Picking the right fight

The second most frequently cited teaching online over the first half of 2023 comes from Hillel, who says (Avot 1:12):

הֱוֵי מִתַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל אַהֲרֹן, אוֹהֵב שָׁלוֹם וְרוֹדֵף שָׁלוֹם, אוֹהֵב אֶת הַבְּרִיּוֹת, וּמְקָרְבָן לַתּוֹרָה

“Be among the disciples of Aharon—love peace, pursue peace, love people and draw them close to the Torah”.

Like every other Tanna, Hillel is careful with his choice of words, using only enough of them to convey his meaning. This can be frustrating at times. For example, when Hillel asks (at Avot 1:14) “If not now, when?”, Torah scholars have offered many quite different explanations. Careful selection of words however offers a chance for us to ask questions that offer the prospect of discovering a fuller, richer meaning.

Why, we can ask, does Hillel tell us both to be among the disciples of Aharon, a man whose people-friendly commitment to peace and Torah is legendary, and to pursue the same ends as he did? If he had only said, “Be among the disciples of Aharon”, it would be difficult to think of any other ways we could all learn from him, given the stellar peacemaking profile that midrash paints of him. And if Hillel had only said, “love peace, pursue peace, love people and draw them close to the Torah”, what in addition might the Aharon name-check add to our understanding of how we should comply?

One possibility is that Hillel, by mentioning the name of Aharon, is inviting us to make a discreet comparison between him and his elder brother Moshe. Both were at the helm of the nascent Jewish nation in the long march from slavery to the borders of the Promised Land; both were also masters of the newly-given Torah, Moshe being pre-eminent. Their aims and objectives were identical. However, their record in peace-making was not.

Moshe’s first attempt to resolve conflict was a unilateral intervention on behalf of the underdogs, causing the death of an Egyptian (Shemot 2:11-12). His second attempt, this time in a fight between two fellow Jews, resulted in one of them turning on him (Shemot 2:13-15) and his subsequent flight to Midian. Once there, he rescued the daughters of Yitro by driving away the shepherds who were preventing them watering their sheep (Shemot 2:16-19)—once again, the term “driving away” suggests the use of actual physical force or at least the threat of it. After the crossing of the Reed Sea and the Giving of the Torah, Moshe still struggles with situations in which there is a breach of the peace: these include the rebellion of Korach and his followers (Bemidbar 16:29), where he prays for them to suffer an unusual death, as well as the public outrage over the flagrant coupling of Cozbi and Zimri, where Moshe was not able to act decisively.  Aharon in contrast seems to have fared better. Though his response to the people’s demand for a physical replacement for the absent Moshe compromised the Torah and led to the sin of the Golden Calf, he was able to hold the nation together, and when Korach challenged both him and Moshe in the episode mentioned above, he held his peace and did not inflame the already volatile situation by saying anything.

If Hillel’s citation of Aharon in this mishnah invites us to draw comparison with Moshe, it can also be said to do so with regard to his grandson, Pinchas. It is with Pinchas that God establishes His covenant of peace (Bemidbar 25:12) after he restored order and halted a plague through his decisive action (Bemidbar 25:6-8). However, while the name of Pinchas is eternally bound in with peace, this is a form of peace-making that, we are taught, is not for us to emulate. So, taking their track records into account, it would hardly have been appropriate for Hillel to urge us to be talmidim of either Moshe or Pinchas if peace was our objective.

The Divrei Yoel of Satmar Rebbe R’ Yoel Teitelbaum offers a further perspective. Loving peace and pursuing it are not absolutes, he explains: they are means to a greater end because they must themselves be compatible with the Torah. Where a dispute is between righteous, God-fearing people, there is an imperative to make peace that is lacking where the disputants are not. No example is given but it is easy to think of one: a fight between thieves over the allocation of their spoil. Not only may one not love such nefarious people; one may even be required to hate them (the mitzvah of hating the wicked is complex and nuanced: for a useful and accessible source-based discussion of this topic see R’ Dovid Rosenfeld, “Should We Hate the Wicked?”, here).

According to the Divrei Yoel, Aharon had the ability to discern whom he should draw close and from whom he should keep his distance—and this is no easy matter. This is because the yetzer hara, human inclination, tempts us to misidentify disputants and their motives. In short, we should emulate Aharon and learn, from his experiences, to pick the right disputes to settle and the right battles to fight.