What Have You Tried So Far?

Recently at work one of my colleagues shared this article from the Atlantic about a parenting style called “Lighthouse Parenting.” The gist is that whereas there are some parents (“snowplow parents”) who try to clear their child’s path of any problems and there are some parents (“helicopter parents”) who fly in to rescue a child in stressful situations, a “lighthouse parent” doesn’t allow the child to crash into metaphoric rocks and die, but is also not quick to problem solve either. The article reminded me of something I learned a good number of years ago that became part of my parenting and even part of the way I work with students. “What have you tried so far?”

I have used that in lots of situations from students that have a problem with a roommate on a school trip, to child problems at school, to the oft repeated, “I’m hungry and there is nothing to eat in this house.” (Which is extremely unlikely. Unless it’s the week before Pesach, then yeah, there is nothing to eat, and all that food is for yontif. Put it back.) If it works correctly, the big ideas behind these 6 small words are, 1) you are capable, 2) you have agency here, 3) I believe in your ability to come up with solutions. It doesn’t catastrophize a situation but it doesn’t dismiss the child’s problem either. I think it also subtly give the message that I’m not absolving my role here either. I’m just keeping the spotlight on you.

Not to be overly rabbinical about this, but this might parallel a way the Creator deals with us. Way back in The Garden, Adam was charged “to work the Garden and guard it.” Judaism has always taken the view that we are active participants in the work of perfecting the world. Yes, there is a place for prayer and faith, but that isn’t the totality of what is incumbent upon us. We are REQUIRED to turn to G-d in prayer and ask for help. But I also get the feeling that sometimes Hashem asks, “What have you tried so far?”

The truth is, the tension between “doing something” and “faith alone” is one of the most interesting philosophical and theological topics in Judaism, in my opinion. Classically, this tension is described as being between Histadlut (effort) and Bitachon (trust). On the one hand, we trust in Hashem to take care of us. On the other hand, we take our blood pressure medicine every day.

This time of year, we are reading the stories of Yosef and his brothers AND we are fully in the Chanukah season. One of the ways that these stories have “thematic resonance” is that they are chock full of this tension between taking action and having faith. Yosef has dreams that foretell his ascendence, but when given the opportunity he feels compelled to take action to help them along. (See the Ramban for more on that.) Yaakov and his sons have faith that Hashem will take care of them, but they also travel to Egypt to buy food. We can easily take each moment of this story and analyze through this lens. Should the brothers have had faith that Yosef wasn’t a threat to them? Should Yosef have had faith that Hashem would help without needing to ask the “butler” to remember him to Pharoah?

Even more so, the Chanukah story brings the need for balance in the “effort/faith equation.” We know there are really two miracles at the center of the Chanukah story; the miracle of the war and the miracle of the oil. The truth is, they are very different miracles because the miracle of the oil was something that “just happened” by G-d’s intervention, whereas the miracle of the war took a lot of work and self-sacrifice by the Jewish people. Perhaps you’ve never thought about this before, but some miracles are like that – they take a lot of work.

In a way, the balance of the “effort/faith equation is highlighted by these two miracles. We can easily understand why there was a need for the victory of where the “many fell into the hands of the few and the impure fell into the hands of the pure.” I mean, that’s the whole thing. But what was the “need” for the miracle of the oil? Not to get overly technical, but if “everyone” was impure they really could have lit with impure oil. And even if they couldn’t, big deal. If there was no oil for them to use, then there should have been no culpability on their part. (It’s the old, “guy with no arms doesn’t have to wear tefillin” scenario.) Why was the miracle of the oil even necessary?

In Hegyonei Halacha (Vol 1.) Rabbi Yitzchak Mirsky makes the point that there are two ways our sages have theorized the miracle of the oil took place; either it was because there was a miraculous increase in the quantity of the oil or because there was a miraculous increase of the quality of the oil. Maybe it’s not the case that the small amount that was left in the jug somehow became more and more oil each night. Rather, it’s that the Maccabees put a small amount into the menorah, but something about the oil’s natural ability to burn was divinely blessed, and the small amount burned the whole night.

Rabbi Mirsky suggests that if in fact the miracle was an increase in the quality of the oil, then that perfectly parallels the miracle of the war. It wasn’t that the few of the Jewish people we victorious over the many of the Syrian Greeks because the was a sudden increase in Jewish soldiers. It was because EVEN THOUGH they were few, the quality of their natural ability to fight was divinely blessed. In this understanding, we’ve arrived at a great answer to the question, “Why did they ‘need’ the miracle of the oil?” Because it was a symbol to show that even though there was so much effort, sacrifice, and hardship during the war, the victory was still a miracle.

And that brings us right back to parenting. When a child comes home and complains about a teacher or trouble with a peer, or even when they complain that they are hungry and there is “nothing” to eat, we might be tempted to jump in with a solution. Our first instinct might be to call the principal or the teacher or to open up the fridge and start naming perfectly edible options. But to me, the goal of parenting is not teaching them “I can fix your problems.” I think the goal of parenting is doing our best to form competent, independent, functional humans. So instead of jumping towards a solution, you might want to ask, “What have you tried so far?”