Festive feasts and divine retribution

At this time of year, to mark the Jewish festival of Chanukah, a great deal of festive eating is done. Chanukah may be regarded by many as a "minor festival", but this eating is an activity in which the vast majority of Jews appear to indulge, regardless of their level of religious observance and commitment. The main object of consumption in contemporary is the sufganiyah-- a species of doughnut on steroids [linguistic note: the word sufganiyah is rarely heard since it is the singular form of the noun: the word is normally found in the plural, sufganiyot, since that is how they are generally purchased and consumed].

All this feasting on doughnuts reminds me of a mishnah in Pirkei Avot in which feasting makes a surprising appearance. According to Rabbi Akiva (Avot 3:20):

"Everything is given on collateral, and a net is spread over all the living. The store is open, the storekeeper extends credit. The account-book lies open and the hand writes -- and all who wish to borrow may come and borrow. [But] the bailiffs make their rounds every day and exact payment from a person, whether he knows it or not. Their case is well founded, the judgement is a judgement of truth, and everything is prepared for the feast"

What does this feast have to do with the collection of debts? And who gets to attend it? Let's look a little further into this mystery.

One view of the promised banquet (Bartenura; commentary ascribed to Rashi) is that it is for everyone – the righteous and the wicked alike – on the strength of a promise that every Jew is entitled to a share in the World to Come – though the wicked may find that they need to purge themselves of the error of their ways before they get to receive their share. According to this mishnah, that purging is effected through the punishment element of the payback which is indicated through the Hebrew verb nifra’in.

An alternative view is that only the righteous will enjoy this feast: the wicked, having consumed their credit in their lifetime, are unable to attend since they will be destroyed for all eternity (per Rabbi Ovadyah Sforno). There is also a position that lies between the two: everyone gets to attend the banquet but only the righteous get to eat: the wicked sit and watch, grinding their teeth (per Rabbi Ya'akov Emden).

None of these explanations answer a fundamental question: what is the intended function of this reference within the mishnah?

All the other statements in this mishnah share a common function: that of getting man to change his behaviour for the better. The vague statement that “everything is prepared for the feast” does not. If a person is reminded that God keeps a record of everything he does, that he cannot cheat God and that he will be judged on the basis of his performance, he may be moved by these sobering reflections to behave better, or at least to think more carefully before continuing to behave badly. However, imagine your response if someone were to say to you, “watch out how you behave because, after you die and God judges you for good or bad, there is a banquet to which you may or may not be invited and at which you may be allowed to eat immediately, after a delay or not at all.” How big an impact might these words have as an incentive to do good or as a caution against doing bad? And what is the attraction of this banquet in an afterlife in which there is no eating or drinking in the physical sense, but instead a reward that we cannot comprehend: that of being bathed in the light of the Shechinah (an experience of one's awareness of God's presence)?

A possible answer lies in how we view the concept of post-mortem dining arrangements in Avot. This mishnah refers to a se'udah (translated here as “feast” but generally referring to any meal that marks or honours a special occasion), and a later mishnah taught in the name of Rabbi Ya’akov (at 4:21) refers to a traklin (which I translate as “banqueting hall” but also means “dining couch”). These are the only two mishnayot in Avot to make explicit reference to banqueting arrangements, but that is not the only thing they have in common.

In each case the “banquet” is in the World to Come; the banquet is contemplated within a wider context as something that follows a course of repentance/payback and good deeds, and the word used in relation to it has the same Hebrew root: letaken, “to prepare.”

It is submitted that both mishnayot can be read as conveying the same message: it is not the meal that matters here, but the preparation for it. If you want God’s judgement to be in your favour in the next World, you have to prepare for it in this one. When Rabbi Akiva teaches that “everything is prepared for the feast” he means that, if you follow his guidance in the earlier parts of the mishnah, it is you who have, figuratively speaking, prepared the “banquet” that awaits you – and that whether there is a banquet ahead of you or not depends on your efforts and your preparation.

More on food as a metaphor

The idea of a person behaving well or badly, being judged and then being sentenced in a manner that is appropriate to his conduct is also frequently conveyed in English by a sequence of food-related metaphors. While Rabbis Akiva and Ya’akov talk of feasts, we speak of a person “getting his just desserts.” One cannot have unlimited credit and expect that he will never have to pay it back since “you can’t have your cake and eat it.” Where a person performs a deed in a clumsy or unnecessarily complex manner, he is said to have “made a meal of it” or, depending on his locality, to have “made a hash of it.” If he vigorously asserts that he has done no wrong but God’s judgement goes against him, he is obliged to “eat humble pie.” Some people’s World to Come is better than that of others: this is not because “that’s the way the cookie crumbles” but because Divine justice takes into account things that we cannot know or see. Since preparation for one’s World to Come can only be done during one’s lifetime, someone who “doesn’t care a fig” about God’s judgement while he lives won’t get a chance to remedy the situation after he dies since no-one gets “a second bite at the cherry.” When he sees the rewards of others, which are denied to him, his attitude may be one of “sour grapes” and he may be “stewing in his own juice.” In each of these cases, the use of the metaphor describes a person’s conduct or attitude: what is eaten, and whether it is eaten or not, are matters of no consequence.

Photograph: doughnuts from Modiin, the locality from which the Hasmonean uprising against the Greeks was launched.