The Impossible Mitzvah -- A Belated Sermon for Mother's Day

Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway was bet that he could not write a novel in just six words. He wrote, “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”  Larry Smith, a journalist, published a book called, OY, Only Six? Why not More? Six Word Memoirs on Jewish Life.”  In that book, which contains 360 personal takes on Jewish life, no subject is more popular than Mom. Here are five six word statements that describe the Jewish mother: —

Olivia Bercow, age 21, Miami Beach, about her mother Julie Bercow                                        

You met a boy? Jewish , right?

 Bob Wolf,  age 62, Chappaqua, N.Y., about his mother Annette Wolf

She’s older. Now I’m the worrier.

Edgar Weinstock,  age 71, Brooklyn, about his mother Libby Weinstock

You shtopt my soul with character.

Karyn Gershon, 51, Wilmette, Ill., about her mother Gloria Grossman

Unconditional love but hates my outfit.

 Ari VanderWalde, age  35, Los Angeles, about his mother Joan VanderWalde

Strong, independent rethinker of tuna casserole.

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day. Of course, every day should be "Mother’s Day". As we know, the Fifth Commandment states that we should “Honor our Father and our Mother”. This commandment is also found in this week’s Torah portion, as part of what is called the “Holiness Code”. Here it states that we should “revere” our Mother and Father. The Talmud takes up the question of the meaning of honoring and revering one’s mother.  As we know meanings are often up to interpretations. For example, Rabbi Tarfon, who lived in the period just following the destruction of the Second Temple, thought he was an exemplary son.  Whenever his mother wished to get into her bed, Rabbi Tarfon would get on his hands and knees and allow his mother to step onto his back to climb into bed. Just imagine! Whenever she wished to get out of bed, he would get on his hands and knees and let her use his back as a step down. Rabbi Tarfon boasted to his colleagues at the House of Study about the way he honored his mother. His fellows were not impressed. "You have not yet reached the honor due her," they said. "Has she thrown her money into the sea without your getting angry at her?" Others said to him, "If you had done a thousand times more for her, you still would not have done half the honor due her that the Torah prescribes."

In other words, fulfilling this commandment to honor ones mother is a very tall order and maybe even impossible to do. Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States in 2000, writes about the time in his life when he was quite certain he had accomplished the impossible in this poem, “The Lanyard”.  One day, writes the poet, he comes by accident across a word in the dictionary – “Lanyard” --

.......... No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly-
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-clothes on my forehead,
and then led me out into the air light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift - not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-toned lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Billy Collins is saying that, it is a cliché that you can never repay your mother, a “worn truth” as he calls it. As we say in “Jewish”, there’s no “chiddush” there, no new insight or thought. Your mother gave birth to you, fed you, cleaned up after you, took care of you when you were sick, protected you, clothed you, educated you. Of course you can never repay her! Yet, when, as a boy he gave his mother the arts and crafts project he made at camp, he was as certain that he had, in fact, accomplished the impossible task, fulfilled the awesome mitzvah, of honoring his mother. Only as an adult, looking back, could he understand the naiveté and innocence of his thinking. That insight is his small gift to his mother.

We all, like the sages teach, fall short of fulfilling the Biblical commandment to honor our mothers. Yet Maimonides warns that parents should not be overly demanding of their children in this respect.  A mother, he writes, should just shut her eyes and hold her peace if her child fails to honor her adequately.

It comes to a matter of balance. Children have the duty to be respectful to their parents and honor them each and every day, in whatever way they are able. Parents, in turn, should temper their disappointment should what they consider the proper show of love and respect not materialize. The most important thing is to strive for harmonious relations between a mother and her children.

Shabbat Shalom