What sort of peace?

The importance of shalom (“peace”) within Jewish thought is paramount. Pleas for peace conclude the standard prayer format that practising Jews recite daily; God’s capacity to deliver peace is also affirmed at the end of the blessings that follow a meal and the priestly blessings that Kohanim confer on their congregations. It is hardly surprising, then, that peace occupies a prominent place in Pirkei Avot too.

In the first chapter of Avot, Hillel (1:12) urges us to emulate the followers of Aaron, to love peace and pursue it. His descendant Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel (1:18) goes as far as to say that, along with truth and justice, peace is one of the three things that enable the world to continue to function.

Later teachings in Avot elaborate on the theme of peace in various ways. Peace increases in direct proportion to the giving of charity (Hillel at 2:8). It is a bulwark against civil anarchy (R’ Chanina segan HaKohanim, 3:2). Setting others on to the path of peace is one of the 48 measures relating to acquisition of Torah (6:6). Other mishnayot imply the value of peace without explicitly mentioning it. But nowhere in Avot is the meaning of shalom explained.

Briefly we can point to three different species of peace: (i) peace between nations or communities, (ii) peace between individuals and (iii) inner peace that a person experiences within him- or herself.

Peace, in Avot, must surely mean something other than the absence of large-scale hostilities. Likewise, references to peace in Avot do not fit the notion of some sort of private spiritual inner peace or tranquility.  This is because the tractate is primarily concerned with human relationships and interpersonal conduct.

My feeling is that the shalom that the authors of Avot had in mind is a sort of freedom, a state in which people can live good lives in accordance with their duties, responsibilities and beliefs without suffering from the social friction that irritates, then angers people, leading to dispute. This is the sort of peace to which the Torah alludes (Bereshit 37:5) when it describes the relationship of Joseph with his brothers who hated him for being his father’s favourite. The brothers wanted him out of their lives and recognized that they would not have peace until they had got him out of their hair, so to speak.

The Torah does not tell us whether either Joseph or his father Jacob were ever aware of the brothers’ disquiet. From the fact that Joseph, having told them one dream that upset them, went on to tell them another of the same ilk, it rather seems that he was impervious to their feelings. This unhappy domestic situation would have been ripe for the intervention of an Aaron, the pursuer of peace. Aaron, serving in his midrashic role as an empathetic go-between, might well have been able to shine the light of each side upon the other and brokered a lasting peace. But Aaron was not yet born and the interstitial wisdom of Avot which was to bond the fabric of the written Torah, had yet to be consolidated and compiled.

In these days of hostility and open threat, may we experience peace in our own lives—both in a global sense and in our own quiet small lives as ordinary human beings.