AUGUST 24 • 2023 | 47

declared, ‘The one who sins is the one who 
will die.’” Makkot 2b
In general, the Sages rejected the idea 
that children could be punished, even at 
the hands of Heaven, for the sins of their 
parents. As a result, they systematically 
reinterpreted every passage that gave the 
opposite impression, that children were 
indeed being punished for their parents’ 
sins. Their general position was this:
“
Are not children then to be put to death 
for the sins committed by their parents? 
Is it not written, ‘Visiting the iniquities of 
the fathers upon the children?’ — There 
the reference is to children who follow in 
their parents’ footsteps [literally ‘seize their 
parents’ deeds in their hands,’ i.e., com-
mit the same sins themselves].” Brachot 
7a, Sanhedrin 27b
Specifically, they explained biblical epi-
sodes in which children were punished 
along with their parents by saying that in 
these cases the children “had the power 
to protest/prevent their parents from sin-
ning, but they failed to do so.” (Sanhedrin 
27b; Yalkut Shimoni, I:290) 
As Maimonides says, whoever has the 
power of preventing someone from com-
mitting a sin but does not do so, he is 
seized (i.e., punished, held responsible) for 
that sin. 

OUR SCOPE OF RESPONSIBILITY
Did, then, the idea of individual responsi-
bility come late to Judaism, as some schol-
ars argue? This is highly unlikely. During 
the rebellion of Korach, when God threat-
ened to destroy the people, Moses said, 
“Shall one man sin and will You be angry 
with the whole congregation?” (Num. 
16:22) 
 When people began dying after King 
David had sinned by instituting a census, 
he prayed to God: “I have sinned. I, the 
shepherd, have done wrong. These are 
but sheep. What have they done? Let Your 
hand fall on me and my family.” (II Sam. 
24:17) The principle of individual respon-
sibility is fundamental to Judaism, as it was 
to other cultures in the ancient Near East. 
Rather, what is at stake is the deep 
understanding of the scope of responsibil-
ity we bear if we take seriously our roles as 
parents, neighbors, townspeople, citizens 
and children of the covenant. Judicially, 

only the criminal is responsible for his 
crime. But, implies the Torah, we are also 
our brother’s keeper. We share collective 
responsibility for the moral and spiritual 
health of society. “
All Israel,” said the Sages, 
“are responsible for one another.” 
Legal responsibility is one thing, and 
relatively easy to define. But moral respon-
sibility is something altogether larger, if 
necessarily more vague. “Let a person not 
say, ‘I have not sinned, and if someone else 
commits a sin, that is a matter between 
him and God.’ This is contrary to the 
Torah,” writes Maimonides in the Sefer 
ha-Mitzvot. 
This is particularly so when it comes 
to the relationship between parents and 
children. Abraham was chosen, says the 
Torah, solely so that “he will instruct his 
children and his household after him to 
keep the way of the Lord by doing what is 
right and just.” (Gen. 18:19) The duty of 
parents to teach their children is funda-
mental to Judaism. It appears in both the 
first two paragraphs of the Shema, as well 
as the various passages cited in the “Four 
Sons” section of the Haggadah. 
Maimonides counts as one of the gravest 
of all sins — so serious that God does not 
give us an opportunity to repent — “one 
who sees his son falling into bad ways and 
does not stop him.” The reason, he says, is 
that “since his son is under his authority, 
had he stopped him, the son would have 
desisted.” Therefore, it is accounted to the 
father as if he had actively caused his son 
to sin. 

THE GENERATIONS TO COME
If so, then we begin to hear the challenging 
truth in the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy. 
To be sure, we are not legally responsible 
for the sins of either our parents or our 
children. But in a deeper, more amorphous 
sense, what we do and how we live do have 
an effect on the future to the third and 
fourth generation.
Rarely has that effect been more dev-
astatingly described than in recent books 
by two of America’s most insightful social 
critics: Charles Murray of the American 
Enterprise Institute and Robert Putnam 
of Harvard. Notwithstanding their vastly 
different approaches to politics, Murray 
in Coming Apart and Putnam in Our 

Kids have issued essentially the same 
prophetic warning of a social catastrophe 
in the making. For Putnam, “the American 
dream” is “in crisis.” For Murray, the divi-
sion of the United States into two classes 
with ever decreasing mobility between 
them “will end what has made America 
America.”
Their argument is roughly this, that at 
a certain point, in the late 1950s or early 
1960s, a whole series of institutions and 
moral codes began to dissolve. Marriage 
was devalued. Families began to fracture. 
More and more children grew up without 
stable association with their biological par-
ents. New forms of child poverty began to 
appear, as well as social dysfunctions such 
as drug and alcohol abuse, teenage preg-
nancies, and crime and unemployment 
in low-income areas. Over time, an upper 
class pulled back from the brink, and is 
now intensively preparing its children for 
high achievement, while on the other side 
of the tracks, children are growing up with 
little hope for educational, social and occu-
pational success. The American Dream of 
opportunity for all is wearing thin.
What makes this development so tragic 
is that, for a moment, people forgot the 
biblical truth that what we do does not 
affect us alone. It will affect our children 
to the third and fourth generation. Even 
the greatest libertarian of modern times, 
John Stuart Mill, was emphatic on the 
responsibilities of parenthood. He wrote: 
“The fact itself, of causing the existence of 
a human being, is one of the most respon-
sible actions in the range of human life. To 
undertake this responsibility — to bestow 
a life which may be either a curse or a 
blessing — unless the being on whom it is 
to be bestowed will have at least the ordi-
nary chances of a desirable existence, is a 
crime against that being.”
If we fail to honor our responsibilities as 
parents, then — though no law will hold 
us responsible — society’s children will 
pay the price. They will suffer because of 
our sins. 

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020) was a 

global religious leader, philosopher, the author of 

more than 25 books and moral voice for our time. His 

series of essays on the weekly Torah portion, enti-

tled “Covenant & Conversation” will continue to be 

shared and distributed around the world. 

