Final Request- Additional Information

Question

I was quite perplexed by the question of Rabbi Daniel Travis in a recent Yated ($1,000,000 to Save the..., pg. 30) and the answer given by Rav Zalman Nechemiah Goldberg.

A father makes a request regarding how to disburse his charitable funds right before he dies and the son asks whether he is allowed to ignore his father’s wishes and give the funds to a charity he deems more worthy.

Before even reading the answer, I couldn’t understand why this question was deemed worthy of asking a gadol baTorah. It seemed elementary that of course you need to fulfill your father’s wishes.

I was quite surprised to see that the answer quoted in Rav Goldberg’s name was that yes, the son can and should ignore his father’s wishes and donate the money elsewhere.

I am not a posek and not qualified to weigh in on the halachic aspects of this question. I also don’t know if there were perhaps other details missing from the story or some other explanation.

My feeling, nonetheless, is that perhaps from a technical halachic perspective, the son is not obligated to follow his father’s wishes, but lemaaseh, I have a hard time understanding why the conclusion isn’t simply that from a moral and ethical perspective, the son must fulfill his father’s wishes. If this isn’t a prime example of derech eretz kodmah laTorah, I don’t know what is.

Can you clarify this with Rav Goldberg?

Rav Goldberg 

I appreciate your letter asking to clarify this ruling, and I will do so on two levels. I will explain the actual ruling and then explain why the concept you raised of “derech eretz kodmah laTorah” may be relevant in similar cases, but is not applicable in this particular case.

Mitzvah Lekayeim Divrei Hameis

Chazal teach us that it is a mitzvah to fulfill the will of someone who expressed a request in their lifetime after they have passed on. Which mitzvah does this fall under? The Ketzos (252:3) explains that this is a mitzvah of fulfilling a neder, a vow. If a father made a neder to give a certain sum of money to tzedakah before he died, the children have a mitzvah to fulfill this request.

Thus, in our case, as you correctly point out, if the father had asked the son to give money to a charitable cause, the son would have had a mitzvah to fulfill his request. Even if he had asked to give the money to a non-Jewish organization that distributes the money to poor people, I believe the son would still have a mitzvah, as Chazal teach us that there is a mitzvah to give tzedakah to non-Jewish poor people as well.

However, in this particular case, the father asked the son to give money to save a certain species of animal that is in danger of becoming extinct. Although this organization may do excellent work in their field, as far as I know there is no mitzvah to support such a cause. We find that there are species that existed previously that became extinct, and as far as I am aware, we do not find a source in Chazal that one is obligated to spend money to prevent this.

Derech Eretz Kodmah LaTorah

Once we have established that there is no mitzvah to fulfill the words of the departed in this specific case, we can move on to your next issue. Is this included in the category of derech eretz kodmah laTorah? I would like to explain this idea, since I believe that this concept is often misunderstood.

The Gemara in Brachos 63a writes that derech eretz preceded the Torah by 26 generations. It is clear that Chazal are not teaching us that derech eretz overrides the Torah, but rather that derech eretz existed even before the Torah was given. Chazal teach us that even if we had not received the Torah, we would be obligated to learn certain attributes from the animals for concepts such as tznius and zerizus, modesty and alacrity.

In this case, we must determine if listening to the father’s will is called derech eretz. Although in most cases it would be, I believe that in this particular case of giving such a large amount of money to help prevent a species from becoming extinct, it is not the case. For the father’s neshamah in Shomayim, he would certainly want the money to be distributed to the poor or to help support Torah study or some other mitzvah cause.

All this being said, I respect your great sensitivity towards the mitzvah of honoring parents, and I once again make it clear that in most cases, where the father’s request constitutes a mitzvah, there would be a mitzvah to distribute the funds as per the father’s request.

There are other cases where the son has a mitzvah to honor his father after his death. The Gemara in Bava Kama (92a) teaches us that there is even a mitzvah to return items that a parent stole during his lifetime if he dies before he does teshuvah. The reason for this is because it helps preserve the dignity of the parent’s name. We do not find that one is obligated to give money for everything that a father requests before passing away if it is not a mitzvah.

Honoring one’s parents is a very great mitzvah, and we must do everything possible in our power to fulfill it. However, in this particular case, I believe that the greatest honor one can afford his parent is to give the money for the benefit of a tzedakah that is a mitzvah. As my brother-in-law, Rav Azriel Auerbuch, wrote in that week’s column, this has a great impact on the neshamah of the departed.