Is a bur a boor, or something more?

This is the second of two posts with a common theme, based on the Tiferet Tzion commentary of Rabbi Yitzchak Ze'ev Yadler.

Hillel teaches (in the first part of Avot 2:6):

אֵין בּוּר יְרֵא חֵטְא

In English: “A boor cannot be a sin-fearing person”.

This apparently abrupt and dogmatic generalisation has invited much discussion over the years. This discussion can be conveniently divided into the consideration of three questions: (i) what actually is a “boor” in this context? (ii) what is meant by “a sin-fearing person” and (iii) why should the fact that a person is a boor deprive him of the ability to fear sin? These three questions are clearly related, inasmuch as the answer to question (iii) is contingent upon the way we understand that is meant by “boor” and how we view “sin-fearing”.

In Hillel’s mishnah the boor is one of five defective character-types, the other four being the am ha’aretz (variously understood as someone who, in Torah terms, is uneducated or uncultured), the bayashan (being timid, this person is afraid to ask questions and will not therefore learn well), the kapadan (irritable or irascible and therefore unsuited to teaching) and the marbeh vischorah (who is too greatly engaged in business and commerce to impart Torah to others). Since the boor and the am ha’aretz are adjacent and potentially overlapping concepts, discussion tends to focus on how the boor and the am ha’aretz differ and, if one reads all the commentaries on this issue, one could be forgiven for thinking that there is really very little difference between them at all.

Rabbi Yitzchak Ze’ev Yadler takes a different approach in his Tiferet Tzion. His starting point is an earlier mishnah in the same chapter (Avot 2:2) in which Rebbi’s son Rabban Gamliel teaches that it is a beautiful thing for a person to combine Torah study with a regular occupation since the exertion that is demanded of someone who combines Torah study with a day job will remove sin from that person’s consciousness.

The word בּוּר (bur) indicates something (or in this case, someone) that is empty. It is the capacity to pursue Torah and a worldly occupation that distinguishes humans from members of the animal kingdom. When engaged in both or possibly either of these activities there will be no room to contemplate sin. But if both are emptied out, a person becomes a bur and, like the animal, has no awareness of sin and therefore no capacity to fear it or its consequences.

It is possible that, while the mishnah refers specifically to learning Torah, it may be equally applicable to the learning of any system of morality that points to considerations of rewards for good behaviour and punishments for sins, thus embracing the moral basis of all three Abrahamic religions.

Don't just sit and learn! For God's sake get a job ...

In recent weeks I've made frequent use of a commentary on Pirkei Avot, Tiferet Tzion, by Rabbi Yitchak Ze'ev Yadler, which I picked up for 10 shekels in a street sale of unwanted and abandoned books. Before moving on to sample the approach to Avot another commentator, I'm posting two final pieces based on Rabbi Yadler's book which deal with different mishnayot but share a common theme. Here's the first:

The Talmud (Berachot 35b) brings a famous argument between Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and Rabbi Yishmael as to whether it is better to sit and learn Torah full time, as Rabbi Shimon contends, or to work when it is time to work and learn when it is time to learn, as Rabbi Yishmael maintains. The passage, in full, reads like this.

Our Rabbis taught: “And you shall gather in your corn” (Deut. 11:14). What is to be learnt from these words? Since it says: “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth” (Joshua 1:8), I might have thought that this instruction is to be taken literally, so it says: “And you shall gather in your corn”, which implies that you should combine the study of them [i.e. the words of the Torah] with a worldly occupation. This is the view of Rabbi Yishmael.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai says: “Is that possible? If a man ploughs in the ploughing season, sows in the sowing season, reaps in the reaping season, threshes in the threshing season, and winnows in the windy season, what will become of the Torah? No! But when Israel perform the will of the Omnipresent, their work is performed by others, as it says: ‘And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks…’ (Isaiah 61:5). and when Israel do not perform the will of the Omnipresent their work is carried out by themselves, as it says: ‘And you will gather in your corn’.  Not only that, but the work of others will also be done by them, as it says: ‘And you will serve your enemy…’ (Deut. 28:48). Said Abaye: “Many have followed the advice of Ishmael, and it has worked well; others have followed Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai and it has not been successful”.

As I mention in my book, this argument continues even today and both sides can cite the authoritative support of great sages on whom they rely.

Anyone taking the teachings in Pirkei Avot as a whole will find that this great chasm between the “nothing but Torah” and “Torah in its right time” camps is reflected there too. Much of the sixth perek is in effect an extended paean of praise for Torah and an affirmation of its rightful place at the summit of Jewish endeavour. Against that, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel asserts that it is not learning but action that is the objective of Torah study (Avot 1:17) and Rabban Gamliel, son of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, praises the combination of Torah learning with a worldly occupation (Avot 2:2) on the ground that it is this that causes all sin to be forgotten; he adds that, in the absence of some sort of worldly occupation, one’s Torah learning is batelah (“of no effect”).

Commenting on what appears to be Rabban Gamliel’s harsh assessment of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s position, Rabbi Yitchak Tzevi Yadler draws our attention to another mishnah (Avot 3:6) in which Rabbi Nechunya ben Hakanah  promises that anyone who opts for Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s stern regime and takes upon himself the yoke of Torah will find that two other yokes—those of government and of having to make a living—will be removed from him.

According to Rabbi Yadler, when Rabban Gamliel advises taking up a worldly occupation as well as learning Torah, he is not at odds with Rabbi Nechunya ben Hakanah. That is because Rabban Gamliel’s advice is addressed to the ordinary Jew in the street, as it were, and not the night-and-day Torah student. For the person whose head is totally immersed in his learning there is (or should at any rate be) no need to forget sin since such a person shouldn’t be thinking about it in the first place, never mind closing his Gemara and wandering off in order to commit it. But for the person who only studies Torah at the times fixed for doing so, the Torah content of his day is insufficient to blot out inappropriate thoughts and actions entirely and that is why it is good for him to engage in an worldly occupation as well as learn.

But what of those people who occupy themselves totally in Torah? They are the people for whom, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai asserts, everything will be done by others.

Going back to Rabban Gamliel’s mishnah, we can understand it in two ways. One is that “Torah plus worldly occupation” means that a person learns and works. The other is that, while one person learns, it is not he but another person who works, in order to meet the needs of the one who is in learning. If we have a situation in which one person is ostensibly learning but no other person is working to meet his needs, we have “Torah without a worldly occupation” and it is this that appears to testify against Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s promise. As Rabbi Yadler puts it, there is, Heaven forfend, a chillul Hashem (a desecration of God’s name) because people will look at a person who dedicates his entire life and energy to learning Torah, receiving no support from others, and say “Is this the Torah and is this its reward?”

Shanah Tovah! A Happy New Year to You All

Tonight brings with it Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Despite its special significance this event receives no special mention in Pirkei Avot, a tractate that shows no favouritism towards calendar dates.  That does not mean, however, that Avot has nothing to teach us.

Tasked with answering the question “Which is the good path for a person to follow?”, Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel (Avot 2:13) advises us that it is the path of looking to the future in order to look for likely outcomes. This is valuable counsel for anyone who wants to make something positive of the year ahead.

For better or worse, God has placed us in His world and has given us the choice of whether to believe in Him and how close or distant to Him we want to be. This means that, to make the most of our lives, we have to work out what sort of relationship with God we want. But there’s more to life than accommodating God. We also have to accommodate other people, each of whom is also endowed with freedom of choice and with whom we can cooperate or compete. Finally we have to live with ourselves, to be comfortable inside our own skin and to be able to look ourselves in the mirror without feeling that we are looking at someone who has routinely failed us and who will probably continue to do so.

There is no simple formula for life that can enable us to strike a perfect balance between these three sets of relationships. If however we follow Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel’s advice and try to look ahead and predict the likely consequences of what we say, what we do and what we let ourselves think and feel, we may be able to improve our chances of navigating the New Year in a state of relative equilibrium.

I wish all Avot Today blog readers a happy and prosperous year 5783.

כתיבה וחתימה טובה

Lions, foxes and a mysterious proof verse

Open any contemporary siddur or volume of mishnayot today and look for the teaching of Rabbi Matya ben Charash (Avot 4:20). There you will find the following text:

הֱוֵי מַקְדִּים בִּשְׁלוֹם כָּל אָדָם, וֶהֱוֵי זָנָב לָאֲרָיוֹת, וְאַל תְּהִי רֹאשׁ לַשֻּׁעָלִים

In English: “Be the first to greet all people—and be a tail for lions, not a head for foxes”.

This does not appear to be the text that the Catalan scholar Rabbi Menachem Meiri (1249-1315) contemplated when he authored his commentary on Avot. The Mishnah in his text continues with a proof verse from Proverbs:

הלוך (הוֹלֵךְ) אֶת-חֲכָמִים וחכם (יֶחְכָּם); וְרֹעֶה כְסִילִים יֵרוֹעַ

In English: “He who walks with wise men shall be wise, but the companion of fools will suffer for it” (Mishlei 13:20).

Rabbi Samuel ben Isaac de Uçeda states explicitly that this was the text before Meiri in his compendious Midrash Shmuel (1579).

The link between this mishnah and the proof verse was clearly understood to exist in earlier times, even among scholars who probably did not have it in their copies of Avot. Rabbi Simchah ben Shmuel (died 1105) quotes the first half of the verse in the commentary on Avot found in the Machzor Vitry; rather later, Midrash Shmuel cites references to it by Rabbenu Yonah (1200-1263) and Rabbi Matityahu Hayitzhari. It continues to be cited even today.

This post addresses the extent to which the proof verse supports the mishnah.

It seems to me that the plain meaning of the verse from Proverbs is directed to the company one keeps. This proposition is supported by commentators on Tanach Essentially, the company of the wise enhances one’s wisdom, while the company of fools has the opposite effect. If we learn the verse in this manner, we can make the following observations:

• The proposition that one can learn wisdom from the wise is already implicit in the axiom in Avot 4:1 that the person who is wise is one who learns from others. It is unclear why we should need a repetition of this proposition;
• Our Mishnah here appears to emphasise the significance of a person being a “tail” or a “head”, that is to say a leader or a follower. The proof verse makes no express reference this issue;
• The lion in mishnayot and midrash is associated with many positive characteristics (see e.g. commentaries on Avot 5:23, “be as strong as a lion”), but wisdom is not one of them;
• Likewise, the fox in mishnayot and midrash is associated with cunning, guile and natural craftiness (see e.g. Rashi, Sanhedrin 39a)—but not with foolishness.[1]

Rabbenu Yonah sought to read the Hebrew as indicating that, while a person trails along behind the wise and is therefore metaphorically their tail, he finds that the fools follow him and he is therefore their head. While this explanation has been accepted and amplified by the Vilna Gaon and Rabbi Ovadyah Yosef, it does not read convincingly and Ralbag implicitly rejects it in his commentary on Proverbs: there he writes of the subject of the verse pursuing either the wise or the foolish—and thus being the “tail” in each case. Malbim however expressly follows the tails-and-heads approach.

We are left to contemplate the utility of verses that do not actually prove or clearly illustrate the point of a mishnah or baraita but which remains associated with them. There are many examples of such verses and the Judeophile Christian scholar R. Travers Herford points to several in his Ethics of the Talmud. While it would be quite wrong and thoroughly inappropriate to discard these verses, we are entitled to ask why they were chosen and what function they truly serve. It is improbable that their inclusion was solely for mnemonic reasons. Perhaps they are traces of earlier, deeper or more complex teachings that have been lost to us in the process of transmission through the generations. It would be good to know.

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[1] Even in Rabbi Akiva’s famous parable of the fox and the fish (Berachot 61b), where the fish call the fox “foolish”, they preface this jibe with a recitation that the fox is called pike’ach shebachayot (“the cleverest of creatures”).

Portrait of a prophet: another reason for not judging by appearances

Rabbi Yisrael Lifschitz’s Tiferet Yisrael commentary on tractate Kiddushin (at 4:14) tells a story that deserves our attention at a time when Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Judgment, is fast approaching. This story, as told by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski in Visions of the Fathers, runs as follows:

A desert king heard of the greatness of Moses, and sent his finest artists to bring back a portrait of him. He then submitted the portrait to his physiognomists to study it and describe Moses’ character. They reported that the portrait revealed a man who was vain, arrogant, lustful, greedy, and degenerate. Inasmuch as this was in sharp contrast to what he had heard of Moses, the king went to the Israelite encampment to see for himself.

Upon meeting Moses, the king saw that his artists had indeed captured every minute detail, and he could not understand how his physiognomists could be so far off course. Moses explained to him, “Your physiognomists can interpret only the innate characteristics with which a person was born. All they said of me was true insofar as those were the traits that I was born with. However, I struggled to overcome them and to transform my character”.

In terms of Pirkei Avot, the story illustrates the following:

• The association of power with self-discipline and control of one’s yetzer hara (evil inclination) rather than physical prowess (4:1);
  
  
• The danger of judging by appearances (4:27);
  
  
• The importance of admitting the truth rather than denying it (5:9).

The story additionally reflects the notion that self-control goes further than making sure one does the right thing and forbears from doing the wrong thing. True self-control goes further because its proper exercise can help a person to change even his or her inclinations and inherent middot, personal qualities.

We generally assess people by reference to the way they behave. This can be misleading since humans tend to do their good deeds in public and commit their bad ones when they are out of the public eye (sadly the media have reported a string of examples in recent years of public benefactors who were also private predators). We never however see a person’s private desires and inclinations. These are the province of God alone, and it is He alone who judges us as the sort of individuals we aspire to be.

Do good, feel bad?

For the practising Jew it is axiomatic that one should serve God and do His will with simchah, happiness. Sometimes, though, it is hard to reconcile the reality with this ideal.

The commandment of tzedakah, the making of charitable gifts and donations, is a case in point. Throughout both the written Torah and its oral counterpart we learn of the importance of tzedakah. Pirkei Avot is no exception. Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota (Avot 3:8) reminds us to give with a good conscience since everything we have in the first place belongs to God In the fifth chapter (Avot 5:16) we learn of the four different types of (non-)donors:

There are four types of givers of charity: (i) one who wants to give but does not want others to give is mean-spirited towards others [since he wants to retain all the glory for himself]; (ii) one who wants others to give but does not want to give himself is mean-spirited towards himself; (iii) one who wants both to give and that others should give is a chasid [essentially someone who is magnanimous]; (iv) one who wants neither himself nor others to give is wicked.

The sixth chapter (Avot 6:6) adds that love of tzedakot is one of the 48 means through which a mastery of Torah is acquired.

So what is the problem? It is one of ends and means.

At base, tzedakah means giving to the needy. In theory we can eliminate all poverty (Devarim 15:4) but in reality (Devarim 15:11) the poor are always with us. With most other commandments, once the action in question is performed the task is complete. However, with tzedakah—unless we are able to make lifestyle-changing donations—the poor remain poor, the hungry hungry and the destitute destitute even after we have done our bit to help them.

Going back to Avot 6:6, another of the 48 steps to acquiring mastery of the Torah is that of not ascribing credit to oneself for the good things one does. This precept is more or less self-fulfilling in the case of tzedakah since it is difficult to pat oneself on the back and congratulate oneself on giving a poor person a good meal today when you know he or she will be foraging for food tomorrow.

On a personal note, I have been trying to help the Abayudaya community in Uganda. This community is struggling to recover from the devastating effects of recent floods. At every step of the way I am reminded of the needs that remain unmet, both at community and individual level, and of the personal suffering and anxieties that will remain even after the flurry of pre-Yom Kippur charitable donations abates.

Of the four types of donor mentioned at Avot 5:16, I am firmly in the camp of those who both give and want others to give. I give with reluctance since it is always hard to part with one’s money, and with a mind full of conflict since there are several other charities that I support and that are closer to heart and home than the Abayudaya, however great may be their suffering. Still, if anyone wishes to make a contribution, here are a couple of causes they may wish to consider:

Abayudaya Emergency Aid Fund: https://tinyurl.com/2p9393p5

Shalom Children’ Care Centre for Orphans: https://tinyurl.com/4eps48xf

A vanishing hatred

Ben Azzai teaches an important pair of principles at Avot 4:3:

אַל תְּהִי בָז לְכָל אָדָם וְאַל תְּהִי מַפְלִיג לְכָל דָּבָר, שֶׁאֵין לָךְ אָדָם שֶׁאֵין לוֹ שָׁעָה, וְאֵין לָךְ דָּבָר שֶׁאֵין לוֹ מָקוֹם

In English: “Do not scorn any man, and do not be disdainful of any thing, for there is no man who does not have his hour, and no thing that does not have its place”.

This post discusses the first of these principles.

According to Rambam and Rabbenu Yonah, the point Ben Azzai makes is that, if you do not underestimate another person, even someone of no account, he will have no reason to hate you. Who might this person be? It could be someone who currently has no feelings towards you or (according to Me’iri) someone who hates you already. Either way, even if this person is utterly insignificant, don’t take his potential for hatred lightly since it may be in his power to harm you. Indeed, as all three of these eminent commentators accept, if you do take this person seriously, you may find that it is also in his power to benefit you.

Though there are some outliers (Maharal’s Derech Chaim, for example, links this teaching to the unique mazal of each individual), this understanding, shared by Bartenura and the commentary attributed to Rashi, appears to have shaped the consensus view of the meaning of Ben Azzai’s teaching from the days of the Rishonim until relatively recently, when it has been more extensively explored and the focus on the notion of personal animosity abandoned.

Is this drift away from the traditional explanation justified? Let us first see how it works. Examples of later, non-traditional approaches that violate neither the meaning of the words of the mishnah nor the ethos of Pirkei Avot include the following:

• 
  “The only way to earn esteem and respect for yourself is to esteem and respect other people, for in that way you are showing respect to your Creator.  … [A] man who is a criminal or a fool is a human being just like you and, if you cannot find anything to say in his praise, then rather say nothing, but you have no right to despise him…” (The Lehmann-Prins Pirkei Avoth);
  
  
• “Everything in life has its purpose, every person has a potential meaning (sic) possibility, however distant and remote it might seem from the superficial view. It is obligatory upon each individual to see the good and the potential of other individuals” (Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka, Chapters of the Sages);
  
  
• “[I]f everyone and everything that exists has time and space by Divine decree, in a universe governed by His will, each person, creature, and object is automatically due a certain respect and reverence” (Irving M. Bunim (Ethics from Sinai);
  
  
• “Each person and each object has value, even if that value is not always manifest. Each person, at some point in life, may rise to greatness…” (Rabbi Marc D.Angel, The Koren Pirkei Avot).

What then has happened to the notion of taking account of the hatred of others and the possibility of being harmed by them? Has this idea become old-fashioned and in need of replacement by a more relevant explanation of Ben Azzai’s words? Or do we now live within a society in which the need to avoid being dismissive of others and to underestimate their potential for hatred has become so deeply self-understood that it no longer requires to be taught?

Maybe the real reason is that, being uncomfortable at the thought that our attitude towards others might cause them to hate us, we prefer to read a more congenial message into Ben Azzai’s admonition.

Goodwill to all men

A frequently quoted teaching in Avot is that of Shammai, that one should greet everyone with a cheerful face (Avot 1:15). Does this apply truly to everyone, or does it only apply to one’s fellow Jews?

The Hebrew term for “everyone” is אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם (literally “all the man”). The use of the word הָאָדָם (“the man”) rather than simply אָדָם (“man”) has generated considerable discussion as to the significance of the distinction.  In particular, if one term means “all men”, is the other limited only to Jews? And, if so, which is which? I discuss some of the sources on this discussion in Pirkei Avot: A Users’ Manual, vol 2 at pp 177-179.

In the context of this mishnah there is a serious justification for speculation as to whether Shammai intended his advice to apply to all humans or only to Jews. This is because there is a passage in the Talmud (Shabbat 31b) that portrays Shammai as speaking to potential converts to Judaism—who are by definition non-Jews—in a brusque, irascible and less-than-friendly manner.

In his Tiferet Tzion commentary on this mishnah, Rabbi Yitzchak Ze’ev Yadler circumvents the need to resolve this issue. He takes note of the famous proposition (Yoma 28b) that Abraham fulfilled every commandment, including even the rabbinical laws relating to eruv tavshilin (the correct manner of preparing food before the onset of a Jewish festival on which one intended to cook food for the Shabbat that immediately followed it). We can learn from this proposition that Abraham must himself have greeted non-Jews with a happy, smiling face since in his generation there were no Jews to greet.

Avot, Elul and repentance: It's not too late

Many years ago I worked with a major law firm which prided itself on the enthusiasm with which it dedicated itself to its clients’ welfare. The lawyers worked long hours and rarely used their generous holiday allowance. Only on 1 January did they all desert their desks and return to their families to celebrate the new year. During my first year with the firm I told the partners that, for the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, I would be unavailable for work for two consecutive days. “Wow”, said one of my colleagues, “two days? You must have one enormous hangover after that!”

But the new Jewish year is not like that. It opens with Yom HaDin, the Day of Judgement. We face God, as it were, and give an account of ourselves. This is an awesome prospect, but we do not stand before Him unprepared. The month of Elul is our time for reflection on what we have (or have not) done and how we plan to address the challenges of the year ahead.

Two mishnayot in Avot deal with giving God an account of our actions, but in contrasting ways: one addresses our past, the other our future. Rabbi Elazar HaKappar (Avot 4:29) reminds us that there is no escape. In our ordinary lives we can dodge court appearances, fail to submit tax returns, and take evasive action when our fellow humans call us to account. But from God there is no escape. Just as a life is created, is born, lives and dies, so too will we have to answer to God for everything we have done, said, thought and been. That’s a tall order—and when we make all our excuses, God quite literally has all the time in the world to listen and judge accordingly.

Akavya ben Mahahalel (Avot 3:1) takes a different line. The time to think about what you are going to tell God is actually before you contemplate doing anything wrong. That way, you will avoid wrongdoing, your conscience will be clean and you won’t be punished. No-one needs to make excuses to explain away something they didn’t do wrong after all.

Looking at the Jewish calendar, we see that Elul is a festival-free space in which we can practise justifying our wrongs and if—as is most likely—this proves impossible, it’s a time to practise repentance too. Rabbi Eliezer (Avot 2:15) kindly tells us we only need to repent the day before we die; but, since that could be tomorrow, we effectively repent each day. Elul is also prime time for turning the exercise of stocktaking of good deeds and not-so-good ones into a golden chance to improve our performance for the year to come.

Roughly two-thirds of Elul has passed and, for many people, Rosh Hashanah still seems a long way away. Some of us have not long returned from our summer vacation or have been busily settling in children for the new school year. There are bills to be paid and so many terrestrial priorities to see to. But there’s still time to pause, to reflect and ponder, to ask what sort of person we are and what sort of person would we like to be, if we were only prepared to make the effort to do so. Let’s invest in Elul ahead of the Day of Judgment that lies ahead.

Does God accept bribes? A further comment

On 18 August I posted a piece called “Does God accept bribes?” (weblog here; Facebook here). This piece considered, among other things, whether a person might “pay” God for the performance of wrongful actions, offsetting their punishment through the performance of good deeds; it also took note of the early Christian practice of purchasing indulgences.

Rabbi Akiva teaches, at Avot 3:22:

הַכֹּל נָתוּן בָּעֵרָבוֹן, וּמְצוּדָה פְרוּסָה עַל כָּל הַחַיִּים, הֶחָנוּת פְּתוּחָה, וְהַחֶנְוָנִי מַקִּיף, וְהַפִּנְקָס פָּתֽוּחַ, וְהַיָּד כּוֹתֶֽבֶת, וְכָל הָרוֹצֶה לִלְווֹת יָבֹא וְיִלְוֶה, וְהַגַּבָּאִין מַחֲזִירִין תָּדִיר בְּכָל יוֹם, וְנִפְרָעִין מִן הָאָדָם מִדַּעְתּוֹ וְשֶׁלֹּא מִדַּעְתּוֹ, וְיֵשׁ לָהֶם עַל מַה שֶּׁיִּסְמֽוֹכוּ, וְהַדִּין דִּין אֱמֶת, וְהַכֹּל מְתֻקָּן לִסְעוּדָה

In English: “Everything is given on collateral, and a net is spread over all the living. The shop is open, the shopkeeper extends credit; the account-book lies open, the hand writes, and all who wish to borrow may come and borrow. The [debt] collectors make their rounds every day and exact payment from man, with his knowledge and without his knowledge. They have that upon which they rely, the judgement is a judgement of truth, and everything is prepared for the banquet”.

I now quote from Rabbi Yehudah Bulman’s excellent translation of the Meiri’s commentary on Avot in his Bet HaBechirah on the bold text above:

“Even if the person has long wallowed in his evil ways, nevertheless he has support to lean on in the form of repentance. [The Tanna] promises him that repentance is never precluded, even if he has sinned excessively. It is possible to lighten his punishments or even purge them altogether if his repentance is extensive enough. This is ‘counsel after the fact’”.

Rav Bulman, citing the Mishnat Reuven, notes that Meiri’s explanation diverges from that of other early commentators, who take the word “they” to refer to the debt collectors rather than, as Meiri does, to the sinners from whose assets the cost of sin is to be paid. He therefore points to the use of those resources for the purpose of lightening punishments or even purging sins completely.

Is this the same as bribery? Arguably it is not. A bribe is usually offered ahead of time, so that the person offering it will be confident that he has calculated the cost of the sin that he is about to commit and that his repentance for it will certainly be accepted. But there is more.

While both the lightening of punishment and the purging of sin are clearly objectives that a sinner desires, they cannot be bought by repentance since discretion to accept repentance remains in God’s hands alone and it is for Him to determine its adequacy, its sincerity and its acceptability.  The more egregious the sin, the greater the sinner’s enjoyment of it and the more premeditated its execution, the more intensive and heartfelt the repentance is likely to be before it reaches the level of acceptability—and even if it does, there is no guarantee that it will satisfy an all-wise and omniscient deity who understands us better than we understand ourselves.

Escape from captivity

Last month I came across some information concerning yet another commentary on Avot that I had not previously encountered. Its source is Israel Mizrachi (Jewish Press, Features on the Jewish World, here):

Rabbi David Hazan (d. 1748) was a noted rabbi and kabbalist, author of several books and founder of a prominent Hebrew printing press in Izmir (Smyrna), Turkey. ... I was able to obtain one of the books he authored, titled David Bametzudah (translated as “David in the Fortress”), being a commentary on Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) and printed in Salonica, Greece in 1748. The title page tells of the interesting background to the writing of this work and the travails of the author that led to it.

In translation, this background praises the grace of God and continues as follows:

“While I was visiting the city of Vienna, being that it is their custom to require passports of every visitor, I had in my possession an authentic passport. An evil man spoke slander about someone with the name David and said before the government that he was a spy. Despite our father’s names being different they accused me of being a spy and locked me in a prison on the holiday of Pesach. Since I was of ill health, the Jewish community sent a doctor to request that I be sent to a hospital under surveillance. May God repay them for their kindness. They instructed the doctor to care for me and paid for all the expenses. I was there from Pesach until Shavuot. I requested from the community leaders to send me the Midrash Shmuel on Pirkei Avot and Ein Yaakov (on the Aggadic portions of the Talmud), and within a short time I had written this commentary on Pirkei Avot. The very day that I completed the writing of this work, I received a pardon and was released…”

According to the online entry in the Jewish Encyclopaedia, the author's full name is David ben Chaim ben Joseph Ḥazan. He lived in Jerusalem about the middle of the eighteenth century. In addition to this commentary on Avot he wrote Ḥozeh David (commentary on the Psalms, Amsterdam 1724), Ḳohelet ben David (on Ecclesiastes, Salonica, also apparently 1748); and Agan haSahar (on Proverbs, Salonica 1749).

I have not seen this work and have never even come across any reference to it in the works of others. I'm curious to know whether it is a yalkut upon a yalkut, taking extracts from Midrash Shmuel and refreshing them for contemporary readers, and whether it has a kabbalistic flavour. If any reader can enlighten me, I shall be grateful. 

Meanwhile, noting that Rabbi Hazan was pardoned and released from prison on the day he completed his work, I wonder whether it ever occurred to him that, had he written a shorter commentary, he might have been released sooner.

Are you a man or a chameleon?

The other day I came across a paragraph that stopped me dead in my tracks. It read as follows:

“In order for a person to have a meaningful, constructive identity, it should be one which he gives to himself. If a person has no other identity than that given to him by others, he really has no identity at all. He must change like a chameleon, being one thing to his wife, another to his parents, another to his children, another to his employer, another to this friend, and yet another to a different friend”.

What was it about this paragraph that so gripped my attention? First, it struck me as being so completely wrong that it could not withstand any serious analysis. Secondly, it was written by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski and appears in his commentary on Pirkei Avot, Visions of the Fathers, a work that I enjoy reading and from which I have learned a great deal.

Why do I find Rabbi Twerski’s words here so unacceptable? Perhaps it is because I am a chameleon at heart. I believe strongly that one has to be different things to different people and that this does indeed shape one’s identity. Let us start with our parents—the first and most influential relationships in most people’s lives—and then go on to our teachers, friends, colleagues, partners and children. Anyone who lives in a society that is comprised of other people will immediately recognise that they are bound to be shaped by them. It is simply impossible to be the same person to each of them in every situation and live a fulfilled and meaningful existence, as the Torah’s narrative of Moses’ personal relationships seems to suggest.

Pirkei Avot itself seems to require us to be different people in different circumstances. Thus Rabbi Yishmael (Avot 3:16) encourages us to play different roles depending on whether we are dealing with our superiors or those junior to us. The principle of al tifrosh min hatzibur (“don’t separate yourself from the community”: Avot 2:5, 4:7) reflects the notion that we should commit ourselves to a shared position rather than stand out alone). Also, we are supposed to make ourselves loved (Avot 6:1, 6:6), which is certainly easier when one adjusts to the circumstances of each relationship in our lives rather than stick to our chosen identity and wait for others to adjust to us.

Moving from morality to metaphor, is it even such a bad thing to be a chameleon? While these creatures change colour to match their immediate environment, they do so for the sake of their safety and survival. This is the same survival technique that many of our fellow Jews employ when mixing outside their comfort zone: hats are exchanged for caps; tzitzit are tucked in, and so on. But in the real world, despite their camouflage, chameleons still recognise one another—just as Jews tend to do in business centres, airport terminals and shopping malls around the world.

Ultimately, since I have no wish to quarrel with the words of Rabbi Twerski, I shall endeavour to read them as applying to the starting point in a person’s life, before the question of familial and social interaction becomes a problem. We should all have a default position, something that defines our essential individuality, before we find ourselves engaged in the lifelong task of compromising it when we encounter other people. After all, an identity remains an identity even when it is compromised. 

Left dangling: limits to free will revisited

In an earlier post (Freedom of choice and lined writing paper) I opened a discussion on Rabbi Akiva’s apothegm that “everything is foreseen, but free will is given” (Avot 3:19). My point was that, while this teaching is usually taken to allude to God’s foresight and supervision of the world, it can also be understood to refer to the way our freedom to exercise our choice is limited by human considerations as well as by divine ones. This line of thought would not be inappropriate, given the era in which Rabbi Akiva lived and the cause of his death.

It is often assumed that the free will versus determinism debate hinges on whether a man is a puppet who, dangling from the puppeteer’s string, has no real choice in what he does. Those who take this extreme view often press the point that God controls absolutely everything: if a person exercises choice in performing any act, it is only because the circumstances leading to that choice and the means of resolving it are both predetermined by God. Free choice is therefore an illusion. We are however bound to believe that we exercise free will, since it is this that gives any sort of personal meaning to our lives.

Others take the view that God’s control over human thoughts and actions is more nuanced in that, while setting the parameters within which we act out our daily existence, He has the freedom to choose the extent to which we exercise a genuine freedom of choice.

I can give an example, by way of analogy. Many years ago, two of my grandsons were fighting one another. Initially a play fight, the game became a little too rough and I decided to intervene. I lifted the lighter boy off the ground and held him firmly so that he could neither kick nor punch his cousin, though he made strenuous attempts to do so.

At one level my intervention curtailed the physical motion of the wriggling child. He could neither escape my grasp nor approach his foe. This was clearly a constraint upon his freedom to choose where to move. On another level, however, I contemplated the full range of options that remained available to him:

• Continue to resist my grip (in which case I would simply strengthen it as necessary);
  
  
• Stop squirming and relax (in which case I would have put him down, at a safe distance from his protagonist);
  
  
• Say he was sorry (in which case I would have put him down near his erstwhile rival, having first extracted an undertaking from the latter that hostilities would cease);
  
  
• Scream (in which case I would have ignored him till he stopped screaming);
  
  
• Call for his mother to intervene (which is what he actually did).

I like to think that this scenario reflected in human terms the sort of thing that Rabbi Akiva had in mind in this mishnah. Do you agree?

Orphaned, unloved

I’m sad to say that I’ve just picked up another abandoned commentary on Pirkei Avot from the streets of Jerusalem. This time it’s Melitz Yosher al Pirkei Avot, by Rabbi Reuven Melamed, rosh mesivta at Ponevezh Yeshivah and a talmid muvchak of the celebrated mashgiach of Ponevezh, Rabbi Yechezkel Levenstein ztz”l.

Self-published in Bnei Brak 1990, this book is in mint condition and shows signs of never having been opened. It is handsomely produced, with clear, vowelised Hebrew for the mishnayot and baraitot and well-spaced, unpointed text for the commentary itself.

I look forward to dipping into this little book and reporting on some of its more interesting content. Meanwhile, does any reader know anything of this book and its author?

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Postscript

On the same topic, readers may remember that not long ago I found another unwanted edition of Avot that contained two commentaries—the Tiferet Tzion of Rabbi Yitzchak Ze’ev Yadler and the Kerem Chemed of his grandson Rabbi Yehudah Rabinowitz (see earlier post on Facebook and on the Avot Today blog)—which I picked up from a street sale for the princely sum of 10 shekel. I’ve been sampling the Tiferet Tzion daily over my breakfast and can testify to it being a gentle, traditional commentary that takes pleasure in delving into the Gemara in order to highlight or illustrate the teachings in Avot. Even though I’ve not yet finished the first perek, I’m delighted to say that I’ve got far more than 10 shekels-worth of value for my purchase.