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A lot of Jews grew up in a family business. It's how most of our great grandparents and grandparents made it in America--scrap metal, dry goods, shmattes, produce, it was all the same idea. Start small, save your pennies, employ the family, grow and prosper. In one or two generations these small businesses provided the cash flow to mold us into what we are today--the most highly educated, affluent, successful minority in America, and probably the world. Or did it? I guess it's all a matter of how you define success.
Before college, rabbinical school, and spending Shabbat in shul, I prayed alongside my Dad and my Uncle Mort at their Temple, Leder Brothers’ Scrap Iron and Metal--it was sweaty, loud, dirty work. They started out poor, fishing tin cans out of other people’s garbage. Next, they bought a little land and an old truck…no building. With no place to keep their tools safe, they buried them under the snow at the end of each day and dug them out each morning.
Dad and Uncle Mort took the jobs no one else wanted; wrecking cast iron boilers and copper pipes out of burned-out, condemned buildings. Eventually, they were more trucks and more accounts, and a double lot in the suburbs where they built two houses. After twenty years dad and Uncle Mort had made it. But the more they made, the further they drifted apart. These two brothers needed each other, but they didn’t love each other. Eventually they became neighbors who didn't speak, whose wives lost touch, and whose children barely interacted. At work, they spent most of their time arguing about who really made the money, who screwed up the deals gone bad and where the stapler belonged on the desk.
A lot of us raised in a family business know the psychic price paid for every dollar collected. Parents pit children against each other; mom backing one, dad the other. A son-in-law enters the scene and creates more resentment. Wives and daughters are shut out with a patronizing pat on the head. Business is good and there is jealousy. Business is bad and there is finger pointing. Everyone is trapped on the gravy train speeding through a dark tunnel of dysfunction. "But," as my father would say, "it's a living."
For many of us, the fallout from a family business is an old and familiar story, but I doubt most people realize how old. Early on in the Torah we meet Abraham who founded the first Jewish family business called “monotheism.” He almost murders his son Isaac for the sake of that family business. Isaac's own children Jacob and Esau battle over who will receive their father's blessing and control his enterprise. Isaac favors Esau, Rebecca backs Jacob. In a deceptive power-play, Jacob cheats his older brother out of control.
In this week’s parasha, fearing his brother’s retribution, Jacob makes a run for it. He travels to his Uncle Laban's home where he meets his beautiful first cousin Rachel and immediately falls in love with her. After agreeing to their marriage, Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Rachel’s older sister Leah. Jacob the deceiver has been deceived. As a result, he has to work an additional seven years in order to also marry Rachel. Leah bears children, but Rachel remains barren. The two sisters become bitter enemies. In a final act of deception, after working for him as a shepherd for twenty years, Laban tries to cheat Jacob out of his rightful wages. Jacob responds by sneaking away in the middle of the night with his family and rightful share.
When Laban catches up to Jacob he seems truly hurt. "Why did you flee in the middle of the night?" he asks. "I didn't even have the chance to kiss my daughters and my grandchildren good bye, or to send you off with food and gifts.” Jacob airs his grievances with Laban and after twenty years of deception and struggle, the two men finally seem to understand each other. They accept each other's faults. They sense each other's fears and insecurities. They recognize each other's need for love. In a final, sweeping gesture, Laban blesses Jacob and says: "May Adonai watch over you and me, when we are out of each other's sight." Then, as the Torah tells it: "Early in the morning Laban kissed his son and daughters and bade them good-bye." After twenty years of struggle, deception, misunderstanding and anger, this ancient Jewish family finally comes to know and accept itself.
The Torah could have given us a different kind of family to learn from; a perfect family without strife, jealousy or animosity. But instead, Torah teaches us about a real family--a family like yours and mine (remember Thanksgiving?), full of tension and skeletons. But so too, a family that in the end, has just enough love to understand itself, overcome the tension and confront the skeletons; a family that puts its arms around each other in blessing.
It's an old story--these family businesses of ours. The story could have been less painful for our ancestors had their parents treated them fairly and taught them love. It could have been less painful for Dad and Uncle Mort too. Whether or not our own family story ends with a blessing, a hug, a kiss, and a “God bless until we meet again,” is really up to us.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Steve Leder
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