Sponges, funnels, strainers and sieves

 According to a mishnah in the first chapter of Avot (5:18),

There are four types among those who sit before the sages: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer and the sieve. The sponge absorbs everything. The funnel takes in at one end and lets it out the other. The strainer lets the wine pass through but retains the sediment. The sieve lets the coarse flour pass through but retains the fine flour.

Most commentators take the view that the sponge, the funnel and the strainer are unfavourable metaphors and that we should all be sieves. There is however another way of understanding this mishnah: maybe all four metaphors are designed to sing the praises of four different types of student.

On the principle that we should never be dismissive of any item since there is nothing in the world that does not have its place (Avot 4:3) let us look for a place for them in the world of learning.

The sponge

Here is a person who literally mops up the contents of each class. This is a wonderful asset. Almost every reader of these words will have attended a lecture, a seminar or a tutorial where the discussion was scintillating, stimulating and well worth further thought – but the rapidity with which each idea followed another, and with which the cut-and-thrust of argument generated fresh sparks, made it impossible to take accurate notes of what precisely was said, who said what, and which responses were given in return for which propositions. Who would not pay handsomely for a clear and accurate record? But here we have the sponge! He may not understand all or indeed any of the finer points of what he has absorbed, but there he is, nonetheless – a priceless asset and a thoroughly useful learning partner at times like this.

The funnel

Now we have another valuable utensil in the family of students. One of the salient features of a funnel is that what goes in at the top is identical to what comes out at the bottom. In other words, output is a faithful reproduction of input. There is no variation, adulteration, change of quality or quantity. How many of us have toiled to get students to transmit with pinpoint accuracy that which is drummed into them? How many times do people need to be told that there is nothing to be gained from paraphrasing a statute or a Torah verse? Only the original version is valid and -- in the case of Torah learning -- that is the word of God. With our funnel, what goes in is what comes out: you can depend on that.

The strainer

Here we find another precious resource for serious study. The need to separate out the relevant from the irrelevant, the essential from the peripheral, is beyond doubt. The only question we need to decide now is how and where this straining process takes place. This mishnah postulates a student of Torah who sits before the chachamim and listens assiduously to their every word. However valuable those words may be as a whole, not every one of them will be relevant and applicable in the course of every discussion, so our strainer filters them before discussing them with his fellows. This means that he will take great care to retain the so-called “dregs” rather than cast them at his colleagues in the course of their subsequent analysis and revision of what they have learned.

The sieve

Like the strainer, the sieve separates that which is relevant and desirable from that which is not. The text of our mishnah is however problematic since it tells us that the sieve retains the fine particles of fine flour (solet) but lets the larger particles of coarse flour (kemach) fall through. This is surely impossible.

Maybe the fact that it is impossible for a sieve to retain the small but let the large pass through is the precise point that the mishnah is trying to make. Yes, this sort of sieve is impossible – but even so, at the end of the day and after all the discussions and arguments are over, we are left with a sieve full of fine flour. In other words, one of the four types of Torah student we learn of here is the person who achieves the impossible: he starts with the same materials as the rest of us – a bag of flour, a sieve – and ends up with a result that none of us could predict, replicate or explain.

On this reckoning the sieve is therefore a metaphor for the creative and imaginative Torah scholar who can think outside the box and produce results that are quite beyond the rest of us.

If this counterintuitive explanation of the mishnah can be upheld, it provides a positive and upbeat conclusion to a succession of mishnayot that depressingly represent most people in negative terms. It also provides a context in which this mishnah is taken to refer to different types of chachamim who have come to sit before chachamim greater than themselves in order to learn from them (Rabbi Shmuel de Uçeda again, this time citing Rabbi Moshe Almosnino, Pirkei Moshe): If the sponge, funnel, strainer and sieve were not all “positives,” this view would be quite insulting.

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The idea of taking this mishnah positively is not mine. Rabbi Shmuel de Uçeda, Midrash Shmuel, explains the apparently superfluous words in the Hebrew text as an invitation to explain the four utensils twice over, once as praise and once as criticism. This approach is followed by Rabbi Avraham Azulai in his lovely commentary, Ahavah BeTa’anugim

Slow and steady?

An anonymous mishnah in the fifth chapter of Avot (5:15) discusses the merits of different types of student. Two in particular merit closer attention. They are students who are "quick to learn, quick to forget" and ‘"slow to learn, slow to forget". According to the author of the mishnah, the advantages possessed by each of these personalities cancels out their disadvantages, so we might with good reason say that they were each as good (or bad) as one another. I would be reluctant to draw that conclusion.

Speaking from my lengthy personal experiences of teaching law both to university students and to practicing lawyers, I can say that the ‘quick to learn, quick to forget’ person generally comes over as a pretty smart individual who is a pleasure to teach: this is because the attention of a professor who is giving a class is immediately attracted by the student who latches swiftly on to the subject-matter of the class. This student’s ability to think on his feet and generate relevant questions without the need for deep and patient thought makes for classes that are lively and enjoyable both for the teacher and for other students. The fact that the content of the class is soon forgotten is something that only manifests itself later, after the class is over, and the professor discovers this unfortunate effect after the examinations are marked, when he sees this student’s poor grades and comes to understand the reason for them.

In contrast, the ‘slow to learn, slow to forget’ type of student israrely a pleasure to teach. This student sits there quietly, neither asking nor answering and often wearing a facial expression that ranges between the blank and the uncomprehending; if he or she speaks at all, it is usually to ask for something to be repeated; this can slow down the class and bore the elite corps of faster classmates. This student’s understanding of the class does not begin to happen until his lecture notes have been read and re-read together with any other relevant materials on the syllabus. Again, this is only apparent when examination papers are graded and the late-flowering intellectual development of this academic slowcoach is there for all to see.

Our Sages prefer ‘slow-and-slow’ to ‘quick-and-quick’. Rabbi Yitzchak Magriso (Me’am Lo’ez), Rabbenu Yonah and others go further and suggest that, if there are only enough funds to support one of the two, they should go to the one who is slow to learn but slow to forget. since, at the end of the learning process, however laborious and painful it may have been, that student always has something to show from the task of studying. The fact that the process has been long and arduous is itself a plus, since we learn that the reward that results from the performance of any mitzvah (Avot 5:26).

The scenario here of fast learners versus slow ones is a little reminiscent of the Aesop fable of the Tortoise and the Hare, which teaches the motto that "slow and steady wins the race". At least one Tanna was familiar with Aesop's fables though it is improbable that this particular tale would have influenced our mishnah, which takes the concept of slow-and-steady to a new level. In reality, tortoises rare if ever outrun the hare, but the slow, steady student has an excellent chance of outperforming a speedy rival.

The Golem, speaking first and interrupting others

The characterisics of the golem (an immature person) and the chacham (the wise person) are contrasted by the mishnah at Avot 5:9. This mishnah lists seven criteria that identify a person as being one or the other. In particular, a golem is someone who, in debate or discussion with others, speaks ahead of someone better entitled than himself to do so, and a golem is also a person who interrupts others once they have started to speak and are, so to speak, in full flow -- regardless of their seniority.

Who speaks first?

Among chachamim, one who has more knowledge because he has learned more than another takes precedence in speaking over one who is sharper and better at reasoning but knows less (per Tiferet Yisrael), while one who asserts that he is more knowledgeable takes precedence over one who does not (per Rabbi Shmuel de Uçeda, Midrash Shmuel, basing this conclusion on a slightly different text of Avot from that normally found today). This raises interesting problems because humility is a sign of a chacham (Avot 6:1, 6:6), so one would not expect a genuine chacham to advertise himself as such. However, another sign of a chacham is that he recognizes and speaks the truth, so he could hardly deny being a chacham if he is one.

Knowledge versus reasoning is not the only issue at stake when it comes precedence. Wisdom versus age is another. So who speaks first? Thus (i) one should accord precedence to a chacham who is younger and let him speak first even if he is one’s junior in years; while (ii) one should also accord precedence to an older person even if he is not so wise (Rabbi Avraham Azulai, Ahavah BeTa’anugim).

There is an obvious conundrum here: if you are wiser but younger than your colleague, he is older but not as wise as you. So, as a matter of logic, each should let the other speak first. This scenario potentially risks turning comically into a polite but unending dialogue along the lines of “After you!” “No, after you!” “No, no. Please! I insist, you go first.” However, it does give two people the opportunity to show and express respect for one another, which in itself is a desirable outcome (as in Avot 4:1).

Interrupting others

Experience of life tells us that, particularly in wider society, interrupting others is a regular part of daily life. Whether it is appreciated or not, it is far more tolerated than in previous generations when proverbs such as “children should be seen and not heard” were more widely respected.

It is difficult to ascertain the point at which interruption became so widely accepted: this practice may have developed in post-Second World War western culture, when ownership of telephones became more widespread and charges for calls were made on the basis of their duration. Money could thus be saved by cutting conversations short.

In any event, interruption of the speech of others appears to be here to stay, and it is particularly apparent in conversations conducted with the elderly and the hard-of-hearing. It is easy to assume that someone who speaks slowly and haltingly has finished speaking when they have only paused for breath, and a person with poor hearing may not even realize that he is speaking through someone else’s words.

Letting someone else speak first is a status-based quality, since it accords greater respect to those of us who enjoy some seniority. In contrast, letting someone finish speaking and not interrupting them is an egalitarian principle: an older or wiser person must show this respect to even a much younger and less knowledgeable speaker. Why? Because interruption can cause the younger person much distress (Rabbenu Yosef ben Shushan, cited in Mishnat Avot). and because it treats what he has to say as being of little worth (Ri Chiyyun, Milei deAvot, ibid).

Regardless of the age of the speaker, there are still further reasons in support of this Mishnah. Interruption of others is not only a sign of arrogance (per Rabbenu Yonah); it might also be quite unnecessary if it turns out that the words interjected by the interrupter are those that the speaker was in the process of saying (Rabbi Moshe Shik, Chidushei Aggadot Masechet Avot) and the mere fact of being stopped in full flow can knock a speaker off his stride and confuse him (Tiferet Yisrael).

Incidentally, we should not be thinking merely of a dialogue between two discussants: breaking into a conversation to which a person is not a party, for example where two people are having an argument and a bystander chooses to interject his own contribution, is just as much covered by the ground-rules for non-interruption (Rabbi Shimon ben Tzemach, Magen Avot).

So the moral of the mishnah, for us all to absorb, is that we should respect the entitlement of others to speak and, if they are older/wiser, let them have their say first even if we propose to disagree and set them right. Likewise, conversations are to be shared, not owned, and one of the best ways to share a dialogue is to resist the temptation to control or monopolise it by interrupting others.

So long, Meat Loaf

Yesterday saw the death, at the age of 74, of Michael Lee Aday, better known as Meat Loaf. A phenomenally successful musician and composer, his Bat Out of Hell trilogy of albums sold more than 65 million copies worldwide. He will be mourned by legions of appreciative fans, as well as by his family and friends.

I respected his talent and enjoyed his music, but didn't always see eye to eye with his lyrics. In particular, I was troubled by a line from his track "Everything Louder Than Everything Else":

"A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age"

I had already passed through my own youth by the time I heard this track but had yet to reach old age. Even so, the line troubled me.

The squandering of one's youth is not a policy that is endorsed by Pirkei Avot. Rather, it is advantageous to learn while one is young (per Elisha ben Avuyah, Avot 4:25), when it is easier to absorb new ideas and skills. Time that is lost is time that cannot be recovered

The notion of an old age being wise and productive is however quite consonant with the Ethics of the Fathers, where intellectual maturity begins at 40, and the ripe old age of 80 is cited as the age of gevurah, "strength" (Avot 5:25). We are encouraged not to be adversely judgemental of the way youngsters spend their youth, being advised to judge others favourably (Avot 1:6). However, if we have survived our teens and twenties, negotiated the perils of middle age and are now edging toward what Frank Sinatra calls the "final curtain", we should make an effort to say something positive about being old, to reassure the young that they should look forward to joining us when the time is ripe.

As an aside, old age doesn't usually get a good press in rock lyrics. One of the most famous lines in any rock number -- "I hope I die before I get old" -- was composed by British band The Who and features in their iconic number "My Generation". That song was launched in 1965. Could the band have known that, as old men themselves, they were still going to be singing that self-same song to audiences more than half a century later?

Something old, something new -- a long-published book comes up for review

Here's something of a novelty: a review of a book that was published nearly 30 years ago. Even more of a novelty is the fact that this review has something of a sectarian slant to it. While I have generally not singled out any religious preference for special attention, this post cannot fail to do so because this is a book on Pirkei Avot by two scholarly advocates of Reform Judaism in the United States.

As an orthodox Jew by persuasion and practice, I cannot pretend to be an expert on the Reform movement in the States. This review will not therefore discuss its principles and doctrines. My interest here is solely focused on what the book under review has to say about Avot and how it says it.

The book, Pirke Avot: A Modern Commentary on Jewish Ethics, was published in 1993 by the UAHC Press. The authors are Leonard Kravitz and Kerry M. Olitzky, both of whom held posts with the Hebrew Union College and worked as congregational rabbis. Finding this work in my local second-hand book shop, I was intrigued. What would it say about the Ethics of the Fathers?

I had expected to find some fairly revolutionary, not to say shocking, religious pronouncements in the commentary on the six chapters of Avot. The big shock, however, was that there weren't any. The authors took an eclectic approach to their choice of sources, limiting themselves to just five: the Avot deRabbi Natan, Maimonides, the commentary ascribed to Rashi, Rabbi Ovadyah MiBartenura and Rabbi Yom Tov Lipman Heller's Tosafot Yom Tov. For the benefit of readers who may not appreciate the significance of this selection, it is notable that all five belong firmly within the orthodox camp and none is modern. The author of the most recent of these works, Rabbi Yom Tov Lipman Heller, died in 1654.

Taken as a whole, the treatment of these venerable sources is most respectable. In the main, each mishnah or baraita is accompanied by a translation and a brief extract of one or more of the sources mentioned above that seeks to elucidate or contextualise it. There are a small number of exceptions, where the authors add or substitute their own comments for those of the sages, of which the most puzzling is that which follows Avot 4:26 (where Rabbi Yose ben Yehudah likens learning from the young and the old to, respectively, drinking wine that is raw or mature) and 4:27 (the account of new jars containing old wine and old jars that don't even contain new wine). The sole commentary on the two mishnayot reads:

"The use of wine growing and wine making as symbols suggests how much viticulture was part of the ancient Jewish and general world".

This comment reflects the general drift of this book in treating Avot as a useful reference point for the study of Jewish life and rabbinical thought in the mishnaic period.

There is a further issue to address here: where is the Reform content of this book?

Each of the six chapters of Pirkei Avot is followed by two further sections. The first add-on consists of short explanations, penned by the authors, of some of the concepts and issues touched upon in the preceding chapter. In these we also read a little about the Reform positions on, for instance, rabbinic legislation, reward and punishment, this world and the next, and cremation. These explanations are brief and matter-of-fact, and certainly not "preachy".

The second add-on, called "gleanings", consists of a collection of short passages that have direct or tangential reference to a mishnah or baraita in the chapter to which they are appended. All are written by influential figures within the Reform movement from the United States and beyond.

Taken individually and collectively, these "gleanings" are far more powerful than the teachings in Avot and the accompanying commentary are allowed to be. Most are stylistically elegant and eloquent, designed to stimulate the mind and stir the emotions. Strange to say, if one were to blank out the name of the authors of many of these passages, one might easily imagine that they had been spoken by a contemporary orthodox rabbi.

Nonetheless I was left feeling uncomfortable about this book. Admittedly it was neither a critique of orthodox/traditional Judaism nor a hard sell for Reform. It did however make me think of an exercise in "bait-and-switch". My attention had been caught by the fact that this was a modern commentary -- but I had assumed that it was a modern commentary on Avot. In essence, it was not. The subtitle does state that the book is a "modern commentary on Jewish ethics" -- which it is. But the choice of Maimonides and the rest, the selection of source materials that were not modern and did not engage with any discussion of Jewish ethics, rather suggested that their inclusion may have been intended to show that the rabbis of the mishnah spoke only to their peers and that the sages of yesteryear had nothing to offer the then modern world of 1993.

In other words, the reader will receive the impression that "old" Judaism is a closed book, and that Jewish ethical narrative has now relocated to the "gleanings".

I would be curious to discover whether any readers of this blog have read this book too. If there are, I hope that they will share their opinions with the rest of us.

When you are standing in my place...

I'm sure that most if not all readers of this blog will have heaved a mighty sigh of relief when the terror incident in the Colleyville Synagogue was brought to an end, Malik Faisal Akram neutralised and the hostages released. Some may have thanked God, while the gratitude of others may have been directed towards the local SWAT team; in an ideal Jewish scenario, some may have done both.

What can we, as mere spectators, learn from this? Let us look at Pirkei Avot, which sometimes asks hard questions. At Avot 2:5, Hillel teaches (among other things): "do not judge your fellow until you are standing in his place". What does that mean to us?

I know with absolute certainty that, had I been in Malik Faisal Akram's place, I would not have stormed a synagogue in Texas in order to obtain the release from jail of convicted terrorist and high profile antisemite Aafia Siddiqui. But then, why would I, as a practising Jew, wish to do such a thing? From the sheer absurdity of the proposition that I might have acted in the same way, we see that this is not what Hillel means.

The real question that I must ask myself is this. If I were to explore the secret recesses of my mind and delve deeply into my own heart, can I honestly say that there is no cause that would mean so much to me that I would be prepared to take hostages from people to whose fate I was indifferent, in order to secure an outcome in which I passionately believed to be just and which I thought I could bring about through my personal intervention?

I can honestly say that I would never wish to follow the path of terror and do what Malik Faisal Akram did. But that is not the issue. Hillel may be teaching us not only that we should be slow to judge others who fail to match our own standards, but that we should not rush to judge ourselves as being incapable of doing likewise.

Fire that the rain won't extinguish

As I watch the rain trickle down my window on this wet Jerusalem morning, I am reminded of the teaching in Pirkei Avot (5:7) that ten miracles enhanced our enjoyment of the Temple in times gone by. Number 5 in this list is this:

“The rains did not extinguish the wood-fire burning upon the altar’s woodpile.”

Miracle or no miracle? Water and fire are “opposites” in that they do not naturally share the same space. This is why the plague of hail, inflicted on Pharaoh and the Egyptians for refusing to release the Children of Israel from slavery, was miraculous (the Torah describes the hail as descending together with fire: Exodus 9:23-24).

But is this truly a miracle? Readers may have personal experiences of their own regarding bonfires and camp fires that have continued to burn notwithstanding the rain. They are not alone. The same phenomenon has been noted on a far larger scale too (see Jake Spring, “Rain will not extinguish Amazon fires for weeks, weather experts say,” Reuters, 27 August 2019, here).

Only if there is sustained and heavy rain will a well-established fire be at risk of being extinguished. The fire on the altar’s woodpile, being carefully prepared and dutifully tended, should therefore stand a good chance of surviving any given downpour. Be that as it may, the persistent survival of this fire in the two Temples for an aggregate of nearly a thousand years does rather suggest something more than chance or coincidence: this mishnah therefore attributes it to divine intervention.

There is surely a bigger message in this mishnah, and I would suggest that it is this.

The symbolism of fire and water in this miracle cannot be ignored. Some commentators have taken the Temple to be a metaphor for man, or even as an allegory of man’s relationship with God. Fire represents flaming desire, a passion in man’s heart: where those flames are kindled on the altar of man’s service to God, they cannot be extinguished.

A second explanation is founded on the symbolism of the word used here for wood, עץ (etz, “wood” or "tree"), together with that of גשמים (geshamim, “rains”). The etz here is an allusion to Torah, described as “a tree of life to those who grasp it,” (Proverbs 3:17) and the גשמים here allude to גשמיות (gashmi’ut, “materialism,” “non-spiritual matters”). Employing this symbolism, the dedicated student who lays himself out, as it were, on the altar of Torah will be ablaze with the fire of Torah, a fire that the waters of materialism and the pleasures of the physical world cannot extinguish.

This imagery is both powerful and attractive. However, even though it is accepted that learning Torah is something that requires divine assistance as well as human effort, some may be a little sad to think that, if a serious Torah student pursues his studies so enthusiastically that he cannot be derailed by the distractions of gashmi’ut, we should have to regard that as a miracle.

Virtual friends: where Avot meets Facebook

Though I have been an active user of the social media since 2002, it is only recently that I have gained any sort of meaningful experience of Facebook. The use of this platform is an obvious topic zone of application of the ancient principles of Pirkei Avot.

On my personal account I am currently receiving several requests a day to become a “friend” of people whom I have never met and of whom I have never heard. Many of these people have outlandish names, offer no meaningful information as to their identity and have no obvious point of connection with me. I’m an inherently friendly person and hate to say “no” to anyone, so how should I react?

Avot offers the following guidance:

• Do not judge any person only by their name or by the photograph that appears on their Facebook page (Avot 4:27);
  
  
• Recall that every person is created in God’s image (3:18) and that I should respect them if I expect them to demonstrate the same respect for me (4:1);
  
  
• Recall also that a person who is wise who can learn from everyone (4:1), so every fresh encounter with a stranger – even online – is an opportunity to improve myself;
  
  
• In the event that I should be required to form an opinion as to anyone's motives for wishing to be my friend, I should presume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that their motives are good (1:6);
  
  
• To be loved (or at any rate respected and liked) by others is one of the 48 things that lead to the acquisition of Torah (6:6);
  
  
• One should however distance oneself from someone who is wicked or who is a bad neighbour (1:7) and, while one should acquire for oneself a friend (1:6), one must recognise that the acquisition of a bad friend is a derech ra’ah (a “bad path”) that one should seek to avoid (2:14).

I am saddened to report that this guidance has not led to a meaningful expansion of my circle of friends. Many of those whom I have accepted as friends have plainly harboured motives of an unworthy nature. Apart from being offered the prospect of Nigerian gold in return for an unsecured loan, I have been pursued by people intent in extracting all sorts of personal information from me, and I have been targeted by people who clearly perceive me as being vulnerable to manipulation for their own purposes.

While I don’t like “unfriending” anyone, I have no compunction about doing so. However, I must admit that it hurts to do so, even though I have good grounds for suspecting that some of the people I’ve “unfriended” are not real people at all but carefully crafted personas that are designed to gain the confidence of the vulnerable.

Have reades of this weblog any thoughts to offer on this issue? If so, I’d love to hear from you.

Buying a book: the benefit of the doubt

Last week I bought a book from the second-hand shelf of my favourite local bookshop; it was a volume of ethical writings by Maimonides, replete with plenty of informative footnotes. 

When I got this tome home, I thumbed through it and spotted a printed label inside the front cover that had hitherto escaped my notice. This label proudly proclaimed that the book was the property of my local synagogue. This institution has quite a popular library of Jewish interest titles. A sign on the wall declares that these books are not to be removed from its premises.

Subsequent enquiry revealed that the synagogue was disposing of a quantity of books that were of little or no current interest to its members and functionaries and that it had passed them over to the bookshop for disposal. It did not however remove its ownership labels from these books before doing so.

My concern was this. If I had been hit by a truck on the way home from making my purchase, anyone who picked the book up off the floor would see the label and assume that I had stolen it. Though I assiduously keep all receipts and had one for this purchase too, the receipt testified only to the fact that payment had been made -- but not to what it was made for, since aged second-hand books such as mine have no barcode and are not identified by the shop's computer system at the point of sale.

Yehoshua ben Perachyah, in Avot 1:6, calls on us to judge our fellow humans favourably. However, commentators through the ages have acknowledged that there are limits. If for example I was a known book thief with a string of convictions for stealing second-hand items of Maimonidean interest, it would strain the average person's credulity to believe that I had not stolen it. Alternative scenarios can of course be scripted. I could perhaps have found the book in the street and was taking it home for safekeeping before returning it to its rightful owners, But would anyone have believed me?

The suspicion of theft does not disappear once the book is safely stored on my bookshelf. Once I have passed on to a better world than this one, my family and the executors of my estate will see the label and I will not be around to explain it away.

So what should I do? To be on the safe side I have decided to leave the label in the book, but to put a note of my own next to it, affirming that I purchased it from the local bookshop and that I have verified that it was put up for the sale by my synagogue, giving the contact details of the relevant synagogue officers who can confirm my story. After all, while I can look forward to being given the benefit of the doubt, others who have not (yet) learned Pirkei Avot may not be so swift to give it to me.

Conceding the truth

Earlier today, on my personal Facebook page, I posted a short note on the temptation to justify mistakes I had found in the final proofs of my book, rather than correct them. In posting that piece I managed to make a different sort of mistake -- I failed to make any mention of the fact that this issue is also connected to Pirkei Avot.

In the fifth perek (Avot 5:9) we learn that one of seven signs that distinguishes a chacham -- a wise person -- from a golem is that he or she does not deny the truth but concedes it. In other words, once you are shown to be wrong, don't cling on to your error but relinquish it and accept the truth.

That's not all. the process of setting oneself up on the basis of truth is listed (Avot 6:6) as one of the 48 items through which one acquires the Torah, and the mishnah even goes so far as to say (Avot 1:17) that truth, along with justice and peace, is one of the three foundational qualities that keeps the world going.

The truth can be elusive, frustrating and annoyingly inconvenient. Pirkei Avot pulls no punches when it comes to advocating the need to live by it -- even truth has its limitations when it comes into conflict with peace. But's a subject for another post.

Whatever happened to the Ten Tests of Jacob?

One of the better-known sayings in Pirkei Avot goes like this:

5:4 With ten tests our father Abraham was tested and he passed them all, to make known how great was our father Abraham's love [for God].

Abraham is the only one of the three Patriarchs to feature in Avot at all; there is no mention of Isaac or Jacob, notwithstanding their importance and notwithstanding the many lessons we learn from studying their lives in the Torah and in midrash. God speaks to all three and there is no reason to doubt either His love for them or their love for Him. We know relatively little of Isaac’s life, but Jacob is by far the best-chronicled Patriarch. Though he lives for rather less time than his grandfather Abraham, the narrative of his life and death occupies more than half the Book of Genesis, rather more than twice as much space as is given to the Torah’s account of Abraham.

From the Biblical narrative alone it is clear that Jacob faced at least ten tests of his own. These are, in chronological order:

(i) having to masquerade as Esau in order to obtain the latter’s blessing from Isaac;

(ii) having to flee from his home to escape the threat of being murdered by Esau;

(iii) having to work a full seven years for the hand of his promised bride Rachel;

(iv) waking up the morning after his marriage to discover that he had married not Rachel but her sister Leah;

(v) having his wages constantly changed by Laban;

(vi) having to face Esau and his militia after leaving Laban,

(vii) Rachel’s death in the course of his travels;

(viii) the abduction and rape of his daughter Dinah;

(ix) the loss, presumed dead, of his favourite son Joseph;

(x) having to part with his youngest son, Benjamin, in exchange for food.

One can add even more tests that are based on the Torah text, without the need to draw on midrashic teachings: for example, Jacob’s fight with the angelic stranger and his being told to leave Israel in the knowledge that he would not see his Promised Land again. Yet none of this is mentioned in Pirkei Avot or in the usual commentaries. Why should this be?

In the absence of guidance from our Sages, we can offer some rationalizations to explain away the fact that Avot does not teach us anything about the tests that Jacob had to surmount. Possible explanations are that

(i) what applies to Abraham's tests applies equally to Jacob, so there is no need to repeat the lesson;

(ii) the reason why Jacob passed his ten tests was because, in some way, his task was made easier by the knowledge that his grandfather had been tested ten times and had come away successful;

(iii) Jacob did not pass his tests with the same high level of trust in God as Abraham possessed and his tests therefore provided a less powerful lesson;

(iv) while, from our perspective, Jacob passed all his tests, God in some way expected more from him.

Looking at the Patriarchs at a distance of three millennia or so, it is easier for us to recognize and admire the high level of faith, love and confidence in God that Abraham possessed, but nonetheless to identify with Jacob – a physically strong but more emotionally frail and troubled personality, whose anxieties and life experiences more closely resemble our own. Reading the Torah, one never expects Abraham to fall short of the mark. Jacob however stumbles through from crisis to crisis, much as so many of us do in our own lives.

If we subscribe to the notion that every one of us will have our own “ten tests” to cope with in our own lives, Jacob epitomizes the fate we share with him. We have to cope with trials and tribulations, whether forced upon us or of our own making – and none of us can expect to be praised and held up as examples from whom later generations can learn. Even so, as Avot reminds us (at 5:26), the rewards we receive for passing our tests are commensurate with our struggle to pass them, as was the case with Jacob himself.

Avot in Retrospect: a summary of last month's blogposts

In case you missed them, here's a list of items posted on Avot Today in December 2021:

Friday 31 December 2021: A thought for the Winterval. The annual learning of Pirkei Avot in synagogue usually commences in spring, when people's thoughts traditionally turn to the pleasures of the flesh -- but don't we now have these thoughts all year round?

Thursday 30 December 2021: A name made great...": some notes on Avot and celebrity failure. The Chaim Walder affair has shocked Jewish communities the world over. We view it here through the guidance of Pirkei Avot.

Tuesday 28 December 2021: A place at last: Avot teaches us not to despise any item, however useless or trivial it seems to be. The wisdom of this teaching is shown in the Temple Mount Sifting Project.

Thursday 23 December 2021: Lawgiver takes law into his own hands: what does Avot say? Moses strikes and kills an Egyptian who is assaulting a fellow Jew. Does a saying of Hillel give him support?

Friday 17 December 2021: Weighed in the balance:  There are two versions of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai's assessment of his top five pupils. Which one is right -- or are they both correct?

Thursday 9 December 2021: Keeping honour at a distance: In Avot 6:6 one of the 48 ways of acquiring Torah is to put some distance between oneself and honour. What are the practical implications of this?

Tuesday 7 December 2021: Testing God -- a national pastime? Avot 5:6 teaches how our ancestors tested God ten times in the wilderness. Why then are we still testing Him?

Monday 6 December 2021: A mishnah for all seasons? Avot's political guidance in the 21st century: A post commissioned by the Judaism Reclaimed Facebook Group which looks at Avot and attitudes towards authority.

Wednesday 1 December 2021: How Judaism approaches pain and suffering: A guest post by Rabbi Shmuel Phillips which touches on numerous issues, including Avot 4:23 and the need to respect a person's personal space.

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Avot Today blogposts for November 2021 here
Avot Today blogposts for October 2021 here
Avot Today blogposts for September 2021 here
Avot Today blogposts for August 2021 here
Avot Today blogposts for July 2021 here
Avot Today blogposts for June 2021 here