This week’s portion of the Torah we read about “If a Cohen’s (Priest’s) daughter has an adulterous affair, she defamed her father’s name, she should be put to death by burning”(21;9). We learn from Rav Henoch Leibowitz z”l who quotes the mainstream commentary Rashi, as he explains the verse above, she defamed and embarrassed her father’s honor, people would say on him ‘curse is the person who gave birth and curse is the person who raised such an individual’.
As we know, it was King David who laid the blueprints for the Bet Hamikdash (Temple). However, it was under King Solomon’s leadership that it was built. When King Solomon was married to the daughter of Pharaoh, one of his many wives, on the day of the inauguration of the long-awaited Temple, she caused him to oversleep. The entire nation was waiting for their King on this momentous occasion to lead the ceremony, not knowing that he was out of commission. Apparently, his mother, Batsheva, had a grasp on what was taking place. She had a sixth sense that mothers possess which led to her uneasy feeling. Mothers have a certain intuition about their children. (If I sneeze, my mother, who happened to be on the other side of town, will call me up and demand that I should put on my sweater.)
So Batsheva storms the King’s bedroom with the heel of her shoe in hand. She hits her son, King Solomon, scolding him ‘What are you doing? People would say I’m at fault for not raising you properly. They wouldn’t blame your father because he was a tzaddik. If you’re a rasha, they’ll blame me that I was the cause of your actions’. Perhaps we can deduce from the words of Batsheva. If the people did not believe David was a tzaddik, they would blame him for Solomon’s actions, even though David had been dead many years before the inauguration took place. Regardless, apparently the people would say that David did not give Solomon the proper education and this is the cause of his misstep. But the fact that David was a tzaddik, the blame would fall on his mother. The Gemarah deduces from what happens next during the inauguration ceremony; that whatever wrong King David did, G-d forgave him. This is evident from the mysteriously locked Temple doors, which would not open. Every effort was made by Shlomo and the sages to open the Temple, but it was to no avail, until Shlomo cried out to G-d ‘do it for the sake of my father, King David.’ With this cry, the doors opened.
Rav Leibowitz asks, why would anybody blame David or Batsheva for their son’s wrongdoings? At what point does an individual take responsibility for his own actions? Don’t you think at this stage of his life, he can make his own decisions? After all, he runs a kingdom; the Israelites at this juncture were considered a super power. We have to say this is human nature. People always link an individual’s negative and positive attributes to one’s parents. Even though one can argue that Shlomo didn’t do anything maliciously, David and Batsheva still would have felt slighted by their son’s actions, which would have been magnified in peoples’ eyes and would cause them embarrassment.
I know of an individual who was seeing a girl whom he was interested in marrying. Apparently, as the relationship got closer to the very serious state, it was disclosed that she had a relationship with a non-Jew. This was an issue; considering this person was a Cohen who cannot marry anyone who had such a relationship, he ended the relationship rationalizing, what would my ancestors say ‘you broke the family chain of Cohanim that goes back three thousand years because you’re in love’. This individual took tremendous pride of his Cohen status and of his family tradition. Today, he is performing his Cohen duties in synagogue along with his sons right by him.
Rav Leibowitz points out that Batsheva was more concerned in adding a sense of responsibility to Shlomo, than to her own personal pride. If one feels he is alone in sinning, he should think again. Many of his ancestors will be affected.
We conclude that any of our wrongdoings could be a violation of ‘honoring your father and your mother’ because it causes people to look negatively at our parents. Perhaps, if we are tempted to violate any laws, we should think twice because our parents’ honor is at stake.