Hedgehogs, Foxes and the "one great thing"

During the First Temple period, shortly after the wicked king Menashe ascended the throne, an obscure Greek poet living on the tiny island of Paros was busy composing his verses. His name was Archilochus and some fragments of his work have survived until today. One such fragment reads πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα ("a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing").

On one level this is a trite observation, drawn from nature. The fox, an opportunist omnivore who shares with the Jewish people a fondness for chicken, finds its food wherever it can. This task requires resourcefulness, cunning and the ability to learn from both successful and failed experiences. As its potential prey, the hedgehog need only know one crucial thing: how to roll into a prickly ball in order to ward off whatever stratagem the fox or any other predator might use.  

But there is a higher level too.  In The Hedgehog and the Fox, a celebrated essay published in 1953, the eminent philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin wrote of the contrasting characteristics of these animals. He then proceeded to categorise many well-known personalities as sharing the outlook of one or the other. Sir Isaiah and his followers classed Plato, Nietzsche, Marx, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Sir Winston Churchill as “hedgehogs”, while Aristotle, Shakespeare, Freud, Warren Buffett and Benjamin Franklin were “foxes”.

Should a practising Jew be regarded as a fox or a hedgehog? In parashat Ekev (Devarim 10:12-13) Moshe says:

“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only that you fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. To keep the commandments of the Lord, and His statutes, which I command you this day for your own good”.

There are 613 mitzvot in the Torah and a good many more beyond it, so a statement that one must obey them for love and fear of God would appear to reflect the policy of the hedgehog. An extreme version of the same reductionist position appears in the Talmud (Makkot 23b-24a) where we learn that King David was able to reduce this total of 613 to a mere 11. Not to be outdone, the prophets Isaiah, Micah (and Isaiah again) whittled down the number of principles of Jewish faith to 6, 3 and 2. Habakkuk (at 2:4) then founded the entire Torah on a single grundnorm: “But the righteous shall live by his faith”. This fragment of prophetic verse could very well have been a summary of the words of Moshe quoted above, since it is faith in God that generates every part of that great leader’s advice. Both offer us just one great rule to fit every situation—and that is very much the territory of the hedgehog.

But there is more. The considerations we have reviewed above all represent the Tanach, the fixed and immutable truths of the Written Torah. Is the Oral Torah for hedgehogs too?

A reading of the tractate of Avot as a whole suggests that the life of a morally responsible, ethically sensitive Jew requires the skills and the reflexes of the fox. Its dynamics reflect the tension of when to speak and when to remain silent, when to give respect and when to avoid it, when to act and when to stand aside, and so on. Three of its key mishnayot (Avot 2:1, 2:12 and 2:13) open with a Tanna asking which is the right path to choose (or avoid); they conclude with answers that tell us how to find those paths but not what they are in purely factual terms. The overriding principle in Avot is the exercise of discretion and personal initiative when ducking and weaving to escape the problems that block one’s passage through life.

Putting the Written and Oral Torah together, we can now see that we do not live in a binary world in which everyone is either a hedgehog or a fox. A Jew must be both. He or she must know when to emulate the hedgehog, batten down the hatches and take the path of security and caution, and when to take the path less travelled, or not yet travelled at all, sniffing out fresh sources of inspiration in prayer and learning, innovative solutions and creative devices for growing in one’s service to God.

Is any proof needed? Let us turn again to the animal kingdom. Since the dawn of creation the great knowledge of the hedgehog has been a brilliant and simple solution to the problem of fending off predators. However, it little avails the bold animal that, venturing beyond the hedgerow, aspires to fend off passing traffic as it crosses the road. Without innovation the hedgehog is just an endangered species, another victim of roadkill. In sharp contrast, the fox’s initiative and ability to learn on the job, as it were, have provided it with a host of new and exciting opportunities for urban living while its rural habitat diminishes. This is not merely survival: it is prosperity and growth.

To conclude: when we study the Torah and seek to implement its ways within our lifestyle, we seek to respect and observe the Torah’s eternal values and mitzvot while living in a world of constant change, change that lies beyond our power to control or prevent. In doing so, it appears that there is no alternative. We must be both hedgehogs and foxes.

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Historical postscript: Sir Isaiah Berlin was a direct descendant of Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the Ba’al HaTanya and author of the Shulchan Aruch HaRav. It would have been interesting to know whether he classed his illustrious ancestor as a hedgehog or a fox—or as both.