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Parents As People Ki Tavo, August 31, 2018 www.torahleadership.org PARENTS AS PEOPLE: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE OBLIGATION TO HONOR PARENTS AND THE HALAKHIC CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY Rabbi Aryeh Klapper, Dean A beraita on Kiddushin 30b presents one rationale for spirit, breath, facial features, vision, hearing, speech, mobility, the halakhic obligation to honor parents. understanding and intelligence When its time comes to depart from the world שלשה שותפין הן באדם: The Holy Blessed One takes His share and leaves the share of the הקדוש ברוך הוא, ואביו, ואמו. בזמן שאדם מכבד את אביו ואת אמו, אמר הקדוש ברוך הוא: father and mother before them. מעלה אני עליהם כאילו דרתי ביניהם וכבדוני The fading applicability of this metaphor is a challenge, There are three partners in the human being: but also an opportunity. The appeal and power of the The Holy Blessed One, its father and its mother. human-Divine parental partnership metaphor may obscure When a person honors (is mekhabed) their father and mother, The ​ ​ and deemphasize important underlying halakhic principles of Holy Blessed One says: parent-child relationships. These principles may be easier to I regard them as if I had dwelled among them and they had honored discover and understand in our day. Me. One clue to such principles may be found in Devarim However, that beraita is being rapidly obsolesced by the 27:16: wide variety of contemporary reproductive practices. אָר֕וּר ַמקֶל֥ה אִָב֖יו וְִאמּ֑וֹ ְ Doctors and nurses are partners in reproduction via IVF and Blasted be one who is makleh his father or mother most artificial insemination; gestational carriers are partners ​ ​ To be makleh probably means “to make kal (=lighter). It in surrogacy; mitochondrial DNA donors relieve the risk of ​ ​ ​ ​ is therefore the antonym of l’khabed =to make heavier, and a some hereditary diseases; and random people may soon be ​ ​ less intense form of l’kallel =to make very light =to curse. partners in chimaeras. All this on top of the traditional cases ​ ​ The Torah obligates us l’khabed our parents, and forbids us in which halakhah recognizes a child as having a legal ​ ​ l’kallel them on pain of death. So what is added by this mother but no legal father, such as when the mother is ​ prohibition? Jewish but not the father. Fascinatingly, this verse is never cited explicitly in the It does not matter whether we greet the multiplication of literature of Chazal, so far as I can tell. But Rambam such cases with ambivalence, horror, or joy. The fact (Hilkhot Mamrim 5:15) gives it a place of prominence: remains that the “three partners” metaphor is no longer a The Torah was not insistent only about not-striking and not-cursing compelling description on a physical level. This is even parents more true if we look at the physiological explanation given but rather even about degradation in the version of the beraita found on Niddah 31a: since anyone who degrades their father or mother There are three partners in the human being: even verbally, even by gesture – The Holy Blessed One, its father and its mother. is blasted from the mouth of the Omnipotent Its father generates the white, as Scripture says: “Blasted be one who is makleh their father or ​ ​ from which emerge the bones, tendons, nails, and the brain in its head mother”. and the white of the eye Rambam seems to believe that “degrading” parents is not The mother generates the red, a violation of the obligation to honor them, or even of the from which emerge the skin, flesh, hair, and the black of the eye obligation to revere/awe them. This seems very peculiar. and the Holy Blessed One places in it His rhetoric “blasted from the mouth of the Omnipotent” also seems peculiar, as he is referring to the curses uttered by the people – albeit at Hashem’s dictation – on Har Eival. satisfied the personal obligation of honoring, and yet the Moreover, his position yields a very difficult halakhic result. father wanted more. An Amoraic statement on Kiddushin 32a-b permits But the Talmud challenges the rejection, as follows. The parents to waive their children’s obligations of kavod, and beraita continues by citing Rabbi Yehudah’s position that a ​ ​ Rambam (Hilkhot Mamrim 6:8) seems to make this waiver m’erah (=blasting?) should befall one who feeds their parent ​ obligatory: poor-tithe. Why should the child be cursed if the case is one It is forbidden for a person in which the obligation of kavod has been satisfied? to heavily impose his yoke on his children and to be picky about his The Talmud answers: honor with them Nonetheless, it is degrading to him lest he cause them to transgress. The obvious problem with the Talmud’s answer is: If it is Rather he must waive and look away degrading, then how can the obligation of honor have been since a father who waives his honor – his honor is waived. satisfied? Raavad (cited in Responsa Rivash 220) derives by analogy We must answer that the obligation that generates the from the honor of scholars that a parent cannot waive the curse cannot be related to the regular obligation of honoring ​ ​ obligations of children to the extent of permitting severe parents. But then what is its nature? degradation. However, now that we have a separate I suggest that the Talmud here is differentiating between prohibition against degradation, it may be that parents honoring parents as parents, and honoring them as human cannot forgive anything negative. Netziv further argues beings. (Responsa Meshiv Davar 2:50) that this obligation is not Honoring them as parents – as G-d’s partners in creation subject to the limits imposed on other obligations toward – requires engaging in a set of formal activities that are not parents: culturally contingent or socially derivable. It seems that what is written in Yoreh Deah 240:25 Honoring parents as human beings, by contrast, means “So too, if a father objects to a son marrying the woman he wishes to, treating them in the way that recognizes your human the son need not heed the father” relationship with them. It is a subset of the obligation to applies only in a case where marrying her would not cause the father respect human dignity, which the Talmud acknowledges can degradation or pain vary depending on social position. To feed parents out of Note that Netziv adds “pain” to degradation, further poor-tithe degrades them because it treats them as human expanding the scope of the obligation and limiting the space strangers, not because it fails to treat them as G-d’s partners. in which children’s right to autonomy can shield them (This obligation may therefore apply as much or more to against unhealthy parental domination. (Netziv likely does adoptive as to biological parents.) this on the basis of Sheiltot d’Rav Achai Gaon 61, which in a On this understanding, Rambam’s framing of the manner similar to Rambam asserts that children are obligation is contingent on the conventions of one’s society, obligated to not-pain their parents, not only to not-curse and children always have the right to choose their own them.) spouses, although for most people in most places during I suggest that while Devarim 27:16 is not cited explicitly most periods it would be wise and proper for them to in Chazal, it is cited implicitly in at least one place, and its consult their parents before doing so. use there will give us a very different halakhic principle and One framing of the Torah obligations toward parents outcome. depends on having children view their parents as creators in On Kiddushin 32a, the Talmud attempts the following partnership with and therefore almost on par with G-d. proof for the position that parents must bear the financial Another roots the relationship in a recognition that parents, costs of their children’s obligation to honor them. like everyone else, were created b’tzelem Elokim and deserve A beraita rules that children may feed their parents out of social dignity. As biological parentage becomes an ever the poor tithe. This proves that children have no financial more fraught concept, it seems likely that the second model obligation toward parents, as otherwise they would be will and should become more prominent. At the same time, satisfying their personal obligation out of money that we the formal and fixed Torah obligations toward biological conceive of as already belonging to the poor as a class. parents should remind us of the grave social risks involved The Talmud rejects the proof by suggesting that the in the progressive separation of biological reproduction beraita discussed a case in which the child had already from human responsibility. The mission of the Center for Modern Torah Leadership is to foster a vision of fully committed halakhic Judaism that embraces the intellectual and ​ ​ ​ moral challenges of modernity as spiritual opportunities to create authentic leaders. The Center carries out its mission through the Summer Beit Midrash program, the Rabbis and Educators Professional Development Institute, the Campus and Community Education Institutes, weekly Divrei Torah and our website, www.torahleadership.org, which houses hundreds of articles and audio lectures. ​ ​.
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