Big Question: How Do You Honor Your Mother?
May 9, 2012 
4 Comments
In honor of Mother’s Day, WRJ’s President, Lynn Magid Lazar, and Executive Director, Rabbi Marla J. Feldman, were asked to pose May’s Big Question for The Global Day of Jewish Learning.
Their question: “As Jewish law commands us to ‘Honor your Father and your Mother’, on this Mother’s Day, how do we fulfill our obligation to honor our mothers? Is there any difference between how we honor our mothers and how we honor our fathers?” was answered by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz below (and on the Global Day site).
Please share your own thoughts on this question.
The Scriptures do not distinguish between mother and father when it comes to honoring them, and treating them with deference. Differences in implementing this command stem not from the Law but from the human mind and behavior. While there is no law that creates different modes of fatherhood and motherhood, in every family there is some difference between these two.
However, Jewish Law does not oblige us to love father and mother. Respect is something that the Law can command; emotions are not within its power. Parents often complain about emotional neglect rather than financial or other disrespect. Children may be guilt ridden because they don’t love their parents. Love comes from individual, unique relationships; whether or not there are blood ties does not create, by itself, an emotional closeness. It does not mean that people should not love their parents; but it should be a wish rather than a command.
The commandment of honor is not just in showing external signs of respect, but in doing things that cause the honored person to feel better, brighter and honored. In that sense, Mother’s Day is always a very individual choice of the children. Children must answer the question – what will make my mother happy?
This is a question I have pondered especially while my children were growing up. Have I been a role model to my children in showing my respect to both my mom and mother-in-law.
Is calling my mom a hundred times a day considered respectful or perhaps annoying? Yet it makes her happy to be needed! Is having my mother in law over for dinner every week for the past 29 years showing my respect? Is being available to my moms all of the time showing my true respect of them? I believe respect and honor comes in so many ways, both external and internal. Although we are commanded to respect and honor isn’t there such a fine line between respect, honor and love?
This is a subject I have been thinking about a lot lately. I wrote a blog post for WRJ about Pesach and about my mother. I sent it to my children, more as an example of how brilliant and talented their mother was than anything else, and was shocked and even saddened by one of my son’s replies. He told he that he hadn’t known anything about my mother, other then the rather non flattering stories I told about her behavior towards me, especially after she was ill. He didn’t know that the brisket I serve was her recipe, nor that she taught me how to hard boil eggs. He said he didn’t even know that she died of cancer. I realize that honoring my mother means telling her stories.. ALL of her stories, and letting her continue to live in my heart and in the hearts and minds of my children. So, the next time I see my sons, I will talk about my mother. I will tell them about what a good cook she was, and how she loved my father, and how she looked through the light of the holiday candles.
My son decided to follow the route of Orthodox Judaism, and went to study in a yeshiva in upstate New York. I received a call from him shortly before he was due to return home for vacation – he asked my husband’s and my permission for him not to stand every time we entered a room – he had been told that this was required (unless the parents agreed it was not necessary) to show honor and respect towards mother and father.
Needless to say, I readily gave my permission for him to remain seated in our presence.
The honor and reapect I receive from my children are shown in much more subtle ways – mostly in the ways in which we communicate with each other and respect each other’s opinions and life choices.
I have a friend who went through conversion last year. Her relationship with her mother has always been poor. I always stressed honoring your mother even if they disrespect you and don’t love you back. However, after seeing how devastated she would become after repeated abuses, I understood that you can’t always observe the Torah commandment. My friend now calls me Ema and is in the process of legally changing her name with my parents as her parents. Extreme?? You decide.