KI TISSA - PARENTS

May 25, 2000

After the episode of the golden calf, Moses ascended Mount Sinai a second time, and pleaded with the Almighty for a reprieve for the Jewish people.  Moses won the reprieve in a face-to-face close encounter with the Creator of the Universe.  Moses took this opportunity to ask the Almighty to reveal His inner essence. The response is what we call the thirteen attributes of mercy:

Hashem, Hashem, G-d, Compassionate and Gracious, Slow to anger, and Abundant in Kindness and Truth, Preserver of kindness for thousands of generations, Forgiver of iniquity, willful sin, and error, and Who cleanses. (Exodus 34:6).

The focus is on a bountiful capacity to forgive, just as the Jews had been forgiven for their sin.  But the attributes do not end there, for there is an additional line that seems to be a proviso, a limit to the Almighty's capacity to forgive:

But Who does not cleanse completely, Who visits the sins of the fathers onto the children and the children's children (pokade avon avos al bonim ubnai bonum) for three and four generations.   

This is usually understood to mean that a limitation to the Almighty's forgiveness is that if children and grandchildren follow in the footsteps of their father's sins, that they will be punished for the sins of that the fathers did.  There are several questions can be asked about this additional line:

1.    If children commit sins in the same way that their fathers did, why wouldn't it be enough if they were punished for their own sins, why are they punished for the sins that their fathers did?

2.    In this glorious moment of rapprochement and declaration of forgiveness, why is this point so important to mention?

3.    The Almighty is precise in all ways, so why does He say that children are punished for "three and four generations"?  What is this conditional on, when does this last three generations and when four generations?

These three questions can be answered by giving a different interpretation and translation to this problematic line.   In Hebrew the line says "pokade avon avos al bonim ubnai bonum".  The verb "pokade" has several different meanings.  It is traditionally translated here as "to visit", i.e to visit the sins of the fathers onto the children.  Pokade, however, can also be translated as "to remember".   In addition, the word "al" is traditionally translated here as "on", but it can also mean "to".  Therefore we can translate the line to give a completely new meaning: "But Who does not cleanse completely, Who remembers the sins that fathers do to their children and grandchildren, for three and four generations".  

Seen in this light, the Almighty is telling us although He is overflowing with mercy, the one thing that is not easy to forgive is when a parent teaches and trains a child to sin in the same way that the parent is sinning.   When we ourselves stumble and then want to make amends and be forgiven, we are welcomed with open arms.  We can cleanse ourselves with repentance when we have only besmirched ourselves.  But if we raise children and grandchildren to be criminals in sin, then waking up and repenting is not enough.  In such a case the parents have set in motion many other people - their children and grandchildren - who are sinning because of what the parents have trained them to do.  In this case a parent's asking for forgiveness is not enough, and he will be held accountable for the sins of the children and the grandchildren because he is responsible for having set their sins in motion. 

This interpretation answers the first two questions.  First, the children are not punished for the sins of their parents, but rather the parents are punished for the sins of their children, because the parents are the cause of those sins.  And second, it is understandable why the Almighty mentions this now - He is saying He can abundantly forgive our own sins, but not those sins that we've caused others to do. 

But how about the third question?  Why is there the seeming inexactness of 'three and four generations'?  The answer is that a parent is held accountable for the sins of children and grandchildren that they have personally taught.  And that depends on how long the parent lives and the spacing between the succeeding generations.  If a parent lives long enough to personally train children and grandchildren to sin, then he is punished for three generations - himself, his children, and grandchildren.  However, there are some people who live long enough to personally train even a great-grandchild to sin, and then he is punished for the sins all four generations.  It stops at four generations because very few people live longer than that.

This interpretation fits with what the Gemorah says in Yuma 86b.  The Gemorah there says that there are several levels of sin, most of which are forgiven with repentance.  But the one sin that cannot be forgiven is Chillul Hashem, "desecration of G-d's name".   The reason is that Chillul Hashem causes others to lose faith, and thereby leads those other people to sin caused by their lessening of belief.  If we sin, repentance wipes the slate clean.  But if we cause or teach others to sin by our act of Chillul Hashem, how can our repentance clean the slate when others continue to sin as a result of what we have taught or led them to do?