Honor of parents goes on even when they have left this world. At least you can see that with Yonadav ben Recab. He was a friend of Yehu and he helped Yehu in wiping out the house of Ahab--which was at the time the son of Ahab and Ahaziahu the king of Judah. Ahazia was the grandson of Jehoshaphat.
So when Jeremiah came to his descendants and asked them to drink wine that was a long time after he was gone--and still they listening to their great grandfather rather than to a prophet. --and they were praised for that and received an astounding promise from God for that.
So just for the record I wanted to state that my parents raised me in a more or less secular fashion. My brothers and I went to public school. [Though public school in those days was completely different than nowadays. Nowadays there is no question they would have found some private school at all and any cost.] Torah was considered very important in our family but not to make a public show out of. Nor to make money off of it.
The values of Torah were more or less summed up in these few simple instructions: Be a Mensch. [That is always to the right and moral thing.] Marry a Nice Jewish Girl.
Though Torah was encouraged, my decision to go to yeshiva was frowned upon, because they thought that yeshiva's even the best of them do really represent accurately what Torah is about. They thought in spite of the hype, that yeshivas are there to make money.
This leaves me now as it did then in a kind of quandary. For the great Litvak yeshivas I went to were clearly learning Torah for its own sake--that is Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY. But I never succeeded in convincing them of that fact. And subsequent events showed that in fact they probably saw more clearly than me. Still it is hard for me to imagine how I ever could have gotten into authentic Torah with being at least for some time in an authentic Litvak Yeshiva.
So when Jeremiah came to his descendants and asked them to drink wine that was a long time after he was gone--and still they listening to their great grandfather rather than to a prophet. --and they were praised for that and received an astounding promise from God for that.
So just for the record I wanted to state that my parents raised me in a more or less secular fashion. My brothers and I went to public school. [Though public school in those days was completely different than nowadays. Nowadays there is no question they would have found some private school at all and any cost.] Torah was considered very important in our family but not to make a public show out of. Nor to make money off of it.
The values of Torah were more or less summed up in these few simple instructions: Be a Mensch. [That is always to the right and moral thing.] Marry a Nice Jewish Girl.
Though Torah was encouraged, my decision to go to yeshiva was frowned upon, because they thought that yeshiva's even the best of them do really represent accurately what Torah is about. They thought in spite of the hype, that yeshivas are there to make money.
This leaves me now as it did then in a kind of quandary. For the great Litvak yeshivas I went to were clearly learning Torah for its own sake--that is Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY. But I never succeeded in convincing them of that fact. And subsequent events showed that in fact they probably saw more clearly than me. Still it is hard for me to imagine how I ever could have gotten into authentic Torah with being at least for some time in an authentic Litvak Yeshiva.
