Why Must What Has Grown Also Learn to Let Go?
Why Must What Has Grown Also Learn to Let Go?
Why Must What Has Grown Also Learn to Let Go?
There are parents who devote twenty years to helping their child grow, and then struggle deeply at the moment when the child truly does grow up. A manager trains an excellent employee, but when that employee begins to think independently, the manager feels threatened. A rabbi raises students, but finds it difficult when a student develops a voice of his own. And there are people who build their entire identity around a certain role, only to discover, when the time comes to move on, that they do not know who they are without it. We speak often about the ability to grow, but far less about another ability that is no less difficult: knowing how to separate from the place in which we grew.
It is precisely the schach that places this question before us in a surprising way. The Mishnah establishes a fundamental rule: “This is the general rule: anything that is susceptible to ritual impurity and does not grow from the ground may not be used for schach, while anything that is not susceptible to ritual impurity and grows from the ground may be used for schach” (Mishnah, Sukkah 1:4). At first glance, we might have expected that if natural schach is required, the ideal material would be living branches still attached to the tree. Yet the Mishnah also rules: “If one trained a vine, a gourd, or ivy over it and placed schach on top of them, it is invalid; but if there was more valid schach than the plants, or if he cut them, it is valid” (Mishnah, Sukkah 1:4). The living, green, attached branch cannot serve as valid schach as long as it remains connected to the source of its growth.
The Gemara derives the foundations of the law of schach from the verses and examines the phrase “when you gather in from your threshing floor and your winepress” (Deuteronomy 16:13), learning that the material for schach is taken from the refuse of the threshing floor and winepress, something that grows from the ground and is not susceptible to ritual impurity (Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 12a). Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, Maimonides, rules that schach may be made only from something that grows from the ground, has been detached from the ground, and is not susceptible to ritual impurity (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Shofar, Sukkah and Lulav 5:1). In other words, there is an almost paradoxical combination here: schach must be something that grew from the earth, but in order to fulfill its new role, it can no longer remain attached to it.
The sages were not, of course, attempting to teach a lesson in the psychology of separation through the laws of schach. This is a halachic rule with its own sources and definitions. Yet the image it creates is powerful: there are things whose source of growth is essential to them, and nevertheless a stage arrives when continuing to remain connected in the same way no longer allows them to fulfill their next role.
The Torah itself describes the first major transition in human life in this way: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife” (Genesis 2:24). The verse does not say that a person ceases to honor or love his parents. On the contrary, the commandment to honor father and mother remains fully binding. But in order to create a new home, one must also be able to leave a previous form of belonging. A person who is unable, in any sense, to leave the home from which he came may struggle to build a home that is truly his own.
Abraham likewise begins his journey with a command that contains separation within it: “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). Abraham is not asked to erase his past but to leave it. There is an enormous difference between a person with no roots and a person who has roots but is not bound by them. A root is meant to nourish growth. It is not meant to prevent the tree from extending branches into a new place.
This process also appears in the relationship between teacher and student. Tractate Bava Metzia relates that after Rabbi Elazar son of Rabbi Shimon died, Rabbi sought to appoint his son Rabbi Yosi and continue the chain of Torah (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 85a). The relationship between Moses and Joshua likewise illustrates the transition from student to leader. God commands Moses: “Take for yourself Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom there is spirit” (Numbers 27:18). Rashi explains “a man in whom there is spirit” as one who knows how to deal with the spirit of each and every person. Joshua grew all his life beside Moses, but the moment he becomes the leader requires him not to be a copy of Moses, but a person whose own spirit is suited to his mission.
Developmental psychology uses the term individuation for the process by which a person develops a distinct and independent identity without erasing the relationships from which that identity grew. A healthy family does not raise a child so that the child will remain dependent forever. It is meant to provide enough security for the child eventually to stand outside it as well. This is one of the great paradoxes of parenting: genuine parental success contains within it the moment when the child no longer needs the parent in the same way as before.
And this is where the difficulty begins. We enjoy watching people grow as long as their growth still needs us. It is far harder when the growth itself changes the relationship. A father is proud that his son learned a profession until the son begins making decisions the father would not have made. A manager wants initiative from employees until the best employee asks to open an independent business. A rabbi wants his students to become Torah scholars, but a genuine Torah scholar should eventually be able to ask questions, offer new insights, and carry responsibility independently. Sometimes we say that we want to help people grow, while deep inside we want them to grow without ever ceasing to depend on us.
People themselves also struggle to separate from the things that helped them grow. Someone was a manager for thirty years and suddenly retires. A woman devoted years to raising children and the home becomes empty. A person was identified with a certain business, institution, or public role, and one day that role ends. Research on identity transitions shows that such changes can be destabilizing precisely because we do not lose only a daily schedule. We may lose an answer to the question, “Who am I?” The more central the role became to our identity, the more leaving it can feel as though the person himself is being cut away with it.
Yet here the schach offers a different image. A branch cut from the tree does not become worthless. Quite the opposite: it can now fulfill a role it could not fulfill while still attached. Separation is not necessarily the end of growth. Sometimes it is the condition for growth's next stage. A person who retires from a position does not have to become “someone who used to be.” He can become a teacher, a mentor, a present grandfather, or a person who studies something for which there was never time before. A child who leaves home does not cancel parenthood. The departure allows the relationship to change from one of dependence into a new relationship between adults.
The sages teach, “No person can touch that which is prepared for another” (Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 38b), and elsewhere, “Let the honor of your student be as dear to you as your own” (Pirkei Avot 4:12). Taken together, these sources place a challenge before anyone who helps others grow: the success of a person who grew beside me does not take away my place. A parent does not become smaller because a child no longer needs instructions for every decision, and a rabbi does not become less significant because a student develops a voice of his own. Sometimes the very ability to release proves that the relationship fulfilled its purpose.
Perhaps this is a question worth taking with us beneath the schach this year. Not only: from what do I need to grow? But also: from what has the time come to grow onward? Which role has already given me what it was meant to give? Which dependence was once appropriate but now holds me back? Which person I love do I need to stop holding quite so close in order to allow that person to stand independently? And perhaps there is also a child, student, or employee whom I am still keeping “attached to the tree,” not because they need it, but because I need them to need me.
The schach teaches a delicate lesson. It cannot be made from something that never grew. We need roots, a home, parents, teachers, and people who held us at the beginning of the road. But that same schach also cannot remain attached to the ground. A stage arrives when gratitude toward the place from which we grew does not obligate us to remain there forever. Sometimes the best way to honor those who helped us grow is to take what we received from them, stand on our own feet, and use it to build the next level.