For 12 months, you’ve watched and listened as Kivi and Malky Denburger try to find their places within their families, neighborhood, and marriage. You’ve cheered on the crew at 55 Norton and empathized as they struggled and grew. As the serial draws to a close, we reached out to voices of authority within the community to discuss some of the underlying threads of Shared Space. This week, Dr. Meir Wikler weighs in on the intergenerational and neighborhood dynamics threaded through the story.
KEEP OUT OR HELP OUT?
What are the guidelines for parents to be aware of in regard to when and when not to get involved in the lives of their children who appear to be on unsteady footing?
I
once heard a very embarrassing question from Rav Moshe Meir Weiss shlita on the following pasuk. “Therefore a man should abandon his father and mother and cling to his wife and they shall be of one flesh” (Bereishis 2:24). I say embarrassing because many who hear it are ashamed that such an obvious question never occurred to them before.
The pasuk begins with the words “al kein,” suggesting that what follows is a result of what was just stated. The previous pasuk, however, simply quotes Adam Harishon declaring that Chavah is “a bone of his bones and a flesh of his flesh.” Rabbi Weiss asked, how does the injunction for a man to leave his parents in order to marry his wife flow from Adam’s statement? Furthermore, why does the Torah use the harsh term “ya’azov,” abandon, rather than the gentler expression “yeitzei,” leave?
