It's Not Easy To Be a Son

Try ignoring your wife for a week. She won't let you. Try ignoring your husband, your children, your friends -- it's not possible. You depend on each other, your lives are intertwined.

Try ignoring your parents. Not only is it possible -- it often feels right and necessary. After all, they let you do it. They encourage you to. They even seem to want you to.

For twenty years they tell you: "When you'll be older, you'll need to do this on your own"; and: "When you're all grown up, you'll do it your way." And if you don't, they're disappointed in you. "It's about time you stood on your own two feet," they say.

But when you don't do things their way, they get upset. It takes a while for us to figure out that our parents want us to lead independent lives and to make our own, independent choices, but they want us to independently choose to do things their way.

It's not easy to be a son.

"You are G-d's children," says Moses to the people, after describing their difficult first forty years as a nation. It's not easy.