At Avot 1:4 Yose ben Yo’ezer Ish Tzeredah offers advice that most of us are unlikely these days to follow literally:
“Let your home be a meeting place for the wise; wrestle
in the afar raglehem (“dust of their feet”), and drink their words in
thirstily”.
With so many conveniently-located synagogues and batei midrash in almost
every Jewish community that a talmid chacham is likely to visit, we only
infrequently have the chance to host meetings of the sort of wise person that
the mishnah contemplates. And even if we do, the likelihood is that any dust at
floor level will be cleaned up well ahead of the event. So if we are to look for
practical advice in this teaching, we must look further than a literal meaning
for it.
For those of us who regularly hang out in their synagogue or bet midrash,
whether to pray, to attend shiurim or just to be sociable and catch up on the latest
local news, the place is a sort of home-from-home—and it is almost by
definition a meeting place for the wise (or at least for the presumptively wise).
But what about wrestling in the dust? How do we manage that?
I rather like this approach because I have on many occasions found
myself either promoting or relegating a rabbi in my personal hierarchy on
account of throwaway lines or small gestures that have either impressed or
disappointed me. Is it pettiness on my part that I rate a rabbi more highly
when I see him returning a book to its proper place on the shul bookshelf after
he has finished his shiur, or that I find it hard to respect a rabbi who
carries on speaking for several minutes after his shiur should have ended,
while people who turn up for prayers are kept waiting? Should my response to his
teachings be affected by my delight that he helps an old man on with his
overcoat, or my horror when I find him checking his smartphone while using a
urinal?
These things are the afar raglehem and they are important to me.
Are they important to you too?
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