Father of the Man |
My friend Kobi recently helped his mom move to an eldercare facility near his home in Raanana. He wistfully told us how her personality has changed: “She used to be so decisive,” Kobi said. “Mom would always tell us all what to do and how to do it – and now she just kinda sits there, waiting to be told what to do next.”
What does it feel like for a parent to reach that stage? Is it freeing, or sad, or a little of both? Yaakov, when he needs to ask Yosef for a burial in Israel in this week’s Torah reading of Vayechi, behaves differently than he did years earlier. Novelist Thomas Mann, in his masterwork