LEV294 Limits on the Filial Duties of Honor and Respect. The filial duties that Jewish law prescribes are extensive and demanding, but they do have limits. Children should not fulfill a parent's command that violates God's laws, undermines the child's welfare, or is unreasonable. Furthermore, although it is certainly desirable that children love their parents, Jewish law does not require that. God's Commandments. The tie between honoring parents and honoring God has direct implications for determining the hierarchy of our duties to honor our parents and honor God. For the Rabbis, the order was very clear: because all Jews, including one’s parents, are duty bound to obey God, God's commands take precedence over those of one’s parents when they conflict. “Because one might think that one is obliged to obey one's father or mother who desires that one violate a commandment, the Torah therefore says immediately following the commandment to fear or revere one’s parents in Leviticus 19:3], “and you shall keep My Sabbaths,” [meaning that] you are all required to honor Me (Sifra Leviticus, Kedoshim 1:10). It was taught: One might think that the honor of father and mother supersedes the Sabbath, [but that is not so:] the Torah says, “You shall fear every man his mother and his father, and you shall keep My Sabbaths; I am the Lord your God,” [meaning” that all of you are obligated to honor Me (Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 5b).” Clearly, this aspect of Jewish law should not be an excuse for children to dishonor their parents in a kind of religious “one-upmanship.” If the children decide to become more religiously involved and observant than their parents, they must do so in a way that continues to show their parents honor in attitude, word, and deed. If the children are teenagers, they need to work out with their parents exactly how the new patterns of observance that they want to adopt can fit into the family structure. Sometimes, for example, the parents may be convinced to make the home kosher or refrain from some of their customary family activities on the Sabbath and instead do things appropriate to the Sabbath as they grow in their Judaism along with their children. In other families, the parents and children have to negotiate a way in which each can “live and let live” in his or her own, distinct way while living under the same roof. The critical thing is not the ultimate agreement; rather, it is that the conversations in which these negotiations take place remain calm and mutually respectful and that all family members continue to interact with each other in the same manner. Another increasingly common issue that falls under this category occurs when parents have made it clear that upon their death they want to be cremated. It is bad enough if only one adult child is involved in this decision, because then if the child has the parent buried, he or she must bear the burden of acting against the express wishes of the parent after the parent has died and cannot protest or even argue. On the other hand, if the child acquiesces to the parent’s wishes, he or she must suffer the guilt of violating Jewish law. The situation is yet worse when there are two or more children involved, one or more of whom want to bury Mom or Dad according to traditional Jewish rites, despite the parent’s instructions to the contrary, and one or more of whom want to carry out the parent’s wishes, whether or not they agree with Mom or Dad. Jewish tradition is clear: neither the parent nor the children have the right to violate Jewish law, and so the children should bury, and not cremate, the parent. Putting that decision into practice, however, is often not nearly as simple as that, and the adult children would be well advised to get the help of their rabbi in working this out so that they can have reasonable relationships with each other after this is over. Such an approach is even more important when the requirements of Jewish law are not clear. This happens often when adult children face the decision of whether to remove life support systems from Mom or Dad when there is no reasonable hope for recovery. Although Jewish law is clear in its prohibition of cremation, rabbis differ on what Jewish law does and does not demand with regard to end-of-life care, especially the status of artificial nutrition and hydration. On one end of the spectrum, some, but certainly not all, Orthodox rabbis demand that absolutely everything be done to keep a body alive, even if that means the person will never regain consciousness and will have to be on machines forever. On the other end of the spectrum, some Reform rabbis maintain that here, as always, individual family members should seek the advice of their rabbi but in the end should make their decisions however they think is best. In the middle are multiple positions that rabbis of all movements have taken on these issues. Some, for example, see artificial nutrition and hydration as food and liquids and therefore require that they be administered under all circumstances, while others maintain that artificial nutrition and hydration are medicine and therefore may be withheld or withdrawn. All Jewish authorities would say that patients must be kept as comfortable as possible, for, unlike some forms of Christianity, Judaism does not regard pain as a good. Furthermore, each movement in Judaism has produced its distinctive form of advanced directive, so that a person can indicate which medical treatments he or she would choose at the end of life, as framed by the choices open to him or her according to his or her movement’s approach to Jewish law. In addition, books on these general issues of medical ethics and, in particular, on how adult children should understand their duty to feed their parents at the end of life have been published from the viewpoint of all movements in Judaism [lengthy bibliography in footnote omitted--AJL]. Adult children would also be well advised to consult with their rabbi in such circumstances to determine exactly what their approach to Judaism requires of them. In some, one must take into account that the Jewish tradition demands honor and respect for parents, even while one is not supposed to follow their directions to violate the other commandments. When Jewish law is clear on a given issue and their parents want the child to do something else, one must find a way to honor parents even if disobeying them in the name of Jewish law, and this may even mean compromising one’s standards of observance in the name of such honor. After all, religion should be an instrument for strengthening families, not dividing them. When Jewish law is not clear on a given issue, or when it permits several different options, the parent’s wishes should play a stronger role in how the children honor them. In the end, then, Jews must find a way to uphold both of these Jewish duties--to abide by Jewish law, on the one hand, and honor parents, on the other, recognizing full well that that may be difficult for some families on at least some issues and that to do this may require us to be more creative inflexible than we might otherwise be.
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