Page 210 - EFI-RAV ZILBERSTIN_VOL 8.EFI-RAV ZILBERSTIN_VOL 8.1A

Pg: 210 - 7-Back 21-10-31

when the father chooses to forgo honor and offense, which amounts
to agreeing to forgive embarrassment but is something that he has
no active, personal interest or desire to do. To explain further: Rav
Huna wanted to test his son so he presented him with a challenge in
order to gauge his response. He had a personal interest in forgoing
any possible disgrace, for he would otherwise not have been able
to gain insight into his son’s character and train him in the trait of
patience. His advance forgiveness was therefore something that he
personally desired. On the other hand, while Rava certainly forgave
the slight of the disciples’ failure to rise even slightly for him, this did
not extend beyond pardoning their offense; he had no reason to have
desired such behavior on their part and he merely forgave their lapse.
Such forgoing is ineffective.

Similarly, it can sometimes happen that a father will ask his son to
perform surgery on him because the son is an expert physician. Such
forgiveness is effective because the father has a personal interest in
doing so and is motivated by his desire that his son should injure him
in this manner. In such a situation the son is doing nothing wrong.
Under different circumstances the son might let his father’s blood
and injure him without the father having any particular desire that
his son do this, though he forgives him. This is something the son
should not do to begin with.

Let us now return to our topic: were the father to come and ask
the therapist to provide guidance to his son and restore harmonious
relations between them and if the only way the therapist had of do-
ing so was by getting the son to imagine getting angry at his father
and the father was explicitly asking that this be done so that his son
should become close to him and he should become close to his son, it
might be possible to permit it. However, so long as the father does not
request that this be done and is not seeking this particular method
of treatment, there is concern that the son will be transgressing the
mitzvah of honoring parents. [In a difficult situation a Torah scholar’s
guidance should be sought because it is possible that in the case of
a minor who is under bar mitzvah age, it is only forbidden to have
him transgress a negative commandment – as the Mishnah Berurah

194 1 Medical-Halachic Responsa of Rav Zilberstein