To honor one's parents I think involves two things obeying and walking in their ways.
To obey nowadays does not sound so good but it is in accord with nature. When we are born we understand soon to obey our parents and their sense of reason because we understand that they know better than us before our own sense of reason is full.
But to walk in the ways of one's parents is made hard by the fact that many parents are jerks.
How would I even begin to imagine how to walk in my parent's ways? Volunteer for the U.S. Air Force? Go to the California Institute of Technology {Cal Tech}? Hard to conceive of that now. It is more so complicated by the need to learn Gemara which I could only have done in N.Y. Litvak Yeshivas like the Mir or Shar Yashuv.
[Not to mention that to marry a nice Jewish girl was among their priorities, and it is hard to figure out how that might have happened in any kind of context outside of the Mir. I mean, I knew Paula [Hebrew name Lea] in California in high school, but for her to make up her mind to come after me was obviously dependent on the fact that I was in an authentic Litvak yeshiva. That is clearly what sparked her interest in me in the first place.
I assume these and similar kinds of questions attend on anyone who seriously contemplates the question how to go about כיבוד אב ואם honor of one's father and mother?
The simplest thing is when what one's parents say corresponds to objective morality and objective truth which certainly was the case for me.
To obey nowadays does not sound so good but it is in accord with nature. When we are born we understand soon to obey our parents and their sense of reason because we understand that they know better than us before our own sense of reason is full.
But to walk in the ways of one's parents is made hard by the fact that many parents are jerks.
How would I even begin to imagine how to walk in my parent's ways? Volunteer for the U.S. Air Force? Go to the California Institute of Technology {Cal Tech}? Hard to conceive of that now. It is more so complicated by the need to learn Gemara which I could only have done in N.Y. Litvak Yeshivas like the Mir or Shar Yashuv.
[Not to mention that to marry a nice Jewish girl was among their priorities, and it is hard to figure out how that might have happened in any kind of context outside of the Mir. I mean, I knew Paula [Hebrew name Lea] in California in high school, but for her to make up her mind to come after me was obviously dependent on the fact that I was in an authentic Litvak yeshiva. That is clearly what sparked her interest in me in the first place.
I assume these and similar kinds of questions attend on anyone who seriously contemplates the question how to go about כיבוד אב ואם honor of one's father and mother?
The simplest thing is when what one's parents say corresponds to objective morality and objective truth which certainly was the case for me.
