Rabbi Daniel Siegel, Head of Jewish Life

Honouring Parents

In speaking with our students about freedom and responsibility within our Jewish tradition, they shared that they are not free as they must listen to their parents to whom they must answer. They added that their parents, in turn, were not free as they were responsible for meeting their needs, being their children.

It is in this week’s parashah, Yitro, that we are commanded: “Honour your mother and your father” – כבד את אביך ואת אמך/Kaved et Avikha ve-et Imekha.

The Hebrew root word for ‘honour’ – כבד/kaved, means ‘weighty’. Honouring your parents is not centered on obedience, but upon recognising and responding to their weighty significance in your life.

Soon after presenting the mitzvah of honouring one’s parents, the Torah severely admonishes “one who curses his mother or father”- מקלל אביו ואמו/mekallel aviv ve-imo.

The word ‘curse’ – קלל/kallel, finds its origin in the word קל/kall, meaning ‘light’.  Treating our parents lightly, as trifling, dishonours them.

What constitutes honouring our parents? Our Jewish tradition explains: “One must provide them with food, drink and clothing. One should bring them in and take them out. One must provide them with all their needs”.

Remarkably, these acts of sustaining our parents reflect the very role that out parents played in providing for our well-being and growth. However, honour is not to be construed as a transactional relationship. While parents are obligated to provide for their children, whom they brought into this world, this should not, in any wise, minimise their being devoted and invested caregivers who have taught us and enabled us to be the same.

Honour goes beyond “payback”, as the Rabbis seek to point out in the following anecdotes of exemplary honouring:

Rabbi Tarfon would serve as his mother’s footstool, crouching down for her to step up on him so she could climb in and out of bed. It was told, as well, with regard to another Rabbi, that his mother threw a purse full of gold coins into the ocean in his presence, but he did not embarrass or admonish her.

When are parents are failing physically and mentally and we become their providers, do they retain the same weightiness in our eyes or do they become burdens to us?

For our Jewish tradition, honouring our parents is a testament of their honouring us.