Middot at war 2: words that wound

My contribution to Israel’s war with Hamas is a small one. As chair of the vaad bayit, the management committee for our apartment block in Jerusalem, I share responsibility for the safety and maintenance of the building—and it is I who am answerable to my neighbours for the decisions we take and the way we implement them.

In times of peace there is little friction in the building. Our disputes are usually small and easy to resolve. At this time of war, however, nerves are frayed and tempers displayed even by residents who are normally placid.

In the past three weeks I have been at the receiving end of two things that feature in Pirkei Avot. One is tochachah (“rebuke”), the other being elbon (“insult”).  We are supposed to love rebuke (Avot 6:6) since embracing rebuke is a way in which we can improve ourselves and, in the case of someone who studies Torah, make ourselves more amenable to acquiring Torah. As for insults, Rabbi Meir promises (Avot 6:1) that one of the benefits derived by someone who studies Torah for its own sake and not for personal gain is that he will be able to forgive insults.

How does this work out in practice? Over the past three weeks, wearing my vaad bayit hat, I have had many opportunities to consider what it means to me.

In the first place, when a neighbour is so angry that he is shouting at you and, far from respecting your personal space, is standing so close that you can feel the heat of his breath, it is not easy to keep one’s cool and separate the words from the person who speaks them. They may be well-deserved words of rebuke or gratuitous abuse, and it is the words to which Avot alludes, not their speaker. As for the person who delivers the rebuke/insult, Avot reminds us that we cannot judge him if we are not standing in his place (per Hillel at 2:5).

So what do I do? The most difficult thing to do is to keep one’s own cool. The temptation to shout back is very great and hard to resist, particularly when you are certain that you are in the right and that any criticism or abuse is undeserved. But Avot reminds us that one should be slow to anger (Avot 5:14), following the example of God (Avot 5:2, 5:3).

I cannot pretend even to myself that I am not hurt at all by criticism, especially when it is justified, and I cannot pretend that I am not stung by insults and abuse. So what I now do is to allow myself to feel the pain—but only for a short and limited period—and then tell myself that, having felt the pain and been genuinely annoyed, the time has come to move on. If a criticism is justified, my job is to be grateful for it and to express that gratitude, disagreeable though this may sometimes be. And if it is not justified, I should explain why this is so and thank the rebuker for taking the trouble to correct me even though, in the event, the rebuke missed the mark.

As for insults, there’s no need to be grateful for them and it certainly doesn’t help to retaliate in like kind. But, in the quiet of my own mind, I do try now to make an effort to see what motivated them and ask if there is any better way to make myself insult-proof.

As a footnote to this piece, I am happy to report that, at least at the time of posting it, we are all on good terms with each other. The issues that divide us are infinitely smaller than the things that bind us together, thank God.

Middot at War 1: Judging others

Our previous post touched on the importance of practising what you preach. It’s not always easy, as I hope to show in this piece and the one which will follow it.

Israel is at war and a very large number of young men and women have been called to action. Though news is scarce, most of us have been led to expect that a ground invasion of Gaza is imminent.

In the streets of Jerusalem it is not unusual to see youngsters chatting with friends or sitting round a table in one of the city’s innumerable cafes and enjoying a drink together. When these youngsters are in uniform, I find myself gazing benignly at them, feeling happy that they are there to protect me and hoping that they will make the most of their leave before they return to the front.

Yet when I see youngsters who are not in uniform doing the same thing, my first thoughts are unkind ones: why are they not involved in the country’s welfare at this time of great need? Are they shirking their duty? Do they not care?

Under normal circumstances it would never have occurred to me to draw any distinction between those young people who were wearing uniform and those who were not. So is it right for me to do so now?

In reality there are a large number of reasons why people whom I view as potential soldiers might not be serving at the front. Some people suffer from physical or mental conditions that render them ineligible or unsuitable for combat; these conditions are often invisible to the casual onlooker. There are other people who hold government jobs that require them to be here in Jerusalem, or who work in healthcare and other sectors where staff cannot be spared. Others again may be volunteers who have taken a short break from sorting equipment and clothes that are sent to the front or provided for the many families and individuals who have been displaced.

This group has frequently discussed Yehoshua ben Perachyah’s teaching at Avot 1:6 that one should judge others on the basis that what they do has some merit. We should give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s easy to say this and even easier to tell other people that it’s what they should be doing—as I have often done. But now, when it is I who am challenged to live up to my Avot ideals, I still find it an effort to conquer my initial, irrational conclusion.

The moral: I must in future be less judgmental towards other people who have found it difficult to judge others meritoriously themselves.

Leading astray, going astray

Avtalyon (Avot 1:11) warns us that our rabbis have the potential both to lead and to mislead. He states:

חֲכָמִים, הִזָּהֲרוּ בְדִבְרֵיכֶם, שֶׁמָּא תָחֽוֹבוּ חוֹבַת גָּלוּת וְתִגְלוּ לִמְקוֹם מַֽיִם הָרָעִים, וְיִשְׁתּוּ הַתַּלְמִידִים הַבָּאִים אַחֲרֵיכֶם וְיָמֽוּתוּ, וְנִמְצָא שֵׁם שָׁמַֽיִם מִתְחַלֵּל

[Translation] Scholars, be careful with your words, in case you are exiled to a place of evil waters. The disciples who come after you will then drink of these evil waters and die—and the Name of Heaven will be desecrated.

The “evil waters” here are generally taken to be distortions of true Torah teaching which, if internalised by one’s pupils and followers, may lead to error and even heresy.

Everyone who has been involved in teaching, at any level, will know how easy it can be for a student to misunderstand a teacher’s words, however sincere and well-meaning, if they are ambiguous or poorly chosen. For many years, at the Universities of London and Alicante, I found myself teaching highly educated postgraduates and often legally qualified lawyers whose first language was not English. In general, their grasp of English was excellent, but I learned to be careful because there was always room for misunderstanding a poorly-chosen word, phrase or metaphor. Avtalyon’s teaching is usually taken to refer to the teacher’s need to take particular care in choosing the right words, especially where the message derived from them might adversely affect a student’s thoughts and conduct in this world and his entitlement in the world to come.

But there is another way of looking at Avtalyon’s teaching. Midrash Shmuel asks us to look at the rabbi or teacher’s words in a different light. Don’t look at whether they are good or bad, right or wrong. Look instead at whether they are matched by the speaker’s actions or not. If a person advises or instructs one thing but personally does another, the gap between what is said and what is done is a zone of uncertainty, confusion and potential error for the talmid: do I do what I’m told—or do I do what my teacher does? If a person’s words are wise, that wisdom should be mirrored in his or her conduct. If not, the inconsistency may be absorbed and perpetuated.

This summary of the Midrash Shmuel’s explanation is culled from R’ Chaim Druckman’s Banim Le’Avot, vol.1.

Learning from our teachers--and from experience

How do we know anything? The Malbim, in his introduction to Mishlei (Proverbs), lists various ways we can acquire knowledge. There is prophecy, a class of knowledge that is channelled directly to us from God. While this source is not currently open to us, we still have records of much prophecy that has been received by the prophets of the Jewish bible. Then there is wisdom, in the sense of understanding something because we have thought about it and placed it within our general scheme of things. Next comes tradition: we know something because it has been told to us by someone else. Finally there is empirical knowledge, which we can gain through our own research, experimentation and experience.

Of these four sources of knowledge affect, the one that makes the greatest impact is empirical knowledge which we gain from personal experience. This is because of its immediacy and its intensity. Catching one’s finger in the door, gazing lovingly at one’s newborn child, realizing that one has lost one’s way when alone in the dark—these are events which, once experienced, are unlikely ever to be forgotten.  At the other end of the scale lies knowledge gained solely from books and which is unlikely to be personally experienced. However great its importance, we may struggle to internalise it and fully appreciate it.

Pirkei Avot addresses not only the value of knowledge (particularly Torah knowledge) but also the danger of forgetting it. R’ Dostai bar Yannai teaches, in the name of R’ Meir (Avot 3:10) that anyone who forgets even one item of his learning is responsible for the fate of his soul; Avtalyon (Avot 1:11) and R’ Yehudah (Avot 4:16) both warn of the danger of getting one’s Torah wrong—a likely consequence of teaching a topic when you no longer remember it properly. Then there is R’ Nehorai (Avot 4:18), who cautions us to remain in the company of those who will reinforce our Torah knowledge rather than “going solo”.

We know that what we learn when young generally sticks in our memories better than what we learn later (Elisha ben Avuyah, Avot 4:25). But does the likelihood of forgetting one’s learning also depend on how it reaches us in the first place? Maharam Shik acknowledges that what we learn from our own investigations and experiences is recorded more vividly in our memories—but there is always the worry that, when we learn something for ourselves, we may fail to draw the right conclusions from our learning.

So how do we strike the right balance between what we learn from the Torah and what we learn from our own experiences?

Preparing false accounts: a personal perspective

I once found myself in the middle of a curious din Torah when I was working at the London Beth Din. This case arose from a dispute concerning the correct valuation of a business whose partners had decided to go their separate ways. The legal issues, which were simple, were not even contested. But the parties quarrelled over the figures. It transpired that the partnership kept no fewer than three sets of accounts.  One, in English and prepared by their accountant, was submitted annually to the tax authorities. The second, in Hebrew and based on the Jewish calendar, recorded not only their trading figures and expenses but also their charitable donations. A third set of accounts, in Yiddish and out of sight of both the tax authorities and their religious consciences, was the set of figures that ostensibly dealt with their personal input and output. The Beth Din was asked to rule as to which set(s) of accounts should govern their settlement.

Accounts and accounting play an important role in stimulating the Jewish conscience, particularly around the season of Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Judgment, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Unsurprisingly therefore, the idea that, once our lives have ended, we must account to God for what we’ve done with them is not unique to Pirkei Avot. It does however feature in two significant mishnayot in that tractate. In Avot 3:1 Akavya ben Mahalalel warns us:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה. דַּע מֵאַֽיִן בָּֽאתָ, וּלְאָן אַתָּה הוֹלֵךְ, וְלִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עָתִיד לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן. מֵאַֽיִן בָּֽאתָ: מִטִּפָּה סְרוּחָה. וּלְאָן אַתָּה הוֹלֵךְ: לִמְקוֹם עָפָר רִמָּה וְתוֹלֵעָה. וְלִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עָתִיד לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן: לִפְנֵי מֶֽלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא

[Translation] Reflect upon three things and you will not come to the grip of transgression. Know from where you came, where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give a judgement and accounting. From where you came—from a putrid drop; where you are going—to a place of dust, maggots and worms; and before whom you are destined to give a judgement and accounting—before the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

Then, in a thunderous teaching at Avot 4:29 which concludes that perek, Rabbi Elazar HaKAppar says:

הַיִּלּוֹדִים לָמוּת, וְהַמֵּתִים לִחֳיוֹת, וְהַחַיִּים לִדּוֹן, לֵידַע וּלְהוֹדִֽיעַ וּלְהִוָּדַע שֶׁהוּא אֵל, הוּא הַיּוֹצֵר, הוּא הַבּוֹרֵא, הוּא הַמֵּבִין, הוּא הַדַּיָּן, הוּא הָעֵד, הוּא בַּֽעַל דִּין, הוּא עָתִיד לָדוֹן. בָּרוּךְ הוּא, שֶׁאֵין לְפָנָיו לֹא עַוְלָה, וְלֹא שִׁכְחָה, וְלֹא מַשּׂוֹא פָנִים, וְלֹא מַקַּח שֹֽׁחַד, וְדַע שֶׁהַכֹּל לְפִי הַחֶשְׁבּוֹן. וְאַל יַבְטִיחֲךָ יִצְרָךְ שֶׁהַשְּׁאוֹל בֵּית מָנוֹס לָךְ, שֶׁעַל כָּרְחָךְ אַתָּה נוֹצָר, וְעַל כָּרְחָךְ אַתָּה נוֹלָד, וְעַל כָּרְחָךְ אַתָּה חַי, וְעַל כָּרְחָךְ אַתָּה מֵת, וְעַל כָּרְחָךְ אַתָּה עָתִיד לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן לִפְנֵי מֶֽלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים, הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא

[Translation] Those who are born will die, and the dead will live. The living will be judged, to learn, to teach and to comprehend that He is God, He is the creator, He is the maker, He is the one who understands, He is the judge, He is the witness, He is the plaintiff, and He will judge. Blessed is He, for before Him there is no wrong, no forgetting, no favouritism, and no taking of bribes; know, that everything is according to the reckoning. Let not your heart convince you that the grave is your escape; for against your will you are formed, against your will you are born, against your will you live, against your will you die—and against your will you are destined to give a reckoning and an account of yourself before the king, king of all kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

These two mishnayot summarise the functional utility of keeping good accounts. The first offers the daunting prospect of God both auditing them and then ruling on their validity can provide a potent threat and impel a person towards avoidance of those thoughts, words and actions that go against not just God’s word but also common decency.  The second reminds us uncomfortably that, even more effectively than ChatGPT on steroids, God can instantly and effortlessly recall, contextualise and analyse every item of relevant data—including much that we are not aware of ourselves. If there are two ways of relating to God, through love and through fear, we know that no-one enjoys submitting accounts: these mishnayot deal with fear.

Though Avot does not state it explicitly, the message is conveyed that our accounts should be accurate and correct when we submit them: no deliberate omissions or falsifications, no disguising personal perks as legitimate expenses, and so on. We are obliged to accept the truth. But equally we are only human and cannot, for as long as we live, trust ourselves (Avot 2:5).

We are urged to accept that our accounts of our actions in our lifetimes will never be, and can never be, accurate and objective. Even if we were capable of viewing our every word and deed in a completely dispassionate manner, the question still remains as to whether what we view is what is actually there. Rabbi Chaim Friedlander’s Siftei Chaim, in the first volume of his Middot veAvdut Hashem, repeatedly hammers home the qualitative difference between the world we live in now, a world of “right and wrong”, and the primordial world into which Adam and Chava were created, the world of “true and false”. True and false are portrayed as absolutes, while “right and wrong” are relative terms. Putting it simply, what’s true for me must be true for you, but what’s right for me may be wrong for you.

The corollary of this distinction is that we live in a world of sheker, falsity. Only the world to come possesses the quality of absolute truth. For us, living here and now, whatever one sees, experiences or reasons out is tinged with falsehood. But when we reach the world to come, there we will be treated to truth in all its glory, and it is there that we will give our account of ourselves and be judged on it.

Irrespective of whether one accepts these distinctions as axiomatic or discards them as midrashic myth, the fact remains that we live in this world and have no means of perceiving anything that lies beyond the limits of our own lives. If Akavya ben Mahalalel and Rabbi Elazar HaKapar were aware of this, as they surely were, their teachings must be read in light of their expectation that, however well we prepare to justify ourselves before our Maker, we will always fall short of the account that He has already prepared for us. Our encounter with God at this point may well thus be less of a trial and more of a posthumous education for us. Perhaps the scenario is more like this. We tell God what we have done and why we have done it, where we have gone wrong and where we think we got it right. He then marks our card, as it were, and shows us how close we got, in the world of sheker, to the emet, the ultimate truth.

Knowledge or wisdom?

At Avot 2:6 Hillel teaches:

אֵין בּוּר יְרֵא חֵטְא, וְלֹא עַם הָאָֽרֶץ חָסִיד, וְלֹא הַבַּיְּשָׁן לָמֵד, וְלֹא הַקַּפְּדָן מְלַמֵּד, וְלֹא כָל הַמַּרְבֶּה בִסְחוֹרָה מַחְכִּים, וּבְמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ

 

[Translation] “A boor cannot be sin-fearing; an ignoramus cannot be pious; a meek one cannot learn; a short-tempered person cannot teach; nor does anyone who does much business grow wise—and, in a place where there are no men, strive to be a man”.

The part of this Mishnah I’d like to discuss is Hillel’s statement וְלֹא כָל הַמַּרְבֶּה בִסְחוֹרָה מַחְכִּים. Translated here as “nor does anyone who does much business grow wise” (per chabad.com; the ArtScroll Avot is quite similar), it can also mean “nor does anyone who does much business make others wise” (see eg Tiferet Yisrael, Yachin; Lehmann-Prins Avoth). Of the two meanings I personally prefer the second since the word מַחְכִּים, where it appears in Avot 6:6, is understood to mean making someone else wise, rather than oneself.

Whichever meaning you prefer, you may want to think about an explanation of it which appeared a little while ago in the weekly Dee Project on Pirkei Avot:

“Although pursuing a livelihood is important, involvement with business can sometimes detract from a person’s wisdom. It’s important that a person’s mind is focused and one must be aware of the potential of business matters to distract from the important pursuit of wisdom”.

As a child, I had it drummed into my head—both by my father and by my teachers—that there was all the world of difference between wisdom and knowledge. 

You can be wise without being knowledgeable, which is why very clever people make rational but erroneous deductions in the absence of useful data. 

You can also be knowledgeable without being wise, like one of my friends at university whose phenomenal recall of facts was not matched by his wisdom: he knew far more law than I did, but was twice unable to pass his first-year examinations and left college with nothing to show for his two years there.

Somewhere in this classification there is also the butt of many Jewish jokes: the Phudnik ( = a Nudnik with a PhD).

In a best-case scenario a person will acquire both enough data to make his wisdom work for him and enough wisdom to apply his data to good effect. Involvement in business is potentially an avenue through which one can achieve both those goals. And it is not the time spent engaging in business that is relevant here, but the quality of one’s thoughts while so engaging.

I’d like to qualify this part of Hillel’s Mishnah by tying it in with the message of two other teaching from Avot.

The first is Ben Zoma’s reminder at Avot 4:1 that a person is wise when he can learn something from everyone, be it his rabbi, his math teacher, his children or the people who comprise his business environment.

The second is Rabban Gamliel ben Rebbi’s advice at Avot 2:2 in praise of combining Torah study with a worldly occupation because the blend of the two of them causes sin to be forgotten. Which sin? One might humbly suggest that it’s the sin of failing to recognise the difference between wisdom and knowledge. 

And now for something a little different

Recent developments in Israel and the diaspora have generated a host of sombre social media posts and opinion pieces, as well as an impressive array of positive and inspirational material. Just for a change, here are three short items that are neither.

The bread and salt diet

From Claude Tusk comes what we can fairly describe as “food for thought”.

In Avos 6:4 it is taught: “Thus is the way of Torah: eat bread with salt…”. But in Kiddushin 62a, when expounding the words חֶרֶב תְּאֻכְּלוּ (“You shall be fed with the sword”: Isaiah 1:20), we learn: “Stale bread baked in a large oven with salt and onions is as harmful to the body as swords”.

Does that mean, Claude asks, that a Torah-true diet should not include onions, or is the quality of the bread the issue?

Top of the pops

As regular readers will recall, Avot Today keeps track of all the citations of mishnayot and baraitot in Avot that it can find on the social media, using Google Alerts. In the third quarter of 2023 (July to September) we counted 68 all told, July being the peak month with 28 cites.  The most popular Mishnah, with 5 ‘hits’ for this quarter and 17 for the year to date, was Rabbi Tarfon’s teaching at 2:21: “It’s not for you to finish the task, but neither are you free to withdraw from it”.  Next, on 4, is Ben Zoma at 4:1: “Who is strong? The person who can control himself”.  The biggest surprise was the decline in popularity of Yehoshua ben Perachyah’s teaching at 1:6 that we should judge others favourably. Last year it was on everyone’s lips, as it were, but it has only notched up 3 citations for the first nine months of 2023.

 

Fresh opportunity to go astray?

Rabban Gamliel, son of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, promotes the virtues of combining the study of Torah with a worldly occupation (a.k.a. a job) on the basis that the combination of the two causes sin to be forgotten (Avot 2:2). On this the Maharam Shik raises a point worth pondering. Ideally a person who learns Torah 24/7 shouldn’t be thinking of sinning at all. But if he is the sort of person who does contemplate sin, would it not be the case that splitting his time between learning and work will not stop him sinning at all, but will simply provide him with extra opportunities to sin in the workplace? Before you dismiss this as a facetious suggestion, ask if you have never come home with pens, stationery, customer samples or other items that did not belong to you. According to Incorp.com, employee theft and fraud cost US businesses between $20-50 billion annually—and then there is the temptation to stray beyond the bounds of acceptable behaviour towards one’s colleagues. If you want to stay on the straight and narrow, it might be safer to stay in the Bet Midrash…

Repentance: never too early?

Here’s a thought for Shabbat Bereshit.

Some mishnayot in Avot are discussed only on account of what they say. Others offer an extra dimension for discussion on account of the way they say it. One such mishnah is this teaching by Rabbi Eliezer (Avot 2:15):

יְהִי כְבוֹד חֲבֵרָךְ חָבִיב עָלֶֽיךָ כְּשֶׁלָּךְ, וְאַל תְּהִי נֽוֹחַ לִכְעוֹס. וְשׁוּב יוֹם אֶחָד לִפְנֵי מִיתָתָךְ. וֶהֱוֵי מִתְחַמֵּם כְּנֶֽגֶד אוֹרָן שֶׁל חֲכָמִים, וֶהֱוֵי זָהִיר בְּגַחֲלָתָן שֶׁלֹּא תִכָּוֶה, שֶׁנְּשִׁיכָתָן נְשִׁיכַת שׁוּעָל, וַעֲקִיצָתָן עֲקִיצַת עַקְרָב, וּלְחִישָׁתָן לְחִישַׁת שָׂרָף, וְכָל דִּבְרֵיהֶם כְּגַחֲלֵי אֵשׁ

[Translation] Let the honour of your friend be as precious to you as your own, and don’t be easy to anger. Repent one day before your death. Warm yourself by the fire of the sages, but beware in case you get burned by its embers; for their bite is the bite of a fox, their sting is the sting of a scorpion, their hiss is the hiss a serpent, and all their words are like fiery coals.

This mishnah is introduced by a statement that Rabbi Eliezer and the four rabbis whose mishnayot come after his own each taught three things. However, if you count them, you will see that there appear to be not three things but four. Leaving aside the frivolous suggestion that the Tannaim couldn’t count and the unprovable hypothesis that an extra teaching was added to the other three after the original mishnah was composed, the statement that R’ Eliezer teaches just three things screams out for a plausible explanation.

Many rabbis have solved this problem by linking two of the four together as a single item of guidance. Perhaps the most popular combination is that which binds “Let the honour of your friend be as precious to you as your own” to “Don’t be easy to anger”. This is quite reasonable. The two axioms are next to each other and they fit in terms of content: if you are quick to get angry with someone, you are not exactly treating their kavod, their honour and sense of self-respect, as you would your own.

The Maggid of Kozhnitz, in his Avot Yisrael, offers another possibility. He yokes “Don’t be easy to anger” with “Repent one day before your death”. In doing so he invokes a teaching of R’ Levi of Berditchev that, if a person wants to lose his temper with someone else, he should do his repentance first because the day one loses one’s temper with another is like the day of one’s death. Comparison of an angry person with a dead one is made explicitly in the Zohar: as with death, so with anger, one’s soul departs as it were from one’s body.

In practical terms, the Avot Yisrael advises us to stop, think, do perform a vidui (“confession”) and then repent before whipping oneself up into a rage. The promise is that, if you seriously follow this procedure, you won’t get angry at all. Though Avot Yisrael does not add this, we note that he is advocating a practical regime for suppressing his inclination to get angry which is compliant with Ben Zoma’s apothegm at Avot 4:1 that we call a person “strong” not because he conquers cities but because he can curb his own yetzer, his inclination to do wrong.

What does this discussion connect with Parashat Bereshit, the biblical account of the Creation and of God’s subsequent evaluation of the creation of humankind?

We learn that teshuvah, repentance, is no mere afterthought.  According to Pirkei d ’R’ Eliezer, teshuvah was created even before the Seven Days of Creation. One can take this literally, of course, but it is more meaningful to take it as a warning to us all that we should stop for a moment before we act, and take stock of our intended actions. Are we about to do something that we might (or certainly will) regret and come to repent, or are we doing something that our consciences can comfortably live with?

When we read parashat Bereshit we see various aspects of teshuvah. Adam and Chava sin but do not repent. They are punished severely. Cain sins and, while he does not formally repent, when he says that his punishment is more than he can bear, there is arguably a sign of charatah, regret, in the implication that, had Cain known the severity of his punishment, he would not have killed his brother.  Later it is God who repents, as it were, for having created humankind: though on one level He in his omniscience would have known that we found fail to exercise properly the gift of bechirah (free will) He gave us, by expressing both His disappointment of us and His preparedness to tolerate us despite our faults, He teaches us that, along with teshuvah, the world we live in is sustained by forgiveness and forbearance. We would do well to emulate His example.

Don't look now -- or ever

Horrendous material has been released by Hamas, featuring footage of violent, barbaric and inhuman treatment of Jews captured and kidnapped in last Shabbat’s invasion of Southern Israel. Many institutions and individuals are urging that children, in particular, should not see these images since they are likely to disturb anyone viewing them and may inflict deep psychological scars. This toxic, hate-filled material is being publicized through TikTok, a social media app that is popular among teenagers, a vulnerable and impressionable audience.

For me, the question is not one of whether children and young adults should be shielded from these vile materials, but of whether anyone of any age should choose to see them at all.

Pirkei Avot offers guidance here, at Avot 4:23, where R’ Shimon ben Elazar says, at the end of a four-part teaching on respecting other people’s wishes and personal space:

אַל תִּשְׁתַּדֵּל לִרְאוֹתוֹ בְּשַֽׁעַת קַלְקָלָתוֹ

[Translation] “Do not endeavor to see [your friend] at the time of his degradation”.

Early commentators on Avot have little or nothing to say on this topic since, for them, its meaning and its import are self-evident. But we now live in a technological environment in which the person viewing events may be distant in both time and space from what the mishnah calls the “time of degradation”; he may replay offensive and degrading material as often as he wants and can also forward it to any number of friends and followers.

While the underlying reason for R’ Shimon ben Elazar’s axiom is not hard to discern, we can add to it. In the first place, the act of watching the Hamas video clips may have an adverse impact on the voyeur. If any reader with the appropriate qualifications in psychology can supply us with some useful reference material on this issue, I should be most grateful.

Further, it is not hard to imagine the discomfort and embarrassment of a person to whom you are talking if someone comes to realise that you have watched them taking part in humiliating acts that were designed to break their spirit and dehumanise them. Having already suffered once, these tragic victims may (according to Midrash Shmuel) worry that you have enjoyed the spectacle and have even obtained some gratification from it. A further dimension is the distress of the humiliated person’s family, when they know you have been watching things that should never have been done to a loved one, let alone made public for the world’s entertainment (see R’ Abraham J. Twerski, Visions of the Fathers).

However tempting it may be to watch real-life scenes that correspond to the horrific descriptions which previously existed only in the form of the podcast or the written word, do please resist that temptation. I believe that you will be the better, and the stronger, for doing so.

Dealing with conspiracy theorists

Most problems I have with my fellow humans these days can easily be dealt with by a clear and direct application of one or more maxims drawn from Pirkei Avot. But this is not a magic formula and there are times when my normally successful policy of using Avot as my moral compass is clouded with uncertainty. Here is a case in point.

I have among my friends a very sweet gentleman of relatively advanced years. He is an honest and upright citizen. He makes charitable donations, attends synagogue regularly, greets others with a warm smile and likes to help people when he can. But—and for me this is a major but—he is an ardent believer in a number of so-called conspiracy theories. Even harder for me, even though he does not say so in as many words, he assumes that his friends and acquaintances share his beliefs and seems a little hurt when he discovers that they don’t.

 I’m reluctant to argue with my friend about the validity or veracity of the theories to which he subscribes. This is not just because I don’t like to upset him but also because a key feature of every good conspiracy is that it is impossible to disprove. Avot charges us to accept the truth when we encounter it (Avot 5:9); it is, after all, one of the three means through which the world endures (Avot 1:18). It is also one of means through which one acquires mastery of the Torah (Avot 6:6). But how does one establish the truth in the first place, when every fact that one offers up as a challenge to a fanciful theory is dismissed as being part of a cover-up by the conspiratorial authorities in order to bar us from access to the ‘real’ truth.

Elsewhere Avot tells us to learn how we should answer an apostate (Avot 2:19), but my friend is not a heretic. We are also charged with distancing ourselves from a bad neighbour and with taking care not to link up with someone who is wicked (Avot 1:7) —but my friend is neither of these things.  On the other hand I don’t want to leave him with the last word in any conversation with me because, if I do not contradict him, he will assume that I agree with him.

My problem appears to be echoed by the words of the wise king Solomon (Proverbs 26:4-5). He first says אַל-תַּעַן כְּסִיל כְּאִוַּלְתּוֹ פֶּן-תִּשְׁוֶה-לּוֹ גַם-אָתָּה (“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, in case you act like him”) but then offers the opposite advice too: עֲנֵה כְסִיל כְּאִוַּלְתּוֹ פֶּן-יִהְיֶה חָכָם בְּעֵינָיו (“Do answer a fool according to his folly, in case he becomes a wise man in his own eyes”). 

So how should I respond when my friend buys into his conspiracy theories and expects me to agree with him? Suggestions, anyone?

When war breaks out

We have all been shocked and distressed by the sudden turn of events that transformed the tranquil spiritual haven of Shabbat and the festival of Shemini Atzeret in Israel into a bloodbath of terror, chaos, violence and death. At the time of writing this piece, how this could have happened is beyond comprehension. We can only mourn the dead, console the living, take care to safeguard our own lives, pray that no more innocent human life should be lost on either side -- and remember to place our trust in God.

What does Pirkei Avot have to offer in a situation such as this? The Ethics of the Fathers is not a soldiers’ manual. One of its overarching themes is that of peace. We are taught to love and pursue it (Avot 1:12) since it is one of the three bases upon which the world endures (Avot 1:18) and one of the 48 qualities that enable a person to acquire Torah (Avot 6:6). Anger and violence are not condoned, and the praise accorded to strength is not that of the warrior but of the person who exercises self-control (Avot 4:1). Beyond that, the maxims and principles articulated in Avot are not suited to military conflict. Is it meaningful to expect a soldier to judge favourably the sniper who his aiming to shoot him, or to greet his enemy with a happy, smiling face?

But Avot will have an important place in the unfolding of the story of this tragic conflict. Eventually the events leading up to the Hamas invasion will be subjected to the close scrutiny of an official inquiry. This is where Avot is particularly relevant, since another of its overarching themes is that of justice—another of the bases upon which the world endures. The tractate contains substantially more references to the judicial process than it does to peace, and there is good reason for this. Peace is an end that we seek to achieve, while justice is both an end in itself and a means of achieving it.

Yehudah ben Tabbai teaches (Avot 1:8):

כְשֶׁיִּהְיוּ בַּעֲלֵי הַדִּין עוֹמְדִים לְפָנֶֽיךָ, יִהְיוּ בְעֵינֶֽיךָ כִּרְשָׁעִים, וּכְשֶׁנִּפְטָרִים מִלְּפָנֶֽיךָ יִהְיוּ בְעֵינֶֽיךָ כְּזַכָּאִין, כְּשֶׁקִּבְּלוּ עֲלֵיהֶם אֶת הַדִּין

When disputants stand before you, consider them as being guilty; and when they leave your presence, regard them as innocent because they have accepted your ruling.

This mishnah does not overtly mention commissions of inquiry, but the principles it incorporates are highly relevant. In his Avot leVanim, R’ Chaim Druckman links it to the tail-end of a verse from Leviticus:

בְּצֶדֶק, תִּשְׁפֹּט עֲמִיתֶךָ

“In righteousness you shall judge your fellow” (Vayikra 19:15).

Citing explanations of this Torah snippet by Rambam and Rashi, R’ Druckman builds on his theme that the “righteousness” referred to here covers the procedural aspects of a hearing as well as its decision. It is imperative to treat everyone who comes before a tribunal in a fair, open and impartial manner.

What does this entail? For one thing it means letting everyone have their say, not pressing some parties and witnesses to say more while seeking to stifle or curtail what others have to say. For another thing it means disregarding rank, status, fame or notoriety of those who come under scrutiny.

All of this is in practice more difficult than one might at first think. The public will, quite understandably, looking for people to blame. These may be politicians or those with military and intelligence expertise. They may be senior or junior, and either possessing military or government experience or lacking it. Both the public and the investigators will have been exposed, inevitably, to a large quantity of information promulgated by the media, some of which may be factual but which may also have been designed to shape public opinion.

The responsibility of those who examine the lead-up to this war, its conduct and possibly its consequences is immense, and the pressure to which they will be subjected may be close to overwhelming. Nonetheless, Avot urges them to take strength and conduct their duties in a manner that is absolutely transparent and impartial, so that there can be no accusations of cover-ups, no allegations of favouritism—and so that, with the truth at its disposal, Israel will be in a position to dispense true justice.