Q&A: His Son, Who Is Also His Rabbi
His Son, Who Is Also His Rabbi
Question
The Rosh wrote in Kiddushin 1:56: “They asked: if his son is also his rabbi, what is the law regarding standing before his father? It was not resolved. They asked: if his son is also his rabbi, what is the law regarding the father standing before him? This too was not resolved, and it is a Torah-level doubt, so they should stand for one another. They said about our teacher Meir of Rothenburg that from the day he rose to greatness he did not receive his father, and did not want his father to come to him.”
However, I did not understand why Maharam avoided meetings. If because of the doubt all that is needed is that both of them stand, as the Rosh wrote, and each one can waive his honor. But I’m not asking about that right now. (I thought maybe it was because someone for some reason did not want to waive his honor, or was concerned that the other was not really waiving it.) What seems strange to me is the prioritization here. After all, it is obvious that in this way he is not fulfilling honoring parents well enough, or perhaps at all, so it seems odd that a doubt about details within honoring one’s father could cause total avoidance—like a groom who is afraid his shoes will get dirty on the way to the wedding, so he stands barefoot under the canopy, to his embarrassment. Maybe at the moment of meeting there is some deficiency in honoring one’s father, but even so it would seem that the meeting as a whole is, on net, an advantage in honoring one’s father, so why not take the overall balance into account.
Answer
This is not a practical ruling. The Talmud really does not say that he should not come, only that they should both stand.
Maharam chose that course, and I assume he knew his own specific circumstances and decided to conduct himself that way for his own reasons. Clearly, this is not a proper ruling for the public as a general approach.
Discussion on Answer
I didn’t understand. He has nothing to waive, because it remains an unresolved doubt in the Talmud. Both of them need to stand for one another. Is it even relevant to take a stand in a case of doubt regarding a law of honor?!
Maybe I did not correctly understand the doubt in the Talmud and the Rosh’s ruling.
After all, seemingly, what is the doubt? Obviously the son must stand because of honoring his father, and the father must stand because of honoring his rabbi. It is like one person deposited a jug with his fellow, and the other deposited a barrel with him: this one returns that one’s jug, and that one returns this one’s barrel.
Rather, the doubt is perhaps that the son is not obligated to stand before his father-disciple, because the honor of his Torah *requires him not to rise*, and that is stronger than the honor of his father, which requires him to rise. And perhaps the father is not obligated to stand before his son-rabbi, because the honor of his fatherhood requires him not to rise, and that is stronger than the honor of his rabbi, which requires him to rise.
Therefore, if the son who is the rabbi decides to waive the honor of his own Torah, then he is certainly obligated to stand before his father. And likewise, if the father who is the disciple decides to waive the honor of his fatherhood, then he is certainly obligated to stand before his rabbi.
So I understood the Rosh to be saying that in order to get out of the doubt, if they meet each one must waive his own honor, thereby enabling himself to stand. And for some reason Maharam decided that waiving it was not appropriate for him—perhaps he was worried that onlookers would come to belittle the honor of Torah or something like that—or he thought that perhaps his father would not waive his honor, and therefore he preferred to avoid meeting.
That is what I understood before asking the question. And I understand from your words that this is incorrect.
[And then I asked that it would still be preferable to meet the father and not stand, thereby perhaps violating honoring one’s father for a tiny moment, but overall throughout the meeting they gain more honoring of one’s father than through not meeting at all.]
So first of all, I would ask, if possible, that you explain how you understand Kiddushin 33a and the words of the Rosh, even before I ask further questions.
Ah, maybe I understand what you meant. You interpret the Talmud as saying that honor is by definition an anti-symmetrical relationship; the doubt is whose honor-status is higher, the father’s or the son’s. It is not separate obligations like the jug and barrel, but one hierarchical axis on which we need to determine who is above whom, and therefore who is obligated in whose honor. And there is no issue at all that standing damages honor—which is what I had thought was necessary for the explanation above, because the jug and barrel are separate. So waiving honor has nothing to do with it, and naturally the doubt leads to the conclusion that both should stand—which I had thought was not natural at all, but required mutual waiving. And that is also why you said there is nothing general to learn from Maharam’s conduct. If that is your intent, then now that I think about it, it really does seem like the correct interpretation (and certainly more plausible than the interpretation I had innocently assumed).
Only one small thing remains: according to my understanding I can also understand Maharam’s behavior, and about that I have a separate question regarding balancing considerations; but according to your (presumed) understanding, it is not at all clear what could have motivated him to act that way.
All right, maybe once again I’m getting carried away with my own understandings instead of waiting for correction at each stage, but in fact if we assume from the outset that honor is an anti-symmetrical relationship, then why are there two separate questions in the Talmud? Why is this not just one question? Maybe that shows that the explanation really is as I thought, even though it is rather awkward.
I completely lost you. Forgive me, but all this sounds to me like very odd pilpul.
So let the pilpul go in the trash. Could his honor please explain what the question in the Talmud is, and why they should not both stand as a matter of certainty—this one because of honoring a father, and that one because of honoring a rabbi?
What is difficult about these questions? The question is whether it is proper to stand before his rabbi/father even at the cost of diminishing the honor of his father/rabbi.
One possibility is that there is a single scale on which both obligations stand, and the doubt is which is higher. But that is not necessary. It may be that one does not fulfill one value at the cost of harming another, even if the other is not greater than the first. In particular, the honor of one’s rabbi also has a public element and is not only personal—the honor of Torah—and there is room to say that even if, essentially, the honor of one’s father is greater, the public cost overrides it. And so on.
And the reason they should not both stand automatically is exactly what I wrote: if the one who should not stand does stand, there is a cost here; it is not neutral.
Thank you. If the problem is that the cost is diminution, then if they both waive that diminution vis-à-vis one another, does the obligation to stand remain in place?
The single-scale possibility seems problematic to me because the Talmud has two different questions, and if the issue is who ranks higher, then that is one question. (If the son does not need to stand before his father, that means the honor of the rabbi is more important, and therefore the father should need to stand before his son. Actually, maybe there could be equality.)
Not necessarily, because the diminution has public significance. When a father stands before his son, there is a diminution of honoring parents, and that is not comparable to a father waiving his own honor so that his son need not stand before him.
I am not sure that the division into two questions necessarily indicates that this is not a single scale. Sometimes the Talmud’s way is to present two dependent questions as though they were two independent ones, in order to sharpen the point. We would need to look for examples, but there are such cases.
According to the diminution suggestion (not the scale), if waiving honor—waiving one’s own honor and standing—does not help, and there is a doubtful problem of diminution, then why in an unresolved question should they both stand? Maybe there is a Torah-level doubt of diminution, and therefore specifically they should both not stand.
If this has gotten too drawn out, feel free to cut me off. I came to ask about one detail in Maharam, and it turns out that all my assumptions needed probing. (I thought the problem was diminution and that waiving honor solved it, and that the Rosh said each one should waive his honor and then they should both stand.)
It seems simple that if both stand, there is no diminution. In such a case, the situation is clear to any sensible person.
Interesting reasoning, thank you.
And suppose that the son, who is his rabbi, for some reason is unwilling to waive the honor of his own Torah stature, and therefore there is a problem with the meeting: if he stands, perhaps he has compromised the honor of his own Torah; and if he does not stand, perhaps he has compromised the honor of his father. So one option is, so to speak, to lose everything—they won’t meet, and the father will not rejoice in his offspring. Another option is to think in terms of the overall accounting of the world—they will meet, and the son will not stand, and will absorb this small deficiency in honoring his father for the sake of the possibility of honoring his father through the meeting more than the small deficiency. Do we make that kind of overall calculation, or is each moment judged on its own?