"Baruch Sh’petarani M’onsho Shel Zeh" - Blessed (is the One) that exempted me from the punishment of this (son).
Upon the Bar Mitzvah of his son, a father recites a blessing that frees him from the responsibility for his son’s actions.
It does not, however, free him from the love and devotion that he feels for his son. We see the power of this father-to-son bond throughout the Torah and in Jewish teaching and tradition.
When God tested the first Jew, He tested him in the most profound and terrible way possible – with the sacrifice of his son! Only when God was convinced of Abraham’s enduring faith did He provide the substitute sacrifice, the ram.
Perhaps no Biblical passage expresses the power of the father-son bond so powerfully as when Yehudah pleads with Yosef for his brother Binyamin. The history of this passage could not contain more emotion and significance. We are well aware of the context; the brothers having sold their brother, Yosef, the favored son of Yaakov, to the Ishamaelites…
The brothers had become jealous of their youngest sibling, Joseph, the one favored by their father Jacob.One day, the brothers wandered off into the fields and the young Joseph, unaware of his older brothers’ feelings toward him and loving them as only a young brother can, wanted to be included and followed after them. He did not know where they had gone but a man, an angel perhaps, pointed him in the correct direction.
When Joseph reached his brothers, they taunted him. They clamored to kill him. But Reuven, being the eldest, took control of the situation. He didn't want his brothers to kill Joseph so he suggested that they throw him into a nearby pit.
The brothers stole Joseph's coat of many colors, the gift of a doting father, and threw him into the empty pit without food or water. While this whole scene was unfolding, the brothers spotted a caravan of Ishmaelites approaching.
“We should not kill him,” Judah cried out. “Instead, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites!”
The brothers did exactly that and so Joseph was taken down to Egypt.
To hide their terrible deed, the brothers dipped Joseph's coat in fresh goat's blood and showed it to Jacob, saying that the young boy had been killed by the wolves of Canaan.
Joseph, meanwhile, was taken to Egypt and sold into servitude. He was later jailed but his gift of interpreting dreams brought him before Pharaoh, for whom he interpreted Pharaoh’s strange dreams and was rewarded by being named Viceroy of all Egypt.
Concurrently, the drought and ensuing famine that plagued Canaan prompted Yaakov to send his remaining sons to Egypt in search of food. Upon their meeting, Yosef immediately recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him. He sought to repay them for their cruelty to him, saying he would keep Binyamin as ransom for the gifts he’d sent.
Their father’s grief from the loss of Yosef always fresh in their minds and hearts, the brothers knew only too well what the loss of his youngest son would do to him.
Which brings us to Yehudah pleading to Yosef for mercy, saying that his father would most certainly die from grief should he lose another son.
In truth, Yehudah’s pleas no doubt were also selfish and colored by his own guilt. For he had been the one to convince Yaakov to allow Binyamin to accompany the brothers to Egypt, eliciting Yaakov’s reluctant consent only after painting a picture of the famine that awaited them all.
How could he return without his younger brother? How could he put his father through such grievous torment?
The narrative is correct to focus on the fact that Yaakov would have been absolutely devastated by the loss of Binyamin. But it is strangely silent about the devastation that Binyamin’s own ten children would surely have felt by the loss of their father.
Wouldn’t their grief be at least as compelling as Yaakov’s?
Perhaps, but it is the father’s grief that drives the narrative, and which drives our own feelings.
The Kotzker Rebbe states that it is natural that the love of a father for his son greatly exceeds the feelings of the son for his father. This, the Rebbe explains, is simply human nature.
The Rebbe of Ostrov traces the reason for this back to Adam. He explains that human qualities are generally passed down from parent to child. Among these many qualities are both the love of parent for child and of child for parent. But of the two, the love of parent for child is always stronger. This fundamental reality of our nature is due to the fact that the very first person, Adam, had no parents. He experienced only one of these loves, that of a parent for his own children.
And so it remained , that this love will forever be the stronger of the two.
Likewise, as the Kotzker adds, we children of HaShem do not feel His pain nearly as much as He feels ours. In the expanded Tachanun prayers recited on Mondays and Thursdays, we ask for God’s mercy by beseeching Him – as a father has mercy on his children, so too You Hashem should have mercy upon us.
The parent always knows the pain of the child more acutely, having felt that pain as a child and as an adult. The parent can see the world more clearly than the child. In the same way that the sighted bystander fears for the blind man crossing the street more acutely than the blind man fears for himself, so too does the father fear for his child, seeing the dangers and hazards more clearly and plainly.
But why do we pray “as a father”? Does not a mother too have mercy upon her child? Indeed, a mother often has more mercy than the father. And that is the explanation.
A mother’s mercy is often greater than her wisdom; her love at times coloring what is best for the child. As a result, a mother often becomes indulgent. Such unwarranted mercy, can result in a spoiled, irresponsible child. A father’s mercy is often conveyed in less overt ways. He may punish the child, but only so the child will grow to become a responsible, righteous person.
Mercy and wisdom. These, delivered in appropriate measure, define the love of a father and form the bond from father to son which is the greatest of human bonds.