Rabbi Tarfon — a first-century Sage of the generation after the destruction of the Second Temple, one of the voices in Pirkei Avot — was famous among his colleagues for the extremes to which he took the commandment of honoring one's parents.
His mother, in her old age, needed help climbing onto her high bed every night. The bed was too tall for her to mount on her own, and she was embarrassed to ask.
The Step Made of a Rabbi
Rabbi Tarfon solved the problem by becoming the step himself. He would lie down on the floor beside the bed and bow himself very low — so low that his back and shoulders made a platform at exactly the height she needed. His mother would place her foot on him, push off, and climb into bed.
Every night. For years.
The Sages' Argument About It
The exempla, preserved in Kiddushin 31b and Jerusalem Talmud Pe'ah 1:1, records a debate among his colleagues. When Rabbi Tarfon described his practice in the academy, expecting praise, the Sages responded in a way that must have surprised him. "You have not yet reached half the honor you owe her."
The reasoning was severe. A mother's labor in raising a child, the Sages taught, is not the kind of debt that can be calculated in kneeling and bowing. Even becoming a footstool does not finish the account. The commandment "Honor your father and your mother" (Exodus 20:12) is unlimited — not because mothers demand unlimited honor, but because the gift of life cannot be repaid in kind.
Rabbi Tarfon, the steepest bower of his generation, was still — in the Sages' judgment — only halfway there.
The bed climbed. The debt remained.