Waking Up Parents

  1. Waking Up One’s Parent

One of the halachos of kibud av va'eim, honoring one’s parents, is not to wake them up. Even if a lot of money is at stake if the parent is not woken up, a child should still not wake up his parent. There is a famous story told in the Gemoro about Doma ben Nesina, a non-Jew, who needed a key that was under his father’s pillow in order to sell a precious gem for a large profit, but refused to wake up his father, thereby losing a large sum of money. Hashem later rewarded him for this great mitzvah, and he was zoche  to have a parah adumah, a red heifer, which had tremendous spiritual and monetary value, to be born in his herd. However, if a person knows that it is important to their parent that they earn that money, and are certain  that the parent would be upset if he did not wake them up and suffered monetary loss as a result, then one is permitted to wake them up. Still, it is preferable to ask someone else to wake them up, even in such a case. If the parent asked their child to wake them up, it is certainly permitted. To wake them up for a mitzvah such as going to shul is also not a problem. Similarly, waking them up because the parent would otherwise lose a large sum of money is also a non-issue. If a telephone call comes in for a parent, a child should not wake them up even if it is about an important matter, unless they know that the father or mother will be upset that they were not woken up to take the call.

https://halacha2go.com?number=116

Practical Halacha: One minute a day. By Horav Yosef Yeshaya Braun, shlita, Mara D'asra and member of the Badatz of Crown Heights.