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Honoring parents under the law
From this morning's blog post
I used to feel bad for orphans. OK, that came out wrong. Please allow me to explain.
As a religious Jew, I try to view my responsibility to abide by and fulfill the commandments as an opportunity, not just as a burden. I tried to take on things that gave me the chance to complete myself through making myself bound to more laws. Yes, there are limits to this (I haven't moved to Israel and become a farmer, for example). I also recognized that being given more laws is, in some ways, a gift. Sure, it can be a burden -- demanding of my time and energy all day and night long, limiting my behaviors in uncomfortable ways, but to remove the burden also stops me from improving.
One major commandment is to honor parents -- it is not always easy or clearly defined, but it is really important and that's neat, but what of those who do not have parents? Like, you know, orphans. They don't have the opportunity to fulfill this obligation because they don't have parents and that's sad. Yes, not having parents is sad for many reasons, but I'm just looking at the "satisfying the law" dimension.
I looked at the commandment -- kabed et avicha v'et imecha. Honor your father and your mother. The talmud (in Ketubot 103, for example, using Sefaria.org's translation) looks at the precise wording and sees that the inclusion of potentially superfluous words and letters allows the law to be understood as applying to more than just the 2 biological parents
The Gemara asks: Honoring a father’s wife is also required by Torah law, as it is taught in a baraita: Honor your father [et avikha] and your mother [ve’et immekha]. The preposition et in the phrase: Your father; this teaches that you must honor your father’s wife. Similarly, the preposition et in the phrase: And your mother; this teaches that you must honor your mother’s husband. And the extra letter vav, which is appended as a prefix in the phrase “ve’et immekha” is included in order to add your older brother to those who must be honored.
But the orphan who is an only child? Still out of luck.
The Torah, though, has thought of everything. I was considering a completely separate story related to Moses and his brother, Aharon. The talmud understands the event as follows (Sanhedrin 19b, via sefaria again)
Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥmani says that Rabbi Yonatan says: Anyone who teaches another person’s son Torah, the verse ascribes him credit as if he sired him, as it is stated: “Now these are the generations of Aaron and Moses” (Numbers 3:1), and it is written immediately afterward: “And these are the names of the sons of Aaron: Nadav the firstborn and Avihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar” (Numbers 3:2), but it does not mention the names of Moses’ children. This serves to say to you that Aaron sired his children, but Moses taught them Torah. Therefore, the children were also called by his name.
A write up at https://torah.org/torah-portion/ravfrand-5763-bamidbar/ clarifies that this occurs when the teacher acts in a way beyond just a generic passing along of information.
But this doesn't solve the problem that the orphan has, does it? Well, not until the mishna in Avot comes along and connects the dots (from Sefaria emphasis mine) and says "aseh lecha rav":
Joshua ben Perahiah and Nittai the Arbelite received [the oral tradition] from them. Joshua ben Perahiah used to say: appoint for thyself a teacher, and acquire for thyself a companion and judge all men with the scale weighted in his favor.
How does this help? The orphan, therefore, has an obligation to set for himself a rav, a teacher (but not some more generic voice -- someone who connects with him and teaches him in a closer and more significant way, even if the content is limited). Then the orphan will be obligated, under the terms of the "honor your father and mother" verse as applying to a teacher/rav, to honor that teacher. Now the orphan has the opportunity, indeed, the requirement, to honor in the same way (or at least a parallel way) as anyone who has parents, and even an adult who loses parents is not exempted, but in fact, must continue to find teachers throughout his life and honor them. The obligation to continue learning becomes a conduit through which anyone and everyone can fulfill the commandment to respect!
So, yeah, I still feel sorry for orphans, but I feel excited that they have a chance to fulfill a commandment that one might have thought excludes them, and that's still something special.
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