Father Meddling into Son’s Business
Question: What am I to do if my father is giving me a headache? He's telling me that I'm not doing my responsibility of being a good landlord if I don't get my tenants the latest model appliances.
Answer: Now, I don't believe that your father should be talking to you like this. That's not his job at this point. He's not supposed to be doing that. He means well, but he needs Hadracha. He's got to learn that you're not a child anymore. He has to listen to Rabbi Miller, who says: "Open your purse and close your mouth!"
But he’s not calling me. You are. Now, you can grow from a father like this. YOU CAN GROW! Even if he's wrong. It doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong. It DOES matter who's going to grow out of this. Because you were born, not to be a landlord. YOU WERE BORN TO BREAK MIDDOS! That's way more important than anything else. In the next world, you're not going to see any of your appliances or apartments. It's DONE! IN THE NEXT WORLD THEY ARE GOING TO SEE YOUR HEART. Did you work on your Middos??!
How should you deal with him, L’ma’aseh? If you can tolerate, i.e., if you can understand your father and go along with what he's asking, that's ideal. But you have no Chiyuv to go along with a thing that you are not capable of doing. A thing that gives you a headache, you have no Chiyuv. You have to block your father out of your head, and very tactfully get him distracted. Make him feel good some other way, like to write him a long note that he's the best father that ever lived. Especially since he got YOU as a son. He must be great! Butter him up. He needs Kavod, and he's getting it in a distorted way. You’ve got to give him some other kind of Kavod that will really fill him up. Make sure they honor him in a certain school, etc., so that he is going to be the big shot, and you are going to be behind it. It has to be in a healthy way, a legal way, not in a way that makes you crazy. That's the ideal way to do it.
In the worst case scenario, you just need to tell him: Tatty, we really love you, but this is my business. The financial responsibility falls on me; and I have to make the decisions. So please don’t mix in.
You can submit your questions to Rabbi Mandel by emailing them to [email protected]
