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On TEXTing: IRL – Ideas for Real Life, Elana Stein Hain brings the big dilemmas facing North American Jews into conversation with classic and modern Torah texts.

Rethinking Our Relationship To The Past Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Elana: Hi everyone. Welcome back to TEXTing IRL: Ideas for Real Life, where we wrestle with the big dilemmas of our time, through the lens of classical and modern tour texts. I’m your host, Elana Stein Gain. We’re recording on January 22nd, 2026. If you wanna find the reference sources in this show, check our show notes. 

Our society often prizes what’s new, both in an immediate sense, scientific and tech innovation, groundbreaking work and individual exploration and creativity. But also in terms of the whole ethos of modernity and post-modernity in the West, is that we’ve evolved beyond many of the ideas and the tropes of the past. 

But what about preserving what’s old? That which is less exciting, but still a really important foundation for both the present and the future. This week’s Torah portion is Yitro, and in it we find the command that one must honor their parents. Now, often, especially with older parents, honoring parents is thought of as just another act of kindness to vulnerable people. Vulnerable people who you love, but vulnerable people. When our parents get older, they need someone to care for them and we should be the ones to do it. 

But in this episode, I want to consider that honoring your parents actually represents an awareness of that which has been created by others before us has to be preserved. What happens in society if we don’t want to learn things from previous generations? What happens when that feeling gets lost, when the older generation just looks to us to be out of touch and a burden rather than a repository of lessons and the shoulders on which we stand to discuss this concern?

Tamara Mann Tweel joins us for a second episode. It’s our second of three together. It’s fitting rhat last episode, on Parshat Bo, we spoke about the stories we tell our children, and this week we ask ourselves, how do we relate to our parents, or more broadly, how do we relate to preserving the past? Welcome back Tamara. 

Tamara: Hello. I’m so happy to be here. I’m also particularly excited to talk about this topic with you. There are tens of thousands of books and blogs and articles on parenting, but when it comes to the other part of the relationship, how to be a child to a parent, the field is starkly silent. We don’t even have a word for it, really, Elana. Childing?  

Elana: Childing. I, I was like muddling through. Well, so the classic rabbinic statement on honoring one’s parents is found in the Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 30B to 31A, and reminder listeners, check your show notes. So let’s jump in.

The rabbis begin by referencing both honoring and showing awe to one’s parents, and they reference it as being akin to doing the same towards God. 

So here goes tanu rabanan, the rabbis taught, ne’emar ‘kabed et avicha ve-et imecha,’ it is said, you shall honor your father and your mother. Ve-ne-emar, and it says elsewhere in the Bible, ‘kabed et hashem mehonecha’ you shall honor—same word—God from your wealth. 

Hishva hakatuv kibud av va-em, lichbod hamakom, scripture is comparing the honor you show to your parents to the honor you show to God. Additionally, ne’emar, ‘ish imo ve-aviv tira’u,’ in scripture it is written, “a person shall fear their mother and their father.” Ve-ne-emar, ‘et hashem elokecha tir’ah ve-oto ta’avod,’ and it is also said elsewhere in scripture, you shall fear the Lord your God—same terminology—and you shall worship the Lord. 

Hishva katatuv mora’at av va-em l’mora’at hamakom. Scripture compares the way that we show awe—I’m gonna say awe rather than fear—the way that we show awe to our parents, to the way that we show awe to God. 

And you know, the use of both kabed or kavod, veneration, yir’ah, fear or awe of God and one’s parents, they do allow for a comparison to be made between the way we treat our parents and the way we treat God. 

And I think modern psychologists would be very happy with this because they’ll often talk to us about how we—they’ll theorize about how children see their parents as gods, right? They see their parents as superhuman, as infallible. But I don’t really think that’s what Rabbinic tradition is trying to say, because both, because I don’t think they want you to grow out of that stage, right? You know, psychologists will tell you you’ll grow out of that stage. And I also think they don’t want you to actually think about God and your parents as exactly the same. 

So I wanna try to figure out what this is saying. How does it hit you? 

Tamara: Well, something that comes up for me when you’re reading these sources is that the commandment is really on the child. It doesn’t ask parents to inspire fear or awe, which actually could be quite terrifying. I think it’s so, it’s just so valuable to me that that’s actually not the parent’s job. It’s a demand for the child. The child must cultivate awe. 

So I, I brought a book. 

Elana: Of course you brought a book. Of course you brought a book.

Tamara: So, yes, of course. This is the novel that is, like, most imprinted on my soul. It’s Gilead by Marilyn Robinson, and there is this incredible scene where the Minister John Ames is writing to his son and explaining the importance of honoring parents. 

So as a parent, you witness the absence of life and then the creation of life. So the existence itself of your child is sort of enough to experience godliness in another entity, in another life. But with a parent, it’s different. So here’s what Minister Ames tells his son. 

Elana: Okay, let’s hear it. 

Tamara: “Every human being is worthy of honor. But the conscious discipline of honor is learned from this setting apart of the mother and father, who usually labor and are heavy laden and may be cranky or stingy, or ignorant or overbearing. 

Believe me, I know this can be a hard commandment to keep. But I also believe that the rewards of obedience are great because at the root of real honor is always the sense of sacredness of the person who is its object. When you honor a parent,” Ames explains, “you see her as God sees her, and that is an instruction in the nature of God and humankind and of being itself.”

So when I read this, to me, this religious discipline of seeing divine qualities in your parents is a particular form of seeing, a form of seeing that is in itself holy. There is almost a duality in it for Ames. So firstly, it allows you to see a parent as God might see them as a child. And secondly, it allows you to access God because you are learning to honor what has created you. 

Elana: Wow, wow, wow. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So are you saying that God doesn’t see your parent as stingy or cranky? Is that what you’re suggesting? Meaning, I, I think that’s very interesting. Meaning, you’re saying read your parent—I, I understand you’re going to sacredness, but there’s also read your parent with generosity, in some way, right? It’s, it’s something like that. The way that we ask God to read people with generosity, you should see your parents the way God sees your parents, meaning you should read them with generosity. 

Tamara: But I also think with this sort of miraculous sigh, like the miraculous sight, is that something didn’t exist and then did exist, right? 

Elana: Right, and you didn’t see that happen.

Tamara: But for us—yeah, you didn’t see that happen as a child, but God saw it happen.

Elana: But God saw it happen. So God as, as the ultimate witness. Well, that’s beautiful. And of course, by the way, we have to give the caveat because there are so many different versions of parent-children setups in the modern day. And thank God for the technologies and the abilities for people to be able to be parents in different ways, that it, it’s sometimes possible, as a parent, you didn’t see the creation either, of it. In the same way. 

So it’s, it’s kind of a fascinating thing that you’re offering, is that God’s a witness, and as children, we should also try to be a witness to something that isn’t just about the way we experience our parents, right? It’s something about what they are given that they are parents. 

Well, so this is interesting because you know, I think the idea of being able to see beyond imperfections is very important, but the Gemara itself, the Talmud itself, a few lines later, actually has its own logic to offer, right? Comparing why, like, why are we comparing this? Fear of God, awe of God, you know, reverence for God to, to your parents and vice versa, right? It’s not, you know, a God complex for your parents, and it’s not just reading with generosity, it’s something else, which is:

Ve-chen badin, it’s so, it should be, this is exactly the way things should be, sheshloshtan shutafin bo, the parents, and here it’s talking about biological parents. But I think we can extend, if we get metaphorical about it, which I think we will, right? It’s talking about the physical, right? Something physical. God and the parents are all partners in the creation of a child, right? 

So Tanan, we have an early rabbinic statement to this effect. So tanu rabanan, shlosha shutafin hen ba’adam, there are three partners in the creation of the human being. Hakadosh baruch hu, the Lord God, ve-aviv, and the male who gives that genetic material, which we call the father, or the biological father, ve-imo, and the female who gives genetic material, right, which we call the mother, or the biological mother. 

Bizman she-adam michabed et aviv ve-et imo, when a person honors their father and their mother, amar hakadosh baruch hu: “ma;aleh ani aleihem ki-ilu darti beineihme, God says, I consider it as though I live among them, ve-chivduni, and they’ve given me honor. So at issue here seems to be very physical, the creation of a person, right? God’s involved in the creation process. 

Now, I don’t know if. We’re saying God’s involved in the creation process because it’s miraculous. I don’t know if we’re saying God’s involved in the creation process, ’cause God gives the soul and human beings give the genetic material. Right? It’s, it’s unclear to me what it means exactly, that God is involved in the creation process. 

But you know, Philo for example, reads it as, oh, your parents are standing between the mortality of being human beings themselves and the immortality of being able to create as God creates, right? 

But I also think—and this is where kind of the physical happening itself—moves to me into the moral, or moves for me into the moral, which is, if I’m going to recognize that there were people who created me, I’m going to recognize that there’s a whole world before me and I’m really recognizing createdness. I don’t make everything myself. There is something created about the world that I step into, and it was created by others, right? It’s a, it’s an actually an acknowledgement of past.

How does that sound to you? 

Tamara: I, I, first of all, I love that so much. First of all, I’m obsessed with this word, which I have never really heard or spent time with,” createdness.”

Elana: It’s a real word. I did not make it up. It’s a real word.

Tamara: But I love what you’re saying, ’cause you’re saying the honoring of the parent is actually not just about learning to see a parent as God would see them. And it’s also not just about recognizing that someone created you. 

You’re taking it a step further and saying, this act of honoring the parents is actually what allows you to fully understand your own history and what has been given to you.

Elana: And I think the world existed before you, meaning it’s God not as witness. It’s God as eternity. Meaning there’s stuff from before you that you just walked into, right? The past matters, venerated, in some way.

Tamara: I feel like what you’re saying is so important and so important right now because we’ve all become just bewitched with newness and innovation and change, and we don’t even have a lot of methods to feel that sense of createdness or indebtedness.

And I’m thinking, you know, I’ve spent, as you have, so much of my life, you know, working in education or the nonprofit sector, and anyone who has spent any time in this sector is tasked with writing something called a theory of change. And like you’re just like, what is that? And you can’t go into any room if you don’t have it. If you’re starting a nonprofit, you have to have your theory of change. 

So what does a theory of change do? It makes you focus intensely on what’s wrong. Like you have to have an analysis of like, what are all the things that are wrong? 

Elana: The gaps. The gaps also. 

Tamara: And then you have to have—totally—and then you have to have a theory of how you and your nonprofit are gonna change it. I would love, love to see nonprofits have like an in tandem theory of preservation. 

Elana: That’s great. 

Tamara: And what would the theory of preservation force you to do? It would force you to actually go into the world or into your field and say, what is everything that is going right? I wanna write, I wanna have like, an accounting of all the goodness that I’ve inherited. And I really wanna have a theory of what I wanna preserve. And I think because we don’t have that, we are, we’re, we’re destroying more than we realize all the time. 

Elana: It’s so funny, I had a great conversation with Christine Hayes years ago. This was 10 years ago at this point, and she said to me, you know, Elana—and Chris, if I’m, if I’m mischaracterizing you, you’ll point it out at some point, I hope. 

But she said, Elana, you, you, you don’t just do things or teach things to society, and then they just stay as you’ve taught them. 

If you, if you aren’t constantly working against the entropy of people losing hard won lessons of how the world should be, we will backslide. That is what will happen. We will backslide. 

And it makes me think about the theory of preservation is actually very real, as a lot of us are thinking about what’s happening to democracy in the world, preserving the past matters. What are the things that we’re taking for granted? You’ve got it, right? Preserving the past actually matters.

Tamara: So I think about this now so much in education, because we’ve gotten to this point where it is true that knowledge doesn’t need to live inside of you. 

Like you can access things in a million different ways. But I’ve been thinking a lot about like, what exactly do I want to preserve for my children inside of them? Like, what do I want them to memorize? Even if memorization feels silly in this moment. Like, what do I want them to have? So, yeah, like b’cherut, like what do I want them to have inscribed upon them, right? 

Elana: Let’s, by the way, to have, for everybody knows cherut, what you’re talking about is the term “freedom” that the rabbis turn into… Well, it’s actually in the Bible, it’s charut, right? It’s engraved, what’s engraved on the tablets, and the rabbis turn it into cherut, what kind of freedom—you have freedom only if you engage with what’s written on the tablets. Right, so the play on freedom, but actually not freedom. Right? What do you have to memorize? What do you need to know? 

Tamara: Right? Well, freedom, well, freedom from fluency. I feel like it’s freedom from fluency. Like when you are, when something is so inside of you that you can just be so fluent in it. And I think about this so much because it’s not, what do you need to know now? It’s, what do I want to preserve in their bodies and their minds and their neshamas that will just be with them and inside of them no matter what is changing in the outside world? 

It’s a very different way of thinking about what do you need to know? How do you need to educate? What do we need to preserve? Not just for our people, but for our—I like thinking about, what do we need to preserve for our own beings inside of us right now? That is, honestly, like a little bit independent from, from every major change. 

Elana: Yeah. I mean, I love structural frameworks and it’s interesting too. I just do.

Tamara: And I love that about you. I like to take on—

Elana: They help me. I’m saying they help me take on. 

Tamara: No Elana, I really earnestly like to just take on your structural frameworks like as a therapy. 

Elana: So I’ve got one that’s, that’s somewhat therapeutic, I think, which is, you know, Leo Strauss, political philosopher. He says like, you know, the, the issue in our contemporary western society is we, we’re struggling between the poles of return and progress, right? 

Meaning, if you are a return oriented person, which by the way, anyone who prays, you actually say it a lot in Jewish prayer, like hashiveinu, “return us,” or chadesh aleinu mikedem, “make things as they were in the ancient past.” Right? 

Meaning a theory of return is that there’s something about the origin, something about the origin that has a… it’s not a mystique, it has a reality to it that we want, we don’t wanna lose and sometimes we wanna get back to, right. It’s almost like, you know how sometimes when you say, you know, we have to get back to our roots. We have to get back to, we have to get back to our… where we come from. Right. 

And that is really very opposed to a theory of progress. Meaning a theory of progress is okay, we’re progressing past where we’ve been, right? Meaning we, we, we need to progress past where we’ve been. And I don’t think, you know, I think when I see all of these sort of people… well, either me saying about the generation before, like, oh, they just don’t get it, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Or the generation before looking at us and saying, oh gosh, they really don’t get it. 

Like something’s actually kind of broken in that approach, ’cause it’s like, okay, so if you think only in a progress perspective, you’re gonna think your parents don’t know what they’re talking about. And if you’re thinking in a return mode, you’re sort of like, ugh, the next generation is doomed because it’s so different from what we had. And I, and I think that push and pull is important. I think that push and pull is important. 

Tamara: Yeah. I, I, I totally agree with you and I’m glad you’re bringing this up. Because I think we’re in it—what era is not an era of generational conflict. They’re all, they’re all now, but I, but I’m feeling it now. 

And I think—I’m gonna go back to this childing idea. I think as children, we do need to have some method, some way to know when we’re supposed to break, you know, when we’re supposed to leave. And we don’t just have a commandment to honor our parents. We have Avraham’s example of completely breaking with his past, with his lineage to create our own history.

Elana: Right, we wouldn’t exist. I mean, there wouldn’t be an “honor your mother and your father” without Abraham not honoring his father, by leaving. 

Tamara: But Elana, I don’t, I, I don’t know. How do you know when you’re supposed to be Abraham? Like how do you know when too many, how do you know when too many of us are being Abraham? I mean Abraham and the Jewish people, you know, were blessed with Yitzchak, a son who rebuilds his father’s well, and generation after generation of leaders who sustain, who maintain, who return to elevate our past into the present. I think it’s a very tricky—it’s very tricky, I don’t know. 

Elana: Look, I think that having Yitzchak, Isaac as Abraham’s son who redigs his wells, who has a very similar story plot line—I think that’s a, that’s a way of saying like, hey, Avraham made the break, but we don’t want that to be happening all the time. We don’t want—we don’t want constant break. We want to create some sense of continuity.

And I am… I’m like a, a one trick pony in the following way, in the ampersand way, which is, if I see us going too far to one side, I see us going too far to the innovation side, I’m gonna say, hey, hey, hey, you can’t have, you can’t have Judaism without some Yitzchaks. Like, you can’t have Judaism without some followers. You can’t have, you know, there’s gotta be some continuity. And, and if I see us obviously getting stagnant, and dangerously so, I’m gonna get itchy in the other direction, and people are gonna have different… They’re gonna have different markers for this, but I just wanna make sure that both models are live in the way we’re talking. Like, yeah, give me your theory of preservation alongside your theory of change. 

Tamara: Yeah. I wanna think also about just like, the practice of kavod, like the practice of honoring, of honoring your parents. Because I think you can, I think you could imagine a world where you spend real energy trying to understand your parent as a… as once a child. Like really paying attention to what was the child. No, no, I’m serious—before you—

Elana: No, I’ve done it even. I’ve done it. 

Tamara: Yeah. Yeah. Even before you break or lean—I, can I tell you, like, the most beautiful story that I think about all the time? So I had love that I had this, okay, so I had this professor, and this is like a, this is a true story. The professor found out when he was in college that his parents were actually spies for a foreign government, and that they were educating him so that he too would become a spy. 

Elana: Okay, Tamara. 

Tamara: It’s like a totally true story. It’s a crazy story. 

Elana: Okay, I’m just saying you’re, you’re, you’re really… pushing my trust in you here. That’s not where I thought you were going when you said a beautiful story.

Tamara: You know, this is a completely true. No, no. So he is basically—

Elana: Okay, so this first thing is he realizes that his parents are spies. At what age is this person when he realizes that? 

Tamara: He’s like 18, 19. And that they are expecting him to spy for this country. Like they, they, they created the conditions for that. So he, he has to have a complete break with them. He doesn’t speak to them once he’s in college ever again. 

Elana: Wow. Holy cow. 

Tamara: And he’s holding and he does that both because I think he thinks they’re wrong. And I think for his own safety, like I don’t think he he—it’s an incredibly dangerous situation. Alright, so he carries this like tremendous guilt, like tremendous, tremendous guilt his whole life. 

So he is sitting at a dinner like 50 years later as an older man, next to a very important rabbi. And he, for some reason tells the rabbi—

Elana: Turning the spy story into a rabbi story. 

Tamara: Yes. Yes. As they all should.

Elana: This is perfect for a Shabbaton for children as the Sabbath is ebbing away. Spy and the rabbi, ready? 

Tamara: Yes. So he, he, for some reason, he tells the rabbi this whole, this entire story, and then he asks him, how could I possibly honor my parents? How could I possibly keep this commandment? And the rabbi looks at him and he says, you honor your parents by living an honorable life and by doing mitzvot and thinking about them. Every single time you do something that you feel is honorable, every time you do an act of service or something good, you are carrying their highest legacy into the future. And that is how you honor your parents. 

And I, I just, I, I mean, I love this so much, ’cause what I learned from this story is that sometimes, you know, honoring your parents is not about obedience. It’s about doing the emotional work to see them and to see their highest legacy, and then to continue, continue your work. 

Elana: Okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait one second. Is the rabbi saying this because they taught this child to do some of those things, or simply whatever you consider to be honorable, you know, think about it as, I’m only able to do this because my parents raised me right. Or meaning, parse it for a minute. Because what you’re really talking about is for every parent who’s out there saying, why is my child living a radically different life than I am? And they say, but don’t you understand that when I do that thing that you completely don’t approve of, I’m doing it with honoring you in mind. You know what I mean? Help me. Help me. I don’t wanna, it doesn’t have to be that. 

Tamara: I don’t want to… I don’t want to in any way kind of support what I think is a flippancy in this. Like I, it could be flippant to say, oh, well, whatever I’m doing, I’m honoring you. That’s not earnest, that’s not true. That’s not always serious. I, my, my understanding is what the rabbi was telling him is that sometimes we’re in relationships that are so hard and so broken and that we should, we can still find ways of trying to honor the past or honor our tradition or honor—or even like, honor the world that we truly think we’re all building together. 

Elana: Beautiful.

Tamara: I, I didn’t, I didn’t, I don’t wanna use that story as an excuse for good, for a flippant rebellion. I wanna use it for a serious honoring in a… in what are always wildly complicated relationships. 

Elana: Yeah. So I, you know what I think then what I’m gonna end with is I think I’m gonna end with kavod. Meaning kavod, having reverence, it actually comes from the term kaved, heavy. What you’re really saying is, and what we’re really saying is, take the past and the people who bore you seriously. See the weightiness in them and in it, and then you’re gonna have to decide where to go. But don’t cast it off as something light, and don’t ignore it as though it’s something light. Feel that weight and go with that weight.  

Tamara: I love that.

Elana: And that’s where I think I’m gonna leave it. I, I appreciate this. I don’t think it’s, you know, I, I think the weightiness is actually really powerful. Tamara, thank you so much. 

Tamara: I love that. Elana, thank you. 

Elana: Thank you so much.