Our society has placed childhood and children in a high pedestal. After many centuries in which children were ignored, neglected and abused, parents understood the importance of focusing on their children’s specific needs. When parents fail taking appropriate care of their children, society assumes the parental obligation. A complex social net, which includes schoolteachers, physicians, clergy, social workers, judges and law enforcement officers, will assure that children will received the appropriate care they deserve and has been given the power to even separate an abused or neglected child from his parents. In this regard, the American society is far ahead from most Eastern and Middle East societies, in which children are still abused and treated as mere property.

Parents, in American, became more respectful of their children’s opinions, preferences, choices. In other words, of their children’s independence.

What do you like to eat today, sweetheart? Which dress do you like the most? Do you want to take piano lessons? Do you like a friend to come and play with you this afternoon? Those are questions parents ask their children frequently, granting them a freedom, most adults didn’t have when they were children.

However, the counterpart of this important achievement of the American society is that parents became so respectful of their children’s own life, that many times when the children grow up, this respect evolved in fear.

Parents, who were so open minded and so inclusive when their children grew up, feel now, that they don’t have the right to share their own preferences about their grown children’s choices. Who am I to tell my son or daughter what to do? – is the question perplexing parents bring to me when they face –usually too late- the fact that their children made a decision they consider, in the best of the cases, wrong.

In this regard, when our occidental society took serious steps to abolish centuries of child oppression, it "threw the baby out with the bath water" (I am trying to impress you with the English idioms I am learning).

Parents, afraid of cutting their children’s freedom, gave up in many cases, their right and obligation, to serve as models, to share an opinion, to give advise, to tell their children what they expect from them or what will please them from their children’s behavior.

We believe our teenagers children don’t want our advise. We take for granted they will reject our opinions. We think they are not interested in our experience. But we might be wrong. Actually I strongly believe our children want to hear from us and they are ready to listen to what we have to say. When we are twenty or thirty years old, we search to disguise our insecurities and doubts with an attitude of arrogance and self sufficiency, and parents may wrongly confuse this attitude with indifference. However, even if we are right in our belief that our children care very little about what we have to tell them, still it is our right and our obligation, to share with them our opinions.

Parents have the right and -as I mentioned before- the obligation to tell their children what will please them from their behavior and what not, what will be good for them to study and who they would like them to marry.

We live in a free country and everybody who is 18 years old and older can do –within the margins of the law- whatever he or she wants; and because that our children will finally do whatever they want. However, such a freedom includes the freedom to share with our children our expectations about them.

The Torah is telling us a strange love story. A story of a father who loved so much his child, that was not afraid to tell his son who should he marry:

The father wanted his son to marry within a good family so when he send his servant to find a wife for his son, he advised him not to be afraid to ask the right questions. And so the servant asked Rebecca:

People usually think that in biblical times young girls were married against their will. But that is not true. Abraham know that the possibility exists that the woman will not wish to marry Isaac. An so we read in the Torah:

Rebecca also is asked for his opinion. Her father and brother knew, even 4000 years ago, that nobody can be forced to marry against her will.

"From this verse our Rabbis learn that a girl should be given in marriage only with her consent [Kiddushin 41a].

This well known Torah story may sound strange to many of us, young people, who are not accustomed to see adults involved in their decisions.

I asked once a member of our congregation: Do you get alone with your son and daughter in law? She answered to me: "I never tell them what I think, I don’t tell them what I don’t like, I don’t ask them to visit me more than they want, so we get alone well".

We may get alone with your children by following this pattern of behavior, but we will neglect our role as parents and won’t help them very much.

Our children may not like everything we’ll tell them to do, but I believe it is still our right and our obligation to tell them. One day, if they grow up in wisdom and sensitivity, they will appreciate our involvement, that is nothing else but a demonstration of love, maybe the most important of all.

Daniela and Faivel might think I am a " nudge", but I can live with that. My parents "nudged" me to death and now I am thankful to them. Hopefully my children will be also thankful to me in the future.

Two of the most important decisions young adults usually make before they are 30 years old are: what will they study (and in many cases this decision implies how will they make a living) and who will them marry. As a friend pointed out to me: "we are expected to make the most important decisions of our life when we lack the necessary experience to make such decisions".

Parents and other role models leaders like teachers, judges, clergy and counselors can certainly help with such important decisions.

Let’s not underestimate our positive influence. Let’s not confuse respect for our children’s freedom with indifference. Let’s make clear our expectations. Is nothing wrong with the fact that parents want their children to be doctors, layers, professors, businessmen or scientists. Is not a sin that Jewish parents want their children to find a Jewish spouse for them.

If we have something to say to our children, let say it, and better sooner than later! With their wisdom, our advise and example, and God’s help, hopefully they will be able to make the right choices and live meaningful lives.

Shabbat Shalom!