Honoring Parents and Halakhic Territory

With God’s help

Meisharim – 5766

Various Qualifications on the Commandment of Honoring Parents[1]

Introduction

In this article we will examine the connection between the obligations of parents toward their children and the obligations of children toward their parents. On that basis, we will present a picture of the parent-child relationship not as a duty of one legal personality toward another, but as a duty of the family whole toward God. We will also point to several implications of such a picture.

The first part presents a general picture of the reciprocal obligations between parents and their children. In the second part we will consider the rights of the son as a legal limitation that qualifies the duty to honor parents. We will then examine additional qualifications on the duty of honoring parents, which are very difficult to explain within the accepted halakhic patterns. After that we will discuss whether there is a connection between those qualifications and the picture described in the first part, according to which the reciprocal duties are duties of the entire whole.

The picture that emerges from the whole article is that almost all the limitations that qualify the duty to honor parents do not stem from the fact that this duty is weaker than other commandments, that is, from the fact that it is set aside by force of other constraints. The limitations on one’s obligation toward parents stem, almost entirely, from a limitation on the sphere in which that obligation applies to them. But where the obligation does apply, it has no limitation at all; in practice, then, it is a very strong obligation. Of course, we must examine carefully where the boundary of that sphere of application lies in each context.

Part I. Parent-Child Relations – An Overall Halakhic Picture

Introduction: The Commandments and Reciprocal Obligations of Parents and Their Children

There are several halakhic aspects to parent-child relations in Jewish law. The most basic obligation of parents is the duty itself to bring children into the world (the commandment of being fruitful and multiplying, and also ‘in the evening do not let your hand rest’). It would seem that this obligation is toward God and not toward the children themselves, who do not yet exist in the world. It is plausible to say that this is a mission imposed upon the parents by God. Below we shall see the implications of this proposal.

After children are born, parents have halakhic obligations toward them, materially and spiritually. First, there is the enactment of Usha (Ketubbot 49b), which created an obligation to support children until the age of six. At a later stage, the Sages extended the period during which this obligation exists, until the children reach the age of majority in commandments (see Shulchan Arukh, Even HaEzer 71; Avnei Milu’im ad loc.; and Maimonides, Laws of Marriage 12:14). Today it is customary to support children until they reach adulthood, and sometimes beyond.

Beyond that, parents are obligated to educate their children, at least until the age of majority in commandments. This commandment, too, is rabbinic (see Berakhot 20b and parallels).

The Mishnah in Kiddushin 29a and the Talmud there mention five additional specific obligations of the father toward the son (that is, commandments the father must perform for his son): to circumcise him, redeem him, teach him Torah, marry him off, teach him a trade, and some say even to teach him to swim. The Talmud explains that the first three obligations are from the Torah, and the rest are from received tradition, if at all. The last three obligations are not brought by Maimonides as practical Jewish law at all.

So far we have described the obligations of the father toward the son. But there is also another side to the coin: sons, too, have obligations toward their parents. A son must honor them and revere them. In addition, children are forbidden to curse or strike their parents.[2] All of these commandments are Torah-level.

Chapter A: The Nature of the Parents’ Obligations

We will try to clarify the character of the parents’ obligations by analyzing several of them. We will begin with the duty to marry off the son. At first glance, this duty depends on whether there is any commandment to marry at all, and the medieval authorities dispute this (see the Tur and Shulchan Arukh with their commentaries at the beginning of Even HaEzer, and Maimonides at the beginning of Laws of Marriage). If there is no duty to marry, then it would seem that the father likewise has no commandment to marry off his son. Only if there is such a commandment upon the son can one say that the father is obligated to help him fulfill it. Yet the Talmud appears not to assume any such dependence, and the law of marrying him off is stated simply and is apparently accepted by all the medieval authorities.

One might have said, according to those medieval authorities who hold that there is no independent commandment in marriage, that even on their view marriage is merely preparation for the commandment of procreation. If so, perhaps the father’s commandment is only to assist his son in procreating, not specifically to marry him off. More than that: perhaps one could say that this completes the father’s own duty of procreation, for in the case where the sons do not themselves produce offspring, the Talmud raises the possibility that the parents have not fulfilled their own obligation of procreation at all. If so, helping the son procreate would amount to completing the father’s own duty.

But this seems a strained explanation, for the obligation mentioned in the Talmud is to marry him off, not merely to help him procreate (and there are, after all, other ways of procreating).

It therefore seems that the duty to marry him off is similar in essence to the duty to teach him a trade. At least according to most medieval authorities, there is no commandment upon the son himself to engage in a trade.[3] If so, the reason the father is obligated to teach him a trade is not to prepare him to fulfill some commandment, for there is no commandment of trade. The father’s obligation to teach his son a trade is an obligation to prepare him for life, and not necessarily for some specific commandment.

A trade is a practical necessity (and perhaps more than that, namely, a protection against sin; see the book Sha’arei Talmud Torah cited above), for the son must earn a living in order to survive. The father must prepare his son for life so that he can exist in a reasonable and fitting way.

According to what we have said, it is entirely possible that the duty to help him marry is also of this type. On our proposal, the duty to marry him off is not preparation for the commandment of marriage; rather, it is a duty to prepare and qualify him properly for the beginning of his adult life. Normal and proper life is life with a wife, and therefore the parents are obligated to help him live such a life.

The conclusion is that these two commandments can be defined more as obligations than as commandments. The father owes his sons a trade and marriage in order to bring them to a proper starting point. This is not primarily a matter of commandments and legal rules, but of obligations that have a quasi-juridical character. To be sure, it is entirely possible that the Torah, or the Sages, impose a commandment upon these obligations, but that does not change their basic character.

As for the age at which each of these commandments is binding, there is some ambiguity in Jewish law (see, for example, Eynayim LaMishpat on Kiddushin 29a). Some decisors seem to hold that the obligation lasts only until the son reaches majority, and no further. Others seem to hold that the obligation continues even beyond that, and that there is no upper age limit to the son for whom the parent remains obligated to assist him in these matters.

Now Maimonides, in his Commentary on the Mishnah to Kiddushin, writes that the obligation lasts only until the age of majority, and afterward it lapses and passes to the son himself. That is parallel to what we find explicitly with the obligation to circumcise and redeem one’s son: if the father failed to circumcise or redeem him, those obligations pass to the son himself. Minḥat Ḥinukh, on commandment 20, is uncertain about Maimonides’ view here, and writes that according to Sefer HaḤinukh these obligations last forever. So too seems to be the case regarding redemption, for the wording of Sefer HaḤinukh on commandment 393 implies that it is forever (and so too in Beit Yosef there, section 29, in the name of a responsum of Rashba). Maimonides, by contrast, uses the language: ‘If the father failed to redeem him—when he grows up, he redeems himself,’ implying that the father’s commandment applies only until the son becomes an adult, and if he failed to do so by then he is considered to have neglected that commandment. Minḥat Ḥinukh infers this from the fact that the Mishnah listed all these commandments together, and from that proves that these obligations last only until majority and no further.

According to some decisors, these obligations last only until majority, and according to others they continue beyond that. But everyone seems to agree—at least from the unqualified wording—that these obligations are not enforced against the father once the son has reached majority.

The conclusion that emerges from this continues the line we proposed above: the essence of these obligations is to prepare the son for adult life. Therefore, once the son has matured, the father can no longer fulfill that role, and he has thereby nullified the commandment.[4] This becomes sharper in light of Minḥat Ḥinukh’s remark that one should equate the parameters of all the obligations that appear in the baraita. If so, the obligations to circumcise and redeem him are similar in character to the obligations to teach him a trade, marry him off, and teach him to swim. All of these are preparations for adult life.

As we have seen, this preparation of the son for adult life is not accomplished only by educating him to fulfill the duties imposed upon him. There are preparations that the father himself performs for his son, in order to bring him properly to the state of an adult Jew. An adult Jew must be circumcised and redeemed (so that he will not be an uncircumcised Jewish adult), know Torah and a trade, and be married to a woman. Therefore the father is obligated to perform all these things for his son.

We have seen that, at least according to some decisors, these commandments constitute preparation for adult Jewish life. We must now sharpen an essential legal point that follows from this understanding: according to our proposal, these are not ordinary commandments that are fulfilled by the father’s act. Their aim is to bring the son into a certain state. If the father did not do this for his son, the son himself becomes obligated to complete what is lacking and bring about the state that the father was obligated to create. That is why, when the son grows up, he becomes obligated in them himself (if the father did not perform them). Thus these commandments do not require an act; they define a state. It is a state in which the son himself must be, and the father is only an instrument of the commandment (according to some views, until adulthood). His role is to ensure that his son will be in the state that the Torah defines for him. The conclusion is that, according to our proposal, these are not commandments concerning specific acts of the father, but commandments of result: their essence lies in the goal reached, not in the doing of the act.

A striking example of this is the well-known view of Maharaḥ Or Zarua and Tosafot Rid regarding circumcision (see, for example, Kli Ḥemdah, at the beginning of Parashat Tetzaveh). Maharaḥ Or Zarua and the Rid hold that the father is not obligated to circumcise his son. The obligation imposed upon him is only to endeavor that his son be circumcised. We may illustrate this with two legal implications:

According to these views, the mohel need not be the father’s agent, for the father is not obligated to circumcise his son but rather to ensure that he is circumcised. The circumcision itself may be performed by anyone, and the father need only see that it is done.
Another practical ramification is that one who circumcises the son in place of the father, without permission, may not be required to give the father ten gold coins as one who snatches a commandment from another. The reason is that this commandment is not directly imposed on the father.[5]
In any event, these views of the medieval authorities show that the obligation to circumcise one’s son is not a duty of action but a duty of effort. The father must strive to bring his son into the proper state—being circumcised—and not necessarily perform a particular act himself.[6]

A similar phenomenon can be seen with the commandment of education. As is well known, Rashi and Tosafot dispute whether the commandment of education is defined as a commandment upon the father with respect to the son, or whether the son himself is rabbinically commanded in the commandments (the practical ramification is whether he can discharge the obligation of someone else who is rabbinically obligated; see Berakhot 48a, Tosafot s.v. ‘ad she-yokhal,’ and Megillah 19b, Tosafot s.v. ‘ve-Rabbi Yehudah’).

At first glance this is difficult: why define education as a commandment upon the son, rather than as an obligation of the father toward his son? Especially since the son is a minor and not obligated in commandments at all; it is surely strained to say that he is obligated to educate himself.

The explanation seems to be that the definition of the commandment of education, at least according to these views, is a commandment that the son be educated. This is not a commandment of action but a commandment of result. If so, the act of education is indeed imposed on the father, but the goal and definition of the commandment is the result realized in the son. Thus, when the son recites Grace after Meals or reads the Megillah, he himself performs a commandment. Even when the father performs the act that brings the son to the necessary knowledge and to the performance of the reading, it is clear that the one who fulfills the commandment of the blessing and the reading is the son. Consequently, the discussion of discharging one’s obligation in Megillah reading or in Grace after Meals is relevant only to the son, and not specifically to the father.[7]

In Brisker terminology, one could say here that the act of the commandment is performed by the son, but the duty that this be carried out rests on the father. The discharge of an obligation is effected by the one who performs the act of the commandment. We do not impose obligations on minors, but the Sages certainly do want minors to perform commandments so that they will learn. If so, their acts count as acts of commandment, and therefore they can discharge the obligation of those who are rabbinically obligated.

There is a well-known story about R. Avraham’le of Sochatchov: when he was a child, his father sent him to eat on Yom Kippur. When the child returned to the synagogue, his father asked him whether he had made kiddush. R. Avraham’le answered that he had not, and explained that his obligation to make kiddush derived from his father’s duty to prepare him for adult life. But in his adult life he is not supposed to eat on Yom Kippur, and therefore he certainly does not need to learn how to make kiddush on Yom Kippur.[8]

Despite the similarity between the commandment of education and the other commandments of the father toward the son, it also contains an aspect fundamentally different from all the other duties of the father toward the son (perhaps for that reason it is not included in the baraita in Kiddushin). All the obligations listed there are acts that the father himself performs in order to bring his son into a certain state—for example, that the son be circumcised and redeemed, know Torah and a trade, and the like. By contrast, in the commandment of education there are two laws: 1. to bring him to know and become accustomed to performing and observing commandments. In that sense, education resembles teaching a trade and Torah. 2. According to Tosafot there is a second layer in the commandment of education: to bring it about that the minor himself perform commandments while still a minor. As we have seen, those commandments are already considered, during minority, as a kind of fulfillment in their own right. For that reason, according to Tosafot, the minor’s Grace after Meals is regarded as the blessing of one who is rabbinically obligated. According to Rashi, perhaps there is no such dimension in education, and this commandment resembles the other obligations of the father toward the son. Though, as we noted above, it is possible that Rashi too agrees to this definition of the commandment of education.[9]

It seems that the father’s obligation to support the son also contains these two dimensions: it is quite clear that he has a duty to sustain him during minority, that is, a duty toward the minor himself during his childhood. In addition, according to what we have said, he also has a duty to bring him fitly to the age of maturity, as part of the preparations imposed on the father. It is worth noting that the obligation to feed and support him is also not mentioned among the father’s obligations toward the son in the baraita in Kiddushin, and perhaps the reason is similar to what we noted (at least according to Tosafot) regarding the duty to educate him in commandments.

Now if the Torah wants the son to be circumcised and redeemed, it is not clear why it does not simply wait until he is grown and then impose the obligation on him. The reason seems simple: if one does not prepare him for the fulfillment of the commandments—if he is not circumcised and not redeemed—then he will remain uncircumcised, and presumably the Torah does not wish to impose commandments on an uncircumcised person.[10] Thus, without the father’s preparation, the Torah could not impose those duties upon him in adulthood. In that sense, the commandment of education is the prototype of them all—the conceptual father of them all (only conceptually, of course, since it is rabbinic)—with respect to the other obligations of the father toward the son. The father’s obligations are to prepare him to exist, to be capable of being commanded, and also to be capable of fulfilling the commandments.

To sum up: the goal of these obligations is not any specific commandments, important as they may be. These are not the father’s own commandments, but states of the son (which appear as commandments or obligations upon the father). The father’s obligations are to bring the son to the beginning of the path in a fit condition, with the capacity to live as a normal human being and also to fulfill the commandments. At that stage, he should also be formed in such a way that the actions required for his functioning as a Jew—materially and spiritually—have already been done in him or upon him.

According to our view, it may be possible to understand the Talmud’s statement (and see Maimonides, Laws of Torah Study, beginning of chapter 5) that one’s teacher takes precedence over one’s father (regarding returning a lost object—Bava Metzia 33a—and rescue—Horayot 13a), because one’s father brings him to life in this world, while his teacher brings him to life in the World to Come (unless his father is also his teacher, or where his father pays the teacher to teach him). At first glance this is difficult, for surely his father also brings him to life in the World to Come, by educating him in commandments and the like. But according to our view, this can be resolved by saying that his father brings him to life in this world, which includes both material and spiritual dimensions, whereas his teacher is the one who brings him to life in the World to Come. His father prepares the beginning of the path and sets him on his feet, both materially and spiritually, but all of that pertains to this world. Only his teacher continues him onward into the life of the World to Come.

To conclude this chapter, let us add a broader aspect to the picture we have drawn. We mentioned that the commandments of circumcision and redeeming the son (and certainly Torah study), if the father did not perform them, are imposed on the son himself once he grows up. That means that the father functions here, in a certain sense, as a prior embodiment of the son while the son is still small: a son is his father’s extension. As long as the son is a minor, the father is supposed to see to the fulfillment of his obligations. The law that grandchildren are considered like children also points in this direction. The father continues his own existence through the son, and afterward through the grandchildren as well. He is obligated to the continuity of his chain, and to setting it on the proper adult Jewish course.

At the outset of our discussion we noted that parents are God’s agents in bringing forth their offspring. There is a chain of emanation here from God to the children through the parents. The parents’ duty is to complete the creation of the children, which was begun by God. They do this by bringing them into the world, and afterward by shaping them into adult Jews who function as servants of God in both material and spiritual terms.

If so, the foundation of the relation between father and sons is a metaphysical relation between them. These are not duties of one person toward another, but a metaphysical continuity of a family chain that constitutes a kind of collective. A duty of one person toward another is a duty between two already-existing entities. But the parents’ obligations toward the children begin even before the children are created. The first obligation is to create them and bring them into the world. After that there is an obligation toward them even though they are still not legal entities. The reason is that the obligation is not really toward them. It is a continuation of the emanation of the children from God through the parents. Thus the son is the physical and metaphysical continuation of his father, who mediates between him and God. Below we will see further implications of this picture.

We now turn to discuss the reverse side of the picture: the relation and obligation of the sons toward the father and mother. In the next chapter we shall see that the foundation of this obligation is rooted in that same metaphysical relation between the father and his offspring. It is a mirror image of the parents’ duties toward their children.

Chapter B: The Honor and Reverence of Father and Mother, and the Honor and Reverence of God: A Parallel Definition

As is well known, when his father or mother tells him to violate one of the commandments, he is not obligated to obey them. This is the language of the Talmud (Yevamot 6a):

For it was taught in a baraita: One might think that if his father said to him, ‘Become impure,’ or if he told him, ‘Do not return [a lost object],’ he should obey him. Scripture therefore says (Leviticus 19): ‘Each man shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep My Sabbaths’—all of you are obligated in My honor!

The Talmud expounds that there is no obligation—and indeed it is forbidden—to obey parents when they instruct him to violate one of the commandments. The reason is that we are all obligated in the honor of God. This is a situation of collision between the honor of parents and the honor of God, and the honor of God prevails. The reason is not a quantitative hierarchy, according to which the honor of God ranks above the honor of parents. The reason is qualitative and essential: all honor shown to parents is an expression of the honor of God, and therefore when honoring them demands a violation of God’s honor, the obligation to do so is void from the outset.[11]

We can see this through a formulation that appears, seemingly in reverse, in Maimonides. This is his language at the beginning of chapter 6 of Laws of Rebels:

Honoring father and mother is a great positive commandment, and so too reverence for father and mother; Scripture equated them with His own honor and reverence. It is written, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and it is written, ‘Honor the Lord with your wealth.’ And regarding his father and mother it is written, ‘Each man shall revere his mother and his father,’ while it is written, ‘The Lord your God shall you fear.’ Just as He commanded concerning the honor and reverence of His great name, so He commanded concerning their honor and reverence.

It seems that these are not two opposite approaches, but just the opposite—they reflect one foundation: because the honor of father and mother is derived from the honor of God, their honor is therefore equated with the honor of God (the third partner in human creation). The parents are representatives of God in relation to the son, and therefore he is obligated to honor them. It follows naturally that their honor cannot overshadow the honor of God, for they themselves derive their force from Him. These two perspectives do not contradict one another; on the contrary, they complement one another.

From here it follows naturally what we established above: the principle that all are obligated in the honor of God is not merely a quantitative hierarchy. That principle is based on the fact that the entire obligation to honor father and mother exists because of the honor of God and as a derivative of it. Therefore it makes no sense to honor them against His honor.[12]

To be sure, one might have understood this differently. It is possible that the setting aside of the honor of parents before the honor of God does not stem from the fact that the obligation to honor them is derived from the honor of God, but from the fact that the parents themselves are obligated in the honor of God. If so, when they demand that their son violate a commandment, they are harming the honor of God to which they are themselves obligated. It should be noted that, at first glance, this is what the language of the baraita itself seems to say.

But this explanation is difficult, for why is the son obligated to ensure that his parents honor God? If that were only their problem, then he would still be obligated to honor them, and they themselves would receive what was due to them from God for not honoring Him.[13] Moreover, this explanation fits even less well with the language of Maimonides cited above in Laws of Rebels. Therefore, our interpretation still seems preferable.

The matter is stated even more explicitly in the Talmudic discussion in Kiddushin 30b:

The Rabbis taught: There are three partners in a person—the Holy One, blessed be He, his father, and his mother. When a person honors his father and his mother, the Holy One, blessed be He, says: I ascribe it to them as though I had dwelt among them and they had honored Me…

A tanna taught before Rabbi Naḥman: When a person causes pain to his father and his mother, the Holy One, blessed be He, says: I did well not to dwell among them, for had I dwelt among them they would have caused Me pain.

[14]

This also explains why the laws of honoring other people are not displaced by the honor of God in the same way (as other commandments are). In the next chapter we will present several practical ramifications of this conception.

We will conclude this chapter with a citation from Sefer HaḤinukh, commandment 33, which writes as follows:

Among the roots of this commandment is that a person should recognize and repay kindness to one who has done him good, and should not be base, alienated, and ungrateful, for this is a thoroughly evil and loathsome trait before God and man. He should take to heart that his father and mother are the cause of his being in the world, and therefore it is truly fitting for him to do for them every honor and every benefit he can, for they brought him into the world and also labored greatly over him in his childhood. And when he establishes this trait in his soul, he will rise from it to recognize the goodness of God, blessed be He, who is his cause and the cause of all his ancestors back to Adam the first man; who brought him into the air of the world, supplied his needs all his days, set him in his proper form and with the full perfection of his limbs, and gave him a knowing and intelligent soul. For were it not for the soul with which God graced him, he would be like a horse or mule without understanding. He will then reflect how very fitting it is for him to be careful in His service, blessed be He.

True, there is no necessity to say that Sefer HaḤinukh means exactly what we have argued—that the honor of parents is a derivative of the honor of God. But at least the comparison, that in both cases the same foundation is operative—gratitude to the source of our coming-into-being—is certainly present here.

Chapter C: The Honor of Parents as Representatives of God in the Creation of Their Son: Three Practical Ramifications

A. Or Sameaḥ, in the addenda (printed in standard editions in volume 1 after Laws of Hanukkah) on Laws of Rebels, raises a difficulty regarding the rule brought by Maimonides (Rebels 6:12), that even a rabbinic negative commandment overrides honoring parents. Or Sameaḥ asks: why does human dignity override a rabbinic negative commandment (as Maimonides writes at the end of Laws of Kil’ayim), whereas honoring parents does not? There he cites a source from the Mishnah, which derives that one may not obey his father who commands him not to return a lost object, from the verse ‘Each man shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep My Sabbaths.’ We see that returning a lost object—which is set aside before human dignity (as in the case of a priest in a cemetery or an elder for whom it would be beneath his dignity)—nevertheless overrides honoring parents.

According to our view, the explanation is simple. The setting aside of the commandment of honoring parents before other commandments is not a rule of quantitative hierarchy of importance (that is, the criterion is not which is more important than which). It stems from the consideration that without honor for God, there is no value at all to the honor of father and mother. Therefore the honor of God, even where it appears only in a rabbinic negative commandment, overrides the honor of parents. By contrast, the rule that human dignity overrides rabbinic prohibitions is an ordinary rule of displacement based on a hierarchy of importance between two values.[15]

The essential reason for the difference between the character of the commandment to honor parents and the duty of human dignity is that human dignity is honor accorded to the image of God found in human beings (including oneself, since one is obligated to honor oneself and not degrade oneself), whereas honoring parents exists because that itself is the form of honoring Him. They are God’s representatives with respect to the child. Therefore, in a case of collision with rabbinic transgressions, honoring parents yields while human dignity does not.

Thus, the fact that the honor of parents yields before prohibitions does not stem from any inferiority in the importance of the duty to honor them—perhaps quite the opposite: it is an expression of their elevated status. They are God’s emissaries with respect to him, and therefore he is obligated to honor them. Their honor comes by force of God Himself. As we suggested above, one may say that they are the ones who ‘create’ the son (together with the third partner), in that they bring him to life in this world. God created him, and his parents are charged with setting him on his feet. As stated, this is a continuation of the process of creating him as an adult person fit to serve God.[16]

B. Something like the principle we found in the rules of precedence between honoring parents and honoring God can also be found within the obligations of honor themselves. For example, the wife’s duty of honor toward the husband’s parents, and perhaps according to certain views also toward an elder brother, the father’s father, the father’s wife, the mother’s husband, and the father’s mother (as stated explicitly in Kiddushin 31a, that the honor of the father overrides the honor of the mother). In all these contexts we see, at least according to some views, that when the primary person to be honored no longer demands honor, the obligation to honor the secondary person also lapses. For example, the duty to honor the husband’s parents lapses when the husband dies and the wife is no longer obligated in his honor. This is what we saw with honoring parents: the obligation draws its force from the duty to honor God.

With respect to God, of course, there is no situation in which the duty to honor the source lapses. Therefore the commandment of honoring parents, which is derived because of Him, continues even after their death (with respect to those matters that still constitute honor for them after death). The explanation is that they are no longer worthy of honor on their own account, since they no longer exist, but their honor is the honor of God, and in that the children are always obligated.[17]

Now, surprisingly, there may indeed be a situation in which even God’s status as the primary object of honor is no longer expressed here. The obligation to honor God never lapses, of course, but there can be a situation in which honoring Him no longer finds expression through the parents, because they are no longer considered His representatives with respect to their children. The example is a wicked father. Some decisors hold that there is no obligation to honor him, and others write that there is no obligation to honor him after his death (in contrast to a righteous father, whose honor remains obligatory even after death; see the paragraph above).

According to our proposal, these laws can be explained as derivatives of the relation to God. When the father is wicked, there is no law requiring one to honor him, for he does not constitute a representative of God toward me, and therefore the obligation to honor him lapses (as with the obligation toward the mother’s husband when the mother has died). Here it is not the duty to honor God that ceases, but the link between God and the parents, and therefore the duty to honor them expires.[18]

Now in Kli Ḥemdah, Parashat Vayigash, a contradiction is raised regarding the honor due to one’s paternal grandfather. On the one hand, the Rema, Yoreh De’ah 240:24, writes that there is a duty of honor toward one’s father’s father. The later authorities challenged him from the passage in Makkot 12, from which it is proved that one’s son does not become an avenger of blood against him, but one’s grandson does. The author of Kli Ḥemdah resolves this by saying that the case involves a father who intentionally murdered his son (as is evident from Maimonides’ wording in Laws of Murder there), and thus he is a wicked father. In such a case the son is obligated to honor him, but the grandson is not obligated to honor his father’s father. That is, wickedness severs the link that generates honor for those who come by virtue of him, for such a link exists only if he serves as a representative of God.[19]

We have already mentioned the views according to which one must honor a wicked father. But all that applies only during his lifetime, not after his death. This requires explanation: how is that distinction generated? It must be that there are two laws of honoring parents: one on their own account and one on account of God. According to this, with respect to a wicked father there is an obligation to honor him only on his own account (because he is the child’s biological parent), and therefore that obligation lapses when he is no longer alive. This is similar to what we saw above in the previous approach: with respect to the father there are two obligations of honor—because of himself and because he is God’s representative toward me. With respect to the grandfather, however, there is only one source, as God’s representative (for though he is not the father, he too is part of the chain of emanation of the grandchildren—in other words, part of the mediation between them and God), and we wrote that this obligation does not exist when the father is wicked.

If our words are correct, and there is an obligation of honoring father and mother from two different directions (two laws)—on their own account and on account of the honor of God—then perhaps this can explain why in several midrashim their honor is said to be greater than God’s honor. For we find in Pesikta Rabbati, section 23 (s.v. ‘Tani Rabbi Shimon’):[20]

And Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai said: Great is the honor of father and mother, for the Holy One, blessed be He, gave it greater weight than His own honor. For concerning the honor of the Holy One, blessed be He, it is written, ‘Honor the Lord with your wealth’ (Proverbs 3:9). How does one honor Him from his wealth? He leaves gleanings, forgotten sheaves, and the corner of the field; separates the first tithe, second tithe, and hallah; makes a shofar, sukkah, and lulav; feeds the hungry, gives drink to the thirsty, clothes the naked. If you have wealth, you are obligated in all of these; if you have no wealth, you are not obligated in any of them. But when you come to honoring father and mother, what is written? ‘Honor your father and your mother’—even if you must go begging from door to door.

The duty to honor God is one, whereas the duty to honor parents is both because of the honor of God and because of themselves. There are thus two distinct dimensions here.

According to this, however, one must still ask why the honor of God nevertheless overrides their honor (that is, why one may not commit a transgression in order to honor them), given that they have extra weight because of the independent dimension of their honor. It must be that their honor insofar as it is grounded in the honor of God is not merely overridden by God’s honor (through transgression), but nullified entirely—as we proved above from the reasoning that all are obligated in His honor. Thus only the obligation to honor them on their own account remains, and that is insufficient to override a prohibition or commandment.

C. In light of all this, we can understand the doubt raised by Minḥat Ḥinukh on commandment 33: is honoring father and mother a commandment between person and fellow man, or a commandment between person and God? The practical ramification is with respect to repentance: does his own repentance suffice, or must he also appease them, like any other interpersonal wrong?

The reason Minḥat Ḥinukh gives for the possibility that honoring parents is a commandment between person and God is not entirely clear. It is obvious that God commanded this relationship, but that is equally true of all commandments between one person and another. So why specifically here does the possibility arise that this is a commandment between person and God? Put differently: is there room to raise a similar doubt about human dignity, or the commandment to return a lost object?

It seems that this is the same difference we saw above. In honoring parents, the duty to honor them is not because of them, and consequently not really toward them either. The duty arises because through them we honor God, whose representatives they are in relation to us. God’s influence upon the son is mediated through the parents. By contrast, with human dignity it is certainly God who commanded it, but the duty to honor people is because of their own dignity, not because of the honor of God. In the act of honoring them, no commandment of honoring God is directly fulfilled, and therefore it is a commandment between person and fellow man.

Thus, the distinction between human dignity and honoring parents lies not in the structure of the honor itself. In both cases we must honor human beings, that is, give them honor. The difference lies in the motivation and rationale for that honor: with respect to people generally, the duty to honor them exists because they bear the image of God, and the aim is their own honor. But with respect to father and mother, the duty to honor them is the duty to give honor to God Himself through them. Therefore precisely here the possibility arises that this is a duty between person and God.

In light of what we said above, a further possibility emerges: perhaps both sides are correct. There is, in the duty to honor father and mother, also a direct duty toward them, and that is a commandment between person and fellow man. And there is also a duty toward God, who is manifested to us through them, and that is a commandment between person and God. According to what we have said, with respect to a wicked father—who, as we saw, is not God’s representative—only one obligation remains: the direct obligation toward him.

Now the practical ramification cited by Minḥat Ḥinukh concerns repentance—whether one must appease one’s father and mother or only repent and nothing more. Yet there is a strong intuition that in any case, according to both sides, one must appease them. In light of our discussion, the explanation is that we must seek their appeasement because that is the way to appease God through them. Honoring father and mother is a duty toward them, but one that expresses a relationship to God. Therefore harming them is harming God, who is as if dwelling among us. The repair of that harm is achieved by appeasing them, and thereby one also appeases Him through them.[21] If so, the practical ramification proposed by Minḥat Ḥinukh is not necessarily correct.[22]

It should be noted that, in general, the language of Minḥat Ḥinukh there does not imply our reading. He explains the possibility that this is between person and God by arguing that a commandment between person and fellow man is only one that applies equally to all human beings. In his view, any commandment that is unique in relation to a specific person belongs between person and God.[23] But according to our proposal, one can explain this more plausibly: honoring parents is an interpersonal commandment on the level of ordinary human dignity. Everything additional that applies specifically to parents is only on the level of between person and God (because they are His representatives, as explained). Therefore, when a person has harmed his parents only on the plane unique to them, there is room to say that this is between person and God.[24]

Chapter D: The Family as a Collective Entity

The conclusion is that the law of honoring father and mother is connected to the law of the parents’ obligations toward the son: the relation between parents and children is a relation of continuing their act of creation. After God creates the children (among other things by commanding the parents regarding procreation), the parents are supposed to set them on their feet and thereby complete the process of their creation. As we saw, this conception is expressed both in the character of the parents’ obligations toward their children and in the parameters of the children’s obligations toward their parents. The children, too, relate to the parents as their creators, that is, as God’s representatives and the continuers of His action.[25]

At the end of Minḥat Ḥinukh, commandment 33, it is brought that Mishneh LaMelekh wondered about the words of Sefer HaḤinukh there: why does one compel fulfillment of the commandment of honoring father and mother, given that it is a positive commandment whose reward is stated alongside it?

According to our approach, this can be explained simply. The commandment of honoring father and mother is the mirror image of the parents’ duties toward the children. We saw above, in the second chapter, that those duties are not duties of action, and in fact are not really ordinary positive commandments at all, but rather a duty to ensure that a required state comes into being. For example, the father must ensure that his son be circumcised and redeemed, and not necessarily redeem him himself. If so, it seems that the same is true in the opposite direction: the children’s duty toward their parents is not a duty of action but a duty of state and result. The children must see to it that their parents are honored. If so, even in the matter of compulsion, this is not coercion under the general rule of coercing commandment-performance; rather, it is a demand to ensure that the desired state with respect to the parents exists (that is, that the children fulfill their duty).

Thus, we are proposing here an understanding of the son’s commandment regarding his parents that again gives it the same character as the parents’ commandments regarding the son. In both directions, these are duties to endeavor that a desirable state be created, and not necessarily duties of action or legal norms in the ordinary sense.

It follows from this that honoring father and mother is also a commandment between person and God. As we saw above, the father’s duties toward the son are likewise not duties toward the son. This completes the symmetry between the character of the parents’ duties toward the sons and the sons’ duties toward them.

Just as we expanded the picture at the end of the first chapter and presented it as a different conception of the family as a collective entity, so too one may do here. From the direction of the children toward their parents as well, one may broaden the picture and say that the relation between parents and their children is not a relation between two separate entities, in which one has duties toward the other. The reciprocal duties are duties to create a desirable state, imposed upon the parent-child whole. Such a picture explains very well why the duties are not duties of one side toward the other, but duties of the whole toward God.[26]

We will now bring two examples that illustrate and sharpen this conception:

The invalidity of relatives as witnesses against one another is learned from the verse ‘Fathers shall not be put to death because of sons’—fathers shall not be put to death on the testimony of sons. The Talmud and Maimonides already explain that this is a scriptural decree and not a concern for falsehood. This is Maimonides’ language (Laws of Testimony 13:15):
The fact that the Torah invalidated the testimony of relatives is not because they are presumed to love one another, for a person does not testify for him either for his benefit or to his detriment; rather, it is a decree of Scripture. Therefore, one who loves and one who hates are valid as witnesses, even though they are disqualified for judging, for the Torah decreed only regarding relatives.

Now in a responsum of Ritva, section 52, he writes regarding the reason for the matter:

For any testimony a person gives about himself, whether to his advantage or to his liability, is not testimony at all, but is like a litigant himself who pleads and either vindicates or obligates himself, for witnesses are separate entities from the litigants, as it is written: ‘The two men who have the dispute shall stand’—these are the litigants…

It appears from his words there that the same applies to relatives: they too are a kind of periphery of the person himself, and therefore their testimony is void, as though the person were testifying about himself.[27] Testimony of a relative is like testimony of a person about himself. In what sense is the relative part of the person himself? It seems that family relations do not express merely a network of relations among members of a family, but their joining into one unit. Therefore the relative is considered as testifying about himself. If so, the family is a kind of collective, which constitutes a new entity with independent existence and meaning. It is no wonder that the Torah chose sons and fathers as its example, for that is the sharpest and clearest relation of two persons who together constitute one whole. Of this it is said: a son is his father’s extension.

Another example is the law of mishmush (see, for example, Kehillot Ya’akov, Bava Batra 42). From several biblical and rabbinic sources it emerges that in the laws of inheritance a son differs from every other relative. Some medieval authorities hold that the son does not inherit from his grandfather through his father, but directly from the grandfather. What is the meaning of this distinction? It would seem that the difference from other relatives is that here there is a metaphysical link between the son and his father, and therefore something of the son is present in the father, and vice versa. If so, the link between the son and his grandfather likewise contains a channel that reaches directly from the grandson to the grandfather. If father and son are one entity, and father and grandfather are also one entity, then grandson and grandfather also belong to that same collective entity called ‘family’ (this is the chain of emanation we mentioned above, which begins with God Himself and ends with each one of us). For that reason, the son need not inherit in actuality through the father; he can reach directly to the source from whom he inherits. By contrast, with more distant relatives, the situation is different, because there the unifying relation that underlies the kinship is weaker, and therefore the inheritance there passes in actuality through each of the intermediate stages.[28]
In the second part we will deal with the implications of the picture described here, which shed light on various limitations that qualify the duty to honor parents. We will see that these limitations are not of the character of displacement by quantitative superiority, but rather a delimitation of the validity of the command to honor parents, which can be described as a balancing of the collective benefit of the entire family.

Part II. Limitations and Qualifications on the Commandment of Honoring Parents

Introduction

In this part we will discuss mainly two legal responsa on the subject of honoring father and mother. Both appear in Teḥumin (volumes 3 and 15), and both deal with a collision between the duty to honor parents and other values. Here we will see applications of the principles we have discussed above.

The first responsum is that of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who discusses whether a son may refuse to obey parents who object to his going to a yeshivah in which only sacred subjects are studied. The second responsum, by Rabbi Ariel, deals with volunteering for officer training against the will of one’s parents. We cannot follow all the details of those responsa, which touch on foundational issues in the duty of honoring parents. We will focus only on the important implications of what we have said thus far for those two cases.

Chapter A: Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s Responsum: Parents Instructing Their Son Not to Attend a Yeshivah in Which Only Sacred Studies Are Taught

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s responsum deals with the question whether the son is obligated to obey his parents when they tell him to study in a yeshivah high school rather than in a yeshivah where only sacred studies are taught.

The discussion relates to questions such as the duty to study sacred subjects (the obligation to teach him Torah), and the permission or duty to study secular subjects (the obligation to teach him a trade). After that comes a discussion of applying the legal principle we saw above, that when parents tell him not to perform a commandment, he is not obligated—and indeed it is forbidden—to obey them.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef concludes that the son is not obligated to obey his parents on this issue, for if he has decided to be like the tribe of Levi (see Maimonides at the end of the laws of Sabbatical Year and Jubilee) and occupy himself only with Torah, this is a matter of commandment. And above we saw that even a rabbinic negative prohibition overrides honoring parents; it need not specifically be a Torah commandment, and see above for the reason.

Already here, however, we should note that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s words imply that the son is certainly permitted to obey his parents, but he also has permission, if he wishes, not to obey them (and perhaps it is even fitting for him to do so—to be like the tribe of Levi). Such a claim seems, at first glance, puzzling. If indeed the permission rests on the rule that one must not obey parents when they tell him to neglect a matter of commandment (whether Torah, rabbinic, or otherwise), then it should follow that obeying them would be absolutely forbidden. How can one understand a ruling that merely permits him not to obey them, but does not obligate him to act that way? In other words: how can one understand a situation in which permission exists in both directions, when commandments are involved on both sides?[29]

One could explain that the halakhic ‘obligation’ under discussion here is itself only an existential commandment rather than an obligatory one, and therefore the son merely has permission to obey his parents. But that itself would be a major novelty—that an existential commandment overrides honoring parents, even though seemingly this is a case in which ‘both can be fulfilled.’

It therefore seems preferable to explain this in light of what we said in the first part (though it is not clear whether this is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s own intention): the desire to study Torah in a fuller way is admittedly not defined as a formal legal obligation (the fact that this may be an existential commandment is not important here, as explained), but it is certainly a form of giving honor to God. A parental instruction not to give full honor to God is void because of the very nature of the duty to honor parents. As we saw, the entire duty to honor parents is itself a form of giving honor to God, so how can that very duty grant them authority to compel the child not to study Torah as he wishes? As we saw, such a consideration does not depend at all on the formal force of the obligation with respect to the commandment in question (and for that reason even a rabbinic commandment overrides honoring parents).

What follows from this is that, in the end, obeying one’s parents in such a case—even if it occurs—would not count as fulfilling the commandment of honoring parents. On the other hand, attending that yeshivah is not really considered a direct fulfillment of a commandment either (certainly not of an obligatory commandment). Therefore, as a matter of practice, the situation here is one of permission in both directions. The foundation of the matter is that this is not a case of displacement, but of the nullification from the outset of the duty of honor. In such a situation the commandment of honoring parents is not ‘overridden’; rather, it simply does not apply.

It should be noted that the permission here is not based on some innovation in the rules of displacement of honoring parents in the face of a rabbinic or Torah commandment, or even a custom. It is a definition that qualifies the duty of honoring parents itself. Therefore there is no need here for any innovation in the rules of displacement with respect to an act that is not a formal legal commandment (or at most an existential positive commandment), nor is there any need at all to discuss the legal obligation to study Torah, or to study secular subjects. Those discussions are simply not relevant to the permission itself.[30]

Below we will see additional, deeper layers in understanding this qualification on the duty of honoring parents.

Chapter B: Rabbi Ariel’s Responsum: Parents Instructing Their Son Not to Sign On for Permanent Service in Officer Training

A different responsum, by Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, deals with the permission to volunteer for officer training against the will of one’s parents. He discusses whether the volunteering itself is permitted (because of the risk to one’s life), and concludes that it is permitted. He then asks whether the commandment of honoring parents and revering them overrides this permission, and perhaps there is even a commandment in it.

He explains that this depends on whether embellishing a commandment overrides honoring parents, since in the commandment of an obligatory war one fulfills one’s duty even as an ordinary private soldier. Rabbi Ariel proves that a pious act beyond the letter of the law does not override honoring parents, and neither does custom. The question he poses is: what is the status of embellishing a commandment in this regard?[31]

In the end Rabbi Ariel turns to the question of the definition of the commandment of honoring father and mother (see on this the book of Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, Amud HaYemini, section 22; Responsa of Rabbi Akiva Eger, section 68; and Birkat Shmuel on Yevamot, section 3, subsections 2–3, and more).

For the Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah at the end of section 240, brings from the responsa of Maharik (root 166) that if the father objects to his son’s marrying a woman whom the son desires, the son need not obey his father. The Vilna Gaon (there, subsection 36) explains that Maharik holds that the commandment is not obedience to the parents as such, but conferring benefit upon them. If so, the commandment is not the act of preparing food and drink and bringing them to the parents, but the fact that the father and mother actually eat and drink.

The source of the Vilna Gaon’s words is the pure Talmudic discussion in Yevamot 6a, though it seems that Rashi and Tosafot dispute this point there. We will not enter the depths of that discussion here, since it is complex and we only note it in passing (see more below). In any event, what emerges there is that according to Rashi the commandment is obedience itself, while according to Tosafot (and likewise Nachmanides and Rashba) the commandment is the result—the benefit that comes to the parents.

Rabbi Ariel concludes that in practice we rule like Tosafot, Nachmanides, and Rashba, and therefore if the parents have a real need, it may be that there is no permission to enlist in officer training, since that is only an embellishment of a commandment. But if they have no real need and the issue is only non-obedience to the parents, that duty does not override even the embellishment of a commandment.

But in light of what we said above, it seems that here too the law should be decided on the basis of more fundamental considerations, and not according to the rules of displacement. Embellishing a commandment, even if it is not itself a full commandment, is plainly an expression of the duty to honor God (no less than a rabbinic rule). Therefore it seems that embellishing a commandment too should override honoring parents, for the duty to honor them does not exist at all where it runs contrary to the honor of God.

To be sure, one might possibly reject this and say that embellishing a commandment, even if it indeed involves giving honor to God, does not constitute an unequivocal legal obligation, unlike rabbinic prohibitions. Therefore it is possible that the duty of honoring parents remains intact even in the face of the embellishment of a commandment, and only the question of displacement remains. Thus, at least in principle, there is room for Rabbi Ariel’s proof that embellishing a commandment overrides honoring parents even though an act of piety beyond the letter of the law does not.

It should be noted that even if we are dealing here with a dilemma of collision between values, and not with questions concerning their sphere of application, one should still distinguish between a case in which the parents demand this for their own benefit, and a case in which they demand it out of their view of the son’s welfare. If they demand it for their own benefit, then there is room for the reasoning that they are entitled to demand it. The honor due to parents stands in tension with the honor embodied in embellishing a commandment, and so there is a genuine collision. But if they say it only from the perspective of the son’s welfare, then it seems obvious that he has no obligation to obey, for this is a demand to honor God (= obey one’s parents) by refraining from fulfilling His commandments in an enhanced manner. Here it seems clear that their instruction or request is entirely void. Thus our reasoning—that the duty to honor parents is an expression of honoring God—naturally and simply leads to Rabbi Ariel’s distinction between a case in which the parents derive direct benefit from the son’s release and a case in which they demand it from him for his own benefit (which is merely a question of obedience to their words).

Chapter C: A General View: Limiting the Sphere of Application of a Halakhic Consideration Because of the Other’s Rights

In fact, it seems that in both these cases a deeper aspect emerges than the one discussed until now. We have already seen that in cases where a parental instruction stands in opposition to the honor of God, it is null and void, and this is not merely a matter of rules of displacement. But it seems there is an additional dimension here. From that perspective, the duty to honor parents is not displaced or nullified because of an opposing weight at all. It is possible that in certain cases the duty to honor them does not exist in the first place, because the case lies outside the sphere of its validity. There are cases in which the parents’ command does not bind the son because of the son’s own rights, and not because it is displaced or nullified for some legal reason. There are areas in which only the son himself should make decisions, and these lie outside the sphere of control that the Torah grants to the parents.

The fundamental legal basis for this claim is the rule that one is not obligated to honor one’s parents from one’s own money, but only from theirs (see the parameters of this in Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 240:5). At first glance this is a very puzzling law, for throughout Jewish law one is obligated to spend up to one-fifth of one’s assets in order to fulfill a positive commandment. If so, why precisely with the positive commandment of honoring parents, which is so important, is there no rule of spending one-fifth of one’s own money?

It is very likely that here too we are not dealing with a rule of displacement, but with a definition internal to the very duty of honoring parents. The duty to honor parents is not imposed upon a person in a domain that belongs to him alone. His money is his, and the Torah does not expect a person to be forced to spend from his own resources in response to parental demand. This duty is simply not imposed upon him. The reason the son need not spend even one-fifth of his own money is not some rule of displacement, nor a cancellation by reasoning of the sort we saw regarding transgressions (that all are obligated in God’s honor), but a qualification on the very duty of honoring parents, because of the rights of the son.

This enables us to understand the distinction made by the Rema in Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 240:5, who rules that there is no obligation to give parents from one’s own money (even less than one-fifth), but there is an obligation to honor them with one’s person even if, as a result, one comes to beg from door to door (that is, even if one thereby loses more than one-fifth of one’s assets). The explanation is that the duty to honor them from one’s own resources is not displaced; it simply does not exist at all. As we explained, the parents have no authority to demand within the domain of the son’s money. By contrast, the duty to honor them with one’s person does exist and is not displaced, and in that area he is obligated even if he comes to beg from door to door.[32] Thus, the commandment of honoring parents is a very weighty one, and the fact that it yields in certain cases apparently points to limitations in its sphere of application, not to weakness in the force of the obligation.

Such a conception also emerges from Maharik, root 167, cited above, regarding obedience to parents in choosing a marriage partner. The Rema in Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 240:25, cites in his name that if parents object to their child marrying a woman whom he desires, he has no obligation to obey them. It is not plausible that this is a case of the commandment of honoring parents being displaced by the duty to marry, for he can marry a woman his parents approve of and thereby fulfill the commandment (assuming there is such a commandment at all; see above).

It therefore seems that here too the explanation is that parents have no right to coerce the son, or demand that he forgo something, in an area entrusted to his personal decision. There is no displacement here, but an absence of right. This sphere lies outside the area in which the duty to honor them applies.

One must distinguish this explanation from the Vilna Gaon’s explanation cited earlier (Rabbi Blidstein pointed out to me that the language of Maharik seems to intend both explanations together). The Vilna Gaon explained this by saying that the parents derive no benefit from such a demand, and therefore they have no authority to require it of their son. Here, however, we are emphasizing that the parents have no right at all to command in this area. The practical ramification of this distinction arises in a case where the parents do gain pleasure from the fact that he does not marry the woman he wants. According to the Vilna Gaon, it would seem that Maharik’s law would not apply in such a case. According to our proposal, by contrast, even in such a case they have no right to prevent him, for there is no duty to obey them in such a matter at all—and not merely because they gain nothing from it. The right to marry a woman of one’s choice is surely no less than the right to one’s money, and we have seen that he has no duty to honor them from his own money.

Thus, in the sphere of one’s money or of choosing a spouse according to one’s will, the parents’ command does not bind because the rights over that sphere belong to the son alone, not because the duty is displaced for some reason.

For the very same reason, there is room to explain that volunteering for officer training (in Rabbi Ariel’s responsum), or choosing a place of study (in Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s responsum), are decisions that lie within the sphere of the son’s own control. There may perhaps be room to take the parents’ wishes into account, but in the end they have no right to prevent him from realizing his basic desires and his personal development. The reasons for this are not various types of legal displacement, but the fact that his personal development is entrusted to his decision alone, and the parents have no authority to intervene in it.

There is certainly room to explain the rule that the son is not obligated to commit a transgression for his parents as part of the same principle: the right not to commit transgressions is part of the son’s rights, and the parents have no right to infringe it. To explain, however, why obedience to them in such a case is forbidden—and not merely that he has permission not to obey—we also need the explanation that both they and he are obligated in the honor of God.[33]

We will now bring several additional examples to illustrate the principle of limiting the sphere of application by the other’s rights:

Let us imagine a situation in which Reuven possesses an object that Shimon strongly covets. Shimon says to himself: two options stand before me—either I steal the object from Reuven and violate the prohibition of theft, or I leave the object with him and violate the prohibition against coveting.[34] It would never occur to us that the outcome of this calculation could be that Shimon is permitted to steal the object from Reuven. Why is that impossible? The answer is that Shimon’s halakhic considerations cannot dictate his relation to Reuven’s possessions, which lie outside the sphere of application of his considerations. His legal considerations, even if valid and correct, concern only himself, his money, and his decisions. But the decision what to do with Reuven’s objects belongs only to Reuven, and therefore Shimon’s considerations are irrelevant to it.
Rashi’s view in Bava Kamma 60b is that a person may not save himself with another’s money. In other words: there is a rule of ‘let oneself be killed rather than transgress’ with respect to theft. The question is how we are adding a fourth prohibition to the three cardinal sins. Where is the source that the prohibition of theft overrides human life? The answer is that theft is not merely a formal legal prohibition. The legal prohibition is derived from the fact that another person’s money lies outside my domain, and therefore I may not take it (this is what Rabbi Shimon Shkop, in Sha’arei Yosher, gate 5, calls a prohibition rooted in the law of rights). In such a case, the consideration of saving life, which overrides all prohibitions, cannot be applied. Such a situation lies outside the sphere of application of my halakhic considerations, even if they are valid.
Similarly, it would never occur to us that a person who needs an organ donation in order to be saved could forcibly take an organ from another person (even if that organ is not vital to the other’s life), relying on the legal consideration that saving life overrides the prohibition of bodily injury. True, Rashi’s view regarding saving oneself with another’s money is a lone opinion, but all the decisors would probably agree to the parallel reasoning regarding organs. Here too the reason is that the sphere of application of that consideration is limited by the other person’s rights over his bodily organs.

Reuven threatens Shimon: give me a certain object, or I will kill you. Is Shimon permitted to kill Reuven in order to save his money, or must he hand over the object (for money is less important than life)? At first glance, the legal consideration determines that money is less important than life, and therefore Shimon has no permission to kill Reuven. After all, a person is permitted to commit a transgression in order to save his life, and one must pay all one’s money in order not to commit a transgression. It would therefore seem that he is obligated to give up all his money in order to save himself and to save Reuven.
But this is not a correct line of reasoning, for Shimon has the right to preserve his money, and if Reuven creates an equation in which Shimon’s life is endangered over against his money, then Reuven himself must bear that price. That halakhic consideration lies outside Reuven’s relevant boundaries, and therefore it is not to be taken into account.

Something like this is discussed in Kli Ḥemdah at the end of Parashat Balak, regarding the episode of Zimri and Pinḥas. His conclusion there is that although Zimri could have saved himself from Pinḥas had he stopped sinning, the Talmud nevertheless rules that Zimri would have been permitted to turn around and kill Pinḥas under the law of a pursuer. The reason is very similar: Pinḥas created an equation in which Zimri’s life stood against Pinḥas’s own life. He must bear the consequences. Zimri owes Pinḥas no duty to stop sinning. That duty is toward God and not toward the pursuer, and therefore Zimri has the ‘right’ to continue his sin and kill Pinḥas, who endangers him under the law of a pursuer. This is an extreme case of limiting the sphere of application of a halakhic consideration because of a consideration of rights. We are acting here, apparently, contrary to the ordinary consideration that decides according to the relative halakhic importance and significance of the two relevant courses of action.

It is important to note that it is specifically in the context of the duty to honor parents being set aside by other commandments that a discussion can arise as to which commandment is more important. In such situations it might have been possible for honoring parents to override commandments, were it not for the consideration mentioned above that their honor is derived from the honor of God. But in the context of the son’s rights, or his self-realization and his personal mode of life, it seems that they have no right at all, regardless of the degree of importance of the son’s considerations. Rights may seem less weighty than commandments and prohibitions, yet with respect to honoring parents they are stronger. They do not override the duty to honor parents; they delimit it.

Note: In Pitḥei Teshuvah, Yoreh De’ah at the end of section 240, subsection 23, a case is brought that was discussed by the author of Ḥavot Ya’ir, in which a mother instructs her son not to rent out a house that he owns. In the discussion whether the son is obligated to obey his mother, considerations of displacement and commandments are raised, rather than, as we would expect, considerations of the son’s rights.[35]

In any event, according to what we have said, it seems that there is certainly room to argue that he would not be obligated to obey her in such a case, for she has no right to tell him this. The question to whom he should rent the house is entrusted to his exclusive decision, and the mother has no standing in that matter.

Chapter D: Difficulties and Laws That Are Not Explained by the Principle of Limitation Based on Rights

1. Beyond the letter of the law. The decisors wrote (see Shulchan Arukh there, section 240:5) that a curse should come upon one who honors his parents from charity money. That is, there is an expectation that the son will honor his parents beyond his formal obligations. To be sure, this is not really contrary to the limitation we described on the duty to honor parents, but only an addition of piety and conduct beyond the letter of the law.

2. The ambiguity of the line that marks off the rights. The line that distinguishes between the son’s rights, with respect to which parents have no right to intervene, and the duty to give of oneself is subtle and far from sharp. There are duties imposed on the son that unquestionably require sacrifice, and yet he is obligated in them. On the other hand, we saw that actions touching the very realization of his personal self lie outside that sphere. The boundary between these two areas is delicate and problematic: which act counts as self-realization, and which counts as sacrifice that still falls within the sphere of obligation?

A. In Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 240:8, the extreme boundaries of the duty of honor are brought:

How far does honoring father and mother extend? Even if they took his purse of gold coins and threw it before him into the sea, he should not shame them, cause them pain in their presence, or grow angry at them; rather he should accept the scriptural decree and remain silent. Gloss: And some say that if he wishes to throw his son’s money into the sea, the son may prevent him, for he is obligated to honor him only from the father’s assets, but not from the son’s. And there is no distinction between honoring him and causing him pain. And this applies specifically before he has thrown it, when it is possible that he can prevent him and he will refrain from doing it. But if he has already thrown it, it is forbidden to shame him, though he may sue him in court. And specifically if he wants to throw his purse into the sea, where there is monetary loss; but if he wants merely to deprive him of profit alone, it is forbidden in every case. If a son has a lawsuit with his father, and the father is the plaintiff against the son, the son must go after his father even though the son is the defendant and lives in another city, for this is part of honoring his father. But the father is obligated to reimburse the son for the expenses, for the son is not obligated to honor him from the son’s own assets, as explained.

B. By contrast, there in the Taz there is a law that does not concern self-realization, and yet it is quite clear that it belongs to the son’s private sphere, and therefore the father has no authority over it:[36]

If a father instructed his son not to speak with a certain person and not to forgive him until a fixed time, while the son would have wanted to make peace immediately were it not for his father’s instruction, he need not heed his father’s instruction.

What exactly is the definition that marks the boundary of validity of the father’s commands? It is hard to point to it precisely, yet it is clear that such a boundary exists. On the other hand, it is also clear that we are not speaking here of ‘rights’ of the son in the ordinary sense of that term. There is a sphere that common sense clearly tells us is irrelevant to the father’s commands, yet these are not rights in the usual sense.

C. Another expression of the difficulty in drawing the boundary can be seen in the well-known story about R. Ḥayyim of Brisk. A yeshivah student came to him and asked whether he was required to travel home by train at his own expense, since the duty to honor parents applies only from their assets. R. Ḥayyim told him that indeed he was not required; he could go on foot. There is a line of reasoning here according to which that student travels by train in order to make things easier for himself instead of walking, and therefore this is included in his duties toward his parents. It is honoring parents with his person, which only incidentally leads him to spend money for his own convenience. On the other hand, when the distance is great, it is clear that the normal way to get there is by train, and he is not required to pay from his own pocket in order to get home. The defining line turns on the question: what are that young man’s rights? Is it his right not to walk such a distance, or is that only an inconvenience, which is not included within his legitimate rights?[37]

3. Balancing the son’s needs and the parents’ benefit. In the decisors we find several distinctions among different situations in the laws of honoring father and mother—something rarer in other commandments. In situations where there is a dilemma between the level of benefit that will come to the parents and the concession demanded of the son, one cannot speak unequivocally of a command that lies outside the legitimate sphere of parental authority. The problem is created by the collision with the concession demanded of the son. When the concession is too great relative to the benefit to the parents, he is not obligated to honor them. From the formal perspective of the commandment of honoring parents, it is difficult to explain these distinctions. If one is obligated to honor them, why is there proportionality in this duty?

A. Rashba, in the passage Yevamot 6a, distinguished that where the parents derive benefit, the duty of honoring them overrides prohibitions; but where they derive no benefit, there is indeed a commandment to honor them, but it does not override prohibitions. Rabbi Ariel asked in the article cited above: what room is there for such a distinction? If there is a commandment, then it should override the prohibition; and if the prohibition is not overridden, then apparently there is no commandment, in which case there is no obligation at all. There he distinguishes between the commandment of honor and the commandment of reverence, but this is forced in Rashba’s words.

According to our approach, the explanation is simple. When the parents derive benefit, they have the right to demand a concession from the son. Consequently the duty of honoring them exists, and therefore it overrides prohibitions, like any positive commandment that overrides a negative prohibition. But if they derive no benefit, then although there is indeed a duty of honor to fulfill their words, once this harms the son there is no obligation at all, because they have no right to demand a concession from him when they themselves gain nothing from it. Consequently, the commandment does not exist in that case, and therefore it does not override prohibitions.

B. Tosafot on Kiddushin 32a ruled that honoring parents is from the father’s assets only if he has assets. But if he has none, then the honor comes from the son’s assets (see Shulchan Arukh there, section 5. Maharsha there suggested that this is under the law of charity—apparently because of the same difficulty raised by Rabbi Ariel. And in the responsum of Rabbi Akiva Eger cited above, this was ruled as practical law).

According to what we have said here, it seems proper to distinguish that everything depends on the relation between the parents’ need and the son’s concession. When the parents are poor, the son must give up from his own resources; and when they have means, his right to keep his money for himself remains, and he honors them from their own resources. So again we see that there is no sharp line here; everything is a matter of the relation between the parents’ need and the price paid by the son.

We will now apply this principle to the cases discussed by Rabbi Ariel and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. It is quite clear that the parents have no authority, under any circumstances, to dictate to the son which woman he should marry. On the other hand, it is possible that sometimes there is room for parents to dictate a place of study to the son, at least for their own needs. As we saw above, according to some views even a demand to commit a transgression is legitimate if the need is sufficiently great. And with respect to volunteering for an officers’ course in the army as well, there is certainly room to weigh proportionally the relation between the son’s concession and the parents’ benefit.

In fact, this principle is a generalization of the claim that parents have no right to violate the son’s basic rights, such as self-realization. The claim is that the benefit they receive from the concession does not justify harming his personal fulfillment. Personal development is an important element whose weight is decisive, and therefore in most cases it overrides the benefit to the parents.

However, several very important differences emerge from this present formulation as compared with the earlier one. First, the delimitation is not specifically according to the son’s rights. There may be cases that cannot really be classified as the son’s rights, and yet they will still lie outside the boundaries of parental legitimacy. More than that: according to the present formulation, the principle that a parental command does not override one of the son’s basic rights is no longer categorical, but proportional. The matter depends on how greatly the parents need that concession. The law is determined here according to the relative measure of the concession or benefit caused to the two sides. In a case of critical benefit to the parents, there may be room to demand a concession even of personal development and basic rights of the son. In a case where he is required to give up the spouse he truly desires, utterly critical benefit to the parents would be needed—if such benefit can exist at all.

Chapter E: Our Proposal from a Different Angle: Again on the Family as a Collective Entity

The situation described at the end of the previous chapter is unusual in the halakhic world. We find, in effect, that there is no categorical definition of when the son must yield and when the parents have the right to demand. The criteria seem rather subjective, depending on the level of loss and benefit to the two sides. The meaning is that there is no possibility of laying down fixed rules in the duty of honoring parents; everything depends on the particular case. It is worth noting that we are speaking about the parameters of the legal commandment itself, not about the standards of piety and the like. This is a rare case in which the law itself is subject to varying assessments according to the situation.

This model emerged for us from the examples in which we saw that Jewish law takes account of the balance between the parents’ needs and the son’s concession. This model also explains the ambiguity of the line that distinguishes between the legitimate sphere of parental demands and the sphere of illegitimacy. We saw that the line cannot be established on the basis of the son’s rights alone, but rather on the basis of a relative measure of the benefits and harms to both sides.

How can such a situation be explained? It seems that we must change our way of relating to the family. Here, with even greater force, the conception on which we already stood at the end of the first and third chapters of the first part comes to the fore, and here we close the circle. We arrive once again at the conclusion that Jewish law conceives the family as a collective entity, and not as separate individuals who have duties toward one another.

Throughout the discussion we saw that the son is not an independent entity. He is the product of his parents, and they are the ones who set him on his feet and complete his ‘creation’ as a legal personality who is obligated in commandments and serves God. But the conclusion from this is not that he has no standing of his own and is nullified before the parents. Nor does he stand opposite them merely as a bearer of rights that limit their ability to demand from him. We are proposing another model here: the entity to which all these commandments are addressed—both the father’s duties toward the son and the son’s duties toward the father—is the family whole. Their relationship defines a new legal entity: the family collective. All these commandments are directed to it.

For this reason Jewish law decides the duty to honor parents by weighing the son’s concession against the parents’ benefit. The reason is that Jewish law measures the total benefit that emerges from the collective as a whole. When the son honors his parents, this is an increase in the honor of Heaven, because they constitute a representation of God toward him. On the other hand, when his rights are harmed, that is harm to one part of the collective, and it is therefore offset in the calculation. The action that should be performed is the one that brings the collective benefit to its maximum.

Perhaps we can now understand the law: ‘If he and his son must both study, he takes precedence over his son. But if his son is wiser, then the son takes precedence.’ The consideration is the maximization of benefit (in this case: Torah) from the family unit as a whole. This is not a question of the duties of the father or of the son, but of the duty of the family collective to increase Torah and the honor of Heaven.

This is a different perspective on what we saw above, that the parents’ duty toward the son is to ‘create’ him, while the son’s duty toward them is toward them as representatives of God with respect to him (= those who complete his creation). Now we see that they and he together form a collective entity, and the obligations are imposed on that entity as a whole.

From God the son is emanated through the parents, and this whole chain creates one totality, which ought to produce the maximum spiritual benefit, or the maximum honor of God. If matters come at God’s expense (= transgressions), then no step in that direction may be taken. But if no transgression is involved, then one must weigh the relation between the son’s concession and the benefit to the parents, and the ruling is determined accordingly. This is not a zero-sum game, in which one yields and the other gains at his expense, but a whole that seeks to reach the best possible result.

The approaches of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Ariel are plainly not like this. They discuss situations of conflict between the parents’ will and the children’s concession as a legal clash between two halakhic commands imposed on the child, and examine which one overrides the other. The son’s own interests carry no weight, and everything is determined between God and the parents. The son is supposed to decide between harming God and harming the parents. If there is harm to God, then there is no duty to honor parents, and where there is no such harm there is a total duty to honor them. When neither of those is harmed, the son has no room left to weigh anything at all. He himself is not a party to the matter.

By contrast, in this part of the article we have proposed an entirely different picture, on two different levels:

The son does not examine things only through the halakhic prism of commandments and transgressions vis-à-vis Heaven. Questions that concern his elementary rights are also examined in terms of rights. He is not obligated to give up rights in the sphere of his privacy in order to honor his parents. He, too, exists in the picture, beyond God and the parents. In other words: he is not wholly nullified before his three creators.
On the second level, we wished to argue that the son does not stand as an interested party opposite his parents at all. The duties of parents and children are not imposed on the parents toward the children, nor on the children toward the parents. They are imposed on the family collective, and therefore the halakhic decision as to how to act is determined according to the maximum benefit to the collective as a whole. Therefore one must weigh proportionally the concession demanded of him against the benefit that reaches the parents from the act under discussion.

We will conclude by returning to the point we noted in the introduction. According to our approach, the duty to honor parents becomes greatly intensified. As we saw throughout the article, there is no limitation on the duty to honor them as such. All the qualifications are of a sort that define the benefit differently, and therefore also the duty. When the son is exempt from honoring his parents, that is because there is no duty at all, not because it is displaced by something else. Therefore, wherever the duty exists, it obligates without any qualification or limitation. It is a total obligation, in those places where it is imposed.

[1] My thanks to my friend Rabbi Avraham Blidstein, who read these remarks and offered several important comments.

[2] The commandments to mourn for them and to become impure for them are apparently not unique to parents, but apply to all close relatives. The distinction depends, to a certain extent, on gratitude, which exists only toward parents and not toward other relatives.

[3] For other views among the medieval authorities, which hold that there is such a commandment and discuss its parameters, see the book Sha’arei Talmud Torah, by Rabbi Prof. Yehuda Levi, Olam HaSefer HaTorani, Jerusalem 1990, gate 6.

[4] One must discuss how to understand the decisors who hold that these obligations continue beyond adulthood. We saw that even according to them, they apparently are not enforced once the son is grown; this is not the place to elaborate.

[5] One could reject this and say that although the definition of the father’s obligation is not a duty to circumcise his son, but only to see to it that he be circumcised, still, in the end, it is clear that he has a right to this commandment, and therefore the one who snatches it from him must pay ten gold coins. This is not the place to elaborate.

[6] There is room to connect this (though not necessarily) to the well-known dispute among the medieval authorities whether the definition of the commandment of circumcision is to be circumcised or to circumcise. Later authorities connected this to the dispute between the Tur and Maimonides regarding returning to non-essential shreds of flesh on a weekday. See Beit HaLevi, vol. 2, section 47, and Ḥiddushei HaGriz on Maimonides, Laws of Hanukkah.

Those later authorities, however, discussed the obligation of the son himself, whereas we are dealing with the obligations of the father toward the son, and this is not the place to elaborate.

[7] It should be added that perhaps both Rashi and Tosafot agree to this definition of the commandment of education, and their dispute concerns only the question who is called ‘rabbinically obligated’ in a commandment of this kind for purposes of discharging others’ obligations: the one who performs the blessing, or the one who is obligated to ensure that it is performed.

[8] To be sure, as is well known, the decisors dispute the law of a sick person on Yom Kippur that falls on the Sabbath—whether he must recite kiddush. See Or Sameaḥ, Laws of the Yom Kippur Service 4:1, and more.

[9] Rabbi Avraham Blidstein pointed out to me that one might say precisely the opposite: specifically the commandment of education is preparation for the future, whereas the other commandments of the father toward the son are fulfilled in the act now.

[10] It should be noted that circumcision and redemption are, of course, commandments, and not only duties imposed on the father, for where the father failed, the son himself becomes obligated in them in adulthood. But the essence of those commandments is preparation for life as an adult Jew.

[11] The relation between this principle and the rule that a positive commandment overrides a negative prohibition is complex, and this is not the place to elaborate. See the discussion in the Talmudic passage Yevamot 6a. In simple terms, these seem to be two different principles, and it is possible that in certain situations both are indeed present at the same time. The explanation of the second principle (the one specific to the commandment of honoring parents) will be given below.

[12] A justification with a similar logical structure may be seen in the passage in the eighth chapter of Yoma regarding saving life overriding the Sabbath. The Talmud there brings several sources and rationales, one of which is the consideration ‘Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths.’ It is worth noting that this consideration does not rest on a hierarchy of importance between the Sabbath and human life, but on the consideration that one leads to the other, and therefore it is obvious that it prevails over it.

Something similar is found in the law that Torah study yields before any passing commandment, and we do not say there that ‘one who is occupied with one commandment is exempt from another commandment.’ The medieval authorities explained the reason by the consideration that Torah study is for the sake of action; if the study prevents action, it no longer has any point. Therefore action overrides study, even though study is more important.

Similarly, we explained above the yielding of the honor of parents before the honor of God: honoring father and mother is an expression of the honor of God, and therefore there is no room to honor them against His honor. This does not stem from the fact that His honor is greater than theirs, but from the fact that without His honor, their honor has no meaning at all.

One should discuss, in light of this, Tosafot s.v. Kulchem on Yevamot 5b, from whose words it appears at first glance that this is an ordinary rule of displacement, and not a consideration of the kind ‘the greater includes the lesser’ (for otherwise their difficulty there would not be difficult). In any event, from the very formulation of the difficulty it is clear that no source is required for this, and it is a matter of simple reasoning of the kind ‘the greater includes the lesser’ (and there is even some implication in their words that in any case there is here greater importance in the parents’ honor than in the honor of God).

See also Tosafot s.v. Nigmar and s.v. Ve-ha, who infer from the fact that their honor is equated to the honor of God that transgressions should be overridden for them. In simple terms, the explanation there too is as we have explained here above. This entire issue requires more elaboration.

Several commentators raise something similar in the passage in Yoma cited above regarding saving life. There too there are different indications pointing to approaches that view the matter as an ordinary rule of displacement, and this is not the place to elaborate.

[13] Compare Kli Ḥemdah at the end of Parashat Balak (whose words will be brought below), where he discusses the Talmudic statement that Zimri could have turned and killed Pinḥas under the law of a pursuer. At first glance this is difficult, for Zimri could have saved him with one of his limbs by simply withdrawing from the transgression. He explains there that the obligation to desist from sin is toward God and not toward Pinḥas, and therefore he is permitted to continue the transgression (at least as far as his obligation to save Pinḥas is concerned) and kill Pinḥas as a pursuer. He has no obligation to stop the transgression in order to save Pinḥas, only an obligation toward God.

[14] It is clear that the word ‘as if’ derives only from the fact that God does not literally dwell among us. But the honor of father and mother is not ‘as if’ it were the honor of God; it is literally His honor.

The status of the first partner differs from that of the other two: He is also the one who establishes them, and therefore the one who establishes the one who establishes, with respect to the son.

And in the second passage, God says that had He dwelt there He would have been hurt, and not merely that it would be as if He dwelt there. Two possible explanations: 1. Where there is no honor of parents, the Divine Presence does not rest. 2. One cannot truly hurt God, even where the Divine Presence rests.

[15] This is somewhat difficult in light of what Kesef Mishneh wrote there in Laws of Rebels, that a rabbinic negative prohibition does not yield because according to Maimonides it is Torah-level by force of the command not to deviate, which implies that an ordinary rabbinic rule would not override honoring parents. Perhaps, absent the prohibition against deviation, a rabbinic negative rule expresses not the honor of God but the honor of the Sages.

[16] And with respect to one’s teacher as well, it seems that his law is like that of one’s father and mother (as the plain sense of Maimonides’ language at the beginning of chapter 5 of Laws of Torah Study cited above indicates), for he brings him to life in the World to Come.

[17] See Minḥat Ḥinukh on commandment 33, who distinguishes between two formulations here. With respect to the father’s wife after the father dies, she is no longer his wife, and therefore the reason for the obligation to honor her is gone. But there are cases in which the root of the obligation to honor has died, while the relation to it still exists. For example, one’s elder brother according to the views that the obligation to honor him exists because of the father (see, for example, Nachmanides’ objections to the second root of Maimonides), when the father has died. In such a case the kinship remains, for he is still the father’s son and the child’s brother (these relations remain after death, unlike the marital relation—see the Talmud and Tosafot s.v. Mah in Bava Batra 114b and the parallel in Yevamot 55b), but there is no longer a living father from whom the obligation to honor him is generated (for honoring a son does not constitute honor to the father after the father’s death), and therefore it is possible that the obligation lapses.

[18] Rabbi Avraham Blidstein pointed out to me that perhaps this law parallels the law of ‘one who acts as your fellow.’ There is then no obligation to honor him, so that one not learn from his deeds. But this too still requires consideration, for we do not find that the definition of ‘one who acts as your fellow’ is mentioned here. Moreover, that is a definition in commandments between one person and another, whereas with honoring parents there is a discussion whether it belongs between person and fellow man or between person and God (see below). And further, the fact that I should not learn from their deeds cannot undermine the rights they have toward me (or my duty of gratitude toward them). It therefore seems more likely that their rights are not really theirs, but rather ‘rights’ of God that find expression through them.

[19] However, see there further, where he writes that when one’s grandfather killed one’s father, there is no longer any obligation to honor the grandfather, because his honor exists by virtue of the honor of the father, and the father is dead. In that case, what is said here may not be needed at all.

[20] And see several parallels in Otzar HaMidrashim (Eisenstein, pp. 79–80, 171, 272). Tosafot s.v. ‘Kabed et Hashem’ in Kiddushin 31a also cites this from the Jerusalem Talmud.

[21] It seems that this differs from other commandments between person and God, in which one does not appease God, because He was not harmed; one simply repents. Here, however, God is, as it were, dwelling among us and is harmed through the injury to the parents, and therefore we must appease Him through them as well.

[22] There may, however, be other practical ramifications, according to the Eight Chapters, where Maimonides distinguishes that commandments between person and fellow man (rational commandments?) should be performed out of inner identification, whereas commandments between person and God are to be performed in the mode of refraining from pork: ‘I desire it and I desire it, but what can I do—my Father in Heaven has decreed it upon me.’

[23] There is here a profound and essential conception of human dignity, or of the human image. Minḥat Ḥinukh holds a position of complete equality among human beings, and their entitlement to honor and proper treatment cannot depend on their uniqueness. All human beings are entitled to the same treatment, and therefore any unique commandment that does not relate equally to all human beings is apparently a commandment between person and God.

This is, however, a puzzling approach, for it is not clear why he assumes that there cannot be someone whom I am obligated to honor more than others, and yet the commandment would still remain between person and fellow man. It is therefore possible that Minḥat Ḥinukh’s intention is what we suggested here—that the honor of parents is such because in that very act there is honor to God.

[24] And with respect to all this, see also Birkat Shmuel on Yevamot, section 3, subsection 3.

[25] And indeed, in Kli Ḥemdah there, at the end of subsection 1, he linked the law that grandchildren are treated like children, with regard to the grandfather’s obligations toward them, to the reciprocal duty of those grandchildren to honor him. See there carefully.

[26] It is interesting to add here what I heard in the name of Rabbi Lichtenstein, who said that the commandment of the Hanukkah lamp is the only commandment whose addressee is the home, or the family, and not any one of its members taken separately. Here we have arrived at the conclusion that all the reciprocal obligations among family members are, in essence, obligations of that sort.

[27] However, with respect to the rule of splitting testimony, the Ritva there writes (in the name of the well-known Ra’avad cited by the Rosh at the end of the first chapter of Makkot) that this rule does not apply among relatives, whereas with a litigant it does. Yet with regard to one’s wife, it is clear from the passage in Sanhedrin that there was an initial assumption to apply it, and so too regarding one’s property. That means there are several circles at different distances, all of them a periphery of the person himself; and from the circle of relatives onward, the rule of splitting testimony falls away and the rule of partial invalidity invalidating the whole begins (or: the rule of ‘a relative or disqualified witness was found’). I have elaborated on this in the third book of the trilogy Two Carts and a Hot-Air Balloon.

[28] Also with respect to the duty of honor, we saw above a view according to which the obligation toward the grandfather exists because of the link through the father, and is not a direct obligation. Therefore it is conditioned on his being righteous and not wicked.

It should be noted that in the laws of mishmush one can also see an opposite line of reasoning emerging from the same root: specifically a son inherits his grandfather by virtue of his father, because something in him is truly part of his father. If so, precisely there there is no direct inheritance, whereas other relatives might perhaps inherit directly.

[29] Rabbi Avraham Blidstein pointed out to me that perhaps this can be understood as a result of the nature of the duty to study Torah. This duty is subjective in character and depends on the desire of the student. At whatever level accords with his desire, he is obligated. Therefore the yielding of the commandment of honoring parents depends on the level of his desire. If he wants that form of study, the duty of honoring parents is set aside.

In my humble opinion, however, such an explanation is problematic for several reasons: 1. It assumes that the duty of Torah study depends on desire. From several medieval authorities it emerges clearly that there is no such obligation, and that this commandment is extra-legal (see my article on the concept of leisure in the book for rear-echelon soldiers, published by the yeshivah). 2. Even if we accept his assumption that in Torah study there is an obligation according to desire, then at a given level of desire that obligation is complete—so why does the student have permission to obey his parents? In the end he is fully obligated at that level of study.

True, the language of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef does suggest that he is speaking in terms of rules of displacement, but in my humble opinion that is not really the case.

[30] There is, however, room to discuss secular studies. For if there is a legal obligation to study them, then the honor of God requires that study, and therefore the duty of honoring parents is not nullified. Here, for purposes of the discussion, we will accept Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s assumption, and this is not the place to elaborate.

[31] This still requires further analysis, for embellishing a commandment is not indispensable to the commandment, yet it is nevertheless a full obligation by virtue of the verse ‘This is my God and I shall beautify Him.’ This is similar to the commandment of tekhelet, which is not indispensable to the white threads, yet is a full positive Torah commandment. Perhaps here we are speaking of embellishment beyond one-third (an officer who serves a year longer has precisely added one-third, though one might also need to weigh the difference in effort and contribution, and this is not the place to elaborate).

[32] Presumably this would be like any other positive commandment, though this too still requires further analysis.

[33] It is important to note that this conception can be correct even according to Rashi’s view in the passage Yevamot 6a cited above, according to which the commandment to honor parents is obedience itself and not necessarily the conferring of benefit and utility. Our remarks apply even according to his view, and their meaning is that the duty to obey exists only in those domains that are not entrusted to the exclusive decision of the son.

[34] This line of reasoning is incorrect in several legal respects (including the understanding of the prohibition against coveting, and more). I raise it here only as a parable intended to illustrate the point of limiting the sphere of application of the halakhic considerations of one person because of the rights of another.

[35] It is not clear why this question should not be decided on the basis of the principle that one honors the mother from her assets and not from his own.

[36] Rabbi Blidstein pointed out to me that the Taz and the Shakh there cite the Rosh himself as saying that the obligation does not apply in such a case because of the prohibition involved in the matter (to hate a fellow Jew), and not because this lies outside the father’s rights. In truth, however, this is puzzling, for one can refrain from speaking with his friend even without hating him. In any event, beyond the Rosh’s reason, even if it is correct in itself, it seems quite clear that there is also the reason of limiting the sphere of application because of the son’s rights.

[37] Of course, the most plausible interpretation of R. Ḥayyim’s words is that this was a sophisticated rebuke to that student, who was insisting on his rights at his parents’ expense. In other words, R. Ḥayyim wanted him to act beyond the letter of the law, and only expressed himself in apparently halakhic terms. Here we merely illustrated, from another angle, the difficulty involved in drawing the line that defines the son’s rights.