The Wayward and Rebellious Son

Parashat Ki Teitzei, in the Book of Devarim, is the parashah with the largest number of mitzvot, containing seventy-four of the 613 commandments.

One of these mitzvot is the mitzvah of the “wayward and rebellious son.”1 In very brief terms, the matter is as follows.

A person’s life is divided into several stages. The general division is taught in the Mishnah (Avot 5:21).2 Beyond that, however, there are additional halachic divisions, one of which is relevant to the law of the wayward and rebellious son.

On the day of a boy’s bar mitzvah—when he becomes thirteen years and one day old—a period of ninety days begins. During those ninety days, if the child commits this particular sin, he assumes the status of a ben sorer u’moreh, a wayward and rebellious son.

The details of the sin are as follows:

He steals money from his father, uses it to buy meat and wine cheaply, and then eats and drinks them outside his father’s domain, in the company of empty and disreputable people.

He must eat, in one meal, half a maneh of meat, and part of that meat must be of an animal. The meat may not be fully cooked; it must be cooked in the manner thieves would eat it. In that same meal, he must drink half a log of wine, mixed in the manner of gluttons.

If the son behaves in this way, his father and mother bring him before a beit din of three judges and say, “This son of ours is wayward and rebellious.” They bring two witnesses who testify that he did everything described above, after the proper warning was administered, and the court administers lashes.

If he repeats these actions, his father and mother bring him before a beit din of twenty-three judges, and his sentence is completed with stoning.

However, a boy can become a ben sorer u’moreh only with the consent of both his father and mother, as the Torah says, “His father and mother shall seize him” (Devarim 21:19). If his father and mother forgive him, he is exempt.

The Yerushalmi (Sanhedrin 8:6) teaches that even after they bring him to court, his parents still have the ability to forgive him, until the sentence is finalized.

This is the straightforward halachah as we have received it.

1 See Sefer HaChinuch, mitzvah 248.

2 The Mishnah states: “At five years old, one begins the study of Tanach; at ten, Mishnah; at thirteen, mitzvot; at fifteen, Talmud; at eighteen, marriage; at twenty, pursuit; at thirty, strength; at forty, understanding; at fifty, counsel; at sixty, old age; at seventy, fullness of years; at eighty, strength; at ninety, bent over; at one hundred, it is as though he has passed away and been removed from the world” (Avot 5:21).