I’m going to write more about parents tomorrow, but I wanted to start the discussion today with a look at one of the Pslams that we say a lot this time of year. It’s Psalm 27, and during the month before Rosh Hashanah we say it both in the morning and at night. Many people say it through Sukkot, though some stop at Rosh Hashana. Anway, you can find the text to Pslam 27 here. I linked to the King James Version, but there are plenty of more interesting translations available as well. 
Here’s a rough synopsis: Verses 1-3: I can do anything because I have God on my side. Verses 4-6: It’s really great to be in God’s company. Verses 7-10: Be nice to me, God, because I do what you say and I need you. Verses11-12: Don’t let my enemies get me, God. Verse 13: God rocks here and now. Verse 14: Be patient and hopeful and God will show up. Verses 7-10 are often thought to be the centralized theme of the psalm, and I want to look specifically at verse 10, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.” It’s kind of a terrifying idea, when you think about it. My mother and father are going to forsake me. I have to be honest here: I don’t think I’d be all, “Oh, I have faith in God. It’s cool,” if my parents forsook me. When you think about it, it’s a strange concept. Why is there an assumption that parents are going to forsake their kids? What’s this all about? Yeshivat Hamivtar has a nice little discussion of this psalm on their website, and it cites three of the classical commentators on this verse, and one not-so- classical commentary (the Twilight Zone):
First, Rashi comments that when parents have relations they turn away from each other afterwards. A sign that the act is a selfish, pleasure-oriented one. Rashi is explaining that parents never wanted the child for its own sake, rather for their own purposes. For many parents a child is the mere result of their lust, or is viewed as a commodity. The abandonment is immediate. A pessimistic observation.
The Radak says children go off on their own at some point. The "abandonment" is the natural way of life after adolescence. The Ibn Ezra gives the most obvious and, I believe, the truest literal explanation. Parents may love you and help out as long as they can, but the way of all flesh is to pass away. All too soon parents die, leaving children bereft.
This last idea first was brought home to me in a Twilight Zone episode many years ago. I was probably about 12 when I first saw "To Sing the Body Electric" (Ray Bradbury, the author, was into Walt Whitman and the perspective of the robot. I would have called it "My Mother and Father have Abandoned Me" after King David from the viewpoint of the child.). It is about a robot company that provides very humanlike products to order. A widower orders a replacement mother for his children. The perfect nanny. One daughter refuses to accept the interloper. We find out her fear was of becoming attached to another mortal mom who would also die, abandoning her.
Well, the nanny is hit by a truck and bounces right back. The young girl is convinced that she has nothing to worry about. The nanny is immortal. This l'havdil is the message of Elul. Hashem is eternally there for us.
So okay, I agree that the larger message does seem to be that God will be there for us forever, but I wonder what else is in this verse. It seems to me that parents, be they good or bad, are what we always go back to mentally. The first few years aren’t called formative for nothing. They give us the most basic template for life, and so it makes sense that we return to our parents for guidance over and over again, because from the beginning they have sent us off on our journeys. Especially for those of us with generally good relationships with our parents, there is a risk of being overdependent. Not only in the way that was recently discussed in the New York Times, but in a spiritual way. It’s so easy to simply perpetuate your parents’ customs and join the synagogues that your parents joined and just generally have a statis relationship with faith because it’s how you were brought up, and it’s what you learned from your parents. But many of my friends have found that at some point this is no longer sufficient. Just as your parents’ political affiliations may no longer make sense to you as you get older, the same works for ritual and spiritual practices. At some point, they may no longer speak to you—it can be as if you’ve been abandoned by your parents’ faith. And so this line makes sense again. Even when it seems as if the traditions and practices of your childhood have abandonded you, there’s plenty of room for you to still find God in some other ritual, prayer or community. It still kind of scares the shit out of me, though.