Slipping into holiday mode: what would Shammai say?

It's the height of summer and many Jewish families are either on holiday or actively preparing to go way. Does Pirkei Avot have a message for them?

At Avot 1:15, we have a mishnah that teaches:

שַׁמַּאי אוֹמֵר: עֲשֵׂה תוֹרָתְךָ קְבַע, אֱמוֹר מְעַט וַעֲשֵׂה הַרְבֵּה, וֶהֱוֵי מְקַבֵּל אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם בְּסֵֽבֶר פָּנִים יָפוֹת.

Shammai used to say: “Make your Torah fixed; say little but do a lot, and receive every man with a cheerful face”.

Most commentators assume, not without reason, that when Shammai says “Make your Torah fixed”, he means “Make your Torah learning fixed”. This can be taken in various ways. For example it can mean

• making the Torah the fixed point around which your life revolves (Rambam, Bartenura),
• fixing a regular time to learn (Rabbi Avraham Azulai, Ahavah BeTa’anugim),
• learning it from one teacher alone, to avoid uncertainty and confusion (Rabbi Shmuel de Uceda, Midrash Shmuel),
• fixing one’s good inclination so that it is in place at all times and can combat the evil inclination that encourages you to stop learning Torah and do other things (Rabbi Tzevi Hirsch Ferber, Hegionei Avot),
• fixing a regular routine for what you learn or fixing in your memory and in your heart the Torah that you are learning.

Shammai himself was a great Torah scholar and his commitment to learning Torah is unquestionable. However, the words of his Mishnah suggest that maybe something else remains to be learned here. This is because, though the word “Torah” may imply “learning”, Shammai does not explicitly mention that word.

Taking a wider view, we can see that Shammai’s teaching may mean that one can also fix the manner in which one observes the Torah’s laws. In simplest terms this can be practising what one preaches rather than laying down one course of conduct but behaving in a way that contradicts this course (Avot deRabbi Natan 13:2).

In terms of setting standards, this can mean demanding of a rabbi that he will not apply the halachah strictly upon himself and leniently for others, or vice versa (According to Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Rav Lau on Pirkei Avos, the text of this Mishnah that was before Rabbi Shimon ben Tzemach Duran states explicitly “so that you will not be lenient with yourself and strict with others or vice versa ….”).

If the achievement of a level of consistency is what this Mishnah is about, it can also point a finger at practising Jews who maintain two levels of practice—one for home, the other for holidays. How careful are we to fix the same standards of kashrut when on vacation, in a resort where there may be no convenient kosher stores at hand? Are we as careful then as we are when we are back home, where supplies of religiously approved foods are readily available? The same applies to the clothes we wear and the way we behave.

Kashrut on holiday is just one aspect of a larger issue: the social dimension to fixing one’s observance of the Torah’s laws. This is an important matter that cannot be overlooked because it reflects a three-way tension between the demands of God, the power of peer pressure and the insidious effect of the yetzer hara (usually translated as the “evil Inclination” but sometimes just a manifestation of the forces of lethargy and indifference).

The clash of Torah and social priorities exists in two forms. In one, a person who is scrupulously observant of Torah mitzvot in the company of friends and family may simply not bother to keep those same mitzvot when he is alone and there is no-one else around to see what he is doing. In the other, a person who is scrupulously observant of Torah mitzvot, even when he is on his own, cannot face the prospect of performing them in the company of strangers or of people he knows but who, being non-Jewish or unobservant, might laugh at him or ask him awkward questions.

In the first of these cases, peer pressure works to encourage and maybe even enforce observance; in the second case it works in quite the opposite direction. Either way, Shammai’s advice is to make one’s Torah practice fixed: be consistent and, when seeking to establish the level at which this consistency should be maintained, remember that the real audience is not one’s peers or family, but an omniscient, all-seeing God.