Rabbi Tarfon's mother once walked in her garden and her sandal split so that she would have to walk home barefoot. Rabbi Tarfon kept stretching his hands under her feet and she walked over them all the way. One day he was ill and his colleagues came to visit him. His mother then said to them: "Pray for my son Rabbi Tarfon, for he honors me more than is my due."
"What has he done to you?" they asked. She told them what happened. They replied:
"If he had done to you thousands times more, he would not have done half of the honor enjoined in the Torah!" [Yerushalmi, ibid. See also Kidushin 31b.]
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