Are you voting for a golem?

Tomorrow Israel’s voters head for the polls for the fourth time since April 2019. With so many political parties and near equilibrium between the coalitions likely opposing each other, the formation of a government is likely to be achieved only after a lengthy round of negotiations, compromises and trade-offs.

Who should we vote for? Some voters opt for the party whose policies most closely reflect their own aspirations. Others seek to support personalities who appeal to them. Others still cast their vote in accordance with what might best be described as a sort of tribal loyalty. But motivation means nothing: when it comes to the count, each vote is of equal weight.

What does Pirkei Avot have to offer tomorrow’s voters? I would suggest they take a close look at Avot 5:9, an anonymous mishnah that talks about the golem—not the fictional golem that was reputedly created by the Maharal of Prague and now the subject of plays, stories and even movie and TV productions, but a boorish, uncultivated person who generally has no idea how to behave in civil society.

This mishnah reads as follows:

There are seven things that characterise a golem, and seven that characterise a wise man.

• A wise man does not speak before someone who is senior to him in wisdom or age;
• He does not interrupt another person while that other person is speaking;
• He does not give a hasty response;
• His questions are relevant and his answers are accurate;
• He deals with first things first and last things later;
• As what he did not learn, he says: "I did not learn”;
• He concedes the truth.

With the golem, the reverse of all these is the case.

These seven criteria need little explanation. A person who pre-empts discussions and interrupts others is not ideally equipped to engage in dialogue and consensus-based decision-making. Hasty responses often require amendment, explanation, apology and subsequent retraction. Relevance and accuracy, not rhetoric and acrimony, should be the standards by which a politician’s engagement with others is measured. The need to recognise priorities and then prioritise them is a prerequisite for anyone who is responsible for discharging a multiplicity of duties. Admitting that one doesn’t know something can be hard, but it is safer than pretending knowledge or understanding that does not exist. Finally, admitting that one is wrong is not merely honest; it helps to gain the trust and respect of those to whom the admission is made.

Now, friends and (where relevant) fellow Israelis, before you next cast a vote for a candidate who will be responsible for your safety and your well-being, for how your taxes are spent and for whether you will be able to hold your head high as a respected member of the human race, before you do any of this—just ask yourself the following questions:

• How many of the seven signs of a golem constitute an accurate description of the candidate for whom I propose to vote?
• Why should any electorate be prepared to elect to its legislature any person whose personal standards of conduct fall far short of the listed items?
• In the light of the extent to which office-holders and potential office-holders do not match up to the Avot 5:9 standards, is there any wonder that so many people have little or no respect for them and are becoming increasingly reluctant to vote?

Before any reader leaps to a conclusion, I must state that this is not a party political post. Many readers, on reading the seven criteria, may assume that I have one particular prominent politician in mind, but this is not the case. The golem syndrome can be found in very many current and prospective members of the Israel Knesset and it is not confined to the members or activists belonging to any single party. I am myself a “floating voter” who is currently contemplating the prospect of voting for my third different party in three years. My points are the following:

• We should be prepared not only to recognise major deficiencies that many of our politicians possess but to call them out and criticise them (the press and online media have made both this process and the publication of its findings increasingly effective in recent times);
• We should demand higher standards of behavioural integrity from our politicians, thereby making it easier for people to listen respectfully and critically to what they say and to engage with them in terms that are constructive, not vituperative;
• We should regard Avot 5:9 as setting at least a minimum requirement for the behaviour of elected representatives and their rivals.

Noah and the limits of patience

Does Noah have a place in Pirkei Avot? The Torah describes him as a man who is righteous in his generations, but its narrative does not elaborate on the reason why this might be so. We know that he found favour in God’s eyes, but most of Avot addresses character improvement and interpersonal relationships rather than the relationship between man and God. All the Torah tells us of his dealings with other mortals is that, of his three sons, he gave one an unqualified blessing, a second one a more circumscribed one and the third a curse. We also learn that he discharged a heavy burden of responsibility for the survival of the livestock within the Ark. But we see no obvious evidence of the sort of middot—character qualities—that is the main focus of Avot.

As it turns out, Noah gets two name-checks in Avot and they are both somewhat pejorative. At 5:2 we are taught that there were ten generations from Adam to Noah (Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Yered, Enoch, Mathuselah, Lemech, Noah). Each generation angered God more than its predecessor to the point that God finally lost patience with humankind, as it were, and sent a flood to wipe them out. The next mishnah repeats this theme, referencing the ten generations from Noah to Abraham (Noah, Shem, Arpachshad, Shelah, Ever, Peleg, Re’u, Serug, Nachor, Terach, Abraham). This time God did not send a flood, but rewarded Abraham for such righteousness as he and the preceding nine generations had accrued. These two mishnayot tell us nothing about Noah, the man and his middot. Rather, they use his name as a convenient shorthand for a literal watershed in Biblical history—the transition from antediluvian to postdiluvian culture. We might characterise the Adam-to-Noah era as a sort of “wild west” anything-goes free-for-all period, while Noah-to-Abraham marks the commencement of an era in which some form of law and order are manifested (the seven so-called Noahide laws), even though it appears that most humans before the time of Abraham did not live in accordance with them.

Some interesting timeline points arise from these two mishnayot.

According to Tosafot Yom Tov, the first mishnah presumably embraces Noah’s entire lifespan, since the second Mishnah—though it mentions Noah by name—would contain not ten names but eleven if it included him. While the Maharal (Derech Chaim) and the Anaf Yosef appear to agree, this view is open to challenge because the first mishnah refers to those ten vexatious generations continuing to annoy God “until He brought upon them the waters of the Flood.” Noah however lived on for a further 350 years after the Flood abated. If account is taken of that mainly quiet and unrecorded part of his life, which in any event overlaps the generation of his three sons, Noah’s last three and a half centuries must surely form part of the ten-generation span that leads to Abraham.

For the record, the Torah gives very much longer lifespans for the generations between Adam and Noah than it does for Noah’s descendants. Thus the number of years that the Bible records from the Creation to the Flood is 1,656, while the ten generations from the Flood to the death of Abraham account for just 467 years. The Alshich (Yarim Moshe) notes that the average age of a first-time father from the time of Adam to the birth of Noah’s first-born Japheth was 165 years; however, from the generation of Shem to that of Abraham, the average age of a first-time father was just 40. Likewise, the average lifespan of the generations from Adam to Noah was 857 years, while that from Noah to Abraham dwindled to 317. The Alshich attributes these statistical diminutions to the fact that the 20 generations from Adam to Abraham angered God increasingly, to the point at which God decreased their lifespans. There is however a problem with this explanation: it would seem to contradict the force of this pair of mishnayot because it implies that God was becoming increasingly impatient as the generations passed since He was giving them less and less time in which to repent, while we are supposed to learn here about the magnitude of His patience and slowness to anger.

Does this analysis have any take-home relevance for us today? On the basis that we should seek to emulate God’s actions where this is possible, we can see how much less patient God appears to be in the later mishnah before acting on His anger. Though the first ten generations were far from righteous, they had yet to receive any warning as to what the consequences of their misconduct might be. Far from destroying Adam and Eve after they ate the forbidden fruit, God performed for them an act of kindness when made them clothing before He sent them on their way. It was not until the cataclysmic flooding of the natural world and everything in it that the physical consequences of bad behaviour were truly manifested. But from Noah onwards, the Flood—and the rainbow that was set in the sky to remind us of the reason for it—served as a warning that God’s expectations are matched by His acts. Perhaps this teaches us that we too should feel morally justified in being less patient with those whom we have cautioned than with those whom we have not.

Relevance in retrospect

Regular readers will know that I spend a good deal of time browsing second-hand bookshops, street sales and even piles of abandoned books in my search for hitherto unfamiliar commentaries on Pirkei Avot. My latest find is in autographed copy of Relevance: Pirkei Avos For The Twenty-First Century, by Rabbi Dan Roth, founder of the interactive multimedia educational platform Torah Live. This tome had been left in a pile of unwanted books that had been left to the elements. Fortunately I was able to save it from the first of Israel’s early seasonal rains. Being a full 15 years too late to write a review of Relevance, I thought I’d look at it in retrospect.

How does this commentary differ from all the rest? The jacket-flap declaration sets out the book’s objectives thus:

The teachings of Pirkei Avos are timeless and contain answers to the moral challenges of every generation. The particular application of those messages to the needs of each generation, however, changes according to the times. As such, every generation needs to delve anew into the words of Chazal to discover how to apply the eternal truths of the Torah to the challenges of the day.

Relevance fulfills this need by showing how each Mishnah pertains to the modern world, revealing Pirkei Avos to be as vibrant and contemporary as if it were written today.

The claim that the book shows how “each Mishnah pertains to the modern world” is not strictly true. Avot contains over 120 mishnayot and baraitot, of which this book discusses just 24, omitting any discussion of the baraitot in the sixth and final perek. Some added features are however worthy of note. One is a glossary of non-English terms found in the text; another is the impressive bibliography, and a third is a short but useful index of names and topics.

The author’s selection of mishnayot suggests to me that he may have started with a collection of contemporary issues and points which he was seeking to make, working back towards whichever mishnah was the appropriate peg on which to hang it. This approach would also explain why, to the relief of many modern readers, there are no flights into the realms of linguistics, semantics and philology. Nor are there lengthy anecdote-laden biographies of the sages or philosophical speculations. The overall effect is to provide a direct, accessible statement of the sort of day-to-day moral values that a Torah-conscious Jew should put into practice. 

This is a book for believers, not doubters. The tone of the text is direct, confident and assertive. I would imagine that the ideal reader is a recent ba’al teshuvah whose enthusiasm for living a Jewish life has resulted in the adoption of a lifestyle where the person’s commitment exceeds their knowledge. Its overall message is clear. It tells the reader: “you too can live a good Jewish life and don’t be embarrassed at the antiquity of its source materials since they are eternally relevant”.

 On a personal note, I enjoyed the author’s approach to Avot 5:23, in which Yehudah ben Teyma teaches us to be as bold as leopards, light as eagles, swift as deer and strong as lions in our service to God. Though his analysis is different from mine, he takes the same line as I do in my book, looking afresh at the natural qualities of these four creatures—but he got there a decade and a half ahead of me.

I’d like to conclude with a word of criticism, to be addressed to the publisher, not the author. Although the main content of the book spans 268 pages, readers will find themselves getting to the end of it rather sooner than they imagined they might. This is not only a consequence of the fact that the print is agreeably large. It also reflects the fact that, of those 268 pages, a remarkable 63—or around nearly 25%--are either completely blank or contain nothing except the title of the discussion that follows two pages later. This seems to be a regrettably large quantity of paper to sacrifice at the altar of aesthetic appeal.

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Pirkei Avos For The Twenty-First Century was published by Feldheim, Jerusalem in 2007. It is available on Amazon in Kindle and hardback formats.

The Bad Neighbour problem

One of the shortest teachings in Pirkei Avot is that of Nittai HaArbeli:

הַרְחֵק מִשָּׁכֵן רָע, וְאַל תִּתְחַבֵּר לָרָשָׁע, וְאַל תִּתְיָאֵשׁ מִן הַפּוּרְעָנוּת

In English: Distance yourself from a bad neighbour, and do not join up with someone who is wicked, and do not abandon belief in retribution (Avot 1:7).

On a literal interpretation, the first of these three propositions raises many issues. Nor does it easily lend itself to practical application in the modern world. In former times we might simply pull up our tent and pitch it further away from the person whose proximity we wish to avoid. Today, however, the option of physically relocating our homes is usually costly, time-consuming and inconvenient—and there is no guarantee that the place to which we move will not have neighbours who are at least as bad as those whom we seek to avoid.

If we take the instruction to distance ourselves from bad neighbours in a figurative sense, we run into a different problem: just keeping our distance from people whom we regard as bad influences would appear to be implicit in the second proposition in this mishnah, since one does not normally join up with someone who is wicked without having ceased to distance oneself first.

A further issue must be addressed whether we prefer a literal interpretation or a figurative one, which is that we must first decide whether a person is wicked. Nittai’s contemporary, Yehoshua ben Perachyah, has already taught (Avot 1:6) that we should judge others on a favourable basis, having regard to that person’s merit; this judgement should not be made before we have stood in that person’s shoes, as it were, and not on the basis of our own ideals, principles and circumstances (per Hillel, Avot 2:5).

Nittai’s teaching also assumes that the good person whose neighbour is bad will be affected by that person rather than the other way round. This is not an inevitable consequence of having bad neighbours but it is at least a risk that a person should weigh up carefully before deciding what to do.

In Western society, the role of the neighbour in our lives is often dramatically different from that with which Nittai was familiar. Family units have shrunk in size and it is now usual for women to work outside the home. With so many people living in apartment blocks which provide only limited opportunities for getting to know one’s neighbours, for many people there is no “bad neighbour problem” since they scarcely ever come into contact with those who live closest to them. The social media provide much scope for interpersonal contact and even relationship-building, but it is difficult to characterise fellow users of the social media as “neighbours”.

None of the above should be seen as an excuse for ignoring Nittai’s teaching. Rather, we should take it as a statement regarding the need to exercise caution and vigilance when coming into close and regular company of others. Without being judgemental or hostile, we should not let our guard drop and, with it, the standards we hold dear as responsible human beings.

Gratitude versus jealousy: keeping it in the family

At Avot 4:28 Rabbi Elazar HaKappar issues a stern warning: “Jealousy, desire and honour remove a person from the world”. Most traditional commentators on Avot add little to this warning since it largely speaks for itself, but the more recent trend is to frame it within the context of modern life. An example of this trend which I recently came upon is found in Rabbi Dan Roth’s Relevance: Pirkei Avos for the Twenty-First Century, a book on which I shall have more to say in a later post. Referring to this teaching, Rabbi Roth opens with the following passage:

A number of years ago, a woman in my shul was diagnosed with leukemia. She was pregnant at the time, and in order to increase her chances of survival, she was forced to undergo an abortion. Even after the abortion, she remained in critical condition.

After she had recovered, her husband went to share the good news with Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, who had been involved with the family throughout the illness. He mentioned to Reb Chaim that he and his wife intended to make a seudas hoda’a [a thanksgiving meal]. Reb Chaim advised them against it.

“Take the money you were going to use for the seuda”, said Reb Chaim, “and distribute it amongst the needy.  And then, instead of making a large seuda for many people, make one only for your children. People today find it hard to rejoice in other people’s good fortune, and by making a large commotion you will just be bringing an ayin hara [evil eye] upon yourselves”.

Reb Chaim’s comment is a sad reflection on our generation, underscoring our inability to share in other people’s joy and truly revel in their happiness. This inability is the root cause of jealousy. If it is difficult for people to wholeheartedly celebrate with a woman who has just recovered from a potentially fatal illness, how much more so are people hard-pressed to feel genuinely happy when they see neighbors building an addition onto their homes or driving a new car. Unfortunately, far too often we resent them and the good things in their lives.

I wonder if I am alone in finding this passage difficult.

The first thing that struck me was that anyone might be jealous of the husband in the first place. While he was plainly both grateful and relieved that his wife recovered from her leukaemia, the fact remains that they had both tragically lost their unborn child. Where a person is threatened with the loss of two precious assets but in the event loses only one of them, would this really generate jealousy in others? On the other hand, the real source of any jealousy may not be the wife’s recovery but the fact that the family might be viewed as having received a greater degree of divine attention than that enjoyed by others.

Secondly, while I should never wish to comment critically on the words of a great contemporary Torah sage without first seeking to understand the wider context in which those words were spoken, I find it hard to accept that Rabbi Kanievsky should make a broad generalisation to the effect that people today find it hard to rejoice in other people’s good fortune.  On a personal level, that has not been my experience of the normal reaction of my fellow Jews who have been invited to share the celebration of another’s good fortune. More to the point, Avot also teaches the importance of judging others in a favourable light (Avot 1:6). That teaching is phrased in the singular, suggesting that it is primarily addressed to the way we view fellow humans as individuals, but I do not believe that it precludes us from taking the same non-judgemental stance with regard to pluralities such as communities as a whole.

It may be that the proposed seudas hoda’a was likely to be on a scale of ostentation that would have been offensive or inappropriate. If this were so, the suggestion that it be restricted to close family members might be constructive and indeed desirable, but the rabbi would surely have been able to make it without casting the credentials of other potential invitees in a pejorative light.

I am therefore hesitant to take this story at face value and invite readers’ comments in the hope of enlightenment.

Quarterly report: Avot in the online media

July to September 2022

This is the third of our quarterly roundups of citations of teachings from Pirkei Avot in articles, news items and reviews posted on the internet. It covers the period 1 July to 30 September 2022 and features references to Avot that I have picked up through Google Alert, discounting any items that have been repeated or syndicated from an earlier source.

So far this year we have found 146 Avot citations. During the third quarter there were only 40 Avot citations, as against the first and second quarters (46 and 60 respectively). Of the 40, no fewer than eight—that’s 20 percent—were to Avot 1:5, where Yehoshua ben Perachyah teaches us to make for ourselves a teacher, acquire a friend and judge other people favourably. Second comes Ben Zoma’s four-fold Mishnah at Avot 4:1 (“who is wise/strong/rich/honoured?”), with five citations. No other mishnah or baraita gets more than two citations.

The year to date

Over the first nine months of 2022, the single most popular teaching in Avot remains Hillel’s at Avot 1:14 (“If I am not for me, who is for me? And if I am only for me, what am I? And if not now, when”), with a total of 14 citations, two up on Ben Zoma (above) who gets 12 and three ahead of Yeshoshua ben Perachyah (above) who receives 11.

The most heavily quoted Tanna is Hillel with 24 citations, spread across four separate mishnayot. Next come two single-entry Tannaim: Yehoshua ben Perachyah’s mishnah receives 19 citations and Ben Zoma’s stands at 16. Far behind in fourth place is Rabbi Tarfon, whose two mishnayot between them are quoted 10 times.

Several well-known rabbis are rarely mentioned online at all. These include Rabbi Akiva (whose four teachings receive between them only three references) and his talmidimRabbi Meir and Rabbi Yose (cited just once each). Those great stalwarts of the Mishnah, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya, Rabbi Yehudah bar Ila’I, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, Rabbi Yose ben Chalafta and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, have not been cited at all.

The distribution of citations between the six perakim remains uneven. Of the 146, 52 are from the first perek, which contains both Yehoshua ben Perechyah's popular mishnah and three of Hillel's teachings. A distant second is the fourth perek, with 35. Next is the second perek, with 28. The other three chapters muster only 31 citations between them.

We hope to bring you a full report on Avot citations for the full year 2022 some time early in January 2023.

Crowds: it'll take a miracle...

My first real experience of serious crowds came some years ago when I was running a course for lawyers in Lagos, Nigeria, on anti-counterfeiting law and practice. Planning to cross a road, I stood poised at the street’s edge, scouring the pavement on the opposite side of the road in search of a spare inch of space on which I might set foot. I could not see one.

Jerusalem is not supposed to suffer from the effects of overcrowding. There is a Mishnah (Avot 5:7) that lists 10 miracles that were said to have been performed in the Temple. The tenth and final miracle is that “no person ever said to his fellow ‘this place is too hard for me to stay overnight in Jerusalem”.

Over the past fortnight Jerusalem has been rocking. After two sad, quiet years of Covid, the festival of Sukkot has blazed forth in all its glory. Tourists from the Jewish diaspora as well as Israelophile non-Jews from all over the world have poured into town. There has been much gaiety and partying, in keeping with the ancient tradition of the Simchat Bet HaSho’evah, the water-drawing celebration of Temple time that is so vividly depicted in the Talmud.

Sadly, while every practising Jew prays for the restoration of the Temple and its services, we have yet to merit the return of the miracle mentioned in our Mishnah.

In my local butcher’s shop, the demand for meat for festive meals was immense. Although the store had twice as many people working there as it normally did, the line of impatient big-spending customers stretched out well into the street and moved at a snail’s pace. I only had to wait an hour and a quarter to be served, but those who queued up behind me were not so fortunate. On of the regular customers exploded with rage that the store had not made special provision for the locals, who supported it every week. How dare they make their loyal and faithful customers wait while serving mere holidaymakers? Across the road, a little later, I listened to the grumblings of a pair of visitors from abroad, irritated and indeed exasperated by the remoteness of their prospects of picking up a swift coffee and bagel when there were so many people in all the eateries.

While one can sympathise with anyone who has to wait a long time to be served, there is in general little to be gained—and much to be lost—by intemperate speech and the raising of angry voices. The inconvenience of overcrowding is not an objective that is keenly sought by local businesses: it is a consequence of something that we should all be prepared to tolerate and indeed welcome and, while making constructive suggestions for its alleviation, it is something we should be prepared to bear with patience and fortitude—at least till we are treated to a return of our miracle.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Anyone spending all or most of the day in synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, will have noticed how often the word emet (“truth”) and its derivatives crop up in the extensive liturgy that addresses the issues of confession, repentance and the quest for forgiveness. In short we are to acknowledge the truth of who we are and what we have done, to strip away the sheker(“falsity”) that can so easily insinuate its way into playing a major part in our lives, and to stand before God as our true selves with the sincere aspiration that we will seek to do better, to be better, in the year ahead.

Emet plays a key role in Pirkei Avot. It is one of the three qualities upon which the continuation of civilised life depends (1:18). Acknowledgement of the truth, however inconvenient it may be, is one of the seven signs of a wise person (5:9); setting oneself on the path of truth is listed as one of the 48 steps to acquiring Torah (6:6).

While the Yom Kippur liturgy contrasts emet and sheker, Pirkei Avot makes no mention of sheker at all. This is unsurprising if we remember that Avot is not a philosophical tract on the nature of abstract concepts but a set of practical guidelines for moral Jewish decision-making. Thus, while truth and peace are both shortlisted as values upon which the world’s survival depends, a mishnah in the first perek (1:12) advocates following the path of Aaron in loving peace and pursuing peace. Aaron famously accomplishes this path midrashically by falsely telling each of two adversaries that the other was sad to be in dispute and wanted to make peace.

If truth is accepted as a relative value rather than an absolute, we can accommodate the concept of the partial or incomplete truth, when words that are spoken are literally true but do not tell the whole story. But how far can not-quite-truth be acceptable? There is a countertrend towards promoting the absolute value of truth. This can be seen in the Sefer Chasidim, where Rabbi Yehudah HaChasid disapproves of the practice of improving even a true story by embellishing it—even if the story has didactic value which is enhanced by the embellishment. It can also be seen in the Chafetz Chaim’s important work on lashon hara (improperly telling tales of others, whether true or false). This work covers much of the same ground as Rabbeinu Yonah’s Sha’are Teshuvah, but effectively converting what were previously regarded as middot(discretionary canons of behaviour) into mitzvot (binding commandments).

A related area of truth and falsehood is that of midrashic teachings, many of which are fanciful and, in real-world terms, impossible. Are they emet because the message they convey is true, or sheker because they did not happen, could not happen or clash factually with other midrashim on the same subject? Here the range of opinions is wide, spanning those who accept as a matter of faith that all midrashim are true and those who discount their veracity—however plausible they may be—on the ground that they are midrashim. Many people adopt the position that many midrashim are literally false but metaphorically true, and that the metaphorical truth trumps the literal falsehood. However, this convenient solution is not, so far as I am aware, flagged by their authors except where the tales are described as mashalim (“parables”), such as Rabbi Akiva’s famous citation of a dialogue between a cunning fox and some remarkably self-aware fish (Berachot 61b).

This leaves us on Yom Kippur with a difficult decision: do we repent telling an untruth or half-truth because we have lied and thus introduced more sheker into the world? Or do we decide not to repent, even if by doing so we are effectively judging our own actions and pre-empting the decision of the heavenly court? Readers of this post now have a year to decide before Yom Kippur comes around again.

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we repent

Tonight the vast majority of Jews, practising or otherwise, mark Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. For some it is an intense and deeply moving day of prayer, fast, introspection and seeking forgiveness. For others it is one or more of those things. For all of us it is a chance to step out from our ordinary lives for a day and ask ourselves just what sort of people we are. Whether we take that opportunity or not is up to us.

Today is erev Yom Kippur—the eve of the Day of Atonement. It a very different day and often an extremely one. Since the fast commences in the late afternoon. Many of us rush home from work far earlier than usual to wash and eat the large festive meal that sets us up for rather more than 25 hours without food or drink. Numerous customs are associated with the day, including the giving of charity.

Not everyone knows that, just as it is a mitzvah to fast on Yom Kippur itself, it is also a mitzvah to eat well on erev Yom Kippur and someone who does so is regarded as though he has fasted twice. Some people take the opportunity to do just that, keeping a bag of nuts or raisins, a packet of sweets or some other tasty items to nibble at random across the day. Unlike Pesach, when it is a mitzvah to eat the unleavened matzah, the Torah does not specify any particular food ahead of the fast, so the choice is left to the consumer. Anyone who wants to suffer on Yom Kippur can opt for salty foods that leave them with a raging thirst. This may not however be the most efficacious way to approach the long, hot day that faces them.

Ultimately, while we should stand in awe of God on the Day of Atonement and repent our sins, the day is not a day of sadness and mourning. It is—or should be—a day of happiness because we have the chance to relegate our bodily needs to second place and let our spirits soar. It is a day for setting the record straight, for drawing a line under our recent past and for starting again along the paths our lives are to take.

Does Pirkei Avot have a special message for Yom Kippur? Nothing is said explicitly about the day, and implicit in the teaching of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (Avot 2:15) is the key to why this is so. If, as Rabbi Eliezer says, a person should repent one day before he dies, he will be in a state of regular if not constant repentance by the time the Day of Atonement comes round. This is the religious equivalent of training daily before running a marathon and getting into good shape. If you do this, the event itself will be less daunting.

Do not be despondent if you have not been strenuously training yourself right through the year for Yom Kippur. The chances are that you will at least be in training for eating well on erev Yom Kippur, so make the most of it!

Do it deliberately!

Ahead of Yom Kippur -- the Day of Atonement and the occasion on which we think of God's judgement of us as being irrevocably sealed -- here's a short thought on the exercise of one's judgement, taken from Rabbi Reuven Melamed's Melitz Yosher.

The first actual teaching in Pirkei Avot, one that emanates from the Men of the Great Assembly themselves, is הֱווּ מְתוּנִים בַּדִּין, be deliberate in judgement. These words have a judicial flavour to them and many commentators emphasise how important it is for judges to be cautious and meticulous when seeking to reach a decision in the cases before them. This is because a judge's long experience of similar cases can lead him to favour a decision that is similar to those reached in previous cases even though the facts before him may be slightly but significantly different; there is also a danger that long-time familiarity with the relevant laws will result in them being misremembered if their words are not carefully rechecked.

Rabbi Melamed observes that being deliberate in one's judgement is actually the foremost principle that a person should employ in every walk of life. When thinking about performing a mitzvah, avoiding the transgression of a prohibition or just making routine decisions in one's life, we should stop and think, weighing up the wisdom and the real meaning of what we do.

In his seminal work, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman explains that we cannot in practice cogitate upon every action we undertake. Much of the time we act on autopilot. If we have to stop and think each time we take a step, life becomes intolerable, normal existence impossible. This does not however affect Rabbi Melamed's view of the advice of the Men of the Great Assembly, which is clearly addressed only to the sort of decisions we should make consciously (but often do not).

One final thought: can we presume that the decisions we make as to which decisions are the ones that we have to think carefully about are themselves decisions that require us to think carefully?

Avot in retrospect: a summary of last month's blogposts

In case you missed them, here's a list of items posted on Avot Today in SEPTEMBER 2022: 

Friday 30 September 2022: Is a bur a boor, or something more? We look at the three-way relationship between learning Torah, having a day job and fearing sin.

Wednesday 28 September 2022: Don't just sit and learn! For God's sake get a job ... Pirkei Avot offers support to both sides of the learn-or-work debate -- and here's a fresh perspective on it.

Sunday 25 September 2022: Shanah Tovah! A happy new year to you all. For once, here's a post that is self-explanatory.

Friday 23 September 2022: Lions, foxes and a mysterious proof verse. Several classical commentators explain the mishnah about being a tail to lions rather than a head to foxes by reference to a verse from Proverbs that no longer appears in the Ethics of the Fathers.

Wednesday 21 September 2022: Portrait of a prophet: another reason for not judging by appearances; A midrashic "case study" of Moses shows the dangers of superficial assessment of others.

Monday 19 September 2022: Do good, feel bad? Fulfilment of a divine commandment should make us feel great about ourselves. Avot advocates the virtues of charitable giving, though that can have quite the opposite effect.

Sunday 18 September 2022: A vanishing hatred. We take a deeper look at Ben Azzai's warning that we should not regard any fellow human lightly.

Friday 16 September 2022: Goodwill to all men. How can we ascertain whether the idea of greeting everyone with a cheerful countenance really does mean "everyone" and not just other Jews?

Wednesday 14 September 2022: Avot, Elul and repentance: it's not too late. A few simple thoughts about the best way to make use of the month that leads up to the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Tuesday 13 September 2022: Does God accept bribes? A further comment. We look at the Meiri's contribution to this great debate.

Sunday 11 September 2022: Escape from captivity. Rabbi David Hazan's David BaMetzudah opens with a description of the unusual circumstances in which he came to write his commentary on Avot.

Friday 9 September 2022: Are you a man or a chameleon? Is a person's individuality compromised by the need to conform to norms and meet the needs of others, or is it determined by these things? 

Monday 5 September 2022: Left dangling: limits to free will revisited. Returning to one of Judaism's favourite topics, we suggest that there is a half-way stage between total free will and complete predestination.

Sunday 4 September 2022: Orphaned, Unloved: Another seemingly unwanted commentary on Pirkei Avot is unearthed. Information concerning it and its author is earnestly requested.

Friday 2 September 2022: Seniors and Juniors: One can learn a lot from those higher up in the hierarchy and those below, even though what one learns may be quite different in each case.

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Avot Today blogposts for August 2022
Avot Today blogposts for July 2022 
Avot Today blogposts for June 2022 
Avot Today blogposts for May 2022
Avot Today blogposts for April 2022
Avot Today blogposts for March 2022