In 1992 Rabbi Joseph Telushkin published a book entitled Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About Jews. While he dedicated the book to his three daughters, the first chapter is about how hard it is for generations in a Jewish family to understand one another; how easy it is for frictions and misunderstandings to grow. Chapter one is entitled “Oedipus, Shmedipus, as Long as He Loves His Mother.” This is the first joke in his book.

Three elderly Jewish women are seated on a bench in Miami Beach, each one bragging about how devoted her son is to her.

The first one says: “My son is so devoted that last year for my birthday he gave me an all-expense paid cruise around the world. First class.”

The second one says: “My son is more devoted. For my 75th birthday last year, he catered an affair for me. And even gave me money to fly down my good friends from New York.

The third one says: My son is the most devoted. Three times a week he goes to a psychiatrist. Hundreds of dollars an hour he pays him. And what does he speak about the whole time? Me.

You might think that parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, are natural allies. That the natural energy is for the generations to get along easily. We share so much. We share a past, present, and future. We share family history. We share values. We share genes. We share a home. We sleep under the same roof. We share dreams. Your success is my success. In fact, I am happier for your success than for my success. What is so complicated? What could go wrong?

And yet, it is complicated, and it often does go wrong. That is not only evidenced by the jokes in Telushkin book. The inevitability of generational tension is the backdrop for the climactic passage in the special Haftarah from the prophet Malakhi who imagines that someday, in the future, there will be a yom Adonai hagadol v’hanorah, a day of the Lord that is great and awesome—that is how today became Shabbat hagadol. What will happen on that great and awesome day of the Lord? God “shall reconcile parents with their children and children with their parents.”