Honor and Revere Parents: Why Not Love?

Honor (kabed) your father and your mother; that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God gives you.
--Shmos 20:12

You shall revere (tiro'u) every man his mother, and his father, and keep my Sabbaths; I am the Lord your God.
--Vayikra 19:3

My friend, Reb Yaakov Freedman, asked me: We are commanded to honor and revere our parents. Why are we not commanded to love them?

The Rambam (She'elos u'Teshuvos, #448) says, ahava is included in honoring and revering (kibud and mora) for parents. Rambam does not say it is a chiyuv or part of the mitzvah, only that it is a logical outgrowth i.e. in the form of his rhetorical question: Is it possible to honor, fear and listen to someone he does not love?

The Zohar (Ki Setze 281a), quoted by the Sefer Haredim (Ch. 9), similarly, says that love is included in the mitzvah to honor parents. (Credit to R. Binyamin Zeingold for the reference in S. Haredim).

If honor and reverence assume love, why do we have a separate mitzvah, v'ahavta es Hashem Elokecha, to love Hashem? It seems a separate mitzvah is needed for love when it comes to Hashem. Why not have a separate mitzvah to love parents?

Tzorikh iyun - This requires further study.

Updated: 5/27/06
A prominent Orthodox therapist, Vicky Harari, told me that she believes there is great psychological wisdom in the fact that the Torah does not command love for parents. Many people have abusive or otherwise difficult parents and love for them may not be possible. Whereas, respect and reverence are still a mitzvah and possible even in a difficult relationship.

The basic problem is: If love has to come from within the person, how can love be commanded?

Rav Dovid Cohen says, that one has to act as if he loves and habituate himself with the performance of loving acts until the love grows from within.

Rav Dovid gives an analogy to someone who gets an anonymous gift everyday of $1,000. The person who recieves the gift is grateful but does not know his benefactor. How can he love someone he does not know? If Hashem is your benefactor and you know Him, surely, you can love him.

This would apply to loving Hashem and the mitzvah of v'ahavta es Hashem Elokekha.

The Rambam says that love for Hashem is a natural outgrowth of knowing Hashem. The level of love for Him is proportionate to the level of knowledge.

Loving your fellowman, v'ahavta l're'a'kha ka'mo'kha, is more difficult to understand because every man is not your benefactor and yet we are commanded to love him. Perhaps that is why R. Akiva translated it as, ma d'sani lakh l'cha'verkha lo sa'aved, which means, that which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is much easier to achieve and in passive form than to demand love in an active sense.