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The Mother Who Begged to Wash Her Son's Feet

Rabbi Ishmael's mother fights to wash his feet and drink the water, while Dama returns a slipper after a public slap.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Basin Was Already Full
  2. She Took the Case to the Sages
  3. Her Honor Is His Obligation
  4. A Slap Among the Nobles
  5. The Chair Nobody Sat In
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The Basin Was Already Full

She had it waiting by the door. Rabbi Ishmael came in off the road and before he could sit down his mother was on the floor with his feet in her hands, working the dust out from between his toes as though the dirt of the road were something she had been trusted with. He let her do it, because she had washed his feet since he was small and nothing in the law forbids a mother to wash her son.

Then she lifted the basin toward her mouth.

The water came up as far as her chin and stopped there, because he had said her name. Not the way a sage says anything. The way a man says it when he has just understood what has been going on in his own house. She was not thirsty and she was not poor. She wanted to take into her body something that had touched his, some residue of holiness left in the water by the feet of a teacher of Israel, and she had worked out that this was the way to get at it.

"Mother, stop. This is not right." And because she was still holding the basin, he forbade her the water outright, in the voice he used on a ruling.

She Took the Case to the Sages

She was not embarrassed, and that was the part he could not get past. Shame would have been easier to answer, since a woman who is ashamed can be reassured, but she looked at him the way a person looks at someone who has taken something away from her, which he had. Serving him was the best hour in her day.

So she went out and brought a complaint against her own son in front of the other sages. "I want to honor my son, and he will not let me."

Now they had a case nobody in the room wanted. The commandment says honor your father and your mother, and here was a mother being stopped from honoring, by the very son the commandment exists to bind. Rule for her, and a sage spends the rest of his life watching his mother drink the water off his feet. Rule for him, and a woman is sent home from a court and told that the one thing she had to give was not going to be accepted.

Her Honor Is His Obligation

They ruled for him, and the reason came to four words. Her honor is his obligation.

The duty does not only run upward. It runs back down as well, so a child who allows a parent to make herself small has failed the commandment as surely as one who raises a hand, since what the law is guarding is the parent's standing, and the standing does not stop being the thing guarded when the parent is the one attacking it. She had wanted to be his servant. He needed her to go on being his mother, and the ruling took his side against her wish, which left nobody comfortable.

She went home honored and empty-handed.

A Slap Among the Nobles

In another city there was a man who had never been given the commandment at all. Dama ben Netina sat among the nobles of the place, dressed for the company, business open on the table in front of him. His mother was a difficult woman, given to storms that arrived without weather. She came through the door and hit him across the face in front of all of them, hard enough that a golden slipper came off her own foot.

He did not stand up, though every man at that table was watching to see whether he would. He did not raise his voice, and he did not let anything into his face for the room to read. He bent down, picked the slipper off the floor, and handed it back to her so she would not have to walk out barefoot. Nobody there would have blamed him for one sharp word. He gave her the shoe.

One mother wanted to kneel and one wanted to strike, and each of them was stopped from making a son smaller than the commandment: one by a refused basin, the other by a returned slipper.

The Chair Nobody Sat In

Then his father died, and since the head of the house was gone the seat at the head of it was his. He did not take it.

Not once. Not at a meal, not when the house was empty and the whole city was somewhere else, not in the years afterward when there was no living man left with a claim on it. The chair stayed against the wall where the old man had left it and went on being his father's chair, in a household that had never been commanded to honor anybody, which is exactly why the sages reached for it whenever they wanted to press a Jewish son: here is a gentile who was never told.

The chair stayed where it was. No one carried it out of the room and no one sat in it, for as long as there was wood in it.

Filial PietyRabbi IshmaelDamaHonorParents
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From the tradition

Sources

2 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Exempla of the Rabbis, No. 191Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Exempla of the Rabbis, Moses Gaster (1924) · Public Domain

Rabbi Ishmael's mother loved him with a love so fierce that it made her do extraordinary things. The Talmud records that when her son, the great sage, the High Priest's descendant, the teacher of all Israel, came home, she would rush to wash his feet. And then she would try to drink the water.

Not out of poverty. Not out of thirst. Out of love. She wanted to consume something that had touched her son's body, as if the water that had washed a sage's feet contained some residue of holiness that she could absorb.

Rabbi Ishmael was horrified. "Mother, stop! This is not right." He forbade her from drinking the foot-washing water. It was beneath her dignity, he insisted. She was his mother, she should be honored, not humiliating herself.

His mother was not humiliated. She felt no shame. In her eyes, serving her son was the highest possible privilege. She brought her complaint before the other sages: "I want to honor my son, and he will not let me!"

The sages were faced with a paradox. The commandment says to honor your parents. But what happens when a parent's way of honoring their child violates the child's sense of their parent's dignity? Who has the right to define what honor looks like?

The ruling was that Rabbi Ishmael was correct to stop her. "Her honor is his obligation," the sages said. Even if a parent wishes to debase themselves for their child's sake, the child must not allow it. Filial duty includes protecting a parent from their own excess of love. Rabbi Ishmael's refusal was not disrespect, it was the deepest respect imaginable.

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Exempla of the Rabbis, No. 187Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Exempla of the Rabbis, Moses Gaster (1924) · Public Domain

The story of Dama ben Netina's respect for his parents did not end with the famous incident of the precious stone. The Talmud preserves additional details that deepened his reputation as the ultimate exemplar of filial devotion.

Dama's mother was a difficult woman. She was, by some accounts, mentally unstable, given to outbursts of irrational anger that she directed at her son in the most humiliating ways possible.

One day, Dama was sitting among the nobles of his city, dressed in his finest garments, conducting important business. His mother burst in and slapped him across the face in front of everyone. The blow was hard enough to knock a golden slipper from her foot.

Dama said nothing. He did not strike back. He did not raise his voice. He did not even show anger on his face. He bent down, picked up the slipper, and handed it back to his mother so she would not have to walk barefoot.

The nobles were astonished. Here was a wealthy, powerful man, a leader of his community, publicly humiliated by his own mother, and his only response was to pick up her shoe. No one in the room would have blamed him for a sharp word, a raised hand, even a stern look. He gave none of these. He gave her back her slipper.

After his father died, Dama never sat in his father's chair. Not once. For as long as the chair existed, it remained empty, a throne for a man who no longer occupied it, preserved by a son who would not take his father's place even when his father was no longer alive to claim it.

The sages declared: if a gentile who was never commanded could show such honor, what excuse does any child of Israel have for treating a parent with anything less than absolute reverence?

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