By Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback
This week’s Torah portion, Yitro, includes the Ten Commandments. Commandment number five is: “Honor your father and your mother that you may long endure on the land that the ETERNAL your God is assigning to you.” (Exodus 20:12) It’s the only one that mentions the reward for its observance within it and it has long been considered a mitzvah of the utmost importance.
In a later text from our tradition, from the Mishna, Bava Metzia 2:11, we learn how our teachers are likened to our parents. The mishna teaches us that our parents bring us into the world and are thus deserving of our everlasting respect. Our teachers, however, bring us לְחַיֵּי הָעוֹלָם הַבָּא (to life in the world to come), and are therefore deserving of an extra measure of kavod (respect).
For most of us, our parents are our most influential teachers and so they deserve all the respect in the world but the point of the text is to remind us of just how important and how essential our teachers are in helping us to navigate this world successfully and, whatever it might mean, the world to come as well.
This week we accompanied our Founding Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin to his final resting place. The kavod we show our Rabbis and teachers is an acknowledgement of how deeply they have influenced us and how their lessons continue to shape the way we experience the world and guide us day by day. As we would mourn a parent who has given us life, we mourn a teacher who has helped us find meaning in our lives.
May our Rabbi’s memory forever be for a blessing and may the Torah he shared, the kindness he displayed, and the community he nurtured continue to sustain us in the years to come.
