Read below the following texts with your family members and be ready to discuss your thoughts on the following questions:
1. Which of the texts speak to you the most? How so?
2. There are no commands to show respect for children. Why, then, are there commands to show respect for the elderly?
3. Do you think American culture respects the elderly in the way these texts suggest? How has the COVID-19 affected the status of elderly Americans?
4. What's going on in text #5? Isn't what you do more important than what you say?
You shall rise before the aged, and show deference to the old; you shall fear your God: I am Adonai.
Do not cast me off in old age; when my strength fails, do not forsake me!
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi further advised: And be careful to continue to respect an elder who has forgotten their Torah knowledge due to circumstances beyond their control.
As we say: Both the tablets of the Ten Commandments, and the broken tablets, were placed in the Ark of the Covenant when the Israelites journeyed to the Promised Land..
A man may feed his father nice, fat chickens and merit punishment (=Gehinom), and another may put his father to work treading a mill, and merit reward (=Gan Eden).
How is it possible to feed his father nice, fat chickens and still merit punishment? There was a man who used to feed his father nice, fat chickens. Once the father said to him: "My son, where did you get these?" He answered: "Old man, shut up and eat, just as dogs shut up when they eat." Such a man feeds his father nice, fat chickens, but merits punishment.
How is it possible for a man to put his father to work in the mill, and still merit reward? There was a man who worked in a mill. The king ordered that the mill workers be brought to work for him. Said the man to his father: "Father, you stay here and work in the mill in my place, and I will go to work for the king. For if insults come to the workers, I prefer that they fall on me and not you. Should beatings come, let them beat me and not you." Such a man merits reward.
- YT Kiddushin 1:7
“A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (New York: Macmillan, 1967), p.72.
