and vaguely robe-like clothing. If they drew more than a head and shoulders, they likely also included sandals on His feet. A few threw in a shepherd’s staff for good measure.

Sister Mary stood over my desk, inquiring, “And what is your picture, Nicole?”

I had used all the shades of yellow and white I could find in my crayon box, shooting out in rays and lines from the center of the page out beyond its edges onto the fake wood of my desktop.

“Light.”

I was a weird seven-year-old.

Or maybe I was just prescient and wise? We read in this week’s Torah portion about how God appeared to our ancestors:

וַיָּבֹ֨א מֹשֶׁ֤ה וְאַהֲרֹן֙ אֶל־אֹ֣הֶל מוֹעֵ֔ד וַיֵּ֣צְא֔וּ וַֽיְבָרֲכ֖וּ אֶת־הָעָ֑ם וַיֵּרָ֥א כְבוֹד־יְהוָ֖ה אֶל־כָּל־הָעָֽם׃

“Moses and Aaron then went inside the Tent of Meeting. When they came out, they blessed the people; and the Presence of the Lord appeared to all the people” (Vayikra/Leviticus 9:23).

K’vod-HaShem. The Presence of the Eternal. Kavod, translated as “honor” or “respect”; in this form, translated by the King James Bible as “the Glory of the Lord,” and in other editions translated as “the Godhead.” Translated by seven-year-old, then-Catholic Rabbi Nikki as Light. Which, when you look at some of our traditional commentators, might not be far off. Kavod, it turns out, is associated with fire and cloud (interplays of light and shadow). We read about the desert sanctuary and the clouds that surrounded it, drawing in and veiling God’s kavod, God’s Presence. It’s there, but you cannot really see it; only Moses ever does. Mysterious, ethereal, overwhelming, surrounding, light and shadow.

When the people were blessed, the Kavod appeared. When God gave our people boundaries to help us live as free people (a.k.a. The Torah), the Kavod “was like a consuming fire” (כאש אוכלת) (Mishpatim/Exodus 24:17). In this week’s story, too, this Presence is both accepting and dangerous: God’s Presence appears and immediately thereafter the people experience a sign that God has accepted their collective sacrifice; namely, that fire literally bursts from nowhere and eats the animal parts laid upon the altar (Vayikra 9:23–24).

The Kavod loves and consumes. A sign, or a strange coincidence, that the word is awfully close to one that features heavily in another of the Jewish commandments: kibud av va’em, “Honor your parents” (Devarim/Deuteronomy 5:16). One root, used in different contexts, to indicate concepts like glory, Divine Presence, overwhelming power, and the honor and respect we are called to afford our parents.

Many of us are spending time in close quarters with our children or our parents these days. College and boarding school students are back “home,” just as their campuses were beginning to feel securely like “home.” Parents of humans of all ages are suddenly reverting spare bedrooms and guest rooms and home offices back into family members’ bedrooms. And those of us with toddlers or school-age children now spend a full 24/7 singing songs, preparing meals and snacks, homeschooling, stepping painfully on interlocking brick toys, and other delightful pastimes. And for full-time family caregivers, it’s… life as usual, with what I can imagine is a frustrating perusal of how other folks now suddenly understand how much labor is required for this kind of unpaid work. There’s a lot of parent-child time these days, and sometimes the last thing I see when I look around our home is God, the white-robed version or the chaotic yellow-spectrum crayon version.

But the Kavod has definitely been in my house these days. I know because my children, like young me, baffling Sister Mary in second grade, can recognize and name it. It appears to them when we are radically present to them, and it disappears in an instant when our frustration and anger make their fiery appearance.

Parents are not God. But we have an awful lot of power over our children. So much power, in fact, that our children sometimes experience the nearness of acceptance and absorption. The “we’ll eat you up, we love you so” of Where the Wild Things Are: a story that is, after all, about a parent and a child trying, and failing, and trying again, to co-regulate emotions, to create boundaries together, to love a wild new creature and raise that creature into a person who appropriately experiences and expresses their emotions and urges. Let me emphasize: I am not talking about the abuse of parental power, which is real and unacceptable and must be addressed immediately, prioritizing the child’s well-being and safety. What I am talking about is the real challenge, especially in a time of crisis, of ensuring our own boundaries, as parents and people, are strong enough that we can also help our children maintain their healthy boundaries.

For God and the Jewish people in the time of the Temple, the boundary was stark and strict, and crossing it meant the difference between life and death. The fiery Presence enclosed the community in a protective cloud, but it also sent forth sparks. In turn, those sparks either consumed the flesh of our offerings on the altar, or it consumed us, our flesh, as it consumed the sons of Aaron. Honoring God was done in a specific, choreographed way. But those days, those ways of navigating the boundary between the Eternal and the moral, are over. We have (we must have) new ways, now.

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, a 19th-century teacher, urges us to turn the fire of that bright, overwhelming Kavod into a metaphor:

לזה אמר ומראה כבוד ה’ כו’, שהסימן כשירצה אדם לידע אם רואה כבוד ה’ והקדוש ברוך הוא נהנה ממנו ולזה כאש אוכלת אם לבו בוער כאש וקל להבין:

“This is the meaning of the words ‘and the Presence of the Lord appeared, etc’: that ‎there is a sign, that when a person wants to know if they can see the Presence of God, which is a ‘consuming fire’ and know if God takes pleasure in their action, they have to look into their heart and feel to be ‘on fire’” (Kedushat Levi, Shemot, Mishpatim 11).

The fire and light I drew as a child did not burn; it was simply wax scribbled on fiber. And what a lesson: the metaphorical light of insight, of passion. A fire that feeds us, but does not consume. A flame we must tend so that our children, our dependents, can warm themselves by it. A spark that inspires us to think ourselves into tomorrow, into not-yet, into the-world-as-it-may-be.

And here’s another secret, a key from the Hebrew language: the root kavod can mean Presence and Glory and Divinity. It can mean regular-old-human honor and respect. And it can also mean kaved, heavy.

This stuff is heavy. Honoring our parents, creating and sustaining boundaries for our children, living 24/7 with people for whom we are responsible. It is heavy. It can be burdensome. Honestly, I do not spend every day delighted to be living in a 1200-square-foot Brooklyn apartment with a 5-year-old and an 8-year-old who are, understandably, regressing a bit in the face of anxiety and uncertainty and pandemic.

It’s heavy, and it’s hard.

And it’s the most important job I have: to be a loving, sustaining, and constant (as constant as I can) presence. A presence that warms but does not burn. A presence that surrounds but does not consume.

May you find the strength to be this kind of Kavod for those who need you, and may you be embraced by a Kavod that helps you to feel safe and secure in these times.