The Mitsvah of honoring parents, as the Talmud defines it, consists of six primary actions: to give food and drink, to clothe and shod (give shoes to wear), and to take out and bring in (meaning, find the parent ways to get out, get fresh air, interact with society, and then get home). That would pretty much mean that the child is obligated to see to it that the parent has these basic needs taken care of. There is a lively debate among halachic authorities as to whether the child is required to pay for this, or only to use the parent's money to see to it these needs are met.

 

In a pinch-- if the parent has no money, and the child refuses to use his/her own money-- Jewish law allows using funds that person had intended to give to charity in order to support the parent.  In saying that, though, the sources immediately denigrate a person who would do such a thing.

 

In all this, I should stress that the attitude with which it is done is almost as important as getting it done. Giving these forms of honor to a parent, but clearly begrudgingly, is almost as bad as not doing them at all. Our parents, in Jewish thought, are almost like God Himself (as it were, but that is a parallel the Talmud itself draws). Note that it's a very limited divinity-- it's only in terms of the child, not anyone else.

 

So at the base level, children are clearly obligated to take care of their parents in these ways, seeing to it that their basic health needs are supplied. In general, Jewish law prefers that a person do a mitsvah him or herself than finding someone else to do it for them. In the case of parents who need significant care, however, that might not be feasible. With parents who are no longer in their full right mind (or, perhaps, never were) making it difficult for the child to handle the parent with the deserved respect (meaning: a child is not allowed to talk back to a parent, to contradict a parent, to raise a voice to a parent, and so on), there is room to outsource the care of a parent, the better to avoid transgressing the need to treat that parent with propriety.

The Torah actually dedicates three separate verses to remind and reinforce a child’s obligation to one’s parents.  In these verses the Torah employs two different verbs to describe our obligation “Yirah” (fear) and “Kavod” (honor). “Yirah” was interpreted by the rabbis to indicate those actions we were forbidden to take against our parents, while “kavod” was interpreted to indicate the positive actions we should take to fulfill this commandment.  Many different classical sources attempt to enumerate and discuss a child’s obligations to parents, both positive and negative, in great detail.

 

Further, considering the fact that two of these verses appear as the fifth of the “Ten Commandments”, which were given to the ancient Israelites on Mt.Sinai, clearly our obligation in regard to parents was considered by the Torah to be extremely important. Rabbinic literature, in the Talmud, highlights the significance of the child’s obligation to one’s parent with a revealing vignette. A son is caring for his aging and ill father who asks him for a glass of water.  By the time he returns with the water, his father has fallen asleep. He therefore stands by his father’s bedside for hours, glass in hand, until his father wakes up, allowing him to fulfill his father’s original command at the first possible moment. In light of this story, our obligation to aging parents seems limitless. The logic seems to be that they helped give us life, so we owe them whatever we can give. 

 

 

In addition, elsewhere in Rabbinic literature, on several occasions, the rabbis inquire as to what the limit of financial support due to a parent might be.  While multiple opinions are shared, in essence the opinion that the child must support his parents with his own funds is upheld again and again.  To exactly what extent must one stretch financially, no hard and fast rule can fit every situation.  However, clearly there is a serious obligation that the child owes his parents in these situations that does demand that the child make reasonable sacrifices.  In situations in which the parents have acted in a pattern of wickedness or attempted to force the child to violate the commandments, things are not as clear.  For example, Yosef Karo who authored the major Jewish legal code, the Shulkhan Arukh, wrote “Even if his father is a wicked sinner, the son honors and reveres him.”  However, Rabbi Moshe Issreles, another great Jewish legal figure who wrote the gloss that appears integrated into Karo’s own text, wrote “There are those who say that one is not obligated to honor his wicked father unless he did teshuvah (sought repentance).”  In other words, according to Issreles, if your parents were wicked, both in general or to the child, this could release the child from the obligation to support the parent, unless the parent sincerely sought forgiveness.