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.