Fathers’ Day - A day to celebrate actual fathers
In an interesting twist of fate (but maybe not that interesting, seeing as fathers’ day doesn’t have any actual cosmic significance), I got to have coffee yesterday with my mentor and teacher, Rav Natan Greenberg.
20-some years ago I took refuge in the Bat Ayin Yeshiva to seek structure and guidance in Jewish learning and living. It is extremely likely that (though not aware of it) I was seeking a father figure - someone who would take me under his wing and show me how to live robustly and passionately as a Jewish man.
I always thought of this is a sort of replacement for my own father A”H. That relationship had ranged from entertaining to frustrating, from irrelevant to expedient, from useful and fun to painful and disorienting. (Later, more and more colorful adjectives would be added to the mix.) For better or worse, my father never taught me or showed me how to be the man, Jewish or otherwise, that I would ultimately want to be. There were pieces that I keep with me even to this day - ways of expressing generosity, the value of family, an appreciation for culture, golf - but each of these was a mixed bag, containing both light and shadow. It was far from a complete and cohesive picture.
So I ended up in yeshiva, where a more complete picture with a lot less shadow was offered to me (and the shadow parts were usually owned and even talked about), and I embraced Rav Natan as a sort of surrogate father. Fair enough. Along with my embrace of Rav Natan and the perspective/model/lifestyle he offered, there was an ongoing and increasing rejection of the perspective/model/lifestyle that my father offered.
Now, I am wondering whether that is fair. Though my relationship with my father, even after his passing, remains difficult and complicated, that shouldn’t be attributed to the fact that he wasn’t my mentor. Something neo-Jungian psychologist James Hillman wrote really got my attention: “To expect primary caretakers, for example, parents, to see through the child into the acorn (that is, the particular and unique genius that the child is), to know who is in there in nuce (fancy for “in a nutshell”), and to tend to its concerns-is far too much. That is why teachers and mentors come into the world. He or she is another special person, often someone whom we fail in love with early, or who falls for us; we are two acorns on the same branch, echoing similar ideals.”
He goes on: “As caretakers, parents cannot also be mentors. The roles and duties differ. It is enough for a parent to keep a roof over your head and food on the table, and to get you up and off to school. Proving a cave of security, a place for regressions is no small job. Freed of these tasks, the mentor has only one: to recognize the invisible load you carry and to have a fantasy about it that corresponds with the image in the heart. One of the most painful errors we make is to expect from a parent a mentor’s vision and blessing ad strict teaching, or expecting from a mentor shelter and concern for our human life.”
Obviously it doesn’t always split so easily. But there is a lot to say, on father’s day, in appreciation of a man who kept food on the table and a roof over my head, even if he was not much of a mentor. And it is wondrous and fortuitous to spend an hour with the man who saw my acorn and helped nurture it. But the fact that it was on father’s day is beside the point. He is not my father. He is my mentor. And we should have a separate Mentor’s Day to honor those relationships as well.