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Positive Mitzvah 

41

Honour your father and mother

 

 “Honour you father and mother” Shmos 20:12

What is considered honour?

To provide food, drink and clothing using the father’s money.

If the father has no money and the son does, then the son must sustain his father according to his means.

Attend to him the way a servant attends to his master. Honour him even after his death.

 

What if his father says to him “fetch me some water” yet there is another mitzvah to do?

If it is not possible that the other Mitzvah can be done by another then he may do that other Mitzvah.

What would happen if his father asks him to commit a sin, even if only according to the Sages?

He must not listen to him as they are both obligated to honour God.

 

Honouring a father takes precedence to honouring a mother because he and his mother are obligated to honour his father.

He who makes light of honouring his father and mother contravenes this positive Mitzvah unless he does so with their knowledge and consent.

Also a woman is obligated with this but if her husband prevents her then she is exempt.  

 

This applies in every places at all times.

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