Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you for joining me. I'm Rabbi David Lyon from
Congregation Beth Israel in Houston. There are many relationships that
we all enjoy, and many of them begin right at
home between parents and children. Sometimes it grows a little
more contentious as children grow and stretch their wings and
become the people they need to be, especially as they
(00:21):
reach middle school age and teenagehood and even young adulthood.
But even as we continue to grow and become adult friends,
sometimes the relationships become confusing as children come into their
own become full adults, and their adult parents begin to
age in ways that are unfamiliar, not only for themselves
(00:43):
but also to their adult children. So we turn to
Scripture to learn how to understand the relationship and the
obligation we have to each other, especially when that relationship
changes and sometimes changes with strain around it. In the
Torah itself, we're commanded to love. What are we commanded
(01:05):
to love? We're commanded in the book of Leviticus to
love our neighbor, Love your neighbor as yourself I the
Lord in Leviticus nineteen verse eighteen. We're also commanded to
love God in Deuteronomy chapter six the hafta etnai el recha,
(01:25):
you shall love the Lord your God. But when it
comes to parents, and we find in Exodus chapter twenty
the commandment, the Fifth Commandment that says, honor your father
and your mother kapade et da vikha ve eti macha.
It doesn't say love your father and your mother. It
says honor your father and your mother. What's the difference.
(01:50):
Honor is actually even more important in some cases than
love itself, because honor comes with a certain duty. It
really is separate from emotions or feelings or other expectations
of the relationship about a love, feeling, or a like
(02:13):
or a dislike. It's separate from all of those options.
Honor is clear and defined. But even in a conversation
I had recently with an adult child, I explained that
in their contentious relationship that love was not the obligation
or the commandment, but rather honor. But even there it
(02:36):
could be confusing because honor is simply an English translation
of the Hebrew word. What does it say in Exodus
chapter twenty and the fifth Commandment about honoring our parents?
It says cobbad, And cobbad is a Hebrew word that
means honor, yes, in the right context, but it can
also mean give weight to and respect for. Therefore, we
(03:00):
don't have to say it means that it means to obey,
to bend over backwards, to do everything that our parents expect,
or to regard them in every way they expect of us.
What happens to us? What happens to our own sense
of self if bending over backwards diminishes our own personality
and our own self expectations. Because in the Torah there
(03:23):
is another commandment, especially for a grown adult who is married.
It says in Genesis to find a partner, to cleave
to that partner, and to depart, to leave your parents home.
Set against the expectation to honor parents, the Rabbis and
then Tumult resolved that when push comes to shove, what
(03:45):
do we do? Do we honor our parents first and
over the love and cleaving that we do with our
partner or vice versa. The rabbis made it very clear
that first and foremost, we have a dude to our partner,
to make a home, to make a family, to make
priorities and choices that are dear to us and important
(04:06):
for our future together. But when it comes to parents.
That relationship is intact, that it endures in a new way.
To appreciate and give gratitude to parents, to honor them
in special ways, but to bend over backwards and to
deprive one's self of one's own family life for their sake,
not as much. It doesn't mean to ignore them or
(04:30):
to disparage them, to insult them. Not in any case.
Honor them means to obey properly and with boundaries, and
to respect them. And from the Talmud we also learned
this from kidushing attracted. In Talmud we read when children
respect their parents, God accounts it as if the children
(04:52):
respected God as well. See, there is a dynamic a
relationship that equates parents with God, so to speak, but
not perfectly and not exactly. And so when we honor
our parents, give way to and respect them, we do
in fact respect God. And it goes on. But when
(05:15):
children annoy and frustrate their parents, God says, I cannot
abide thee, which is to say that when we cause
our parents' strife and struggle and frustration, we are not
honoring God either, and God cannot put up with us.
God does not tolerate that our simple function is to
(05:36):
be a source of peace to our parents, to allow
them to do what they need to do to be
who they need to be as they continue to grow
to and to leave room for us to be who
we need to be as their adult children, in relationship
with our own partners, our own families, and hopes for
our own future. You see, it really goes back to
(05:58):
the day when you got married. When you enter the
wedding canopy if you had one, or the altar where
you were married, that was the end of your parents'
responsibility for rearing you, for giving you and preparing you
for the future. Now you were making your own home,
your own relationship, and your parents needed to step back.
(06:21):
But as we continue to be in relationship with each
other for more years than ever before, as we all
live longer, which is such a blessing, it also creates
a new obligation to understand the boundaries between us in
the case of an infirm parent, as one gets older.
I've often counseled the children grown as they are themselves,
(06:44):
that you are not a physical therapist, you're not an
occupational therapist. You're not a skilled nurse or a doctor.
Even even if you were. You shouldn't care for your
own family, but you are and remain the loving child.
So employ high arrange for physical therapy, OT, the doctor,
(07:04):
the skilled nurse, etc. That allows for your aging parent
to be comfortable at home or in a residential setting
where all of their needs can be accommodated, and that
enables you to continue to be what you do best
and the only person who can do it, which is
to be the loving child, call visit, attend to some
(07:26):
of their needs by bringing a favorite food, sitting and
playing a game, and more. But once you step back
and relieve yourself of some of the duties that maybe
your parent would like you to have but you will
never know how to do, then you remain strong and
able to be a loving child, which is really all
(07:47):
that your parent wants from you and needs from you.
And once that parent gets the skilled nursing and the
PT and the OT and all the other things that
make their life comfortable, well and safe, they will come
to understand the place that they have found themselves in
and the place that you must remain into. And you
can both do it without guilt, which I think is
(08:10):
imperative to the loving relationship that can emerge from one
that begins with honor and respect. The Talmud also teaches
when children honor their father and their mother, God says,
I imputed it to you as if I were dwelling
among you, and you honored me. And so God watches
(08:31):
carefully that as we honor our parents, that God serves
us and delivers us with a sense of gratitude and fulfillment.
That when we get it right by honoring them properly
without also having to love them, even if it doesn't come,
I've known relationships where children do serve their parents thoughtfully,
(08:54):
but don't necessarily like them, let alone love them. It
all comes back for a sense of gratitude and respect,
which is sometimes all that we can muster. It goes
on to say that when children have been spiteful to
their father and mother, God says, I have done well
not to dwell among you, for if I dwelt among you,
(09:15):
they would be spiteful even to me. I have urged
long ago, a young man who really didn't like his
father hated him. He told me his father was brutal, attire,
and terrible, and the mother, who still lived, urged her
son in a brutal way to attend his father's funeral.
(09:37):
He came to me and asked, what should I do?
I don't want to go to his funeral. I hated
the man, and despite my effort to teach him that
he was never commanded to love him, I did get
through to him that what he could do well was
to pay some respect, to approach the grave and to
(09:59):
recite the ancient praise to God called Scottish, which is
the mourner's prayer, not only for the life that has gone,
but also especially in this particular case, for what never was.
There was no relationship, there's no friendship and certainly no love.
But the son could take the high road and recite
the Cottish at his father's grave for what he lost
(10:23):
throughout a lifetime where a gap, a lack of opportunity
always existed. And I said furthermore, many years from now,
as you continue to grow and reflect on the past,
even if it was hard, you will not have regret
that you didn't go at the moment to the cemetery
and the graveside to recite the ancient praise call Scottish. Ultimately,
(10:46):
I'm pleased to tell you that he did go to
the grave. And he did recite Scottish. I haven't seen
him for a very long time, and I doubt that
I ever will, but I certainly hope that as he
reflects on that day and that moment, that he can
live without regret and understand that sometimes the relationship between
father and son, between parents and children can go awry.
(11:07):
And it isn't the lack of love or a lack
of effort necessarily. But if love is not present and
not available to us, then respect and honor is always
obligated upon us to make it clear through words and
deeds and efforts. And if we get it right, then
God's presence is available to us too. And for this
(11:30):
young man then, and I hope now that he feels
God's presence in his own life because he did it
right and he made a good choice under very, very
difficult circumstances. Finally, the Tulma teaches Rabbi Simeon ben Ilchhai said,
great is the honoring of father and mother, for God
(11:52):
makes more of it than of honoring himself. About God,
it is written, honor the Lord with your substance. It's
a quotation from Proverbs chapter three. If you have substance,
you are an obligator to do so, and if you
have no substance, you are not obligated. But when it
comes to honoring father and mother, whether you have substance
(12:13):
or not, honor thy father and my mother, even if
you have to beg your living from door to door.
This beautiful teaching helps us understand that in ancient times
when people brought offerings to God as a sacrifice, sometimes
they couldn't afford much or couldn't bring anything at all.
But even if one is poor, it has no substance
(12:35):
and no wealth, honoring parents is still an obligation God
can forgive. But human beings are more limited in their
complete understanding. And so if you have very little at
the very least, maybe even going door to door to beg,
which I don't promote or advocate, but find a way
to bring something. And if it isn't something of material good,
(12:58):
that brings something of war, warmth, of respect, of honor,
and if it can't be love, and let it rest
in your ability to help them feel not frustrated by you,
but then appreciated by you. I'm Rabbi David Lyon from
Congregation meth Israel and Houston to listen again or share
this message. Please find it my podcast called Heart to
(13:19):
Heart with Rabbi David Lyon. You can find it at
Sonny ninety nine dot com or on the iHeartRadio app.
And as we continue to make our way, let's consider
for a moment in some reflection on the relationship we
do have with our parents, and if they are gone
from life already, not to despair. Whether the relationship was
(13:40):
good and you celebrated it through special memories, or it
was not good and you lament the fact that it
couldn't have been better. Rest assured that if you also aimed,
even if you weren't always successful, to bring honor and respect,
then you did what God called upon you to do.
Love is a different matter. If there was no love,
(14:01):
but there was some respect and honor between you, then
you accomplished what you could say cottish or say your
own prayer to mourn what couldn't be, but also the
life that has gone and no longer the possibility of
restoring or improving the relationship that you had. My hope
is that it isn't too late for any of us
(14:23):
to be sure that we build relationships between parents and
children that are bound on and built upon honor, respect, consideration,
and duty. And let love emerge. If it should be,
let it come naturally. And if it only amounts to
like but not love, let it rest, let it be.
(14:44):
I wish you well this week and all the relationships
you have, especially the one that begins at home and
develops between you and your own children. Let this lesson
guide you now and always thank you for joining me.
I look forward to being with you again next time.
Thank you for joining me. I'm Rabbi David Lyon from
Congregation Beth Israel in Houston. There are many relationships that
we all enjoy, and many of them begin right at
home between parents and children. Sometimes it grows a little
more contentious as children grow and stretch their wings and
become the people they need to be, especially as they
(00:21):
reach middle school age and teenagehood and even young adulthood.
But even as we continue to grow and become adult friends,
sometimes the relationships become confusing as children come into their
own become full adults, and their adult parents begin to
age in ways that are unfamiliar, not only for themselves
(00:43):
but also to their adult children. So we turn to
Scripture to learn how to understand the relationship and the
obligation we have to each other, especially when that relationship
changes and sometimes changes with strain around it. In the
Torah itself, we're commanded to love. What are we commanded
(01:05):
to love? We're commanded in the book of Leviticus to
love our neighbor, Love your neighbor as yourself I the
Lord in Leviticus nineteen verse eighteen. We're also commanded to
love God in Deuteronomy chapter six the hafta etnai el recha,
(01:25):
you shall love the Lord your God. But when it
comes to parents, and we find in Exodus chapter twenty
the commandment, the Fifth Commandment that says, honor your father
and your mother kapade et da vikha ve eti macha.
It doesn't say love your father and your mother. It
says honor your father and your mother. What's the difference.
(01:50):
Honor is actually even more important in some cases than
love itself, because honor comes with a certain duty. It
really is separate from emotions or feelings or other expectations
of the relationship about a love, feeling, or a like
(02:13):
or a dislike. It's separate from all of those options.
Honor is clear and defined. But even in a conversation
I had recently with an adult child, I explained that
in their contentious relationship that love was not the obligation
or the commandment, but rather honor. But even there it
(02:36):
could be confusing because honor is simply an English translation
of the Hebrew word. What does it say in Exodus
chapter twenty and the fifth Commandment about honoring our parents?
It says cobbad, And cobbad is a Hebrew word that
means honor, yes, in the right context, but it can
also mean give weight to and respect for. Therefore, we
(03:00):
don't have to say it means that it means to obey,
to bend over backwards, to do everything that our parents expect,
or to regard them in every way they expect of us.
What happens to us? What happens to our own sense
of self if bending over backwards diminishes our own personality
and our own self expectations. Because in the Torah there
(03:23):
is another commandment, especially for a grown adult who is married.
It says in Genesis to find a partner, to cleave
to that partner, and to depart, to leave your parents home.
Set against the expectation to honor parents, the Rabbis and
then Tumult resolved that when push comes to shove, what
(03:45):
do we do? Do we honor our parents first and
over the love and cleaving that we do with our
partner or vice versa. The rabbis made it very clear
that first and foremost, we have a dude to our partner,
to make a home, to make a family, to make
priorities and choices that are dear to us and important
(04:06):
for our future together. But when it comes to parents.
That relationship is intact, that it endures in a new way.
To appreciate and give gratitude to parents, to honor them
in special ways, but to bend over backwards and to
deprive one's self of one's own family life for their sake,
not as much. It doesn't mean to ignore them or
(04:30):
to disparage them, to insult them. Not in any case.
Honor them means to obey properly and with boundaries, and
to respect them. And from the Talmud we also learned
this from kidushing attracted. In Talmud we read when children
respect their parents, God accounts it as if the children
(04:52):
respected God as well. See, there is a dynamic a
relationship that equates parents with God, so to speak, but
not perfectly and not exactly. And so when we honor
our parents, give way to and respect them, we do
in fact respect God. And it goes on. But when
(05:15):
children annoy and frustrate their parents, God says, I cannot
abide thee, which is to say that when we cause
our parents' strife and struggle and frustration, we are not
honoring God either, and God cannot put up with us.
God does not tolerate that our simple function is to
(05:36):
be a source of peace to our parents, to allow
them to do what they need to do to be
who they need to be as they continue to grow
to and to leave room for us to be who
we need to be as their adult children, in relationship
with our own partners, our own families, and hopes for
our own future. You see, it really goes back to
(05:58):
the day when you got married. When you enter the
wedding canopy if you had one, or the altar where
you were married, that was the end of your parents'
responsibility for rearing you, for giving you and preparing you
for the future. Now you were making your own home,
your own relationship, and your parents needed to step back.
(06:21):
But as we continue to be in relationship with each
other for more years than ever before, as we all
live longer, which is such a blessing, it also creates
a new obligation to understand the boundaries between us in
the case of an infirm parent, as one gets older.
I've often counseled the children grown as they are themselves,
(06:44):
that you are not a physical therapist, you're not an
occupational therapist. You're not a skilled nurse or a doctor.
Even even if you were. You shouldn't care for your
own family, but you are and remain the loving child.
So employ high arrange for physical therapy, OT, the doctor,
(07:04):
the skilled nurse, etc. That allows for your aging parent
to be comfortable at home or in a residential setting
where all of their needs can be accommodated, and that
enables you to continue to be what you do best
and the only person who can do it, which is
to be the loving child, call visit, attend to some
(07:26):
of their needs by bringing a favorite food, sitting and
playing a game, and more. But once you step back
and relieve yourself of some of the duties that maybe
your parent would like you to have but you will
never know how to do, then you remain strong and
able to be a loving child, which is really all
(07:47):
that your parent wants from you and needs from you.
And once that parent gets the skilled nursing and the
PT and the OT and all the other things that
make their life comfortable, well and safe, they will come
to understand the place that they have found themselves in
and the place that you must remain into. And you
can both do it without guilt, which I think is
(08:10):
imperative to the loving relationship that can emerge from one
that begins with honor and respect. The Talmud also teaches
when children honor their father and their mother, God says,
I imputed it to you as if I were dwelling
among you, and you honored me. And so God watches
(08:31):
carefully that as we honor our parents, that God serves
us and delivers us with a sense of gratitude and fulfillment.
That when we get it right by honoring them properly
without also having to love them, even if it doesn't come,
I've known relationships where children do serve their parents thoughtfully,
(08:54):
but don't necessarily like them, let alone love them. It
all comes back for a sense of gratitude and respect,
which is sometimes all that we can muster. It goes
on to say that when children have been spiteful to
their father and mother, God says, I have done well
not to dwell among you, for if I dwelt among you,
(09:15):
they would be spiteful even to me. I have urged
long ago, a young man who really didn't like his
father hated him. He told me his father was brutal, attire,
and terrible, and the mother, who still lived, urged her
son in a brutal way to attend his father's funeral.
(09:37):
He came to me and asked, what should I do?
I don't want to go to his funeral. I hated
the man, and despite my effort to teach him that
he was never commanded to love him, I did get
through to him that what he could do well was
to pay some respect, to approach the grave and to
(09:59):
recite the ancient praise to God called Scottish, which is
the mourner's prayer, not only for the life that has gone,
but also especially in this particular case, for what never was.
There was no relationship, there's no friendship and certainly no love.
But the son could take the high road and recite
the Cottish at his father's grave for what he lost
(10:23):
throughout a lifetime where a gap, a lack of opportunity
always existed. And I said furthermore, many years from now,
as you continue to grow and reflect on the past,
even if it was hard, you will not have regret
that you didn't go at the moment to the cemetery
and the graveside to recite the ancient praise call Scottish. Ultimately,
(10:46):
I'm pleased to tell you that he did go to
the grave. And he did recite Scottish. I haven't seen
him for a very long time, and I doubt that
I ever will, but I certainly hope that as he
reflects on that day and that moment, that he can
live without regret and understand that sometimes the relationship between
father and son, between parents and children can go awry.
(11:07):
And it isn't the lack of love or a lack
of effort necessarily. But if love is not present and
not available to us, then respect and honor is always
obligated upon us to make it clear through words and
deeds and efforts. And if we get it right, then
God's presence is available to us too. And for this
(11:30):
young man then, and I hope now that he feels
God's presence in his own life because he did it
right and he made a good choice under very, very
difficult circumstances. Finally, the Tulma teaches Rabbi Simeon ben Ilchhai said,
great is the honoring of father and mother, for God
(11:52):
makes more of it than of honoring himself. About God,
it is written, honor the Lord with your substance. It's
a quotation from Proverbs chapter three. If you have substance,
you are an obligator to do so, and if you
have no substance, you are not obligated. But when it
comes to honoring father and mother, whether you have substance
(12:13):
or not, honor thy father and my mother, even if
you have to beg your living from door to door.
This beautiful teaching helps us understand that in ancient times
when people brought offerings to God as a sacrifice, sometimes
they couldn't afford much or couldn't bring anything at all.
But even if one is poor, it has no substance
(12:35):
and no wealth, honoring parents is still an obligation God
can forgive. But human beings are more limited in their
complete understanding. And so if you have very little at
the very least, maybe even going door to door to beg,
which I don't promote or advocate, but find a way
to bring something. And if it isn't something of material good,
(12:58):
that brings something of war, warmth, of respect, of honor,
and if it can't be love, and let it rest
in your ability to help them feel not frustrated by you,
but then appreciated by you. I'm Rabbi David Lyon from
Congregation meth Israel and Houston to listen again or share
this message. Please find it my podcast called Heart to
(13:19):
Heart with Rabbi David Lyon. You can find it at
Sonny ninety nine dot com or on the iHeartRadio app.
And as we continue to make our way, let's consider
for a moment in some reflection on the relationship we
do have with our parents, and if they are gone
from life already, not to despair. Whether the relationship was
(13:40):
good and you celebrated it through special memories, or it
was not good and you lament the fact that it
couldn't have been better. Rest assured that if you also aimed,
even if you weren't always successful, to bring honor and respect,
then you did what God called upon you to do.
Love is a different matter. If there was no love,
(14:01):
but there was some respect and honor between you, then
you accomplished what you could say cottish or say your
own prayer to mourn what couldn't be, but also the
life that has gone and no longer the possibility of
restoring or improving the relationship that you had. My hope
is that it isn't too late for any of us
(14:23):
to be sure that we build relationships between parents and
children that are bound on and built upon honor, respect, consideration,
and duty. And let love emerge. If it should be,
let it come naturally. And if it only amounts to
like but not love, let it rest, let it be.
(14:44):
I wish you well this week and all the relationships
you have, especially the one that begins at home and
develops between you and your own children. Let this lesson
guide you now and always thank you for joining me.
I look forward to being with you again next time.
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