answers gruffly,“Eat and be silent like a dog eats.” In the other case, the heathen king had summoned all owners of grist mills to be captured into permanent slavery, and the son says to the father(who still owns the mill),“Father, I will say that I am the owner and will go and be enslaved in your place, while you will pretend to be a mere employee who is hired to grind the grain.” This son who forces his father to a miserable task in order to save him from a worse misery deserves Paradise.”
Evidently this supposed case was not looked upon as a mere hypothetical situation, but was considered to be expressive of an important line of action, for not only is it found in both Talmuds , but it is embodied, one might say, as law in the Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh Deah 240:4, Isserles . He says,“If the son makes the father grind at the millstone but his intention is for the benefit of the father, to save him from a worse situation, then the son should talk gently to the father and convince the father that his intention is for the father’s benefit, until the father finally consents to grind at the millstone. This son will inherit Paradise.”
The implication of this narrative embodied in the law is clear enough. It will often happen that the idea of leaving home and going to a nursing home is as bitter a prospect to the father as grinding at the millstone, but if it is not merely to relieve the children of the burden of his care, but is really for the benefit of the father, then it is the duty of the son or daughter to try, as Isserles says, to allay the objections and to persuade the parent until he consents.
In other words, whatever guidance this gives us is as follows: First the children must be sure of their motives. If they
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