[Avodah] The Survival of Judaism and Kibud Av V'Aim

[Yitzchok Levine]

RSRH writes the following in his commentary on 
Shemos 20: 12 Honor your father and your mother, 
so that your days may be long on the land that God, your God, is giving you.

Y'tzias Mitzraim and Matan Torah are the two basic facts in the history of the
Jewish people that form the foundation of our allegiance to God as the
Master of our fate and the Guide of our lives. These two facts are historical
truths. However, the sole guarantee of their authenticity is tradition,
and tradition depends solely on its faithful transmission from parents to
children, and on its willing acceptance by children from the hands of their
parents.

Thus, the survival of the great Divine institution that is Judaism
rests entirely on the theoretical and practical obedience of children to
parents. Accordingly, Kibud Av V'Aim is the basic condition for the eternity of
the Jewish nation.

Through the father and the mother, God gives the child more than
just his physical existence. Parents are also the link that connects the
child to the Jewish past and enables him or her to be a Jewish man
or woman. From the parents the child receives the tradition of the
Jewish mission, which is shaped by knowledge, a code of conduct, and
upbringing. The parents transmit to the child Jewish history and Jewish
Law, so that eventually he, in turn, will pass them on to his own
children. Just as he looks up to his parents, so will his own children
someday look up to him. Without this connection between parents
and children, the chain of generations is broken, the hopes of the
Jewish past are lost for the future, and the Jewish nation ceases to
exist.

<snip>

Kibud entails, first of all, obeying one’s parents unreservedly and doing
their will with alacrity. The only limitation placed on this duty is
that their will should not be contradictory to God’s Will (see Vayikra
19:3 and Commentary there). For the parents are meant to be the heralds
of God’s Will. This is their mission; this is what gives them their
great importance.

It is this mission of the parents — not the amount of kindness,
large or small, they have shown their children — that lies at the root
of the mitzvah of Kibud Av V'Aim, a mitzvah that increases with the age and
maturity of the children and extends even beyond the death of the
parents. The unconditional and imposing demands of this mitzvah transcend
by far any moral obligation that ordinary morality — the so-called
morality of reason — could deduce from considerations of gratitude
(see Kiddushin 30b, 31, 32).

This selection is taken from pages 347 - 348 of 
the new translation of Rav Hirsch's commentary on the Chumash Shemos.

Yitzchok Levine 
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