Ar t By Step han ie Sh ie l dhouse OBSERVATIONS `Honor Thy Son And Thy Daughter' In suggesting an additional commandment, the author explains that children, like parents, must be honored RABBI HAROLD M. SCHULWEIS Special to The Jewish News 50 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1988 T he Sages claimed that we, root and branch, were all present at the foot of Sinai. We all "saw the thunder" and "heard the lightning," and we all ac- cepted the Ten Words. The revelation was public, offered vertically to those physically present and for the unborn generations. If I knew then what I now know, I would have argued for an additional commandment to accompany the Fifth Com- mandment. It would have read, "Honor thy son and thy daughter that thy days and theirs be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giv- eth thee." Honoring parents is not an innate disposition of children. Were it instinctual, no com- mandment to honor parents would be required. Children need to be instructed in this matter. They cannot be com- manded to love parents, for love cannot be legislated, not even love of oneself. But laws, conventions, etiquette, com- mands may instruct children behaviorally and attitudi- nally. As in our tradition, children may be told not to sit in the parental chairs around the family table, or to contradict parents in public. They may be instructed to avoid quar- rels, to speak softly, to sus- tain parents in their waning years with food and shelter — those are proscriptive pre- scriptions that can be followed. Children may be taught that with age omnipotent and omniscient parents grow weaker, their gait and speech grow slower, their reten- tiveness loses its firm hold. But the honor given parents is not contingent upon their being wise or powerful or good. lb be respected, parents need not be lovable. As par- ents grow older and more forgetful, children may find special meaning in the rab- binic legend that the broken tablets of the law were not cast aside but were placed carefully side by side with the whole tablets of the law in the Ark of Holiness. Age chips away at the whole tablets of memory and strength. But loss of lucidity, proneness to error, fragility of mind and body are no excuses for loss of honor. Brokenness belongs in the precincts of the sacred. There is equally no instinc- tive disposition in parents to respect their children. There- fore the proposed imperative for honoring the child. NOr can parents be ordered to love their children. For just as parents are not all lovable, not all children are lovable. But neither need be respected because of their lovability. Like parents, children must be honored. They must not be shouted at, threatened, in- timidated, punished at the drop of a word, penalized without reason or explana- tion. Ages ago the Sages, on Halachic moral grounds, pro- hibited disciplining a child with corporal punishment after becoming a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. For such punish- ment would likely provoke the grown child and may lead him to strike at the parent, and that would cause the child to violate the Fifth Command- ment. The celebration of the Bar or Bat Mitzvah is of a child who enters adult legal responsibility. lb provoke him or her would be to place a "stumbling block before the blind."