Holding back and going forth: a visit to the Delphic Oracle

Our previous post here discussed Rabbi Akiva’s teaching in Avot 3:17 that “oaths are a fence against abstinence” and suggested that, despite the fact that neither oaths nor abstinence are topics of popular currency, this Mishnah still had something to teach us.

We briefly reviewed the concept of the oath or vow, which we analogised to the New Year Resolution in contemporary culture. Now it’s time to look at abstinence.

The Hebrew word, perishut, which is usually translated as “abstinence”, really means “separation”. It has come to mean “abstinence” on the basis that the things most people most frequently give up or separate themselves from are things of a pleasurable nature. People rarely want to detach themselves from these pleasures but they are often characterised as being harmful to the body (e.g. cigarettes, alcohol, confectionery) or to one’s spirit or emotions (e.g. gambling, pornography). To many English speakers the word “abstinence” conjures up notions of adopting a harsh, ascetic life, possibly involving isolation from human company and celibacy.

The concept of abstinence may not always have had such miserable connotations. Reviewing the ambit of perishut in his classic Chovot Halevavot, Rabbenu Bachye ibn Paquda depicts a wide spectrum of practices that he regards as falling within its scope. At one end is the complete rejection of what one wishes to give up for good. The other end is however described in relative terms, as edging away from an extreme indulgence and moving towards the Maimonidean mean of “not too little, not too much”. The notion of perishut as simply avoiding extremes was not unknown in the world of the Tannaim who composed the mishnayot of Avot: they may well have been aware of the Greek maxim μηδὲν ἄγαν (“nothing in excess”), which was displayed in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, a place visited by travellers from across the Eastern Mediterranean region and Asia Minor.

The scope of perishut as a measure of how far a Jew engages with the pleasurable or dangerously attractive facets of secular life works in two directions. Rabbenu Bachye’s concern, which may also have been that of Rabbi Akiva, lay with the detachment of the Jew from non-Jewish culture. However, in Seeking His Presence, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein discusses with Rabbi Chaim Sabato the opposite phenomenon: the extent to which it is desirable for a Jew who lives within his own culture and religious norms to experience and participate in the culture of the secular world. In Rabbi Lichtenstein’s case the attractions of the non-Torah world included the reading of Milton’s Paradise Lost, a 10,000-odd word poem on the subject of repentance.  For others, the pleasures of the wider world may be of a less noble nature.

How far need a Jew abstain from that which may be harmful and alien in order to protect his essential Jewishness, and how far dare a committed Jew edge towards the values and prospects of the wider world without jeopardising his religious commitment and identity? Ultimately there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Much depends on the strength of an individual’s self-knowledge, his self-discipline, his understanding of what Jewish values represent and what they mean to him. How does one assess these factors?

A second Delphic maxim, balancing the first, looks pertinent here: γνῶθι σεαυτόν (“know yourself”). Putting the two maxims together, we see that the visitor to Delphi is advised to use his knowledge of himself as the yardstick against which to measure moderation and excess. But the truth is that we cannot know ourselves with the sort of clarity that would enable us to judge our actions, or indeed feel confident that we can actually be the people we want to be. Hillel understood this when he urged us not to trust ourselves till the day of our death (Avot 2:5), the point at which we can no longer exercise our free will. So, while both we Jews and the ancient Greeks share the ideal objective of taking the line of moderation, we need a better compass with which to steer ourselves towards it than self-knowledge alone.