Mystery manuscript from Maine

I recently spotted this short article in the Jewish Press on a mystery commentary. In this article (“A Pirkei Avot From a Forgotten Jewish Community In Maine” by Israel Mizrahi, 12 Iyar 5782/13 May 2022) the author writes:

A timely acquisition I made this week is of a beautiful manuscript commentary on Pirkei Avot written by the rabbi of a long forgotten Jewish community in Auburn, Maine. Written in a fluid Eastern European Hebrew script, the writer, clearly a learned individual, describes his manuscript as the basis for his Pirkei Avot shiur in Auburn during the year 5688 (1928) in congregation Beth Avraham.

The author then goes on to describe in brief the history of this community. I wrote to ask him if he had any further clues concerning this manuscript, to which I received the following reply:

It is unsigned but from what I can make out, the rabbi there at the time was a Rabbi S. Levine.

I wonder if any members of this group know anything about this manuscript, the rabbi or of his interest in Pirkei Avot. Might he be connected in some way with a contemporary scholar with an interest in the same subject, Rabbi Chanoch Zundel (“Zindel”) Levine, whose Derashot Shelemot on Pirkei Avot was published in New York in 1936?

Partygate, or When Lies Won't Work, Try Telling the Truth

What is Partygate? The word is now firmly embedded in the English psyche, but I suspect that people who live outside the UK may be less intimately familiar with the Partygate saga.

In short, during a period in which the coronavirus was causing panic among the general populace and playing havoc with the economy, the British government took steps -- as did the governments of many other countries -- to retard the spread of Covid. These steps were portrayed as being vital for the preservation of health and it was emphasised that the restrictions that were imposed were to be binding on everybody, without exception.

It subsequently emerged that the British prime minister Boris Johnson appeared to have exempted himself, his staff and his nearest and dearest from these restrictions. Thus, while the law-abiding citizens of the UK were sitting at home, often celebrating solitary Christmases or fretting indoors while loved ones died unvisited in their hospital beds, a good deal of partying was going on at the prime minister's official residence at 10 Downing Street, with the prime minister very much in evidence.

News of the illicit partying started at level of mere rumours. These rumours generated in turn a sequence of suspicions, denials and accusations that ended with a number of criminal convictions.

Revelations that Boris Johnson was partying while others suffered were scarcely likely to pass unremarked, and even many of his friends and supporters have been highly critical of his perceived hypocrisy in flouting rules that he earnestly urged others to respect.

If I may parody the response of the Prime Minister's Office to the allegations of partying, they seem to have travelled along the following lines:

• There were no parties.
• Even if there were parties, the Prime Minister did not know of them.
• If he knew of them, he did not attend them.
• If he did attend them, he did so involuntarily and did not know that they were parties.
• If he did attend them, he was there in his official capacity and not as an ordinary human.
• And anyway, he didn't drink a lot and wasn't really there to enjoy himself.

This line of defence is a traditionally British approach, one which will be familiar to viewers of the Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister television series.

What has any of this to do with Pirkei Avot?

In the fifth perek (Avot 5:9) we learn that there are seven features that distinguish the wise man from the golem -- an immature clod. The last of those seven is the ability to admit the truth.

If, rather than prevaricating and issuing vague, uninformative statements, the prime minister had been brave enough to follow this advice from the outset, he could have responded to the initial rumours like this:

"Yes, I did it. I went partying when the rest of the country was in lockdown. What I did was wrong and I knew it at the time. I hold up my hands and say, yes, I'm guilty. I am thoroughly ashamed of what I've done and apologise from the bottom of my heart and in all sincerity for this lapse of judgement on my part.

Having said that, I can only say in my defence that we are all human, and everyone makes mistakes from time to time. I responded to a human impulse that I found impossible to resist. I seek your understanding and your forgiveness, In doing so, I ask you to reflect in your hearts and ask yourselves, in all honesty, whether -- if you were prime minister and were struggling under the strain of running a country during an unprecedented pandemic -- you would not have done the same thing".

By admitting the truth, confessing his wrongdoing at the earliest opportunity and earnestly seeking the forgiveness of the nation, Boris Johnson could in a single stroke have ended the did-he-didn't-he speculation that occupied so many columns of news for so long and put the ball in the court of his accusers and detractors by forcing them to decide how to respond, depending on their moral stance and their political allegiance.

Illustration: Boris Johnson having a drink with Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak

Pirkei Avot: A Users' Manual

This is my new book, Pirkei Avot: A Users' Manual. Published by Targum, its three volumes span some 1,600 pages of in-depth discussion and analysis of every mishnah and baraita in the Ethics of the Fathers, together with extensive references that span over 3,000 years of both divine and human thought. 

A clue to the function of this book can be found in its title. Mishnaic ethics aren't just there to be studied and revered: they are there for us to apply in our everyday lives. Pirkei Avot: A Users' Manual seeks to help the reader do just that -- to internalize its teachings and put them into practice on a daily basis.

You may be wondering why I have written this book. Aren't there plenty of commentaries and discussions of Pirkei Avot already? Maybe there are too many of them? Perhaps this is true, but every generation needs its own commentaries because we forever find ourselves facing challenges that were unknown to previous generations -- and our children will face challenges unknown to us. This book discusses issues involving the internet, smartphones and the social media, Covid, peer pressure and the demands made on domestic budgets by everyday life in modern society.

This book looks back into the context of the many teachings that Avot has preserved and passed through the ages. It draws on many classical Jewish commentaries as well as plenty of more recent ones. I have also looked at contemporary research, literature, music and film that reflects on or applies the moral principles of Avot. Here you will find not only Maimonides, Rashi, Abarbanel and the Maharal of Prague but also Fawlty Towers, Frank Sinatra, Les Miserables and Andy Warhol. 

Each teaching is given in Hebrew and English, sometimes with more than one translation. It is introduced and then analysed, then closes with a list of topics for open discussion or private contemplation. There are also many tables, to enable the reader to cross-refer teachings that relate to one another and also to show the true nature of what Avot does -- and does not -- contain.

You may be asking what credentials I have for writing this book. Ideally it should have been written by a respected rabbi with a background in Torah learning. I am not that person -- but I have been studying Pirkei Avot since 1988 and have worked hard to establish it as my moral compass in life. I've not always succeeded, but my experiences have taught me a great deal about Jewish ethics -- maybe more than I might have learned from solely reading books.

At the moment this book is only available from my local bookshop in Jerusalem, Pomeranz Books. Once copies have been distributed further afield, I'll let everyone know.

The images on the three covers all relate to teachings that can be found in the relevant volume. Enjoy the task of working out what image alludes to. 

Breakfast with Bachye, or When a Leader Leads Others Astray

The other morning, while enjoying my breakfast coffee, toast and marmalade, I was perusing Rabbenu Bachye ibn Paquda’s Chovot Halevavot (Sha’ar Hateshuvah, perek 9). There I found a paragraph that caught my eye. Answering the question whether repentance is available for every type of sin, Rabbenu Bachye writes:

ממה שתקשה התשובה ממנו, מי שהדיח בני אדם בדת שבדה להם, והכריחם להאמין בה, ותעה והתעה. וכל אשר יוסיף העם המאמינים בה, יוסיף עוונו ויוכפל

כמו שאמרו רבותינו זיכרונם לברכה

כל המזכה את הרבים, אין חטא בא על ידו

וכל המחטיא את הרבים, אין מספיקין בידו לעשות תשובה

ואמרו: ירבעם חטא והחטיא את הרבים, חטא הרבים תלוי בו

שנאמר (מלכים א טו) על חטאת ירבעם אשר חטא ואשר החטיא וגו

[In English: And repentance is even harder for a person who led others astray by inventing a religion for them and making it necessary for them to believe in it. That person went astray and made others go astray too—and, the more people believe in it, the increasingly serious is that person’s iniquity. As our rabbis of blessed memory said: “One who causes the community to be meritorious, no sin will come by his hand, but whoever causes the community to sin is not given the opportunity to repent. Moses was meritorious and caused the community to be meritorious, so the community's merit is attributed to him; as it says, "He did God's righteousness, and His laws with Israel" (Deuteronomy 33:21). Jeroboam the son of Nebat sinned and caused the community to sin, so the community's sin is attributed to him; as it says, "Regarding the sins of Jeroboam, who sinned and caused Israel to sin" (I Kings 15:30)”].

The citation from the rabbis of blessed memory will be instantly recognised by many Pirkei Avot enthusiasts as the anonymous mishnah from Avot (at 5:21).

Rabbenu Bachye’s citation of this mishnah is in accord with his regular practice of bringing source materials to support his statements, and he often cites Avot. But what is interesting here is the fact that the cited mishnah itself cites sources.

The first citation is at first glance a strange one, since the words of the Torah do not refer to Moses at all. They are actually spoken by him and refer to the tribe of Gad, which Moses is in the process of blessing. It is only through midrash that they are linked to Moses himself. But let’s pass over that citation and move to the second one.

The reference to Jeroboam sinning and causing others to do is entirely appropriate here. Jeroboam’s sins are well recorded in Tanach, even though there is no explicit account of him being unable to effect repentance on the ground that he made others sin too. But what is of interest is the use to which Rabbenu Bachye puts this verse when applying the mishnah.

The mishnah at Avot 5:21 does not refer to any particular sin and, on the face of things, can apply to them all. This position seems to be assumed by most commentators. However, by applying the mishnah specifically to the situation in which a person invents a new religion, a situation analogous to avodah zarah (idol worship), Rabbenu Bachye is effectively contextualising it through the Jeroboam quote. We know that Jeroboam instituted idol worship by setting up no fewer than three golden calves (1 Kings 12:28-33). This offence is the counterpart of Moses’ righteousness (alluded to in the first verse cited), since he descended from Mount Sinai and destroyed the original golden calf. This interpretation of the mishnah as applying specifically to idol worship thus justifies the pairing of the two supporting citations.

Rabbenu Bachye however appears to be unusual among Jewish scholars in giving this mishnah so narrow a construction. Rabbenu Yonah, Rambam, Bertenura, the commentary ascribed to Rashi and Midrash Shmuel are among those who vest it with a wide meaning, imposing no limitation in terms of the sort of sin that a leader might be inducing the general public to follow and modern commentators—if they have anything to say on the subject at all—tend to do likewise, concentrating on issues such as the extent to which a person is responsible for another’s good or bad deeds.

Admittedly, Rabbenu Bachye’s objective is not to provide a commentary on Avot but to provide an in-depth focus on the significance and consequence of a person’s thoughts. Even so, his approach raises a bigger interpretational question relating to how we should handle Avot’s proof-verses.

Verses from Tanach cited in some mishnayot and baraitot are plainly relevant on the face of things. Others are of little obvious relevance and others again are clearly cited out of context. Yet the very fact that they have been incorporated into the teachings of Tannaim means that they cannot be ignored and, if no obvious reason should be found for citing them, it is incumbent on us to look more deeply into them. We also have to accept that, while the same verse may appear in Tanach and in Avot, commentators on Tanach rarely if ever make any reference to the use of that verse in Avot, and commentators on Avot appear most reluctant to take note of explanations of those verses in their original context as part of the written Torah.

Ultimately, what one does with proof verses cited in Avot reflects one’s view of their function. Some scholars start with the mishnayot and seek to work back into their historical or religious context. Others head in precisely the opposite direction, projecting possible meanings and interpretations into social and political circumstances that would have been quite unfamiliar to their authors. No single approach is “correct” or “incorrect” and all ways of reading a Mishnah can enrich our appreciation of them and help us reach a higher understanding.

More on Mazikim

Among the various things that, we learn, were created on the eve of the first ever Shabbat (Avot 5:8) are mazikim. ArtScroll editions of Avot translate this word as "destructive spirits". Other contenders include "demons" (Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Judah Goldin), "vandals" (Me'am Loez), "evil spirits" (Hyman Goldin), or leave it untranslated.

Back in October 2020, in "Mazikim pt 2: Refusal to Admit Responsibility for What Happens in One's Life" I discussed the notion that mazikim were not demons or evil spirits at all, but a coded or metaphorical manner of indicating the damage we cause through a refusal to face up to our own faults and deficiencies. In this context I'd like to quote the words of the late Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz in his book Sayings of the Fathers (1945, discussed in a post last week at xxx). He too denies the real-world existence of mazikim as separate entities, but links them to man's yetzer hara, the inclination of every human to do wrong. He writes:

Demons figure in Rabbinic folk-lore, and belief in their reality was widespread; but, as here, they are held to be absolutely the creatures of God... Later Jewish teachers--the Gaon Samuel ben Chofni (died 1034) and Abraham ibn Ezra (1104-1167)--are among the first in the history of the world to deny the existence of demons. ...[D]emons, e.g. the forces of temptation and unrest in man, date from the dawn of Creation, and are part of the equipment of the human soul from its birth. It is true that, when these forces dominate us, they are "destroying spirits". But when these instincts are properly controlled, when we rule them, they are the driving forces in life. It is the capacity to fight evil, or to succumb to evil, that distinguishes man from the brute. And it is because of evil and suffering and temptation, that life is the glorious battlefield it is. We are at once the combatants and the combat and the field that is torn with strife.

These are powerful, emotive words which graphically invoke the inner conflicts that reflect the human condition. Chief Rabbi Hertz then offers a note of hope:

But in this struggle we are not left groping in the dark. Simultaneously with the destroying passions of man, the "Tables of the Law" together with "The Writing on the Tables" [these being other items listed in the same mishnah as being created on the eve of the first Sabbath] were created. As those instincts towards evil are part of the original constitution of man, so also are conscience and the holy laws of right and wrong, that are to control those instincts.

Is it not so much better, so much more constructive, for a person to bear these words in mind and apply them to his or her thoughts and deeds, rather than to cower in fear of non-existent demons.

***************************************

See also the related blogpost Mazikim pt 1: What are they and how do we deal with them?

Rendering unto Caesar

 I have received the following from Avot Today Facebook group member Louis Kessler:

Reading Avot 3:7 (that's 3:8 in most siddurim and many modern editions):

רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר אִישׁ בַּרְתּוֹתָא אוֹמֵר, תֶּן לוֹ מִשֶּׁלּוֹ, שֶׁאַתָּה וְשֶׁלְּךָ שֶׁלּוֹ. וְכֵן בְּדָוִד הוּא אוֹמֵר (דברי הימים א כט) כִּי מִמְּךָ הַכֹּל וּמִיָּדְךָ נָתַנּוּ לָךְ.

Rabbi Elazar of Bartota said: give to Him of that which is His, for you and that which is yours is His; and thus it says with regard to David: “for everything comes from You, and from Your own hand have we given you” (I Chronicles 29:14).

I want to compare/contrast this with Jesus' statement about rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.

I used to own "Ethics of the Talmud: Sayings of the Fathers" (1962) by R. Travers Herford. Can anyone copy his comment?

I have a copy of R. Travers Herford’s book, in which he writes:

“In this saying there is more than merely a lesson in generosity. The author of it was noted indeed for his alms-giving, and knew the secret of true charity. But his thought is that all that a man has, not wealth alone but body and soul and life itself, are what God has entrusted to him. They are a pledge committed to his care, not to be used for any selfish ends, but to be used in the service of God and held at his disposal. The true giver is to devote to his service what he has entrusted to the giver. The thought was perhaps suggested by the words of David [quoted above], and the quotation of that passage is made not by way of a proof-text but for the sake of the words themselves. The author of the saying gave to the thought contained in them another rendering, which need fear no comparison with the original”.

A Unitarian minister, Travers Herford was a staunch believer that Jewish texts should be interpreted and understood in the light of Jewish law and culture, rather than as merely being precursors of Christianity. He makes no mention in this Mishnah to “rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” (Matthew 22:21). In fact, I don’t recall him making any mention of Jesus or any New Testament writings in his work on Avot.

Turning now to the Caesar quote, I’m not qualified to comment on the interpretation of Christian texts but my impression is that “rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” is unrelated to Rabbi Elazar’s teaching. Rather, it appears to apply to the question whether the Jewish inhabitants of Roman-occupied Israel were obliged to pay taxes to the Romans – the answer being “yes”.

Can readers of this blog shed any further light on Louis Kessler’s request?

Praying for Putin?

This is the full version of a post that was first published yesterday on the Judaism Reclaimed Facebook page.

Ukraine continues its struggle to survive in the face of the massive military invasion by its powerful Russian neighbour. This invasion has taken its toll on Ukraine’s Jewish community. Many have fled, leaving family, friends and possessions behind them. Families have been separated amidst heart-rending scenes of chaos and panic. Unbelievably, those who choose to remain and defend their land are charged by the Russian government with being neo-nazi collaborators. These events raise a difficult question for Russian Jews. Are they required to pray for the welfare of their state and its leaders

The default position in Pirkei Avot is that every Jew in every land should follow the guidance of Avot 3:2, where Rabbi Chanina Segan Kohanim teaches: 

“Pray for the peace of the government (in Hebrew, malchut) since, if it were not for fear of it, a man would swallow his neighbour alive”. 

Before discussing the applicability of this teaching today, it is helpful to contextualise it. Rabbi Chanina lived, and died, in Israel at a time of chaos and anarchy. The Romans, having occupied the whole of Israel and the Levant, were the ruling power – the malchut. Nowhere in Israel was more anarchic than Jerusalem, where the power struggle between different religious and nationalist factions resulted in the great tragedy of Jew-on-Jew murders which the Roman governors had no great interest in preventing. The Jewish authorities too were powerless to stop this carnage. Indeed, the members of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish court, absented themselves from the Lishkat HaGazit (the sole location from which they could discharge judicial functions relating to capital offences) so that they could avoid passing the death sentence on Jewish murderers. This decision was arguably taken on the basis that, since so many Jewish lives were already being lost and the death penalty was no longer an effective deterrent, it was folly to address the escalating mortality rate among Rome’s Jewish subjects by killing even more of them. In this context, Rabbi Chanina could be said to have been urging his co-religionists to pray that the Romans should have the time and the resources to intervene and stop this senseless internecine slaughter.

Nothing in Rabbi Chanina’s words indicates their scope or spells out that they apply only to Roman governance of Israel. The Bartenura therefore reads this Mishnah widely, applying it even to the duty of the Jew who lives in any other (i.e non-Jewish) nation of the world. Not all commentators are so worldly, however. The Ritva, for example, learns it is a maxim for one’s spiritual development: the malchut of which one should stand in fear is that of the One Above, since it is He alone who judges the way we manage our lives.

But who or what is really the focal point of this Mishnah? Tosafot Yom Tov notes that it refers to the peace of the malchut, not the melech (“king”). Since governmental structures are almost always hierarchical, ordinary citizens are most likely to encounter the ruler’s enforcers – government inspectors, tax collectors and other members of the lower echelons of power. These people too should be prayed for, in the hope that they will discharge their duties in a manner that is neither unfair nor burdensome. The Tiferet Yisrael picks up on the same terminological point. He observes that, while there is always a malchut, there may be no melech at all. He cites Rome in the days of the Republic and, in more recent times, the democratic cantonal governance of Switzerland.

While the words of the Mishnah indicate that the great evil which it seeks to avoid is anarchy, traditional commentators have shown that this Mishnah is flexible and can been subjected to many different interpretations. One might therefore expect a variety of approaches to the question that opens this essay: do we pray for the welfare of an oppressive government that is led by a dictator or tyrant, and which may implement policies that are harmful to or downright destructive of Jewish interests and values?

Some commentators adhere rigidly to the notion of prayer even when the government is hostile to Jewish interests. Writing in Germany in the mid-19th century, Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch urges that one should not merely pray for the well-being of the state but should actively promote its interests. Rabbi Marcus Lehmann goes further: “Even an unfair and despotic government is a thousand times better than anarchy and no government at all”. It is ironical that the staunchest exponents of support for the state, regardless of its nature, should come from the jurisdiction that spawned state-sponsored genocide.

In the wake of the atrocities of the Second World War, Jewish scholars, politicians and historians have generated between them a vast literature on the relationship of the Jew to the State. This intense focus has not however been directed at the meaning and relevance today of Rabbi Chanina’s Mishnah.

Numerous popular post-War writers on this Mishnah do not cite the Holocaust and the Third Reich in Hitler’s Nazi Germany as imposing any limitations on the need to pray for the welfare of the State. For some who survived that war the topic may have been too fresh and raw for them to tackle, or the duty not to pray for such a regime may have been so obvious as not to need stating. In this category we find Rabbi Shalom Noach Berezovsky’s Netivot Shalom, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau’s massive Yachel Yisrael and the Be’er Avot of Rabbi Mordechai Mendel Frankel-Teumim. There are also Rav Ovadyah Yosef who, in Anaf Etz Avot—a pirush on Avot that spans some 400 pages—this Mishnah receives little more than half a page. More recently, Irving Greenberg’s Sage Advice—a work that is not short of opinions—leaves this Mishnah with the Romans. The decision not to address the relevance of this Mishnah to modern dictators and their regimes is not limited to commentators from the orthodox camp. Judah Goldin’s The Living Talmud: the Wisdom of the Fathers and Kravitz and Olitzky’s Pirke Avot: a Modern Commentary on Jewish Ethics reflect the same trend

Others touch upon the case of the problematic regime in such indirect terms that one might entirely miss their relevance to our question. Thus Reuven P. Bulka, Chapters of the Sages, writes: “Certain governments, as has been the pattern in Jewish experience were fear-inspiring and even tried to interfere with the Jew’s attempts to actualize Jewish responsibilities It would seem that we are praying for something that goes against our theological responsibilities”. The text continues in the same vein and the reader is left to decide for himself what this means.

Two American commentaries do however meet the issue of the tyrannical regime full-one. The first, Irving M. Bunim’s Ethics from Sinai, describes the gullibility of those who would deny the possibility of Nazi-style genocide, citing reasons that echo the terms of Rabbi Y. Y. Weinberg’s letter to Hitler in 1933. For Bunim one’s prayer should be not so much for the welfare of the government as for “good conditions” since it is the absence of peace and tranquility that turns humans into beasts of the jungle. The second, Rabbi Marc D. Angel, in the Koren Pirkei Avot, would curtail the application of this Mishnah so as to avoid praying for the welfare of the wicked. He writes that “praying for the welfare of the government is relevant only if the government itself is just. If the government is immoral, one should certainly not pray for its welfare”, making specific reference to the Nuremburg trials and the role played by judges and others in enforcing laws that by no standard of morality could be justified.

This Mishnah forms the religious basis for reciting the prayer of HaNoten Teshua in the Diaspora and is therefore the source of a well-known Anglo-Jewish institution, the Shabbat morning Prayer for the Royal Family. This prayer, which is usually recited in English, encompasses the well-being of the ruling monarch (at the time of writing, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II) and the Royal Family. On the basis that the Head of State is only a constitutional monarch, the text of this prayer also covers the elected government of the day:

“May [God] put a spirit of wisdom and understanding into her heart, and into the hearts of all her counsellors, that they may uphold the peace of the realm, advance the welfare of the nation, and deal kindly and justly with all the House of Israel.”

While it is never possible to ascertain with certainty the extent to which one’s prayers are positively acted upon by God, the period within which this prayer has been regularly recited in British synagogues spans more than a century in which British Jews have been able to exercise an increasing range of civil and religious rights in their host country. It is also the period in which the government published the Balfour Declaration and subsequently voted in favour of the establishment of an independent Jewish State of Israel.

 The text of this prayer does not endorse the policies of “my country right or wrong” and plainly does not endorse the initiation and pursuit of any government policies that are inimical or hostile to Jewish interests. It is bland and appears to be written in such a manner as to avoid giving offence to those whom it is articulated. A draft of this nature may be said to implement the guidance of Rabbi Chanina while not straining the conscience of inhabitants of even the most corrupt and contrary regimes.

Just published: Foundation of Faith

According to a recent OU press release, there's yet another book on Pirkei Avot. Intriguingly, its title is Foundations of Faith -- even though very little of the content of Avot can be said to address directly the issue of faith.

The press release, in relevant part, reads as follows:

Foundation of Faith, a commentary on Pirkei Avot based on the teachings of Rabbi Norman Lamm and edited by Rabbi Mark Dratch. Inspiring and profound, the commentary is a scintillating demonstration of Rabbi Lamm’s invaluable message for contemporary Jewry.

A gifted orator, teacher, scholar, and rabbinic leader, Rabbi Norman Lamm was renowned for a distinguished career that included the presidency of Yeshiva University, authorship of numerous books and articles on Jewish philosophy and other aspects of Jewish thought and studies, and a leadership role in the Jewish community which has left a lasting impact. As the spiritual leader of The Jewish Center in New York City for decades, Rabbi Lamm mesmerized his congregants with sermons legendary for their profound intellectual substance and soaring eloquence. With a rare combination of penetrating scholarship and eloquence of expression, he successfully presented a Torah view of contemporary Jewish life that still speaks movingly to all.

Published posthumously in memory of Rabbi Lamm and his wife Mindella, who passed away last year, as well as in memory of the untimely passing of their late daughter Sara, it was edited with care by Rabbi Mark Dratch. Love of Torah, veneration of tradition, positive engagement with the modern world and contemporary culture, and the importance of a life built on overarching Jewish values are just a few of the themes that animate this volume, all expressed with Rabbi Lamm’s characteristic mastery.

Rabbi Mark Dratch is the Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Council of America. He served as a pulpit rabbi, founder of JSafe: The Jewish Institute Supporting an Abuse Free Environment, and Instructor of Jewish Studies and Philosophy at Yeshiva University.

This work will undoubtedly be warmly welcomed as a classic of Jewish thought and exegesis by the ever-growing number of people who appreciate Rabbi Lamm’s unique voice.

Only a couple of weeks ago I had a chance to hear Rabbi Mark Dratch speaking on Avot, when he gave a Shabbat afternoon Avot shiur at Beit Knesset Hanassi that focused on two mishnayot that aren't part of Avot at all but bookend its content whenever a perek is recited: Sanhedrin 10:1 and Makkot 3:16. He is clearly an Avot devotee so I for one shall be looking forward to seeing his treatment of Rabbi Lamm's understanding of this tractate.

"How to handle a woman" -- or oneself?

Last Sunday Beit Knesset Hanassi hosted the second of its three “meet and greet” sessions at which one of the triumvirate of candidates for a rabbinical vacancy had the chance to field questions from the synagogue’s members. In the course of this informative and entertaining session one questioner asked the candidate for his opinion on the presence of women on synagogue management boards and committees.

The answer started off, as expected, with the candidate explaining that there were female representatives on the board of his synagogue and that he had never found any difficulty in working with them. He then added something quite unexpected: “But I never call or message women board members after 10 pm”. In his view the initiation of late-night conversations with women other than his own wife was inappropriate and that it was proper to draw an arbitrary time-line beyond which he would not contact them.

This rabbi’s best practice reflects an application of two maxims of Pirkei Avot working in tandem. First, there is the principle of al tirbeh sichah im ha’ishah… (“don’t chat excessively with a woman…”: Avot 1:5 per Yose ben Yochanan Ish Yerushalayim). At its best, this guidance governs a married man’s relationships with his wife (i.e. don’t insult her intelligence by confining conversation to mere trivia) and with other people’s wives (i.e. avoid suggestive chat-up lines and inappropriate expressions of interest).

The second principle comes at the very beginning of the tractate at Avot 1:1, where the Men of the Great Assembly teach that one should build a fence around the Torah. There is no rule in the written or oral Torah that prohibits calling or texting a woman who is not one’s wife after 10 pm.

By the very nature of their role, communal rabbis deal with women far more frequently than those rabbis who learn and teach Torah within the environment of the yeshivah or Kollel. These dealings can be quite intense, may go on for a long time and, in the case of counselling, they may involve matters of a personal and emotionally powerful nature.  Bearing this in mind, an arbitrary cut-off point for communication between male rabbis and female congregants has much to commend it.

Rabbis are neither more nor less human than the rest of us, but they are different in that we expect them to behave in accordance with halachah and propriety at all times. Fortunately they generally do. However, from my own time as a senior administrator of the Court of the Chief Rabbi in the early days of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks’ tenure, I recall with sadness a small number of cases in which there was no self-imposed barrier, where an initially sincere and well-meaning relationship between rabbi and congregant resulted both in the termination of a marriage and in damage to a career.

The steamship, not the cemetery: Fighting fascism with Avot

1945 was a grim year for mankind, as the end of the Second World War brought with it the discovery of the extent of the destruction and devastation that came in its wake. The same year marked the publication of a most unusual edition of Pirkei Avot: Sayings of the Fathers, with translation and commentary by the then Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, Dr Joseph H. Hertz. As is so often the case, I knew nothing of this work till I came across it in a second-hand book shop. Printed under wartime austerity conditions, this slim volume has already begun to fall apart.

Although this work was published by a commercial publisher, Behrman House Inc., New York, it was published under the auspices of the American Chapter of the Religious Emergency Council of the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire. Chief Rabbi Hertz's royalties were donated to the American Chapter with a view to their being utilized in England for the purpose of continuing its provision of "religious ministrations" to refugees, evacuees and Allied fighting men. I do not know how much money these royalties came to, but the book has been reprinted many times, in standard and illustrated gift editions, and is still available from the publisher's website.

My edition opens with a Foreword by Moses Schonfeld, Honorary Secretary of the American Chapter and co-author of The Mark of the Swastika: Extracts from the British War Blue Book Together with the White Paper on the Treatment of Germans in Germany. He writes:

It is at a turning point in history that this volume makes its appearance. All over the world, the oppressed in bondage so long are at last shattering their bonds. The armies of fascism are being defeated. Yet the war against their insidious ideas must continue if we are to banish evil and intolerance from the face of the earth. And in this war the reaffirmation of the ethical and moral values of the Pirke Aboth can be a powerful weapon against the enemy.

In the wisdom of these ethical sayings we can find an excellent source for evolving the basic philosophy of a decent civilization. Couched in simple, stimulating phrases, many of the Hebrew teachings of the Pirke Aboth have long since become part of the structure of democratic society. Not only is it now fitting to emphasize the origin of these principles to the world at large, but Jews themselves, in relearning the tenets of their fathers, will be armed with the oldest and strongest ammunition...

Chief Rabbi Hertz's commentary on Avot reflects his propensity for citing sources that reflect the width of his general knowledge and cultural awareness rather than the depth of his Torah knowledge. This practice earned him some criticism in his commentary on the Torah -- the Hertz Chumash -- because it gave a platform to some of the Higher Critics whom he sought to take to task, but it makes this little book more interesting for the modern reader who is willing to make the effort to penetrate the formal and somewhat archaic English which was favoured by rabbis long after most of their gentile counterparts had jettisoned it (I doubt that words like "almsgiving" and "chaplet" were part of day-to-day English in 1945, and most readers today are not so squeamish about seminal emissions that they would need to be treated to the euphemistic "unclean accident").

Since this edition was published at the outbreak of peace, I thought it useful to see what Chief Rabbi Hertz had to say on that topic. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel (Avot 1:18) teaches that the world stands on three things -- by truth, by justice and by peace. On this he adds:

The symbol of peace is not the cemetery, but the steamship -- the harmonization of conflicting forces towards one goal".

While the choice of metaphor might not immediately commend itself to a contemporary student of Avot, the message is clear.

Recommended reading? Not so easy

Last week a member of the Ask the Beit Midrash Facebook group asked its 4,500 members to recommend a good commentary on Pirkei Avot for him to study over the coming months. Readers offered a number of suggestions, each of which had something to commend it. This is what I posted:

Hold on there! You want a recommendation but haven't given a clue as to your general preferences. Pretty well ALL commentaries on Pirkei Avot are unique and interesting, so it would be good to know

(i) what language/s you can handle,

(ii) are you looking for mussar, history, textual analysis, chasidut or a pot-pourri,

(iii) do you prefer ancient or modern? For what it's worth, I can offer some suggestions:

1. Maharal, Derech Chaim: long, detailed and somewhat repetitive but with a wide range of different approaches and quite a few barbs and bombshells besides.

2. Maharam Shik: highly original and stimulating perspectives.

3. Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau: Yachel Yisrael (in Hebrew), Rav Lau on Pirkei Avos (in English): wide-ranging and informative compendium of old and new perushim plus comments from the author.

4. Rabbi Menachem Mordechai Frankel-Teumim, Be'er Ha'avot: modern but traditional, elegantly written and intelligent, this work has gone to at least three editions.

5. Chasdei Avot and Birkat Avot of the Ben Ish Chai: colourful, entertaining and with some punchy mussar and cunning gematriot too.

6. Pirkei Avot im Biurim ve'amorot kodesh, extracted from the late Lubavitcher Rebbe. You don't have to be Chabad to appreciate this book, which has a huge amount to commend it, with many points to ponder.

Finally, it's worth keeping an eye on the Avot Today Facebook Group and its easy-to-search blog at avot-today.com. Both feature book notices on new (and occasionally not-so-new) titles on Avot.

There are many other titles that spring to mind. Some are personal favourites but not necessarily what I’d recommend a stranger, such as the one found in Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein’s Baruch She’amar al HaSiddur. Others are of particular historical interest, such as the Abarbanel’s Nachalot Avot—which sheds light on his views of government—and Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch’s commentary which was published at a time of rampant assimilation. Some of the best reading on Avot does not even come from formal commentaries at all: the Ramchal’s Mesillat Yesharim and Rabbi Eliezer Papo’s Pele Yo’etz make numerous telling references to Avot and would both be the poorer without them.

I’m curious to know which commentaries (or other works that refer to Avot) have commended themselves to members of this weblog. Please feel free to share your recommendations, comments and reflections by posting them on the Avot Today Facebook Group.

Thinking fast and slow: the case of the charitable promotions

 Although it is not a canonical book of the Tanach ,Daniel Kahneman's seminal book Thinking, Fast and Slow is cited so often by rabbis and Jewish scholars that one might wonder whether it has achieved a special status as a book of unarguable truths about ourselves, the world within which we live and our decision-making processes. 

Happily for students of Pirkei Avot (the Ethics of the Fathers), Kahneman's work is firmly rooted in it. His thesis is that human decision-making is based on the interplay of two very different types of thought, each of which has a vital part to play when we live our daily lives, act out our routines or face problems and issues that lie beyond the realm of the ordinary. 

The first, "system 1", is the means by which we navigate the myriad minor issues that face us each day and it is this system that accounts for the vast majority of our choices. Activities such as putting on a sock, avoiding an oncoming pedestrian on the pavement, unlocking our front door, making a cup of coffee or responding to a greeting do not require us to stop dead in our tracks and carefully map out what we do. We respond swiftly and often instinctively--and these responses will generally be correct. System 2, in contrast, is engaged when system 1 simply will not work. If I forget my front door key, I must stop and think how best I can gain access to my home. Likewise, I must do a little careful calculation before deciding if I have enough time to drink a cup of hot coffee before leaving to catch a train. 

What does this have to do with Pirkei Avot? The very first piece of guidance in the first mishnah of the first perek teaches: "Be deliberate in judgement" and many commentators go to great lengths to explain that this means what Kahneman would call switching from System 1 to System 2 thinking when resolving a legal dispute. The danger against which this guidance is given is that a judge may jump to the wrong conclusion where he intuits that he has dealt with many cases of the same nature, or involving the same "type" of litigant, in the past. Later in the same perek, at Avot 1:6, Yehoshua ben Perachya counsels us to judge others favourably even where at first glance they are guilty or unworthy of the benefit of the doubt. Again, the impetus of System 1 reasoning is acknowledged, as is the need to curb it. An anonymous mishnah in the fifth perek cautions us not to interrupt others when they are speaking -- a classical System 1 social response -- since it is better to hear them out and then decide whether your words need be said at all. 

A couple of weeks ago I was going through my post and came across two charity appeals. One was from World Jewish Relief's Ukraine Crisis Fund; the other was for the University Jewish Chaplaincy. Glancing at the promotional material for each, I was horrified by the contrast before my eyes of an image of desperate refugees from a war-torn battle zone juxtaposed with one of students eating and indeed partying together. How could I even contemplate supporting the chaplaincy in the face of an appeal on behalf of those who were so obviously in need? I instantly put the chaplaincy appeal in the pile of papers for recycling.

That was my System 1 decision. I then recalled Avot 1:1 and the maxim that one should not be hasty in one's judgement. I also bore in mind the teaching of Rabbi Meir that one should not judge anything by its external superficialities (Avot 4:27). Having done so, I took the trouble to reassess my decision and read the promotional material of the two charities carefully. 

As expected, System 2 delivered a more measured result. For a start, I discovered that the University Jewish Chaplaincy had sent 30 students and three chaplains to work with Ukrainian refugees in Poland. For another, I was reminded of the need to support students who face the ongoing antisemitism on campus which seems to have become endemic, as well as the mental health issues that many students have experienced. On mature reflection it seemed that both charities were deserving causes and that I had been over-hasty in deciding to deprive one of support on the sole basis of entitlement through the contrast between two sets of visuals.