In this week’s parsha, Parshat Beshalach, we read about how Bnai Yisrael prepared for their new life ahead, carrying with them their hopes for the future and capacity for joy and celebration, while at the same time honoring their history, experiences, and identity.
First, Moshe takes with him the bones of Yosef, fulfilling the oath made centuries before, that when Hashem redeems the people, they will take Yosef’s remains with them. Second, Miriam and the women bring their tambourines and drums. For a people enslaved for hundreds of years, to not only own these instruments, but to choose to throw these seemingly non-essential objects in the back of the wagon, is quite remarkable. However, we begin to grasp their import after Bnai Yisrael successfully cross the Red Sea. With joy and gratitude, the people sing to Hashem for setting them free from their oppressors. Miriam leads the women in dance, accompanying the singing of Shir HaYam with those very instruments. Both honoring the past, even that which is sad or painful because it has shaped who we are today, and expressing hakarat hatov.
As Jews, holding both the past and the future in our hands is our cultural inheritance. Under the chuppah, before the eruption of mazel tovs, we express our longing for our return from galut through the singing of Im Eshkachech Yerushalayim. Sadness can co-exist with happiness. Yosef’s bones and Miriam’s tambourine.
Educating our children to be comfortable feeling and anticipating the full range of emotions is one of our primary tasks. Children need to develop the tools to unpack their feelings to know how to make sense of them. Emotional awareness, particularly learning the words to identify and express how they feel, is an essential skill for successfully navigating life’s ups and downs. It helps protect them from becoming overwhelmed and paralyzed by the pain of sorrow, and feeling underwhelmed and consequently unmotivated when life isn’t always a thrill.
Teaching emotional awareness, both of our own emotions and those of others, starts at the very beginning when babies learn that their needs will be attended to by a loving adult. As toddlers and preschoolers develop language and social skills, we teach them the words for the emotions they are feeling so they can begin to express their needs through language. It is only through recognizing their emotions that they can begin to learn how to manage them.
It can tear our heart out to see our children hurting and not jump in to make things right. To make the hurt go away. But, teaching our children that our feelings are road signs Hashem gave us to help us make good choices puts them in the driver’s seat. Feelings serve a purpose – they aren’t good or bad. They are there to be listened to and learned from. We probably have all had the experience of ignoring a gut feeling which we quickly came to regret. Teaching our children to listen to those feelings, express them appropriately, and use them to make good decisions is therefore one of the best ways to prepare them to navigate the myriad challenges in life.
The other essential skill is learning to be comfortable with discomfort. Feelings can be very uncomfortable, and even painful. Deeply feeling children, especially, need to learn that emotions are not to be ashamed of and that avoiding them only increases their power over us.
Working through difficult emotions by talking about them, reframing the situation to consider other perspectives, or even taking a walk, on the other hand, helps our children learn that emotions are tools they needn’t be afraid of.
Our children will experience sadness, loss, embarrassment, and regret at points throughout their lives. We can’t protect them from feeling hurt. However, if we give them permission to feel those emotions, and acknowledge that they hurt, rather than fear those emotions and try to dismiss them, our children will be able use their emotions as valuable tools for making healthy decisions.
We are currently straddling two extreme emotional states, ourselves: celebrating the joy and finding the gratitude in our everyday lives, while storming the heavens for the release of our hostages and davening that no more Jewish lives will be lost. May we take strength from Moshe and Miriam, and daven that with Hashem’s help, in this generation as in the past we will achieve freedom from oppression for Am Yisrael and together sing our own Shir HaYam.
B’sorot tovot. Shabbat shalom.