Michael Jackson, Jewish Parenting, and Neverland
(Sermon for Yahrzeit of Aaron Fisch z"l)
I. The
Parenting of Yitzhak
II. Michael Jackson and Parenting in
III. Our Challenge to Parent Our Children Properly as Jews
I. The Parenting of Yitzhak
In this week’s sedra, Avraham is confronted with tragedy.
His wife, Sarah, has died. Although she was of ripe age, the Midrash
teaches that she actually died untimely, perhaps under shock that her
husband had brought her son to be offered as a sacrifice.
Now alone as Yitzchak’s only living parent, Avraham confronts the duty
to see his son married properly. He sends Eliezer, his servant, to find
a wife for Yitzchak, subject to the instruction that she be a girl from
a good family – namely, from Avraham’s extended line – and not from the
foreign Canaanite nation, with its horrific customs and immoral values.
And although Rivka descends from Betuel, and is the sister of Lavan, she
still comes from a “good family” – by the standards and yardsticks that
measure the social order that existed before Torah spread through the
world.
Avraham has parented well. Sarah has parented well. They have not waited
to the Eleventh Hour to see that their child, on the brink of leaving
the nest, has decency and values. They have implanted and assured those
values in so many ways – even by banishing from their home the foreign
and corrupting influence of Yitzchak’s half-brother, Yishmael.
Even the servant, Eliezer, understands that this family – Avraham and
Sarah -- wants its child to live by carefully monitored values. So, as
he searches for Yitzchak’s future wife – the woman who will become our
Second Matriarch – the servant sets parameters and standards. She must
be kind. She must be compassionate. She must be caring. She must be
mannered. So Eliezer negotiates with G-d to show him a person who will
offer him water, and who will offer water to his camel.
It is about parenting. It is about imparting values. And it is about
protecting the child from bad and evil influences.
II. Michael Jackson and Parenting in
Unexpectedly, I found myself traveling on the freeways most of last
Wednesday, when the Michael Jackson story erupted into a media
feeding-frenzy. No matter what talk station I sought, the conversation
was salacious, incendiary, and vicious.
Certainly, the allegations, if proven, are horrific. But the frenzied
commentary also emerges from the nature of our mass newsmedia. Live
radio and 24-hour television news demands that time be filled. A
succinct account cannot fill three hours of a talk host’s program. And
“good radio” is measured by the amount of telephone lines that light up,
the amount of listeners riveted. Arbitron and Nielsen polls dictate the
approach. The more salacious, the more the gossip – the more people who
will remain riveted.
I do not know whether Michael Jackson is guilty. Our legal system is
predicated on the principle that every person is innocent until proven
guilty, but none of us really believes in that legal fundamental. We
“know” that O.J. Simpson murdered Nicole, even though he was found
innocent by a jury of his peers in a fairly conducted trial in an open
courtroom. And, certainly among radio talk hosts, we “know” that Michael
Jackson did “it.”
But I do not know. I know, from his interviews, that he has an eccentric
understanding of the way that grown men and other people’s children are
supposed to interact, to interrelate. But that does not, in itself,
convict him of child molestation. I know that he apparently paid someone
$20 million ten years ago, in order to terminate a child-molestation
accusation and avoid prosecution, but that does not prove much to me. I
have been a civil litigator for ten years, representing some of the most
important corporations and prominent people in
So I do not know whether Michael Jackson “dunnit.” And, on a much deeper
level, I do not care. I do not associate with Michael Jackson. Odds are
that I never will meet him. The chances that he would invite my
pre-adolescent son to spend a night at his ranch are less-than-nill. And
– most important here – the chances that, if invited, my son actually
would spend a night at Neverland with Michael Jackson were/ are/ and
always will be -- well, Never.
And that really is the discussion that the Michael Jackson matter should
be eliciting. What kind of parents would allow their child, in the
aftermath of the prior scandalous allegations and mega-million-dollar
out-of-court settlement, to spend private time with Michael Jackson? Who
would take such a chance? What cost-benefit analysis could justify that
risk?
And what kind of parents are we? We do not know Michael Jackson, and no
one of his milieu invites our children to spend the night – but ABC
television does, and so does NBC, and CBS, and Fox, and the myriad
cable/satellite stations. Do we know what our children are watching on
television, as strangers enter our home each night through the tube,
babysitting our children and spending a chunk of the night with them? So
many of us do not.
Earlier in my parenting years, as my college daughters were growing up,
I knew that I did not want them watching “
We became censors. As Jerry Springer and Geraldo moved to daytime, along
with reruns of “Married with Children” and so much of the network sitcom
trash, we no longer treated that time zone as safe. We monitored, and we
censored. That is how we reared our children – censoring television.
Even “Nickolodeon,” which began as a “safe harbor” on television a
decade ago, soon moved into “Nick at Night.” Now, “Roseanne” is there –
and our son is not.
In 1993, after law school, we drove from
If the censoring of television and music became part of parenting my
daughters when they were in grade school, I now also censor video games
as my son grows up.
I had no idea that the evil and trash elsewhere in our culture had
permeated the joystick sanctuary. But it has. Virtually every
interesting game that is not sports-based entails glorifying anti-social
behavior: racing away from the police, shooting people, murdering
people. Clerks at the stores have told me that some games even entail
rape. Well, not in the Gamecube at Chez Fischer, they don’t.
There is a broad spectrum for parental preferences, and reasonable minds
may differ. Not each parent would make my choices. That’s fine. But if
L’Affaire Michael Jackson teaches us anything constructive – if we are
to draw anything from the story beyond the salaciousness and the gossip
-- every parent must begin by asking “How could it be that the
plaintiff’s parents ever, in a zillion years, allowed their son to spend
private time alone with
“And what are we doing to assure that our children’s precious minds and
innocent souls are protected from other societal pollutants aiming to
poison that preciousness and to tarnish that innocence?”
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III. Our Challenge to Parent Our Children Properly as Jews
At the same time, Jewish parenting is not only about monitoring,
protecting, and censoring out the evil and the trash. A Jewish parent
must proactively impart The Good. Not only must the Yishmael be banished
away from the environment in which Yitzchak is reared. Not only must the
Canaanite woman be kept away from Yitzchak’s wedding canopy. Rather,
there must be a proactive and positive component.
We cannot merely rear our children with a void and vacuum. Rather, we
must act proactively to parent with good values. We must teach
compassion. We must teach goodness. We must teach caring.
And we must teach our children Torah and Mitzvot.
It is incumbent on every Jewish parent to teach Torah to his or her
child. A parent can teach Torah by sitting down with the child, as I do
with Aharon, and literally studying a text together. Or a parent can
teach Torah, as Ellen does, by encouraging the child at the Shabbat
Table to recite the story of the weekly parsha, and by discussing that
parsha story with him or her. Or a parent can teach a child Torah by
sending the child to a
But this is what we must do. We must parent. And, to parent most
effectively, we must teach by example. If we are not caring, how caring
will our children be? If we are not compassionate, how compassionate
will they be? If we punctuate sentences regularly with expletives, will
they not do the same when they grow older?
But if we are respectful, they will grow to be respectful. If we are
mannered and speak respectfully of others, then they will have
role-modeling to emulate. If we praise their teachers when we speak to
our children – or in the presence of our children -- despite any
personal misgivings we may harbor, we thereby will teach our children to
respect those teachers and to learn whatever those teachers have to
offer.
If we want our children to study Torah and to honor Mitzvot when they
grow older – and to teach those values to their children (that is, our
grandchildren) – then we must role-model for them by regularly doing
Mitzvot in our daily lives and continuing to study Torah throughout our
adult years.
Every time, we tell our child that we are going to a Torah class, we
role-model for them. They see. They absorb.
They absorb how we speak to our parents. They absorb how we speak to
each other. They absorb how we regard their teachers, and they absorb
how we relate to other authority figures in their lives. Children see.
Children hear. Children absorb everything. And they grow up to emulate.
When Sarah banished Yishmael from the house where Yitzchak was being
reared, she demonstrated that she understood. When Avraham sent for a
wife outside of
The Michael Jackson Affair demonstrates that we still live in a world
filled with Darkness and with Light. We absolutely must banish the
Darkness from our children’s homes and lives. That is clear. But it is
not enough for us merely to banish the Darkness. We have to bring in the
Light. We have to teach them Torah and Miztvot – and we have to
role-model by publicly studying Torah ourselves and by conducting our
homes and our lives on the road with an uninterrupted commitment and
adherence to the Mitzvot that the L-rd G-d commanded the Nation He
summoned to Sinai.