Parshas Ki Seitzei contains one of the Torah’s more perplexing chapters — the laws of the Wayward and Rebellious Son (Ben Sorer U’Moreh). The situation involves a male child between the ages of 13 and 13 and a half who begins to “act out” in a very dangerous manner. He steals from his parents. He is gluttonous in his consumption of meat and wine. The Torah prescribes very severe punishment: The parents must bring the child into court and the Beis Din will sentence him to stoning, the most severe of the capital punishments mentioned in the Torah.
The Talmud in Sanhedrin asks why the Torah was so harsh with the Ben Sorer U’Moreh for behavior that certainly does not warrant the death penalty. The Gemara answers that the Torah realizes what the eventual outcome of such an adolescent will be. Eventually, he will not be able to sustain his lifestyle financially and will come to rob from people. He will eventually get into an altercation in which he will take someone’s life. It is better that he be put to death when he is relatively innocent than let him come to thievery, robbery, and eventually murder when he would be deserving of the death penalty!
The Gemara adds – at least according to one opinion – that the situation of a Ben Sorer U’Moreh never actually occurred and never could occur. The reason for this is that the legal conditions necessary to execute such a child are so exacting and unlikely that it is virtually impossible for them to ever come to fruition.
The Gemara justifies the fact that an “impossible” event is dealt with at length in the Chumash and in the Talmud with the principle “come expound its lessons and receive reward for that” (drosh v’kabel sechar).
In one sense, this can be understood to mean that since it is part of the Torah, we will receive reward for studying it, irrespective of the practical application of these laws (in the same way that we receive reward nowadays for studying the laws of the Temple or other ritual practices that we are no longer able to observe on a practical level.)
However, Rabbi Abraham J Twerski has a different insight in the expression drosh v’kabel sechar. He maintains that the Torah is teaching us a lesson here which should be expounded and for which we will gain practical insight and advice. The Torah is talking here about a concept which has perhaps become in vogue over the last 15 or 20 years, but was unheard of before that. This is the concept of “tough love,” which the Torah introduced many millennia before any psychologist or social worker ever came up with the expression. Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski is himself a practicing psychiatrist and his area of specialization is addictions.
He deals with the problem of drug addiction, which unfortunately, is not a rare problem even in our own community.
As a practicing psychiatrist who has dealt with this, he makes the statement that the only way a person who has an addiction is going to be cured is through “tough love”. That “tough love” means the parents who have such a child must at times act in ways that seem insensitive and cruel to the child. The parents cannot just keep providing the child with money to feed his habit. If it means that the child will be arrested for stealing money from others or that he will have to spend time in jail as a result of his crimes, so be it. The eventuality and the inevitability of a person who has an addiction problem is that the only way it is going to be ultimately dealt with is if it is to be cured once and for all. When the Torah records the Parsha of the Wayward and Rebellious son, it is informing us of the principle of “tough love”.
No human being is more merciful than the All Merciful One. How then can this Torah of Kindness whose ways are the ways of pleasantness proscribe that parents should take their children to court to have them executed? The answer is that this is the ultimate mercy, because the alternative is even worse than that. Just as if – Heaven Forbid – a child should have a malignancy on his leg and the only chance for survival would require amputation of the leg, Rachmana litzlan, the parents who brought that child to the hospital to have his leg amputated would not be viewed as cruel parents but as merciful parents, so too this idea applies to the (theoretical) case of parents who have to bring their Wayward and Rebellious son to Beis Din to undergo the punishment proscribed for a Ben Sorer U’Moreh. This is the only way, under those circumstances, to save – at least the “World to Come” (Olam HaBah) — of this child. The “Drosh v’kabel Sechar” of this chapter is that sometimes “tough love” must be applied.
I always say never to pasken halacha (act in practice) based on ideas and opinions presented in my lectures. Certainly, regarding interacting with children and applying “tough love” to children acting out, no one should pasken from a lecture. But the concept is a valid one in certain situations of child raising and it is a prime lesson which we should be aware of in studying the laws of Ben Sorer U’Moreh: Sometimes what appears to be cruel, is the biggest salvation for a child.
