Honoring Your Parents
A central resource for the Torah mitzvah of honoring your father and mother — what it asks, why it can be difficult, and practical guidance for living it.
What is Kibbud Av Va'em?
Kibbud Av Va'em — honoring one's father and mother — is one of the Torah's central commandments. On the surface it seems simple: treat your parents well.
Chazal divide the mitzvah into two:
The ways we actively honor and care for our parents.
- Feeding, clothing, and helping them
- Showing up when they need us
- Speaking to them with warmth
The way we revere them.
- Not sitting in their place
- Not contradicting them harshly
- Not calling them by their first name
Hear from the Rabbi
This is a mitzvah most of us can explain in one sentence and still find genuinely hard to live. Family history, old hurt, distance, guilt — none of that disappears because the Torah commands us. These conversations don't pretend otherwise. Put one on during the drive or the dishes; hearing it talked through honestly tends to land differently than reading about it.
The questions people actually arrive with.
Almost nobody comes to this topic in general. People come with one specific question they have been carrying, sometimes for years, and often one they'd rather not say out loud. These are the ones that come up most.
- 01What do I owe my parents now that I'm an adult?
- 02What if our relationship is strained?
- 03What if my parents gave me very little?
- 04What if they hurt me?
- 05What if they live far away?
- 06How do I balance honoring my parents with my own family?
Submit your question to Rabbi Levy.
Bring the shailah you are actually carrying — the one an article cannot answer. Rabbi Levy's office reads every message and responds by email.
The 30 Day Challenge
Thirty days. One halacha, one small action, and one honest question, delivered to your inbox each morning. Not a course and not a reading list — a month of doing one small thing at a time, in a mitzvah where the doing is the whole point.
It isn't open yet. Leave your name and email and we'll tell you the day it starts.
Prefer a page of its own? See the 30 Day Challenge