Being Overly Burdensome
’My Sabbaths Shall You Observe’
(Yevamos 6a)
The Gemara derives from the following verse that one must refuse a parent’s request to desecrate Shabbos: “Each man, your mother and father shall you fear and my Sabbaths shall you observe – I am Hashem, your G-d” (Vayikra 19:3).
The Gemara suggests that we learn from this verse that positive commandments do not override prohibitions. It rejects this suggestion, however, explaining answers that honoring one’s parents is a hechsher mitzvah,a preparation for a mitzvah.
How so? The Rashba(Yevamos 6a)explains that if a father commands his son to drive a wagon to bring him food, the son does not fulfill a mitzvah when he starts driving the wagon. He only fulfills a mitzvah when he gives his father the food he attained. Only the food benefits his father, not the driving. The fact, therefore, that a person cannot drive on Shabbos to bring his father food does not prove that positive commandments never override negative ones since the person is fulfilling no mitzvah while driving.
Benefiting Our Parents
We have now apparently learned something new: that the mitzvah of honoring one’s parents entails providing them with a benefit. To prove this point, the Rashba cites the Gemara (Kiddushin 31b) which states, “How do we honor our parents? By feeding and dressing them.” In other words, the real mitzvah of kibud av va’eim is not to obey one’s parents but to give them something when they ask for it.
What if they derive no benefit from the item they’ve asked for? Must a child obey a parent if the parent, for example, tells him where to live or what furniture to buy? Apparently not, according to the Rashba.
Marriage Without Parental Consent
The Maharik rules that a child need not obey if his parent forbids him to marry a certain individual. He cites the Rashba, among others, in support of this view. Since the parent receives no benefit from whom his child marries, there is no mitzvah of kibbud av v’eim to obey. The Rema rules accordingly (Y.D. 240:25).
The Vilna Gaon (ibid), however, contends that the Rashba cannot be used in support of this view. The Rashba, he argues, did not mean that there is no mitzvah at all to obey a parent when the parent doesn’t receive a benefit. He only meant that the essence of kibbud av v’eim is to provide parents with benefits. That doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t obey them in other cases as well. In fact, one should.
Causing Anguish to Our Parents
The ChazonIsh (E.H. 148:32a) supports the Gaon’s contention. He cites several proofs that a person must obey his parents even if they receive no tangible benefit. For example, a person may not contradict his parents – even though contradicting them or not contradicting them gives them no tangible benefit (Kiddushin 31b). Why should marrying against their will be any different than contradicting them, asks the Chazon Ish. From the Gemara it seems that anything that causes anguish to a parent is forbidden. Naturally, marring against one’s parents’ desires causes anguish.
No proof to the contrary can be brought from the Rashba. When a father commands his child to drive to bring him food, the driving itself is meaningless to the father. He only cares about the food. That’s why the Rashba writes that driving is only a hech’sher mitzvah in this case, not a mitzvah itself. But when a parent tells his child not to marry a particular individual, he very much cares whether his child then goes ahead and marries her or not.