THE ETHICS OF AGING

acquired? To be sure, there are always a few who diligently peruse their Testament or Psalter, impervious to the turmoil about them. A gratifying number are bent over a Siddur or Humash or even a folio of Talmud , but these did not interrupt their devotions to invite me to take their place. Perhaps, subliminally, the generous people who did were acting in the spirit of a biblical passage they could not consciously identify. In Leviticus 19:32 the Torah enjoins: Mipenei seivah takam vehadarta penei zaken, ve-yareita meielohekha, ani adonai.“You shall rise before the aged, and show deference to the old; you shall fear your God : I am the Lord.” I propose to consider this directive within its context; to examine some of the rabbinic interpretations of the verse as the old sages reduced this ethical maxim to statutory law; and, finally, to speculate on the relevance of the rabbinic insights for our own situation. Parenthetically, the great modem halakhist Jehiel Michal Epstein(1829-1908) in his Arukh ha­Shulhan' provides an answer to a question akin to the one I raised with regard to those in whose daily life Scripture hardly figures yet who nonetheless are guided by this particular precept.

We are generally expected to recite a berakhah when we perform a mitzvah, as when we break bread, when we light the Shabbat candles, when we put on a new garment, and so on. Yet, remarkably, no blessing is prescribed for the mitzvah of honoring parents. Why not? Epstein replies that, in his humble judgment, al peoples —not only Jews —are accustomed to show respect to parents, even though we Jews do so because that is the will of God , and non­Jews do so merely because common sense impels them(and that, he insists, is surely an inferior motivation). But whether we are responding to the Divine mandate or merely to the promptings of our own reason, Jew and Gentile, alike, behave in the same fashion. Epstein concludes, however, that when a course of action can be deduced solely by reason, there is no need to pronounce a berakhal

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