In time for Father's Day, Rabbi Charles E. Simon offers an ethical dilemma to wrestle with: What happens when mitzvot come into conflict? Big mitzvot.
Rabbi Simon is the executive director of the Conservative movement's Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs. He was the one who alerted me to Birkat Hachamah, the Blessing of the Sun.
In the current issue of CJ, the Conservative movement's magazine, he writes about a friend who was put in the awkward position of being invited to a teacher and mentor's 100th birthday party. The party for this mentor -- who was like a second father to Rabbi Simon's friend -- "would be held on a Saturday afternoon at a
catering hall miles from any hotel," Rabbi Simon writes.
Attending would certainly force him to break Shabbat, and the friend told his teacher he didn't think he could make it. The teacher's answer was heartfelt, I'm sure, but reads like Jewish theater:
“Don’t worry about it. I understand," the teacher said. "Maybe you’ll be there
for my 200th.”
Then there was Rabbi Simon's colleague who struggled over whether to attend his father's second marriage -- a church wedding taking place on a Saturday.
"Should he attend the intermarriage ceremony to honor his
father, or should he refrain from showing his father the love and respect that
is the duty of every child in order to observe the Sabbath?" Rabbi Simon writes.
I finished the article, eager to find out what these grown sons decided to do about their troublemaking dads. How did they handle these cases of conflicting mitzvot?
But Rabbi Simon never said. So I emailed him, and asked him how the stories ended. For him, it was obvious:
"Of course he attended
the wedding," Rabbi Simon wrote me. "Honoring one's parents is one of the Big Ten. And of course he
attended the birthday -- it’s the same thing."Meditate on that until Father's Day.
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By Philip Aaberg
Release date: 1989-10-04 |
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