Parshas Kedoshim 5760 Now I Know the World Was Made for Me
By Rabbi Joshua (universally known as The Hoffer) Hoffman
 
 As mentioned in our netvort to this parsha last year, the midrash (Vayikra Rabbah, 24) says that parshas Kedoshim presents us with a restatement of the Ten Commandments, or the Decalogue, albeit with some significant divergences from the first version. For example, in parshas Yisro, we are told to honor our parents, and in parshas Kedoshim we are told to fear them. In both cases, however, the commandment regarding parents is juxtaposed to a command to observe Shabbos. Apparently, there is some connection between Shabbos observance and filio-piety. Our remarks will be directed toward discovering what that connection may be.
 
 The author of the medieval work Sefer HaChinuch writes that the rationale behind the obligation to honor one's parents is gratitude to them for having brought him into this world and taken care of his needs as he was growing up. Rabbi Chaim Elazari, z'l, of Canton, Ohio, points out that this rationale is fine for someone who is happy with his life situation. Many people, however, are not happy with their station in life, and often feel that perhaps it would have be better had they not been born. For example, Mark Twain, who underwent many hardships in his life, wrote in his autobiography that his aunt once saved him from drowning, and he never forgave her for it! Moreover, many people feel, rightly or wrongly, that their parents were in some way inadequate for their needs, and that they were therefore not given the opportunities in life that they should have received. How can we expect such people to have a feeling of gratitude to their parents for bringing them into the world? It is for this reason, writes Rabbi Elazari, that the obligation to observe Shabbos is mentioned immediately before the obligations to honor and fear one's parents. Observance of Shabbos is grounded in the belief that God created the world. Since God is good, and desires to benefit His creations, the world He created is good, and, therefore, a person needs to be grateful to his parents for bringing him into that world. While this explanation is certainly reasonable, I would like to offer a somewhat modified version of it to explain the connection between Shabbos observance and the obligations we have toward our parents. 
  
    The Mishnah in Sanhedrin tells us that man was created as a single individual to teach us that though God creates each individual in the form of the original Adam, no two people are exactly alike. Therefore, concludes the Mishnah, everyone is obligated to say that the world was created for him. The idea being expressed here is that every person has a distinct mission in life that only he can fulfill, and so, in a sense, the word really was created for him, so that he can fulfill that mission. This perspective gives added meaning to our observance of Shabbos. When we acknowledge God as the Creator of the universe, we are also saying that He created our particular world, in which we must accomplish our particular mission, a mission that no one else at any time in history could have fulfilled. Once a person realizes and accepts this, he will be grateful to his parents for having brought him into this world. He will also understand that those parents are precisely the parents he needed to raise him and prepare him to fulfill his unique task in life. Hence, he will not feel that he was deprived of any opportunities that he needed because his parents were not the kind of people he would have liked to have been born to. With this perspective in mind, we can readily understand why the verses commanding us to honor and fear our parents are preceded by a command to observe the Shabbos and thereby recognize that God created the world, or, more properly, our specific world.
 
   Our understanding of the roles played by our parents in our lives will help explain an otherwise difficult opinion expressed by Rabbi Avraham Danzig in his halachic compendium, Chayei Adam. Rabbi Danzig writes that, as part of the obligation of honoring one's parents, a person must consider his parents to be great, honorable people, even if nobody else feels that way about them. How can one be obligated to believe something about his parent that is not acknowledged by anyone else? Must he then deny reality? In light or our explanation, however, this ruling makes perfect sense, because, in terms of the person's mission in life, his parents really are the greatest people in the world, because only they can provide him with the capacity to fulfill that mission. As Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, z'l, once put it, the obligation to honor one's parents entails viewing one's aging father or mother, residing in a nursing home and confined to a bed, unable to care for the most basic of bodily needs, as responsible for everything he ever accomplished. God, as the Creator of our personal world, provides each of us with the parents we need to prepare us for our role in that world.