Ben Zoma famously asks (Avot 4:1) “who is wise” and answers his own question: “the person who learns from others”. Within the context of Torah learning, we tend to look strongly to our rabbis for our learning. We attend their shiurim, we seek their advice and bind ourselves to follow it, and we watch and imitate the things they do. Because of their obvious function as role models, rabbis are frequently—and tellingly—the subject of stories from which we learn. Some of these stories are plainly biographical; others are midrashic. All have the capacity to inspire and to instruct.
With this
in mind, I make mention of one of my favourite little stories, which I came
across this week when perusing Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski’s Visions of the Fathers. There, giving
a blow-by-blow account of the 48 things through which Torah is acquired (Avot
6:6), Rabbi Twerski fleshes out the requirement of mi’ut sechorah (minimising
one’s business activities) by relating a tale of the saintly Torah giant Rabbi
Meir Simchah Kagan (the ‘Chofetz Chaim’):
The Chofetz Chaim supported himself by operating a small store. When he
had earned enough for that day, he closed the store and devoted the rest of the
day to Torah study.
Today my
mind conjured up another image. This was a perspective on the story untold, doomed
to be forgotten, its possibility denied. This was the image of the hard-pressed,
harassed housewife, worn out from the toil of taking in extra washing in order
to support her husband in learning, reaching the store ten minutes after it
closed and being confronted by that same ‘CLOSED’ sign, unaware that the
store-keeper, blessed with extra customers earlier that day, had reached his
daily quota far sooner than might usually have been the case.
This scenario
is of course the fruit of pure imagination. From what I have learned of the Chofetz
Chaim, his remarkable reputation and his ahavat Yisrael, it could never have
happened. But then I found myself wondering about the truth of the original
story. Would the Chofetz Chaim have so preoccupied himself with domestic economy
and cash-flow that he would have taken time from his Torah study to calculate
how much he needed for any specific day? And did I not once hear another
version of the shop-keeper story, in which the Chofetz Chaim only opened his
store a couple of times of week so that the other stores would not be put out
of business, a likely consequence of all the townsfolk flocking to his store to
enable him to make enough sales to get back to his learning?
I have never
read an authoritative biography of the Chofetz Chaim and cannot vouch for the
truth of either of these tales, or of any other version of them. In one sense
it does not matter. The Chofetz Chaim was a man of unimpeachable credentials in
terms of Torah and middot, someone whose life and writings marked him out as an
inspiration and a role model. To show how, even in matters of daily commerce,
he took the trouble to place the value of Torah study ahead of the pursuit of
personal wealth. It can also be argued that, if this message is a valid one, no
harm is done in embellishing or amending the tale in order to make a greater impression
on the recipient, to make it more memorable, or to make it more understandable
or relevant to modern students. Against
that, there is the view that every story should be told exactly as it happened,
without modification or embellishment, on the basis that to do otherwise is to
inject falsity into the world, contrary to the principle that truth is one of
the three things on which the continued existence of the world is based (Avot
1:18, per Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel).
Rabbi Meir
Simchah Kagan is not the only sage who to be affected by this phenomenon. Rabbi
Baruch HaLevy Epstein (the ‘Torah Temimah’) was also a brilliant and deeply
committed Torah scholar who supported himself. How did he do so? In the various
accounts of his life he did so as (i) a banker, (ii) a bank manager and (iii) a
bank clerk. The choice of profession cannot but influence our view of him. If
he was a banker, we imagine a person of great wealth and material substance who
did not let his wealth go to his head but focused firmly on Torah study. If he
was a bank manager, we envisage a man who was able to pursue his Torah despite
shouldering the responsibilities of his local business community. If he was a
bank clerk, we see a man of humility, accepting a lowly and poorly-paid
position rather than using his great gifts to secure a more lucrative but
time-consuming form of employment.
It is
generally accepted that a story does not have to be based on fact in order to
convey a valuable message. Thus, when Rabbi Akiva tells the story of the fox
who seeks to persuade the fish that they should leave the sea for the dry land
where they will be safer, we recognise this instantly as a parable or fable and
do not ask: “who ever heard of a talking fox?” But, where rabbis are named, the
value of the stories may be measured by the yardstick of veracity, and this in
turn can detract from their didactic force.s
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