GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER

QUESTION:

The Talmud mentions the duties of a father to a son (first chapter of Kiddushin) and the duties of a son towards a father. The clearest enumeration of these duties are in the Tosefta to the first chapter of Kiddushin. The question asked is the following: Do these duties, or similar duties, apply also from the son to the grandfather and from the grandfather to the son? (Asked by D. B., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.)

ANSWER:

IT IS NOT definitely fixed in the law that the respective duties of father to son and son to father apply also between grandson and grandfather. This indeterminacy is noticeable in the careful phrasing of Isserles in his notes to the Shulchan Aruch, Yore Deah 240:24. He says: “Some say that the duties do not apply from grandson to grandfather but I do not agree with this opinion, except insofar as it is a man’s duty to honor his father more than his grandfather.”

The “some say” refers to a great scholar who lived in Italy a century before Isserles, namely, Joseph Colon (the Maharik) in his responsa, Root 30:2. The Maharik says that there is no such duty as honor due from the grandson to the grandfather; in fact, since a grandson may testify in court in a case involving his grandfather (which he may not do in a case involving his father), that proves that they are substantially not really kin, at least insofar as the duty to do honor is involved. As for the fact (he continues) that the grandson may say Kaddish for his grandfather, that proves very little since a man may say Kaddish for anyone who is dead. But Isserles in his own responsa (# 118) says that the grandson says Kaddish for his grandfather but, of course, the honor due to his father comes first; and in the responsum Isserles uses the same argument that you used to me when we spoke on this matter, that since the son takes his father’s place, he also therefore must honor his father’s father.

All of this indicates that just as a son has duties towards his father, so we may say a grandson has duties to his grandfather. But the real question is: Is this dutifulness reciprocal? In other words, does the grandfather have duties to the grandson as the father has to his son? The general tendency of the law is to answer this question in the affirmative. Joel Sirkes (the Bach) to the Tur (same reference) takes the point of view of Isserles, that the duties are reciprocal. His argument is as follows: In Jacob’s dream, God Himself says, “I am the God of your father Abraham” (but Abraham was Jacob’s grandfather), and Jacob himself, in his last days in Egypt, speaks of God “of my fathers Abraham and Isaac” (Genesis 28:13 and 48:15). So God Himself and Jacob, too, refer to a grandfather (Abraham) as “father.” Then Sirkes says that since the Talmud says that a grandfather must teach his grandson Torah (if the father dies or neglects his duty) it is inconceivable that the duty should not be reciprocal, and that the son is in duty bound to honor the grandfather. What the Bach refers to is the discussion in Kiddushin 30a on the verse in Deuteronomy 4:9: “Thou shalt teach them to thy sons and thy grandsons.” There the Talmud discusses the grandfather teaching the grandson (in the case of a certain scholar named Zebulon, son of Dan). A further reference with the same tendency is in Shevus Yaacov (Jacob Reischer of Metz, 18th century) II, #94.

We may sum up as follows: that as to the relationship between grandson and grandfather, the law is not as sharply defined as in the case of the mutual duties between father and son. But the tendency of the law is that these mutual duties do indeed carry over the two-generation gap.