GUILT RELATED: CHILDREN ATONING FOR PARENTS’ SINS

By: Rabbi Moshe Zev Granek

Two reasons for reciting the bracha
of Boruch Shepotrani by a bar mitzvah.

  1. Magen Avraham – Till
    the bar mitzvah the father is punished for son’s sins, and now the son is
    punished for his own sins.
  2. Levush
    the reverse. The father is reciting a brocho giving gratitude in relieving the son
    from enduring punishment for the father’s sin.

Question- the pasuk says bonim lo yumsu al avon avos- sons won’t die on account
of sins of their fathers.

Rambam-This passuk is only once he
becomes an ish-an adult-but prior to then, a
son may be punished on account of his father’s sins.

Chochmas Shlomo /Rav Shlomo Kluger asks on the Levush:  It can’t
be that the brocho is to give gratitude for now relieving the son of punishment
for his father because it contradicts an explicit passuk
in our parsha : uvaharon hisanaf lehashmido. This means that Aaron’s
children, who were already past bar mitzvah, were killed on account of Aaron
HaKohen’s sins.

 Question- The source
for the Levush is a Rambam. And although the
question from Aaron’s children is a valid question, it doesn’t vacate the
reality of this concept.

A possible answer is that perhaps the passuk in our parsha has a different
connotation based on an apparent contradiction in two psukim.

One passuk is – poiked avon avos al bonim that implies that children
are punished on account of parents sins. The other passuk
bonim lo yumsu al avon avos implies to the contrary. How
to reconcile the two contradicting psukim?

The gemara answers- when sons continue in their father’s
path with committing the same aveiros as their fathers’,
then sons can get punished. Our passuk is referring to when
the children are not continuing in the father’s path.