Date: August 12th 2022

PARSHAS V’ESCHANNAN – THE IMPACT OF EXPERIENCES AND RECOGNIZING THE TORAH’S PARAMETERS


“Honor your father and your mother as Hashem, your G-d commanded you…” (5:16) is the fifth of the Ten Commandments. Although this concept is accepted throughout the world, it is only through understanding the Torah’s laws that one can know the true definition of this basic commandment.

The Midrash (Devarim Rabbah 1:15) relates that the students of Rabbi Eliezer Hagadol asked him, “To what extent should the mitzvah of homoring one’s parents be carried?” He answered them, “Go and see what Dama ben Nesina did in Ashkelon.” Dama ben Nesina was a gentile who honored his parents to a great degree. In other words, Dama ben Nesina’s conduct defined how to properly fulfill The Fifth Commandment.

The Commentary of Etz Yosef raises a question. How could the precise halachic parameters of a mitzvah in the Torah possibly be inferred from Dama ben Nesina? Even though he may have excelled in this area he was ignorant of the Torah, and his behavior was therefore solely guided by personal intuition.

The Etz Yosef answers that R. Eliezer himself surely learned the parameters of how the Torah defines the obligation to honor ones parents from his teachers. R. Eliezer judged that the extent of Dama ben Nesina’s observance of this mitzvah was in proper balance in the Torah’s view. R. Eliezer was reluctant to simply teach his students that this very high level of parental honor was included in the basic obligation of Torah that is incumbent on all people. He felt that his students might have difficulty accepting that this extreme measure was mandated by the Torah. R. Eliezer therefore advised them to observe Dama ben Nesina. If Dama ben Nesina arrived at, and practiced, this definition of parental honor on his own without the guidance of Torah knowledge, it would certainly be within reason that the Torah would require this level of observance.

R. Eliezer Hagadol was a person of enormous stature. Of him the Mishnah writes, “If all of the wise men of Israel were on one side of a balance scale and Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (Hagadol) were on the other, he would outweigh them all” (Avot, 2:12). One of R. Eliezer’s students was the famed Rabbi Akiva. The Zohar (quoted in Sefer Kav Hayashar, Chapter 67) writes that upon hearing of his teacher’s death, R Akiva rent his garments and wept and then then cried out: “Oh Heavens, oh Heavens! Tell the sun and the moon that an illumination greater than theirs was darkened.”

Like R. Akiva, R. Eliezer Hagadol’s other students were no doubt great and holy people in their own right. In addition, the Torah obligates a student to accept his Rebbi’s teaching even if he doesn’t understand it. This goes so far that chazal describe this as though his Rebbi teaches him something that is so clearly mistaken such as that his right hand is his left hand. One could only imagine the power of a teaching from Rebbi Eliezer Hagadol and how open students a spiritually advanced as his students were to absorb it. Nevertheless, had R. Eliezer merely taught them this lesson, on some level they would have had difficulty completely accepting it. That is why he had to advise them to observe the conduct of Dama ben Nesina. Evidently, this visit was able to get through to them in a way that Rabbi Eliezer Hagadol’s teachings alone could not.
We can learn from this the incredible impact seeing observing something in real life can have on someone.

There are numerous references in the Talmud to the fact that it is advisable to have regular contact with scholars of Torah. For example, in Avot 1:4 it is written, “Let your house be a meeting place for sages; sit in the dust of their feet.” The conventional meaning of these phrases is that through mere contact alone with Torah scholars, one acquires a bit of their knowledge and character refinement.
A possible application of this idea could be in relation to one’s approach to parenting. There is a common thought that the best way to teach is by example. Parents who desire to live by the Torah and to pass on its lifestyle and ideals to their children are constantly in a position where they need to guide and teach their children about the many laws, standards, and philosophies of the Torah as they apply to every aspect of human conduct. There is a strong tendency to verbalize these lessons and to describe how they apply to all the varied circumstances in which they crop up in life. We understand that there is a great advantage to teaching by example in that we practice what we preach. In this way, we show our children that we have fidelity to the ideals we are trying to pass on and that we truly embrace them in our own lives and in our conduct. What we learn from this Chazal is that there is another aspect in which this method of instruction is far superior. When our chil
dren observe something in real life it has a far great impact on them than anything we could possibly say to them. This is true even if our children have great respect for our wisdom and the love and admiration that students of the greatest Torah scholar of the generation have for their teacher. How much more so does this apply to the rest of us.

There is another lesson we can also learn from this commentary. The conundrum of R. Eliezer’s students concerned the precise definition of the Torah’s requirement to practice parental honor. Their question was likely something like this: at what exact point does the honor bestowed upon a parent become inadvisably excessive? The idea of an improper extreme can apply to virtually any mandate of the Torah. To cite one well-known example, although giving charity is highly praised in Talmudic literature, donating more 20% of one’s income is expressly forbidden. Similarly, there is also a “too much” when it comes to parental honor. Where is that line of demarcation?

The words of the Etz Yosef’s Commentary quoted above contain insights into this issue. One who forms his opinions based primarily on personal intuition cannot authoritatively define Torah parameters - not about the Fifth Commandment – nor about anything else. And this remains true even in the case of a Jew who is otherwise righteous and morally impeccable. The question of the Etz Yosef is predicated on the assumption that we could not learn the correct Torah approach based on the thinking of Dama ben Nesina because it was not based on Torah. However, he adds that the great Torah scholar as Rabbi Eliezer Hagadol surely received a tradition from his teachers on this matter Evidently, he only knew the true parameters of parental honor himself because he learned them from his own teachers of Torah. Although in circumstances where it would be necessary, someone of Rabbi Eleizer Hagadol’s stature could authoritatively define the correct balance required by the Torah in a given cir
cumstance, the assumption is that he did not opine on a matter like parental honor based on his common sense alone.
We can learn from here that the basic approach to developing our understanding of the correct and accurate guidelines of the Torah and achieving a true grasp of its dictates is rooted in mesorah. The Torah’s approach is to look to our tradition and that which we have learned from our teachers to inform our perspectives and not to create our own understanding. If this is true of such an eminent sage as Rabbi Eliezer Hagadol it most certainly applies to people of our generation which is so miniscule in our ability to to properly understand the wisdom of Hashem’s Torah in comparison.

It is a sad event when people formulate to institute significant changes to the time-honored interpersonal and halachic mores of Jewish tradition without support from the generation’s truly outstanding Torah scholars, who were themselves students of other truly great scholars. Those who initiate such changes are foolishly laying claim to a level of Torah expertise that even R. Eliezer Hagadol did not do.


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