GOD’S CHILDREN: A BLESSING OR A BURDEN?

At Avot 3:18 Rabbi Akiva burrows into three verses from Tanach in order to prove how dear are humans—and especially Jewish humans—to God. The mishnah runs as follows:

חָבִיב אָדָם שֶׁנִּבְרָא בְּצֶֽלֶם, חִבָּה יְתֵרָה נוֹדַֽעַת לוֹ שֶׁנִּבְרָא בְּצֶֽלֶם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: כִּי בְּצֶֽלֶם אֱלֹהִים עָשָׂה אֶת הָאָדָם.

 חֲבִיבִין יִשְׂרָאֵל שֶׁנִּקְרְאוּ בָנִים לַמָּקוֹם, חִבָּה יְתֵרָה נוֹדַֽעַת לָהֶם שֶׁנִּקְרְאוּ בָנִים לַמָּקוֹם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: בָּנִים אַתֶּם לַייָ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם.

חֲבִיבִין יִשְׂרָאֵל שֶׁנִּתַּן לָהֶם כְּלִי חֶמְדָּה, חִבָּה יְתֵרָה נוֹדַֽעַת לָהֶם שֶׁנִּתַּן לָהֶם כְּלִי חֶמְדָּה, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: כִּי לֶֽקַח טוֹב נָתַֽתִּי לָכֶם, תּוֹרָתִי אַל תַּעֲזֹֽבוּ

Beloved is man, for he was created in [God’s] image; with even greater love it was made known to him that he was created in [God’s] image, as it says, "For in the image of God He made man" (Bereishit 9:6).

Beloved are Israel, for they are called children of God; with even greater love it was made known to them that they are called children of God, as it is stated: "You are children of the Lord your God" (Devarim 14:1).

Beloved are Israel, for they were given a precious article; with even greater love it was made known to them that they were given a precious article, as it is stated: "I have given you a good advice; My Torah, do not forsake it" (Mishlei 4:2).

This is another instance of a mishnah that appears to consist of “take it or leave it” statements with which one may agree or disagree but which don’t appear to interfere with our daily lives. As I have written in previous posts, the Bartenura maintains—and no commentator argues with him—that the function of Pirkei Avot is to teach moral precepts and ethical guidance for our own conduct in the course of our lives. That leaves no room for decorative statements that seem to be there for their own sake.

I fond myself thinking about this issue when I began reading an abandoned copy of Rabbi Shalom Noach Berezovsky’s short tract BeChochmah Yivneh Bayit, which turns out to be guidance for young and presumably Chasidic chatanim as they stand at the threshold of married life.  How does one begin to broach this important but delicate subject?

Rabbi Berezovsky opens with words of foundational advice: בָּנִים אַתֶּם לַייָ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם, "You are children of the Lord your God”.  But, while Rabbi Akiva tells us that these words reflect God’s love for us, Rabbi Berezovsky takes them in a different way. Yes, we are God’s children—but being a child implies a duty towards one’s parent, in this case God.

Wha duty is this? The answer is derived from another verse from Proverbs: מוּסַר יְהוָה, בְּנִי אַל-תִּמְאָס  (Mishlei 3:11). Conventionally translated as “My son, do not despise the mussar of God”, these words are taken to be advice given by a father to a son. However, here they are given a Chasidic spin. The speaker is taken to be God Himself and He is speaking to His children, commanding them not to despise His mussar. Since all Jews are God’s children (בָּנִים אַתֶּם לַייָ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם), God is speaking individually to each one of us and He is telling us to respect and pay attention to His moral guidance.

So Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Berezovsky are pulling this verse in opposite directions. But do they actually disagree with one another? In practice, probably not. Let us return to the first of Rabbi Akiva’s verses: כִּי בְּצֶֽלֶם אֱלֹהִים עָשָׂה אֶת הָאָדָם. It is axiomatic that this verse cannot be taken literally for two obvious reasons. First, so far as we believe and understand, God has no perceptible image and cannot be seen. This means that even if He has an image, we would not know what it is. Secondly human beings are remarkably diverse in their own appearance: they share no “image”. This had led our sages to conclude that “image” here refers to qualities that God possesses and lets us perceive, and which in one form or another we can perceive in ourselves. Just as God is merciful, we can be merciful; just as God is kind, we can be kind, and so on (Shabbat 133b).

Turning to the third verse in Rabbi Avika’s mishnah, the counsel that God has given us and which we are charged not to forsake is not only the written Torah but the web of complex social and behavioural norms that govern our conduct towards others as well as towards God and indeed ourselves.

Putting this all together, we now see two things.

One is that Rabbi Berezovsky’s first advice to the young bridegroom is to be conscious at all times that, though he may feel he is the master of his new home—and indeed of his new wife—he is perpetually bound by his paternal ties to his Creator, who expects him to act with dignity, propriety, kindness and loyalty, as befits a prince, the son of the King.

The other is that Rabbi Akiva’s verses are there to be internalized and acted upon. Because God loves His human creations, He has given them the means to emulate Him. These means are encapsulated in the Torah He has given them, and since they are His children, they are fully accountable to Him.

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SQUEEZING THE IN-BETWEEN TIME

Much of Pirkei Avot deals, directly or by inference, with the need to establish a good lifestyle balance between four key ingredients of a meaningful Jewish life:  learning Torah, performing mitzvot and good deeds, earning one’s keep and attending to one’s basic needs. While each of these four elements is vital, their relationship to one another is not constant. It is obvious that there must be times when one or other is in the ascendant.

In terms of being the priority element by default, Torah does well enough. It has its own dedicated perek, the sixth—and we learn that there is a direct proportionality between Torah and life itself (Hillel at 2:8). However, Torah does not have everything its own way. Thus it is not Torah but good deeds that are the main thing (Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel at 1:17); Torah is most efficacious only when blended with an occupation and, when undiluted, causes sin (Rabban Gamliel at 2:2). But if one forsakes Torah learning, the burdens of government and a worldly occupation are thrown upon him (Rabbi Nechunyah ben Hakanah, 3:6). Food, drink and sleep are essential, but only in small quantities if a person wishes to maximize his pleasure in learning Torah (6:4. There are many more examples.

Of particular note is Rabbi Meir’s call to minimize one’s business activities in order to engage more substantially in learning Torah at 4:12:

הֱוֵי מְמַעֵט בְּעֵֽסֶק וַעֲסוֹק בַּתּוֹרָה, וֶהֱוֵי שְׁפַל רֽוּחַ בִּפְנֵי כָל אָדָם, וְאִם בָּטַֽלְתָּ מִן הַתּוֹרָה, יֶשׁ לָךְ בְּטֵלִים הַרְבֵּה כְּנֶגְדָּךְ, וְאִם עָמַֽלְתָּ בַּתּוֹרָה הַרְבֵּה, יֶשׁ שָׂכָר הַרְבֵּה לִתֶּן לָךְ

Minimize your business activity and engage in Torah. Be humble before every person. If you neglect the Torah, there will be many excuses for you; if you toil much in Torah, there is much reward to give to you.

The first and third segments of this mishnah point clearly to the relationship of Torah to other activities, and there are many commentators who explain this mishnah in a somewhat artificial manner by weaving humility into the balance of Torah learning versus the arguably lesser priorities.

As a personal observation, I’d like to comment on something that affects the balance of Torah study, good deeds, parnasah and personal wellbeing, and that is time.

It’s easy to imagine an ideal day in which, at any given time, a person is doing one of the four things. Here we have a sort of zero-sum game in which there is no moment in which one is not locked into one of the four. Do more of one and you do less of the others, but A + B + C + D always comes out to the same one, complete day. In practice I don’t think this is the case.

Our contemporary lifestyles should warn us to be sensitive to the many challenges we face if we do not wish to watch potentially productive time to fall through the cracks in our day.

One such challenge is posed by choice in a materialist society. Which shirt to wear; which items to select on a menu; which car to buy; which method to fund the purchase of a house or apartment; which school or group to send one’s children—these are just some of the choices that not only demand the consumption of time but, in at least some cases, invade the time spent in pursuit of one’s Torah learning or day job. Some choices are more important than others, but the time consumed by them is not necessarily proportional to their overall importance (picking the right wallpaper or fabric pattern, for example).

Even apart from choice, our good use of time is always subject to bitul, the cancellation of the moment because we do nothing with it. Standing at bus stops and railway platforms, wating for one’s turn at the barber or in the dentist’s reception room, watching advertisements while awaiting the beginning of a program one wishes to view: these are unproductive uses of time and, because of their frequency and inevitability, it is easy to acquiesce and write this time off as lost.

A challenge of a different kind is posed by our own reactions when faced with a decision-making process. Anyone who has worked in the financial sector or in business deadline, usually one that is inherently arbitrary and not imposed by the employees who seek to meet it, so often means skipping meals, working nights, missing regular shiurim and so on. But there is little or no reciprocity here. It is most unusual to hear of anyone who has consciously missed a deadline in order to attend a shiur, or who has taken time off work in order to finish learning a masechta. To the outside observer it might look as though work has gained ascendancy over Torah, though I am sure that we would all be quick to assert that this is not so.

So, to return to Rabbi Meir, we can say with him: “Minimize your business activity and engage in Torah”, while recognizing that there may be real and serious limits as to how this might be done and also accepting that, with the best will in the world, the time saved by minimizing business activity is unlikely to translate precisely into time gained for Torah learning.

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CONSCIOUS OF YOUR IMAGE?

 How self-conscious are you? Are you concerned about your image? Well, you should be, at least according to Rabbi Akiva. At Avot 3:18 he opens a three-part mishnah by telling us:

חָבִיב אָדָם שֶׁנִּבְרָא בְּצֶֽלֶם, חִבָּה יְתֵרָה נוֹדַֽעַת לוֹ שֶׁנִּבְרָא בְּצֶֽלֶם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: כִּי בְּצֶֽלֶם אֱלֹהִים עָשָׂה אֶת הָאָדָם

Beloved is man, for he was created in the image [of God]; with extra love it was made known to him that he was created in the image, as it says, "For in the image of God He made man" (Bereishit 9:6).

Commentators do not generally struggle with the idea of being loved by God, since it is a primal conceit that we are loved. For most of us, the first emotion to which we are exposed following our birth is the warmth of a mother’s love—powerful, unconditional and in most cases irrevocable.

Being created in God’s image is quite another matter. From the moment we recognize that God has no visible or tangible form, we are forced to accept that “God’s image” is a metaphor of some kind. Having accepted that, we soon learn that there is no single metaphor that can encapsulate all the qualities and attributes of an infinite and unbounded deity. This acceptance gives us the opportunity to choose the metaphor that fits the moment. Just as God is kind and merciful, so too do we mortals have the capacity to be kind and merciful. Just as God is slow to anger and willing to forgive, so too is this ability embedded somewhere within us.

When choosing our metaphors, we are careful to point to good and noble qualities alone. Thus in the realm of middot we accept that God has an awesome power to project His anger and to punish others—but these are not for lessons that our Sages draw for us. The Torah too makes it plain that vengeance is an attribute that is specifically reserved for Him and barred to us.

In a short but fascinating essay on this mishnah in Foundations of Faith (a companion to Pirkei Avot based on the thoughts and writings of Rabbi Norman Lamm), Rabbi Mark Dratch reviews an argument between the rationalists (R’ Saadya Gaon and Rambam) and the ethicists (led by the Ramchal). For the former, the image of God is expressed by man’s ability to reason. The Ramchal rejects this on the ground that a person can exercise reason and then fail to act upon it. Rather, what makes man like God is the ability to act in accordance with his perception of the distinction between good and evil.

The key feature of this ability to act, it is argued, lies not so much in what one does as in what one refrains from doing: it is effectively the ability to say “no”. Developing this point, Rabbi Aaron Levine points to part of a verse in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes 3:19) that appears daily in our morning blessings:

וּמוֹתַר הָאָדָם מִן-הַבְּהֵמָה אָיִן …

…and man’s pre-eminence over the beast is naught….

Rabbi Levine gives these words a positive spin. They don’t mean that man has zero pre-eminence over the animal. Rather, they teach us that we are pre-eminent. Our superiority is based on our ability to say אָיִן (ayin, “no”). Ramming home this point, Rabbi Dratch writes:

“An animal has no choice—no freedom—and therefore must say ‘yes’ to his drives, to the world in which he lives. But a human being can say ‘no’ to that which is unseemly and beneath his dignity. And when he says ‘no’ to all that is ungodly, he is being Godly. He is showing that he was created in the image of God”.

This is only one of a large number of explanations of Rabbi Akiva’s words, but it has a special attraction:

“It was Rabbi Akiva, the man who was able to stand up to the wrath and the might of the whole Roman Empire and say ‘no’ to tyranny and despotism, who taught us ‘Beloved is man that he was created in the image of God”.

Now that’s a point to ponder when, in our Mussaf service on Yom Kippur, we reach the midrash of the Ten Martyrs, of whom Rabbi Akiva was the most prominent.

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THE CROWN OF A GOOD NAME

At Avot 4:17 Rabbi Shimon (this being the Rabbi Shimon, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai) teaches:

שְׁלֹשָׁה כְתָרִים הֵן: כֶּֽתֶר תּוֹרָה, וְכֶֽתֶר כְּהֻנָּה, וְכֶֽתֶר מַלְכוּת, וְכֶֽתֶר שֵׁם טוֹב עוֹלֶה עַל גַּבֵּיהֶן

There are three crowns: the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood and the crown of sovereignty—but the crown of a good name rises above them all.

On this, Rabbi Asher Weiss (Rav Asher Weiss on Avos, vol.2) points to the fact that the first three crowns are based in the Torah because Hashem has commanded us to honour them. He then comments.

“By contrast, the crown of a good name has no source in the Torah. Nor is there any commandment to honor one crowned with this title. Nevertheless, it rises above them all”.

Rav Weiss explains why this is so. The first three crowns, and the duty to respect them, do not represent the person himself: they honour the status of the wearer—be it a king, a Kohen or a Torah scholar. Those who wear the crowns of kingship and the Kehunah will wear them by virtue of their birth and regardless of their personal qualities. The wearer of the crown of Torah is different. It is earned by toiling in one’s learning and achieving a deep understanding of it. Ultimately possession of this crown is the acquisition of an external element. While acquisition of this crown says nothing of a scholar’s birth or status, it also says little or nothing about the character and personal qualities of the scholar himself.

The שֵׁם טוֹב (shem tov, “good name”) is a proposition of quite a different order. Rav Weiss expresses its meaning quite briefly:

“…{T]he crown of a good name is achieved by a person through good deeds. A person is only judged according to his actions, so when he performs good deeds, he acquires a good name”.

He adds, citing Rabbeinu Nissim, that the crown of good deeds is superior because the function of Torah learning is to bring one to good deeds (Avot 1:17). Perhaps, adds Rav Weiss, this is why our mishnah affirms that the crown of good deeds is higher than the other crowns. We can add that this fourth crown is far more accessible than the others: it is open to women, children, the unlearned—indeed anyone at all.

Curiously, another mishnah is sometimes taken to hold that the shem tov is not such a great thing after all. At Avot 2:8 we learn in the name of Hillel himself:

קָנָה שֵׁם טוֹב קָנָה לְעַצְמוֹ, קָנָה לוֹ דִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה קָנָה לוֹ חַיֵּי הָעוֹלָם הַבָּא

One who acquired a good name acquired it for himself; one who acquired the words of Torah acquired life in the World to Come.

This teaching actually consists of two separate propositions and there is no word to link them. We subconsciously do this linking ourselves by silently inserting either an “but” or “and” between them.

For one modern commentator at least, the term “good name” is not to be taken literally but in a qualified sense. Rabbi Yaakov Hillel (Eternal Ethics from Sinai) writes:

“It is not a mitzvah per se to acquire a good name. and acquiring it will not gain us entry to the World to Come or any other spiritual reward. But a good name is acquired by dint of Torah and mitzvot, and these deeds most certainly will earn us the reward of the World to Come”.

In other words, one’s good deeds must be allied to learning Torah or performing mitzvot or they are of no value at all. This seems harsher than it is in practice, since it is hard to think of any way of acquiring a good name that does not involve some form of commitment to one mitzvah or another, even if it is as broad and non-specific a piece of guidance as loving one’s fellow as one loves oneself.

I leave the final word to Hillel. At Avot 1:13 he teaches נְגַד שְׁמָא אֲבַד שְׁמֵהּ, often idiomatically translated as “A name made great is a name destroyed”. This is a reminder of the ephemeral and vulnerable nature of a shem tov.  The crown of kingship, kehunah and Torah scholarship, once vested, remains for life. Not so, the crown of a good name: it can be lost or damaged. The moral of this mishnah is that, if you have acquired a good reputation and are known for it, you have acquired an asset which is laudable and should be treasured, but which can be lost in a moment, never to be retrieved.

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ONLY HALF A GOLEM?

Pirkei Avot is a tractate that embraces many forms of human life. We find within it a microcosm of society—Jewish the chasid and the tzadik, the bold and the bashful, the brilliant and the boorish, the wise and the wicked, the confident and the confused—and, at Avot 5:9, the golem.  This is how the mishnah reads:

שִׁבְעָה דְבָרִים בְּגוֹלָם וְשִׁבְעָה בְּחָכָם, חָכָם: אֵינוֹ מְדַבֵּר לִפְנֵי מִי שֶׁגָּדוֹל מִמֶּֽנּוּ בְּחָכְמָה וּבְמִנְיָן, וְאֵינוֹ נִכְנָס לְתוֹךְ דִּבְרֵי חֲבֵרוֹ, וְאֵינוֹ נִבְהָל לְהָשִׁיב, שׁוֹאֵל כְּעִנְיָן וּמֵשִׁיב כַּהֲלָכָה, וְאוֹמֵר עַל רִאשׁוֹן רִאשׁוֹן וְעַל אַחֲרוֹן אַחֲרוֹן, וְעַל מַה שֶּׁלֹּא שָׁמַע אוֹמֵר לֹא שָׁמַֽעְתִּי, וּמוֹדֶה עַל הָאֱמֶת, וְחִלּוּפֵיהֶן בְּגוֹלָם

There are seven things that characterize a golem, and seven that characterize a wise man. A wise man does not speak before one who is greater than him in wisdom or age. He does not interrupt his fellow's words. He does not hasten to answer. His questions are on the subject and his answers to the point. He responds to first things first and to later things later. As for what he did not learn, he says "I did not learn." He concedes the truth. With the golem, the reverse is the case.

Precisely that the anonymous author of our mishnah intended when he deployed that term we do not know, and Jewish folklore has invested the word with a secondary meaning that has largely blotted out its original meaning. Be that as it may, the mishnah invites us to ask an obvious question: can there be such as thing as half a golem?

Rabbi Yisroel Miller (The Wisdom of Avos) raises this issue when he writes:

“The mishnah … seems to imply that there is no middle ground between wisdom and golem-ness, though perhaps possessing some but not all of the seven characteristics is an in-between state”.

The mishnah is correct to imply that there is no middle ground between being a chacham and a golem, as a purely definitional matter. The Bartenura bases his understanding of the concept of ‘golem’ from the term ‘golmei keilim’ in the Mishnaic tractate of Keilim, where it describes vessels that are incomplete because part of the manufacturing process remains to be done. Applying this idea to the golem in our mishnah, a person is a golem whether he has ticked only one of the seven boxes, as it were, or managed six. It is his incompleteness that gives him his status. Tosafot Yom Tov supports this position, additionally citing Rambam in support. In modern parlance we might refer to our Mishnaic golem as someone who is “not quite the finished article”.

Adoption of this approach to defining ‘golem’, the word need not be a pejorative term at all. Our golem may be an intellectual, who adopts a generally respectful attitude towards others with whom he associates and whose mode of thinking is accurate and precise—but who has yet to cultivate the self-restraint necessary to resist the urge to interrupt others.

There is an interesting corollary to our understanding of what it means to be a golem: the process of becoming a chacham is clearly reversible. Just as a person can acquire and then master the seven qualities listed in the mishnah, so too can he lose them. From my personal observation and experience in the secular world, teaching in a university, I am convinced that it requires a great deal of effort, patience and will-power to hear another person out without interruption when you know (and therefore assume that you understand) more than they do—particularly when that other person is a junior colleague. It is equally hard to resist the temptation to answer a question with a response that is spontaneous and witty but sadly lacking in references or support.

So how would I address Rabbi Miller’s point? I would conclude that there is a middle ground between wisdom and golem-ness, and it is occupied by the wise man who sometimes lets his standards slip.

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PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Is Pirkei Avot prejudiced against pride?  It is universally accepted by our ancient Sages that גַאֲוָה (ga’avah, pride) is a damaging and negative quality that should be eliminated from the personality of every individual. Yet Pirkei Avot, the closest we have to a practical handbook on how to improve our behaviour, is strangely coy about it. Jealousy, lust and the desire for honor head the list of bad qualities, but pride is another matter.

The word גַאֲוָה is not mentioned at all, while the word that comes closest to it גְּבוֹהָה, is semantically similar but unrelated. So the closest that Avot gets to condemnation of pride is this anonymous mishnah at 5:22 (with proof verses omitted):

כָּל מִי שֶׁיֶּשׁ בּוֹ שְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים הַלָּלוּ, הוּא מִתַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל אַבְרָהָם אָבִֽינוּ, וּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים אֲחֵרִים, הוּא מִתַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל בִּלְעָם הָרָשָׁע. תַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל אַבְרָהָם אָבִֽינוּ: עַֽיִן טוֹבָה, וְרֽוּחַ נְמוּכָה, וְנֶֽפֶשׁ שְׁפָלָה. תַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל בִּלְעָם הָרָשָׁע: עַֽיִן רָעָה, וְרֽוּחַ גְּבוֹהָה, וְנֶֽפֶשׁ רְחָבָה. מַה בֵּין תַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל אַבְרָהָם אָבִֽינוּ לְתַלְמִידָיו שֶׁל בִּלְעָם הָרָשָׁע, תַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל אַבְרָהָם אָבִֽינוּ אוֹכְלִין בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה, וְנוֹחֲלִין הָעוֹלָם הַבָּא

…אֲבָל תַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל בִּלְעָם הָרָשָׁע יוֹרְשִׁין גֵּיהִנֹּם וְיוֹרְדִין לִבְאֵר שַֽׁחַת…

Whoever possesses these three traits is from the disciples of our father Abraham; and whoever possesses three other traits is from the disciples of the wicked Balaam. The disciples of our father Abraham have a good eye, a meek spirit and a humble soul. The disciples of the wicked Balaam have an evil eye, a haughty [גְּבוֹהָה] spirit and a gross soul. What is the difference between the disciples of our father Abraham and the disciples of the wicked Balaam? The disciples of our father Abraham benefit in this world and inherit the World to Come […] The disciples of the wicked Balaam inherit Gehinnom and descend into the pit of destruction […].

This does not mean that we should encourage pride. Both the Tanach (in Mishlei) and the apocrypha (in Ben Sira) explicitly condemn it. So does our oral Torah: the Gemara at Sotah 5b makes that clear. Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak argues for the zero option:  a person must totally eliminate pride. Rav Chiyya bar Ashi is prepared to tolerate “an eighth of an eighth” of pride on the part of a talmid chacham, just enough to preserve his dignity to the point at which others will not think less of his teaching.

So why is Avot so quiet about this middah? If any reader of this post has an explanation, I invite them to share it here.

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GROWTH OPPORTUNITY AND TOXIC POSITIVITY

Last week I came across a striking sentence in Rabbi Mordechai Ginsbury’s book, The Jigsaw Puzzle of Life: a Rabbi’s Perspective. In his chapter bearing the title “From Bitter to Better: Silver Linings and Positive Outcomes” he writes:

It would be an extremely foolish and unfeeling person who would try to extend comfort to an individual suffering in the grip of a painful, traumatic episode by suggesting that “this is a growth opportunity and you should be grateful for it”.

On the face of it, suggestions of this nature do seem brutal. But are they? And should they be?

One of the most popular genres of literature in our times is the inspirational book. This genre, which clearly sells well in airport terminal bookshops, directs its advice to that morsel of personality that occupies a space in our psyche and tells us that, one way or another, we simply don’t have what it takes to conquer the challenges that face us. These books start by telling us that the solution to our problems lies within ourselves. Once we understand our power to overcome adversity, all we have to do is identify our problems, face them fair and square, declare that nothing is going to get the better of our indomitable spirit and then, quite simply, succeed.

Turning the pages of these inspirational texts, it is hard to miss stories and anecdotes describing the courage and the determination of our fellow humans who have overcome their disadvantages and indeed their personal tragedies, turning the minuses in their lives into glorious pluses. The tradition of telling these stories is probably as old as time themselves, and many are embedded in our own Jewish tradition. Even apart from that, in my own childhood I was told many times of the courage of Douglas Bader, a heroic fighter pilot even after he suffered the amputation of both legs, and Helen Keller, who overcame the loss of her sight and hearing as a baby yet refused to be beaten by these crushing disabilities. I sometimes felt not so much inspired by these stories as inadequate and intimidated.

What does Pirkei Avot have to offer the scenario depicted by Rabbi Ginsbury? Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar (Avot 4:23) addresses the issue thus:

אַל תְּרַצֶּה אֶת חֲבֵרֶֽךָ בְּשַֽׁעַת כַּעֲסוֹ, וְאַל תְּנַחֲמֵֽהוּ בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁמֵּתוֹ מֻטָּל לְפָנָיו, וְאַל תִּשְׁאַל לוֹ בְּשַֽׁעַת נִדְרוֹ, וְאַל תִּשְׁתַּדֵּל לִרְאוֹתוֹ בְּשַֽׁעַת קַלְקָלָתוֹ

Do not appease your friend in his moment of rage; do not comfort him while his dead still lies before him; do not question him about a serious commitment at the moment he is making it; and do not try to see him in his time of degradation.

It would be shortsighted to regard this teaching as pointing to four isolated instances in which one should keep one’s mouth shut and refrain from saying anything. Rather, there is an overarching principle: when dealing on any occasion and under any circumstances with other people whose feelings are likely to be strained, stop yourself and think whether it is wise to say anything at all.

If we look at the four situations in Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar’s mishnah, what do we see? There is something of a pattern:

·         Placating someone who is angry is the pursuit of peace, a policy endorsed by Hillel at Avot 1:12;

·         Comforting the bereaved, nichum aveilim, is not just a mitzvah but an established practice in every civilized society;

·         Questioning the wisdom of a friend’s vows and commitments is one of the responsibilities of any true friend towards another. We should not allow ourselves to be without such a friend and should make an effort to acquire one (Yehoshua ben Perachyah, Avot 1:6);

·         Supporting someone who has just suffered shame or humiliation is a true measure of friendship, as indicated immediately above.

Each of things listed is good in itself. However, the benefit of each of these actions is conferred not by its performance alone but by the combination of the action and the right time for performing it.

Going back to Rabbi Ginsbury’s example, the advice to a friend who has experienced a personal disaster, that “this is a growth opportunity and you should be grateful for it”, may well be perfectly true. The skill is in knowing when to say it—just as it is important to know when to tell a person, “Don’t worry, everything that happens is for the best” and when to refrain from doing so. Interviewed in Gila Ross’s new book, Unbroken, mental health counsellor Rachel Tuchman warns against the phenomenon of what she calls “toxic positivity”—a term I’ve not previously encountered in the writings of commentators on Avot. This she describes as going one step beyond healthy optimism, effectively denying that people are permitted to grieve and to experience pain. The principles of Pirkei Avot, though expressed very differently, would appear to be in agreement.

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WORDS, MEANINGS AND MIDDOT

Many readers of the writings of Lewis Carroll will be familiar with the following dialogue in Through the Looking Glass:

Humpty Dumpty: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

Alice: "The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things."

Humpty Dumpty: "The question is which is to be master—that's all."

At the heart of this exchange are some serious issues. Should a word have only one meaning? Is a word’s meaning the same as its definition? Should the intention of the speaker or the context in which he speaks govern the meaning of a word? Is the function of communication compromised by the speaker’s imposition upon a word of a meaning that is not shared by its addressee? And so on.

We depend on sharing meanings of words with those around us. Where there are no shared meanings, there is no way of communicating an idea, a request or an order to someone else. In our complex and technologically advanced society, new words are constantly coined and old words repurposed, which in turn can cause uncertainty and confusion. Primo Levi points out (“The Scribe”, in Other People’s Trades) that there has been a shift in the way we give meaning to words. Definition used to involve the identification of a new or unfamiliar word and the use of familiar words to convey its meaning. More recently we have taken to the redeployment of familiar words (‘mouse’, ‘window’, ‘notebook’) in contexts where the words that explain them may be less familiar to the enquirer after their meaning (e.g. ‘hand-operated computer device used to control an on-screen cursor’).

Hillel, at Avot 2:5, teaches the Tannaitic position on the meaning of words:

אַל תֹּאמַר דָּבָר שֶׁאִי אֶפְשַׁר לִשְׁמֽוֹעַ שֶׁסּוֹפוֹ לְהִשָּׁמַע

Do not say something that it is impossible to understand, when its objective is to be understood.

Ironically, this teaching—despite its brevity, simplicity and apparent lack of ambiguity—is taken to mean different things by different scholars. The understanding preferred by the Chabad website, for example, is “Do not say something that ought not to be heard …, for ultimately it will be heard” (an interpretation supported by the Me’iri). Another surprising interpretation is that of Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner (Ru’ach Chaim): one shouldn’t say of one’s friend’s words that they cannot be understood in case they later come to be understood.

Hillel’s teaching implicitly incorporates an understanding of the context and the nature of the addressee. This is because שֶׁאִי אֶפְשַׁר לִשְׁמֽוֹעַ (“impossible to understand”) suggests that the possibility of understanding is determined by the level of the addressee’s comprehension. Thus an explanation of Einstein’s theory of relativity might reasonably be understood and appreciated by an audience of scientists but not by a troupe of kindergarten kids.

In his teaching, Hillel is conveying a further message: that there is no point in wasting one’s breath on an uncomprehending audience. This can be annoying and vexatious for the speaker and might cause not just frustration but a loss of temper. If you’re not going to make your words count, don’t say them. This fits in with the advice of the first of the two Rabban Shimons who populate the end of the first perek:

כָל הַמַּרְבֶּה דְבָרִים מֵבִיא חֵטְא

Everyone who increases speech brings sin.

In the sixth perek we also have the lengthy baraita (Avot 6:6) that lists the 48 ways to acquire Torah, of which the third is בַּעֲרִיכַת שְׂפָתַֽיִם (“by articulate speech”). This term is broad enough to cover almost anything one can think of, which takes us back to Alice’s question: are we really entitled to make these words mean whatever we want? Since the baraita gives us no indication of who spoke these words to whom, and we have only the wide and general context of acquiring Torah, arguably it is open to each of us to be the “master” of בַּעֲרִיכַת שְׂפָתַֽיִם and give these words whatever meaning we want.

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TREASURE BEYOND PRICE AND NON-TRANSFERABLE ASSETS

 The lengthy baraita at Avot 6:9, or at least the first part of it, makes for entertaining reading. The baraita reads like this:

אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹסֵי בֶּן קִסְמָא: פַּֽעַם אֶחָת הָיִֽיתִי מְהַלֵּךְ בַּדֶּֽרֶךְ, וּפָגַע בִּי אָדָם אֶחָד, וְנָתַן לִי שָׁלוֹם, וְהֶחֱזַֽרְתִּי לוֹ שָׁלוֹם, אָמַר לִי: רַבִּי, מֵאֵיזֶה מָקוֹם אָֽתָּה, אָמַֽרְתִּי לוֹ: מֵעִיר גְּדוֹלָה שֶׁל חֲכָמִים וְשֶׁל סוֹפְרִים אָֽנִי. אָמַר לִי: רַבִּי, רְצוֹנְךָ שֶׁתָּדוּר עִמָּֽנוּ בִּמְקוֹמֵֽנוּ, וַאֲנִי אֶתֵּן לָךְ אֶֽלֶף אֲלָפִים דִּנְרֵי זָהָב וַאֲבָנִים טוֹבוֹת וּמַרְגָּלִיּוֹת. אָמַֽרְתִּי לוֹ: אִם אַתָּה נוֹתֵן לִי כָּל כֶּֽסֶף וְזָהָב וַאֲבָנִים טוֹבוֹת וּמַרְגָּלִיּוֹת שֶׁבָּעוֹלָם, אֵינִי דָר אֶלָּא בִּמְקוֹם תּוֹרָה, וְכֵן כָּתוּב בְּסֵֽפֶר תְּהִלִּים עַל יְדֵי דָוִד מֶֽלֶךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל: טוֹב לִי תוֹרַת פִּֽיךָ, מֵאַלְפֵי זָהָב וָכָֽסֶף. וְלֹא עוֹד, אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּשַֽׁעַת פְּטִירָתוֹ שֶׁל אָדָם, אֵין מְלַוִּין לוֹ לְאָדָם לֹא כֶֽסֶף וְלֹא זָהָב וְלֹא אֲבָנִים טוֹבוֹת וּמַרְגָּלִיּוֹת, אֶלָּא תּוֹרָה וּמַעֲשִׂים טוֹבִים בִּלְבָד, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: בְּהִתְהַלֶּכְךָ תַּנְחֶה אֹתָךְ, בְּשָׁכְבְּךָ תִּשְׁמוֹר עָלֶֽיךָ, וַהֲקִיצֽוֹתָ הִיא תְשִׂיחֶֽךָ. בְּהִתְהַלֶּכְךָ תַּנְחֶה אֹתָךְ, בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה. בְּשָׁכְבְּךָ תִּשְׁמוֹר עָלֶֽיךָ, בַּקָּֽבֶר. וַהֲקִיצֽוֹתָ הִיא תְשִׂיחֶֽךָ, לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא. וְאוֹמֵר: לִי הַכֶּֽסֶף וְלִי הַזָּהָב, נְאֻם יְיָ צְבָאוֹת

Rabbi Yose ben Kisma said: Once I was going on my way and I encountered a man. He greeted me and I returned his greetings. He said to me: "Rabbi, where are you from?" I said to him: "I’m from a great city of sages and scholars”. He said to me: "Rabbi, would you like to dwell with us in our place? I will give you a million dinars of gold, precious stones and pearls." I said to him: "If you were to give me all the silver, gold, precious stones and pearls in the world, I would not live anywhere but in a place of Torah”. Indeed, as it is written in the book of Psalms by David, King of Israel: “I prefer the Torah of Your mouth over thousands in gold and silver”. Not only that but, when a person passes from this world, not silver, nor gold, nor precious stones, nor pearls accompany him—only Torah and good deeds, as it is said: “When you go it will direct you, when you lie down it will watch over you, and when you awaken it shall be your speech. “When you go it will direct you”—in this world; “When you lie down it will watch over you”—in the grave; “and when you awaken it shall be your speech”—in the World to Come. It also says: “Mine is the silver and Mine is the gold, so says the Lord of Hosts".

This baraita is routinely put forward as a mashal, a parable to illustrate the value of Torah. It does indeed make the point that Torah—and the opportunity to learn it and share it with others—is qualitatively worth more than all the gold, silver and precious gems in the world.

Quite reasonably, commentators learn this mashal from the viewpoint of Rabbi Yose ben Kisma and his noble refusal to be bought, since it is he who is teaching it. But it’s worth looking at it from the perspective of the man whom he encountered too. This man presumably also recognized the value of Torah—and of those whose lives embody it—since we learn that he was prepared to pay an astronomical price to acquire the chance to learn it with a first-class rabbi. Indeed, his high valuation of Torah is even more impressive. Rabbi Yose ben Kisma knew the value of Torah at first-hand, since he was a scholar, steeped in its wisdom and its deeper meanings. The traveller who meets him on the way, lacking that intimate personal knowledge and understanding, is willing to break the bank to pay for it, even though he is taking it on trust.

Another interesting point raised in this baraita is the notion that, when a person leaves this world, his Torah learning and good deeds go with him בִּלְבָד (bilvad) –a word that means ‘only’ or ‘alone’. We normally assume that what this means is that we can’t take anything with us, as it were, on our way to Olam HaBa—and that we certainly can’t take our worldly wealth. However, we can bring with us the intangible benefits that we have accrued in our lifetimes through our Torah learning and our ideally good behaviour.

Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber however has another explanation, which is found not in Higionei Avot, his commentary on Pirkei Avot, but in Sichot Tzvi, his commentary on the siddur, in the first volume in a discussion of the words דבקנו במצותיך (“attach us to your commandments”). There he writes that, when our baraita speaks of our Torah learning and good deeds accompanying us “alone”, it teaches that our learning and our good deeds come with us only if it is they who are “alone”, that is to say, that they are not conjoined to ulterior motives for doing them.

This will be a disappointment for those of us who find it difficult to disentangle their Torah and good deeds from the myriad motives that trail in their wake: these include the wish to avoid disapproval for falling behind in one’s daily daf, the choice of a pleasurable good deed in order to skip attendance at a less than inspiring shiur, and the giving of a charitable donation to a collector in order to be expeditiously rid of him.  Ultimately, it may be fair to say that we set ourselves high, and in some instances uncomfortably high, standards but hope that God will judge us more leniently than we might feel obliged to judge ourselves.

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OUR CHOICE TO REJOICE

At the the heart of a short mishnah by a small rabbi lies a big question, one that should have been resolved centuries before Pirkei Avot was compiled: Is it permissible to rejoice over the downfall of our enemies?

The mishnah (Avot 4:24), taught by Shmuel HaKatan (“Samuel the Small”), reads thus:

בִּנְפֹל אֹיִבְךָ אַל תִּשְׂמָח, וּבִכָּשְׁלוֹ אַל יָגֵל לִבֶּֽךָ, פֶּן יִרְאֶה יְיָ וְרַע בְּעֵינָיו, וְהֵשִׁיב מֵעָלָיו אַפּוֹ

When your enemy falls, do not rejoice; when he stumbles, don’t let your heart be gladdened—in case God sees and it will be displeasing in His eyes, and He will turn His wrath from him [to you]"

This teaching is centuries older than the era of the compiling of the Mishnah, since it is cut-and-pasted straight from the Book of Proverbs (Mishlei 24:17-18). One would have thought that everything that needed to be said about it would be found in the commentaries on the Tanach, but this is manifestly not so.

An ongoing issue presents itself for solution: when and how to rationalize the onset of a feeling of happiness, so as to know when to maximize it and when to keep it under control. We are hard-wired to be happy when things work out for us, regardless of whether our good fortune is at another’s expense, but our Sages—taking their lead from the author of the Book of Proverbs—challenge us to examine and evaluate its cause.

The easy way out is to remind ourselves that everything that happens to us, whether we perceive it as good or bad, is the product of God’s hashgachah peratit, His personal supervision of our lives on earth. When something happens to us that makes us happy, we should then give Him our grateful praise.

In general the situation is more nuanced when we were expecting something bad to happen to us through our own fault, and that bad outcome was to be delivered through the agency of an enemy. This expected outcome is however averted. We are happy, but our consciences may be telling us that this happiness is somehow undeserved. In this situation, our mishnah invites us to ask how deserving we really are.

Next, i if our happiness corresponds to the downfall of our foe, rather than merely to being saved, we should be careful: praise of God while suppressing our jubilation may be the only appropriate response, especially if that foe is down but not out and may therefore rise again. Ultimately, as our mishnah, indicates, we should pause to recollect the possibility that God, displeased at our unworthy rejoicing, may turn His wrath from our worsted enemies, restore their previous fortunes and direct His anger towards us instead.

Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber, in Sichot Tzvi—his commentary on Tefillah—cites the verse from Proverbs in the course of his explanation of the final two verses from one of the Tehillim that we recite in the Shabbat and Yom Tov pesukei dezimra:

תְּמוֹתֵת רָשָׁע רָעָה וְשֹׂנְאֵי צַדִּיק יֶאְשָׁמוּ

פֹּדֶה יְהוָה נֶפֶשׁ עֲבָדָיו וְלֹא יֶאְשְׁמוּ כָּל-הַחֹסִים בּוֹ

Evil shall kill the wicked; and they that hate the righteous shall be held guilty.

God redeems the soul of His servants; and none of them that take refuge in Him shall be desolate (Psalms 34:22-23).

The crucial point here is that evil kills the wicked, who are taken to be our enemies. Once they are dead, they are not in a position to have their fortunes restored at our expense as a consequence of our jubilation, so we can rejoice to our hearts’ content. And it is on the basis of this logic that the Children of Yisrael were entitled to celebrate the drowning of the Egyptians in the Reed Sea by singing Shira.

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LEARNING LISHMOR: WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Rabbi Yishmael ben Yose (Avot 4:6) has something to say about why we learn:

הַלּוֹמֵד תּוֹרָה עַל מְנָת לְלַמֵּד, מַסְפִּיקִין בְּיָדוֹ לִלְמוֹד וּלְלַמֵּד, וְהַלּוֹמֵד עַל מְנָת לַעֲשׂוֹת, מַסְפִּיקִין בְּיָדוֹ לִלְמוֹד וּלְלַמֵּד לִשְׁמוֹר וְלַעֲשׂוֹת

One who learns Torah in order to teach is given the opportunity to learn and teach. One who learns in order to do is given the opportunity to learn, teach, guard and do.

This mishnah does not appear to pose too many interpretational problems, but there is one question that leaps off the page at us. What does לִשְׁמוֹר (lishmor) mean in the context of learning Torah? We can learn Torah and we can act it out by performing its commandments—but לִשְׁמוֹר literally means “guard” or “keep”, not something that has an obvious meaning in the context of learning Torah.

Early commentators must have had a clear understanding of what lishmor meant, at least to them, since Rambam, Rabbenu Yonah, the Me’iri, the Bartenura and the commentary ascribed to Rashi make no reference to that word, quite possibly because that they worked from copies of Avot in which it did not appear.

Lishmor does appear in the text of Avot that lay before Rabbi Shmuel di Uceda, since he mentions it in his classic compendium Midrash Shmuel. For him, לִשְׁמוֹר וְלַעֲשׂוֹת (lishmor vela’asot) are to be taken together: lishmor means “to keep the negative mitzvot” while la’asot means “to perform the positive precepts”. This explanation is neat, memorable. And founded on a well-known and long-established distinction between positive and negative mitzvot, which is likely why it was cited by so many subsequent commentators.

Not everyone found the Midrash Shmuel’s explanation palatable. Affirming that the word lishmor should be included in the text, not omitted, Rabbi Yaakov Emden attacks it in his Lechem Shamayim, in terms so immoderate that only a true talmid chacham would dare using them:

“To keep and to perform." Here too the commentators stumbled; their feet slipped from the firm rock of the mishnah's plain meaning, and they wandered on to a crooked path. It is astonishing beyond measure how such a strange notion could ever have occurred to them—that although one's intention was only to perform the commandments, and not to guard oneself from transgressions, this is what the Tanna took the trouble to discuss.

In truth, this seems to me sheer nonsense. With due respect, the one who proposed this interpretation wished to display ingenuity and novelty in every single word, so that none should appear superfluous, but in doing so he produced many distortions. For "anything added is as though taken away." Concerning such a case it was said: "Do not be overly clever." He erred greatly in thinking that this "keeping" (shemirah) alludes to the negative commandments. Nor is the expression "to keep oneself from transgressions" linguistically appropriate, for the essential word is missing.

Rather, this is a very common biblical expression, referring to guarding something in one's heart, as in: "His father kept the matter" (Genesis 37:11); "Keep heed"; "You shall keep to do"; "You shall keep and do"; "To keep and to do"; "You shall keep and do." These are numerous instances of "keeping" that refer to positive action, and there are many more like them. All of them signify remembering, so that one may fulfill and perform the commandments.

Moreover, refraining from transgression is itself included within "doing," for whoever sits idle and does not commit a sin is rewarded as though he had performed a commandment, as we learned at the end of tractate Makkot.

In any case, it is obvious that the "keeping" mentioned here in the Mishnah means exactly what it means in the biblical verses cited above: namely, preserving the commandment in one's thought and memory [במחשבה ובזכרון ], as it is written: "For it is pleasant if you keep them within you" (Proverbs 22:18). There can therefore be no doubt about this.

Heaven forbid, then, that the word "to keep" (lishmor) should be deleted, as appears in the version of the text that came into the hands of the Tosafot Yom Tov. The copyist of that manuscript wrote it defectively—although he derived it from there—and the scribe inadvertently omitted it. But in our case the error belongs to the copyist. Our version was certainly written with precision by an accurate scribe”.

Is Rabbi Emden right? I believe so, but with one caveat. We now have a wider range of concepts in play than existed in his time. He chooses to equate lishmor with “preserving the commandment in one's thought and memory” because there was no more appropriate term at his disposal, and Rabbi Yishmael could have used the regular words for thought and memory if that was what he specifically intended. But, around a century after Rabbi Emden’s birth, the concept of internalization began to gain traction and I believe that, had he been familiar with it, he would likely have employed it to explain lishmor in our mishnah: a person who learns in order to do is given the opportunity not just to learn and to teach but to internalize his learning—to make it part of his very being—and to perform it.

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OUT OF SIGHT

“Seeing is believing” is a mantra that has been repeated so often that many people, myself included, often forget to think about what it means. But recently I was jolted out of my intellectual somnolence on this point by a small and (in the great course of things) trivial occurrence.

One of my grandkids, aged 6, was watching a sports program that featured highlights of soccer games from the FIFA World Cup. The program showed some of the goals—not just once but a second time as action replays. This juvenile spectator, seeking to make sense of what he viewed, believed that each of what we know to be action replays was in reality an additional goal, though identical to the goal that preceded it.

At first I thought this was an amusing mistake based on an inadequate perception of what the child had seen. On further reflection I concluded that this inference—though fallacious—was not in itself illogical. After all, if we watch traffic lights go several times through their sequence of changes, we recognize that the second and subsequent changes are not “action replays” but separate, if identical, events. From this it seems that the value we derive from what we see with our eyes depends not only on what we see but what we know or infer when we see it.

This led me to ask: what does Pirkei Avot have to say about how we should see things? I was surprised by what I found.

My first port of call was the all-embracing baraita at Avot 6:6, which lists the 48 things that facilitate the acquisition of Torah. This baraita has something to say about what one hears, says, feels, understands and even thinks—but is silent concerning what one sees. Working my way back into the five chapters of mishnah, I gradually realized that sight, despite its significance in our daily lives, was a subject from which Avot appears to consciously distance itself.

While sight is a regular human faculty for which most of us are grateful, we are warned how dangerous it can be for us to use it. Thus at Avot 3:9 Rabbi Yaakov cautions that someone who breaks off from his learning to admire a beautiful tree or field is regarded as having forfeited his soul. Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar adds (Avot 4:23) that we should not seek to look at a person at the time of his degradation. Indeed, even when we do look at something, we should not accept the evidence of our eyes at face value: Rabbi Meir says as much in Avot 4:27 when he teaches:

אַל תִּסְתַּכֵּל בְּקַנְקַן, אֶלָּא בְּמַה שֶּׁיֶּשׁ בּוֹ, יֵשׁ קַנְקַן חָדָשׁ מָלֵא יָשָׁן, וְיָשָׁן שֶׁאֲפִילוּ חָדָשׁ אֵין בּוֹ

Don’t look at the vessel, but at what it contains. There are new vessels that are filled with old wine, and old vessels that don’t even contain new wine.

These negative teachings with regard to human sight stand in sharp contrast to Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi’s mishnah at Avot 2:1, when he references a higher form of vision:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה, דַּע מַה לְּמַֽעְלָה מִמָּךְ, עַֽיִן רוֹאָה וְאֹֽזֶן שׁוֹמַֽעַת, וְכָל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ בְּסֵֽפֶר נִכְתָּבִים

Contemplate three things, and you will not come to the grip of transgression. Know what is above you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds being inscribed in a book.

The message here is unambiguous. We cannot see this “seeing eye”. It is a quality possessed by God alone. This is the ability to perceive that lies above us and which lies normally well beyond our reach. It is metaphorically speaking, the eye of God and it is only this eye that truly comprehends what it views. When someone has this gift, having been touched by Ru’ach haKodesh (a spirit of holiness), we have a special word for that person. He is a ro’eh—literally a “seer”.

There is an allusion to the seer in Avot itself. Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel, when asked at Avot 2:13 to identify the ideal path to which a person should cling, answers הָרוֹאֶה אֶת הַנּוֹלָד (haro’eh et hanolad, “one who sees the outcome of that which has yet to emerge”). In other words, he is one who sees, or foresees, that which is not yet visible—something that falls within the capabilities of the seer.

Is seeing then to be relegated to playing a relatively insignificant role in our lives as practising Jews and in our relationships with God and man? Yes, according to Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks who has repeatedly and consistently argued that Judaism is fundamentally a religion of sound over sight. While the Greeks and other ancient civilizations viewed seeing as a form of knowledge, Judaism takes the contrary view. God cannot be seen, only heard, which is why the Shema, a declaration of faith based on listening, not seeing, provides us with the supreme means of linking us to God and to our fellows.

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BEE IN THE BATHROOM

A few days ago we had an uninvited visitor. A bee found its way through our insect-proof netting and into our bathroom. If we were unhappy at this intrusion, the bee was apparently even more so, emitting a harsh and unremitting buzz as it furiously circled the confines of its prison in search of a way out.  It took a day or so before the bee had calmed down, settled on a handtowel in sullen silence, allowing me to trap it inside a drinking glass and ease it gently out of the window.

I do not know whether bees actually feel anger, though in human culture it is easy to label their frenetic buzz as a sign of anger. Indeed, “angry buzzing” is something of a literary cliché. What I do know is that this episode resonates with my understanding of Pirkei Avot.

While our sages, the foremost of whom is Rambam, are unanimous in condemning anger, and we learn that it is even a form of avodah zarah (Shabbat 105b), the Tannaic authors of the mishnayot in Avot accept both that anger exists and that we feel it. This is why Rabbi Eliezer does not demand us never to be angry but instead urges us (at 2:15) אַל תְּהִי נֽוֹחַ לִכְעוֹס (“Don’t be easy to anger”). Going well beyond that, the anonymous author of Avot 5:17 teaches:

אַרְבַּע מִדּוֹת בְּדֵעוֹת: נֽוֹחַ לִכְעוֹס וְנֽוֹחַ לֵרָצוֹת, יָצָא הֶפְסֵדוֹ בִּשְׂכָרוֹ. קָשֶׁה לִכְעוֹס וְקָשֶׁה לֵרָצוֹת, יָצָא שְׂכָרוֹ בְּהֶפְסֵדוֹ. קָשֶׁה לִכְעוֹס וְנֽוֹחַ לֵרָצוֹת, חָסִיד. נֽוֹחַ לִכְעוֹס וְקָשֶׁה לֵרָצוֹת, רָשָׁע

There are four types of temperaments. One who is easily angered and easily appeased—his loss cancels out his reward. One whom it is difficult to anger and difficult to appease—his reward cancels out his loss. One whom it is difficult to anger and is easily calmed down is a chasid. One who is easily angered and is difficult to calm down is wicked.

This clearly acknowledges that even a chasid will feel anger. But he is not alone. Earlier in the fifth perek, at Avot 5:2-3, we learn that God too gets angry—and that He is able to restrain His anger for generation after generation.

All of this points to a principle that emerges from Rambam’s Moreh Nevuchim: we can’t stop having feelings, ideas and emotions entirely. If we could, we would no longer be functionally human. However, what we can do is control them once we have them.

The bee coming into my bathroom and buzzing around in apparent rage and desperation is analogous to a powerful surge of anger that comes into one’s head. At this point we may not be amenable to rational thought. This is why Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar teaches (Avot 4:23)

אַל תְּרַצֶּה אֶת חֲבֵרֶֽךָ בְּשַֽׁעַת כַּעֲסוֹ

Do not appease your friend at the height of his anger.

But once we have controlled our anger and composed ourselves we can view things, including our own feelings and the circumstances that generated them, in a more reasonable manner.  Once the bee calms down, its problem can be addressed with a happy outcome for bee—and me.

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WHO WILL LEAD THE FOXES?

At Avot 4:20 Rabbi Matya ben Charash teaches:

הֱוֵי זָנָב לָאֲרָיוֹת, וְאַל תְּהִי רֹאשׁ לַשֻּׁעָלִים

Be a tail to lions, rather than a head to foxes.

Both lions and foxes appear elsewhere in Avot and it is safe to say that, since both animals were far more commonly found in the Middle East at the time of the Tannaim than they are today, allusions to them would have been mor meaningful to the Mishnaic sages of 2,000 years ago and to their audience than they are to us today.

Be that as it may, in this mishnah it is probable that Rabbi Matya ben Charash had in mind not the real animal but the symbolic one, the creature of the proverb and the parable. That sort of lion represents strength, intelligence and dignity, coupled with an element of noble self-restraint, while his companion represents deviousness, cunning, sharp observation and a dash of the instinct for self-sufficiency and survival in a world of bigger, stronger animals.

 If this is so, the message of the mishnah is clear. We are advised to keep the company of our betters, whom we can trust and from whose superior qualities we can learn. We should also avoid the company of low-lives, even if we can demonstrate that we are better at being low-lives than they are. According to Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of the Fathers) this mishnah is actually a teaching on the topic of self-image. Those who associate with the foxes do so because they insufficiently value their capabilities and their potential to better themselves. I doubt that the earlier commentators would take issue with this.

But there is one issue raised in this mishnah that troubles me. We are told to be a tail to lions, not a head to foxes—but what does this mean for the foxes themselves? With no-one to lead them in the face of such explicit instruction not to do so, what will be their fate? It cannot be expected that the foxes will cease to be foxes just because they don’t have a leader or that, in the absence of a leader, they will all commit themselves to follow the (head of the) lions. So what is their fate?

I think the answer may be found within Avot itself. Hillel at Avot 1:14 teaches:

אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי, וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי, וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁו, אֵימָתָי

If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?

This mishnah has been so overused in recent years, regardless of its context, that one can easily disregard that it might have had a context when Hillel first taught it. At any rate, the first two propositions—if I am not for myself and if I am only for myself—place it firmly within the category of Avot teachings that deal with interpersonal relationships and the need to strike a balance between one’s personal needs and the needs of others.

By identifying and criticizing the polar opposites of absolute selfishness and total altruism, Hillel foreshadows the Maimonidean golden mean that forms a central plank of Hilchot De’ot in the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah. And as a pair of general maxims for life, Hillel’s guidance casts a clear light on our case of the foxes. We must not devote ourselves utterly to those who may live their lives at a lower standard than our own, and with lower expectations. But nor must we ignore them. We must take our inspiration from the lions and aspire to spread it among the foxes, even though both the lions and the foxes may ridicule our ethics and our efforts.

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