Rabbi Yishmael, at Avot 3:16, teaches a three-fold message. There is no consensus as to what the first two parts mean, but the third part is both simple to comprehend and hard to put into practice: a person should receive everyone besimchah, literally "in happiness". What did Rabbi Yishmael mean by this?
On one view, a person should be genuinely happy to meet others. After all, every human is created, as it were, in God's image and there is no-one on the planet who does not have the capacity to improve the lot of family, friends or the wider community.
Another view is that, however miserable or angry another person has made you, it is still incumbent on us all to grit our teeth and put on a show of good cheer, to demonstrate that we can rise above the behaviour of others and not let them dictate how we respond to others.
Classical commentators have no doubt that Rabbi Yishmael meant his words to be taken literally and applied across the board. Rambam sees them as an upgrade on Shammai's teaching at Avot 1:15 that we should greet others with a cheerful face: now we should genuinely feel the happiness we show. The commentary in Rashi's name adds that we must speak pleasantly to all comers. Me'am Lo'ez takes the mishnah's words literally, as does Midrash Shmuel, who holds that even people who come to hurt you are in one way or another emissaries of God. Rabbenu Yonah does not even explain the teaching but merely repeats it, presumably because he regards its meaning as being self-evident.
Modern commentators, acknowledging the realities of contemporary society, are more nuanced in their advice to readers. Thus Rabbi Marc D. Angel (The Koren Pirkei Avot) prefers to apply this mishnah to 'the whole person' rather than 'every person'. He writes:
"...[Rabbi Yishmael] surely knew that it was unrealistic to expect people to cheerfully receive all human beings. Perhaps his statement should be understood as advising the maintenance of an optimistic overall view of humanity..." Receive the 'whole person' optimistically -- knowing that the good and evil will be judged by God".
"Do not reject anyone from the outset; instead, receive everyone gladly, and then consider whether or not he is suitable for you and your endeavours".
In the wake of the Holocaust and the many dreadful sufferings faced by Jews in both hospitable and inhospitable lands, one can appreciate the temptation to qualify Rabbi Yishmael's words. One contemporary rabbi has however held out against this temptation and his words are all the more poignant for his being a survivor of the Buchenwald death camp. Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau (Yachel Yisrael, ArtScroll translation) writes:
"We must gladly greet 'everyone': each human being... Although not everyone possesses this natural ability to empathize with others, it can be acquired, 'until gladness becomes part of one's nature' [citing Rabbeinu Yitzchak ben R' Shlomo]"".
In a world in which it is so much easier to hate than to love, and to distance oneself from one's fellow humans, but where we have come to accept that there are limitations on the extent to which we can live out the ideals of earlier generations, we should think carefully before imposing limits on any encouragement to do or to be good, so those limitations do not become norms in their own right.
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