Is it so wrong to agree with God?

In this week’s Torah reading we see God’s anger with the Children of Israel. At Exodus 32:7-10 He vents his anger against these ungrateful people who at the first time of crisis turned to a molten calf and pronounced it to be their god. He tells Moses to step aside, telling him: “I will annihilate them and make you a great nation”. Moses prays for God to forgive them, adding: “If not, erase me now from your book that you have written” (Exodus 32:32).   Moses’ prayers succeed. God forgives the people and the trek from Egyptian slavery to freedom in Israel is back on the tracks.

But supposing Moses had not prayed for the people’s forgiveness? What if he said to God: “You are a just and all-knowing God and, though You are slow to anger, You have shown us that there are limits even for Your patience with us. Do destroy these people and set me up as a nation. I will do my best to make it great”?

Moses could justify this position by pointing to the limits God had set upon His own patience, referring to the two mishnayot (Avot 5:2 and 5:3) in which He demonstrates His unwillingness to wait forever for mere mortals to do His bidding. He could also point to the maxim (Avot 5:9) that conceding the truth is one of the seven signs of a chacham, a person who is wise: the people had deserted God, so they deserved punishment, while he, Moses, had not.

Yet precedent supports the position Moses took when he decided to stick with his people and take on God, in all His anger. A tradition teaches that Noah—a righteous man with impeccable credentials in an age of unmitigated evil—was faulted for agreeing to save himself and his immediate family, as God commanded, instead of praying for the salvation of the entire human race (Zohar 1:67b). The Torah also gives a precedent for arguing against God in a somewhat analogous situation, when Abraham (Genesis 18:23-32) pleads for the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah to be spared, despite their iniquities, if only a handful of good people live among them.

The last word goes to Pirkei Avot though. Moses, despite his upbringing and distance from mainstream Jewish culture, felt himself to be very much a man of his people. He loved them and identified deeply with them and with their cause. Hillel teaches (Avot 2:5)  אַל תִּפְרוֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר: do not separate yourself from the community. Moses’ stance of “if they go, I go” is very much in keeping with that teaching.

The Miller's tale

No, this is not a bawdy yarn penned by Geoffrey Chaucer. It’s a tale of how a perceptive rabbi has engaged with Pirkei Avot and how that tractate is reflected in his thoughts and experiences.

I’m talking here of The Wisdom of Avos, a slim hardback volume published by Mosaica in 2022 and which I mentioned in a post a week or two back. The miller in question is R’ Yisroel Miller, who served for many years as a community rabbi in Pittsburgh, then subsequently in Calgary. He will be known to many readers as the author of In Search of the Jewish Woman (1988), What’s Wrong with Being Human? (1993) and What’s Wrong with Being Happy? (1994).  I read What’s Wrong with Being Human? When it first came out and was much impressed by the accessibility and clarity of R’ Miller’s writing, so much so that I re-read it during the Covid pandemic. His essay “In search of our leader Moshe” moves me still.

So what does R’ Miller do with Avot?

This book is not an attempt to furnish omnibus coverage of the entire tractate. Indeed, it originates from notes on a series of shiurim on Avot that R’ Miller did not intend to publish, but which he was persuaded to do by one of his former congregants. Since its focus is on mishnayot that provide fertile ground for thought and demand discussion, it concentrates on the first four perakim; this is where we find commentary based on R' Miller's shiurim. The book also gently touches upon perakim 5 and 6. The book’s provenance as notes on shiurim accounts for the absence of footnotes and detailed references, as well as the presence of many real-life examples and telling anecdotes.

The author sets out his stall at the beginning, explaining what he describes as his “revolutionary old approach”. This consists of essentially four steps:

1.        If a mishnah seems self-evident, ask why someone might disagree with it.
   
   
2.        If it offers no new insight, ask if it is saying something more than a simple translation reveals.
3.        Since Avot has no gemara, take a look at what the Avot deRabbi Natan and comments scattered through the two Talmuds say.
4.        When a mishnah features several points, ask if it teaches more than the sum of its individual parts.

No, there is nothing surprising here. But it’s also surprising how easy it is to skip these steps and jump to one’s own conclusions.

I’ve been dipping in and out of this little book with great enjoyment. From time to time I shall be discussing some of the points R’ Miller makes. I look forward to sharing them with you.

Are you there in body only?

Every schoolkid knows that two plus two make four, while two plus zero make just two. This is why Avot 5:17 is so surprising. This anonymous mishnah goes as follows:

אַרְבַּע מִדּוֹת בְּהוֹלְכֵי בֵית הַמִּדְרָשׁ: הוֹלֵךְ וְאֵינוֹ עוֹשֶׂה, שְׂכַר הֲלִיכָה בְּיָדוֹ. עוֹשֶׂה וְאֵינוֹ הוֹלֵךְ, שְׂכַר מַעֲשֶׂה בְּיָדוֹ. הוֹלֵךְ וְעוֹשֶׂה, חָסִיד. לֹא הוֹלֵךְ וְלֹא עוֹשֶׂה, רָשָׁע

There are four types among those who attend the house of study: The person who goes, but does nothing, gets a reward for going. The person who does [study], but does not go to the house of study hall, gets a reward for doing so. The person who both goes and does is a chasid [pious]. One who neither goes nor does is wicked.

So, while the mishnah talks of four folk who attend the Bet Midrash, the house of study, only two of them actually get there. This doesn’t add up. Does this mean that something has gone wrong with our mishnah?

Many fine minds have pondered over this question over the centuries. R’ Ovadyah MiBartenura doesn’t worry over the arithmetic: in his commentary on Avot 5:16 he says our mishnah is simply talking about that practice of going or not going in general.  Irving M. Bunim (Ethics from Sinai) puts it slightly differently: the mishnah describes four contrasting attitudes struck by people regarding the question whether they should go to the Bet Midrash or not.

The Tiferet Yisrael (R’ Yisrael Lipschitz) sticks to the number four and takes it literally: all four types are there—but two of them are there in body only. Their minds are planted firmly elsewhere. Why do they bother going? In the words of R’ Yisrael Meir Lau (Yachel Yisrael):

“[T]hey intend to meet friends, engage in small talk, maintain their reputation, or even to gather impressions so that they can later mock those whom they saw there”.

Maharam Shik agrees that the two “missing” attendees are there in body only, though he expresses himself in another way. When it comes to learning Torah and turning up in a house of study, there are two attitudes that one can strike. A person can say “I’m doing this because I want to fulfil my duty to God”—or “I’m doing this so that other people can see me and think what a great person I am”.  If one’s only motives are ulterior, not for the sake of God, it is as though one is not really there.

I also found an explanation in R’ Abraham J. Twerski’s Visions of the Fathers that calls for thought because it appears to avoid the two-plus-zero makes four issue entirely:

“Some commentaries interpret the word holech [which literally means “going” or “walking”] to mean “progressing” and they point out that in contrast to angels who are static (omdim), a human being should grow and advance in character development…”

“The second category in this mishnah refers to someone who is oseh [literally “doing”], who seemingly does what he is supposed to do, yet he does not appear to be advancing spiritually and improving himself in any way”.

R’ Twerski then asks:

“Why are there observant people who seem to be deficient in middos (character traits)?”

No indication is given as to which commentators give holech and oseh these meanings and, to be honest, I can’t offhand recall who does. If any reader can jog my memory, I’d be grateful.

As for what R’ Twerski says, if you read “progressing” for “going”, the meaning of the mishnah is changed completely—and it certainly speaks to us today.  R’ Twerski writes that the four propositions in the mishnah provide the answer to his question, but it is not obvious to me how exactly they do so and I’m not sure that I have understood what R’ Twerski has said. Again, if any readers can help me clarify my thoughts, that would be great.

Is what you wear, who you are?

This week’s Torah reading, Parashat Tetzaveh, is definitely one for real enthusiasts. There’s no exciting storyline, no confrontations, no miracles—just lots of detail, much of which is about priestly uniform and specifies what Kohanim, and especially the Kohen Gadol, must wear when going about their sacred duties. Countless generations of Torah scholars have discussed these sartorial details and explained their symbolic significance. We continue to learn from them today.

Though Pirkei Avot makes several references to other basic needs such as food, drink and sleep, it has almost nothing to say explicitly about clothes. There is just one reference to clothing and it comes almost incidentally as one of a large number of things that a person who studies Torah for its own sake deserves. In a baraita in the final perek Rabbi Meir teaches:

כָּל הָעוֹסֵק בַּתּוֹרָה לִשְׁמָהּ זוֹכֶה לִדְבָרִים הַרְבֵּה, וְלֹא עוֹד, אֶלָּא שֶׁכָּל הָעוֹלָם כֻּלּוֹ כְּדַאי הוּא לוֹ. נִקְרָא רֵֽעַ, אָהוּב, אוֹהֵב אֶת הַמָּקוֹם, אוֹהֵב אֶת הַבְּרִיּוֹת, מְשַׂמֵּֽחַ אֶת הַמָּקוֹם, מְשַׂמֵּֽחַ אֶת הַבְּרִיּוֹת, וּמַלְבַּשְׁתּוֹ עֲנָוָה וְיִרְאָה, וּמַכְשַׁרְתּוֹ לִהְיוֹת צַדִּיק, חָסִיד, יָשָׁר, וְנֶאֱמָן, וּמְרַחַקְתּוֹ מִן הַחֵטְא, וּמְקָרַבְתּוֹ לִידֵי זְכוּת, וְנֶהֱנִין מִמֶּֽנּוּ עֵצָה וְתוּשִׁיָּה, בִּינָה וּגְבוּרָה, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: לִי עֵצָה וְתוּשִׁיָּה, אֲנִי בִינָה, לִי גְבוּרָה, וְנוֹתֶֽנֶת לוֹ מַלְכוּת וּמֶמְשָׁלָה, וְחִקּוּר דִּין, וּמְגַלִּין לוֹ רָזֵי תוֹרָה, וְנַעֲשֶׂה כְּמַעְיָן הַמִּתְגַּבֵּר וּכְנָהָר שֶׁאֵינוֹ פוֹסֵק, וְהֹוֶה צָנֽוּעַ, וְאֶֽרֶךְ רֽוּחַ, וּמוֹחֵל עַל עֶלְבּוֹנוֹ, וּמְגַדַּלְתּוֹ וּמְרוֹמַמְתּוֹ עַל כָּל הַמַּעֲשִׂים

Whoever studies Torah for its own sake merits many things; what’s more, the whole world is fit for him. He is called: friend, beloved, lover of God, lover of people, one who rejoices in God and who rejoices in people. [The Torah] clothes him with humility and awe; it makes him fit to be righteous, pious, correct and faithful; it distances him from sin and brings him close to merit. From him, people enjoy counsel and wisdom, understanding and power, as it says: "Mine are counsel and wisdom, I am understanding, mine is power." [The Torah] grants him sovereignty, dominion and jurisprudence. Its secrets are revealed to him, and he becomes like an ever-increasing wellspring and an unceasing river. He becomes modest, patient and forgiving of insults. [The Torah] uplifts him and makes him greater than all creations (Avot 6:1).

Humility and awe are requirements for any Kohen, and especially the Kohen Gadol, if they seek to discharge their sacred functions in the Temple services. But why does Rabbi Meir talk of the Torah clothing a person in these qualities rather than just making him fit to receive them?

Unsurprisingly, traditional commentators generally focus on the importance of humility and awe, rather than on the issue of clothing, since these are the qualities to which not only Torah scholars but every sincere Jew seeks to acquire. But there are exceptions.

The Maharal (Derech Chaim) turns the baraita on its head. He teaches that, once a Torah scholar has mastered humility and awe, the Torah will clothe him in tiferet—a term often translated as “glory” but which has kabbalistic overtones to which the Maharal alludes. For Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau (Yachel Yisrael) “clothing” is a means by which we express who we really are: if you are “clothed” in humility and awe, this means that you are effectively transmitting the message that you are that sort of person. In our own time, we quickly size up what sort of person stands before us when we take note of what they wear, so there is plainly merit in this explanation.

Rabbi Yosef Yavetz (the “Chasid Yavetz”) picks up on clothing too: one’s humility and awe should be with a person all the time, just like one’s clothes. In other words, one should be consistent in exemplifying these qualities, not being sometimes humble sometimes not.

 So what is the message for us today? Putting Rabbi Lau and the Chasid Yavetz together, we can conclude that (i) the humility and awe that we cultivate, assuming we manage to do so, should be regarded as the face we show to other people and that (ii) if we are indeed able to achieve humility and a sense of awe, we should do so on a consistent basis. If at all we let our standards slide, we should do so where no other human being can see us.

This applies to the Kohanim who serve in the Temple too. When they are wearing the clothing prescribed by God in Parashat Tetzaveh, they are sending out a message as to whom they serve and what sort of people they are. We should therefore treat them with respect and give a little thought to what serving God means to them—and to ourselves.

Are we all really pagans?

Following on from my previous post on being watched, I recently read this passage, which stopped me in my tracks:

It is childish, and pagan, to anthropomorphize God as an “eye in the sky”, watching our every move. It is more mature to focus on our mental and spiritual awareness of the reality of God in our lives.

Admittedly I have taken this passage out of context, but its meaning is clear and it troubled me nonetheless. Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi (Avot 2:1) teaches:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה, דַּע מַה לְּמַֽעְלָה מִמָּךְ, עַֽיִן רוֹאָה וְאֹֽזֶן שׁוֹמַֽעַת, וְכָל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ בְּסֵֽפֶר נִכְתָּבִים

Contemplate three things, and you will not come to the hands of transgression: Know what is above you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds being inscribed in a book.

I am uncomfortable with the suggestion that this Mishnah is a childish anthropomorphism and I do not believe that R’ Yehudah HaNasi intended it as such, either. He is inviting us to conduct a thought experiment, at any moment when we might be tempted to do contravene Jewish law or the moral standards that accompany it: we can ask ourselves to imagine that we are being watched by the God who is also our judge.  If, at the point of sinning, we can “focus on our mental and spiritual awareness of the reality of God in our lives”, this would indeed demonstrate a greater maturity on our part. But, in general, which is the more direct route to stopping us when we are in “about to flout” mode?

….. ….. ….. ….. ….. …..

The quote above comes from Rabbi Anthony Manning’s halachic analysis in Reclaiming Dignity (Mosaica 2023) at p.237.

Our children are always watching

In the opening mishnah of the second perek, Rebbi (Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi) teaches:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה, דַּע מַה לְּמַֽעְלָה מִמָּךְ, עַֽיִן רוֹאָה וְאֹֽזֶן שׁוֹמַֽעַת, וְכָל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ בְּסֵֽפֶר נִכְתָּבִים

Contemplate three things and you will not come to the grip of transgression: Know what is above you—a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds being inscribed in a book.

This teaching clearly caught the imagination of R’ Jonathan Muskat, Rabbi of the Young Israel of Oceanside and the author of this piece (“Our children are always watching”) which was recently posted to the Times of Israel. There he writes:

There is a mishna in Pirkei Avot that scared me as a young boy. The mishna states that, “ayin ro-ah, v-ozen sho-ma-at v’chol ma-asecha ba-sefer nichtavin.” There is an eye that sees, an ear that hears and all of our deeds are written in a book. God is watching everything we do. We constantly live under a microscope. This thought can be so frightening and paralyzing that we may tend to ignore it. But sometimes we are reminded that we are being watched, not by God, but by our children. Very often, we don’t even realize how the smallest things that we do as parents can be so impactful on our children.

My initial reaction was that this comment had nothing to do with Rebbi’s teaching at all. The mishnah was surely focusing on how we should cultivate God-consciousness as a means of reducing and ideally eliminating the possibility of doing something wrong. The reference to children watching us was cute but only tangentially relevant. My second thought was quite different.

Rebbi lived some eighteen centuries ago, at a time when people in general—and not just Jews—had a far greater sense of God-awareness than we do today. He lived in an era in which lives were far more closely linked to their immediate environments than ours are today, a time when people’s perceptions of cause and event, of reward and punishment, were sharper and more immediate than they are now. We can imagine how much easier it is to be aware of God in a society which the main events of one’s day are so much more closely related to one’s survival than they are today: growing and harvesting crops, animal husbandry, preserving one’s water supply and making one’s own clothes. Heaven hung directly above their heads and they were acutely aware of it.

In modern society we have surrounded ourselves with so many man-made distractions: the average American, I once read, has about five hours a day in which he or she is neither working nor engaged in domestic chores. Much of that time is taken up with the pursuit of leisure and/or pleasure, if the scale of the entertainment and recreation-based industries is anything to go by. In theory a practising Jew would spend most or all of that time learning Torah and contemplating divine matters, and this aim can be fulfilled by those who are fortunate enough to be supported in their full-time learning—but it would do no-one an injustice to suggest that most of us do not reach that level, at least on a daily basis.

But if we no longer succeed in keeping God in mind 24/7 as we go about our lives and remember that He is watching us, we still have the children. In the case of our own children, we know how impressionable they are and how quickly they mimic our actions and (sometimes embarrassingly) our speech. We are also aware of other people’s children too. An example that springs to mind is that of the adult who happily crosses the road against a red light when no-one watches him, but who will take care to cross on the green, or to use a pedestrian crossing, if small children might get the wrong idea and copy him with tragic results.

Children are not God. But R’ Akiva reminds us (Avot 3:18) that we are all created in His image, and that includes the children who carefully note what we say and do. Maybe this is why R’ Shimon ben Yehudah (Avot 6:8) lists children among those things that are befitting not only to the righteous but to the world at large.

"What would the Queen say?"

At Avot 1:4 Yose ben Yoezer ish Tzeredah says:

יְהִי בֵיתְךָ בֵּית וַֽעַד לַחֲכָמִים, וֶהֱוֵי מִתְאַבֵּק בַּעֲפַר רַגְלֵיהֶם, וֶהֱוֵי שׁוֹתֶה בַצָּמָא אֶת דִּבְרֵיהֶם

Let your home be a meeting place for the Sages [i.e. Torah scholars]; wrestle in the dust of their feet, and drink their words in thirstily.

On the first part of this teaching I recently read this comment:

“Let your home be a meeting-place for the Sages” surely means “have Sages meet in your home”, but the wording seems also to be telling us to make our homes into suitable meeting-places, i.e. that our homes should be places in which the Sages would feel comfortable. Is the nature of the reading material or electronic entertainment scattered around the house appropriate? Are our furnishings too lavish or ostentatious? And is there anything we would want to hide before the Sages arrive?

This comment resonated with me. Even as a young child I was expected to keep my bedroom tidy. If I fell short of the expected standard—which happened quite often—I would be asked “What would the Queen say if she came to visit your room and found it looking like this?”  The words had their desired effect. Though the prospect of Her Majesty the Queen ever visiting this corner of a third-floor apartment in West London was remote, I would instantly set to work on tucking toys into cupboards in order to make suitable preparation for an unexpected royal visit.

But it’s not just monarchs and rabbinical sages whose visits we should anticipate.

In later life I have often felt embarrassed on behalf of people whose houses I have visited when performing the mitzvah of nichum avelim, comforting recently-bereaved mourners.  While mirrors have been dutifully covered in keeping with well-established Jewish tradition, one often cannot avoid seeing things which one would have preferred not to see. These include family holiday photos of people who would never allow themselves to be seen in such a state of relative undress in the streets of Golders Green, racy book-titles on the shelves and figurines of a somewhat indelicate nature.

I’m not a great advocate of hiding the past and, having become religiously observant as an adult, I have often thought about this issue. The past happened and cannot be denied—but exposing it to public inspection it is not just a matter of personal preference. There are other people’s feelings to be taken into account too. That is why the comment I quoted above ends by saying:

There is perhaps no answer suited to everyone, but surely everyone can make time to ask the questions.

I agree.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

The author of the comment is R’ Yisroel Miller whose book, The Wisdom of Avos, will be discussed in a forthcoming post.

A thought for St Valentine's Day

Should Jews mark St Valentine’s Day by sending greeting cards and gifts to those whom they love or with whom they wish to enter a relationship?  

The practice of celebrating this day is of ancient provenance and, while it is recognized as a feast day in some Christian churches, it shares with Christmas the distinction of being widely observed in western society by people who do not practice Christianity and who may indeed belong to other religions—or no religion at all. Given the increased prevalence of sexually suggestive or explicit Valentine cards, the day may more closely reflect the celebration of the Roman Lupercalia from which it has been said to originate.

Writing on Aish.com, Dr Yvette Alt Miller (“Valentine’s Day Difficult History with Jews”) powerfully argues that Jews should have nothing to do with the day. She writes:

Prof. Beard notes that “ancient Roman religion (was not) particularly concerned with personal salvation or morality. Instead it mainly focused on the performance of rituals that were intended to keep the relationship between Rome and the gods in good order....” [citation omitted]. It’s a view that’s opposed to contemporaneous Jewish writings. Take the example of Hillel, the 1st Century CE Jewish sage who lived at a time when Lupercalia was a major event. Hillel – like many Jewish thinkers – focused intensely on the human struggle for self-improvement. “Be among the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving people and bringing them closer to the Torah,” Hillel advised (Ethics of the Fathers 1:12), invoking the Biblical forefather Aaron, who was known to spend his time reconciling friends and relatives after quarrels. While Jewish writers were urging people to look inward for personal growth and improvement, Romans observing Lupercalia were relying on empty (and pretty bawdy) ritual to magically bring about improvements in their personal states.

After explaining why the day has not been a happy one for the Jewish people and advocating Tu be’Av as a perfectly adequate substitute for practising Jews, she concludes:

With so much about Valentine’s Day anathema to Jewish values, Valentine’s Day isn’t a holiday I feel comfortable celebrating. So this Valentine’s Day – like every day – I plan on enjoying a nice meal with my husband and son. I plan on texting friends and relatives to check in on them. I intend to reach out to friends who are having a hard time and ask how I can help. Because if there’s anything being Jewish has taught me, it’s that connecting with other people is paramount, that the world is full of blessings, and it's up to all of us to choose to see and appreciate them.

Cantor Cheryl Wunsch (“Laws of Love”, Alyth.org.uk, 2015) disagrees. Having argued that St Valentines Day as we know it today has no religious significance she writes:

[Valentine’s Day was originally] a celebration of faith, and today, it’s a celebration of love.  Which are, in essence, the same thing.  Faith in God means faith in each other, faith in ourselves, and faith in love and compassion to always lead us in the right direction.  And so on this Valentine’s Day, let’s remember that our laws are really all about love.  To paraphrase the famous passage from Pirkei Avot [Hillel, at Avot 2:6]; in a world where it often seems like there are few true human beings, we as Jews must always strive to be loving, compassionate people.  That is what the mitzvot truly teach us.

 So here we see mishnayot from Pirkei Avot invoked on both sides of the argument, both of which we learn in the name of Hillel.

I believe that neither citation hits the mark. Of course, loving peace and pursuing peace (Avot 1:12) are an integral part of a Jew’s self-development, but this is such a general proposition that it can be invoked in support of both sides of the argument. And as for the paraphrase of Avot 2:6 (“….and where there is no man, strive to be a man”), can it be said that “we as Jews must always strive to be loving, compassionate people” has anything to do with marking St Valentine Day or not? Is there only one day in the year in which we can be loving and compassionate? Is this not a daily demand that is made of us?

Two mishnayot in Avot seem to me to be worthy of closer consideration within the context of St Valentines Day.

The first is an anonymous teaching at Avot 5:19:

כָּל אַהֲבָה שֶׁהִיא תְלוּיָה בְדָבָר, בָּטֵל דָּבָר בְּטֵלָה אַהֲבָה, וְשֶׁאֵינָהּ תְּלוּיָה בְדָבָר, אֵינָהּ בְּטֵלָה לְעוֹלָם

Any love that depends on a specific thing, when that thing goes the love goes too. But where that love does not depend on any specific cause, it will never cease.

In other words, if your love is contingent on you sending the right card, choosing the right restaurant or selecting the optimal movie on a particular calendar date, then is it really love?

The second, admittedly, is of general application, but it strikes me as being particularly apt here. At Avot 2: R’ Yose HaKohen teaches:

כָל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ יִהְיוּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמָֽיִם

Let all your actions be for the sake of Heaven.

This is a litmus test, a way we can measure up the things we do. How far do our actions measure up to our aspirations, and those of God? Unlike Valentine, we are not saints. We cannot be perfect in everything we do, and most normal human beings don’t even try—but if they are sensitive to the wishes of Heaven, they usually do their best not to go out of their way to snub or ignore them. So let’s put aside the issues of whether St Valentines Day has any inherent or residual religious content, and of whether Jewish law permits or forbids its recognition—and let’s ask ourselves: “Why am I about to celebrate this day? Are my motives honourable? And how do I think God will feel about me?”

Share the burden, feel the pain?

In light of the current crisis facing not just Israel but world Jewry I would like to share with you a passage I recently came across in “Lightening the load” by R’ Reuven Leuchter, Mishpacha, 23 January (full text here). He writes:

The suffering around us isn’t just a cause for weeping — it’s a call for avodah. Our times demand from us the middah described in Pirkei Avos as nosei b’ol im chaveiro; literally, sharing our friend’s burden. Being nosei b’ol means seeing everything that your friend is going through, including the subtle difficulties you wouldn’t notice with a superficial glance. This is a necessary step toward helping your friend or providing emotional support, but it’s also significant in itself. Even when we can’t help, we must not remain indifferent to our fellow Jew’s plight. If we can’t alleviate our friend’s difficulty, the least we can do is acknowledge it.

To work on being nosei b’ol, we have to dispel a common misunderstanding. Being nosei b’ol doesn’t mean feeling other people’s pain. If we understand the severity of their hardship, we will inevitably be emotionally affected. But if we try to approach the plight of our fellow with our heart alone, we risk getting sucked into the quicksand of despair. Becoming too emotionally involved actually prevents us from helping others, because when someone is sinking in quicksand, only someone standing on firm ground can help him.

The beginning of being nosei b’ol is not to feel for the other person, but to think about him. To take a moment to step into his shoes and just think about his world, without searching for solutions. What is it like to live in his situation, day in and day out? How does it impact him physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially? We’re often blind to the difficulties our friend experiences because we don’t think about his life. Even caring comrades can be oblivious to the most painful aspects of their friend’s situation, simply because they never thought it through.

To be nosei be’ol im chaveiro, literally pulling the yoke with one’s fellow humans and sharing their burden, is one of the 48 qualities associated with acquiring Torah skills and living in accordance with its precepts (see Avot 6:6). You don’t have to judge another person before you share their load. Indeed, Avot 2:5 suggests that, since we never stand in another person’s shoes, as it were, we should not even try to do so. You do have to think about others—not just in the abstract or when reminded, but in way that the result of your thoughts may be helpful to them. Yes, it is a tall order, but when our brethren are so greatly in need of help we should at least make the effort, even if this means overcoming the myriad distractions that come between us and our thoughts for others.

R' Leuchter writes: “The beginning of being nosei b’ol is not to feel for the other person, but to think about him”. It’s easy to extrapolate from this a message that we should not feel for others, but that’s not what he is saying. Of course we should have feelings; we wouldn’t be human if we were devoid of them. But an increased awareness of other people’s predicaments is only the beginning. If we don’t think meaningfully about their plight, what value are our feelings—to ourselves and to others?

 

Majority verdict

Mitzvot and middot do not always comfortably complement one another. Sometimes it seems that they are on course for a collision.

At Exodus 23:2, in Parashat Mishpatim, this week’s Torah reading teaches us:

לֹא תִהְיֶה אַחֲרֵי-רַבִּים לְרָעֹת וְלֹא-תַעֲנֶה עַל-רִב לִנְטֹת אַחֲרֵי רַבִּים לְהַטֹּת

“You shall not follow the majority to do evil; nor shall you respond to a grievance by yielding to the majority to pervert [justice]”.

In the course of his commentary on the verse, Rashi explains that a judge, though outnumbered by his fellow judges, should voice his opinion in accordance with his understanding of the law and the evidence, if he considers that his colleagues have mistakenly or intentionally reached a contrary conclusion.

Pirkei Avot appears to take a contrary stance, one that at first sight seems less principled. At Avot 4:10 Rabbi Yishmael ben Yose teaches:

אַל תֹּאמַר קַבְּלוּ דַעְתִּי, שֶׁהֵן רַשָּׁאִין וְלֹא אָֽתָּה

Don’t say, "You must accept my view," for this is their [the majority's] right, not yours.

One might jump to the conclusion that a judge who disagrees with the majority is therefore obliged to accept their reasoning, even if it is erroneous or even perverted. But is this so? Certainly, a single judge cannot outvote the majority, but what precisely Is he bound to accept?

Clearly Rabbi Yishmael cannot have been inviting the dissenting judge to drop his principled stance and connive with a majority who wish to pervert justice. But he must also have intended to teach more than simply that the stand-out judge should accept the decision of the majority, since that is an established halachah.

Arguably, this teaching in Avot is that, once the minority rabbi has explained his objection to the majority position, he should stop at that point and not be overcome by the temptation to assert himself through the force of his personality. Once the other judges have heard his argument, his job is done. “You must accept my view” is not an argument based on law or on fact; it should therefore not be allowed into the court’s discussion—however correct it may be.

There are other ways of explaining our mishnah in Avot that do not bring it into possible conflict with our Torah verse at all. The Me’iri gives us an extreme example of this in his Bet HaBechirah, where he astonishingly removes it from the context of judicial proceedings altogether and categorises it as good advice for businessmen that they should not assert their position against their colleagues without bringing some sort of proof to support it.

Returning to the application of  this mishnah to a judicial context, the Hebrew word דַעְת, which is translated here as “view”, has many shades of meaning. These include the following (per Jastrow and Brown-Driver-Briggs): knowledge, mind, temperament, intention, skill, perception and wisdom. Rabbenu Yonah picks up on this: the דַעְת here refers to the knowledge of an expert judge who is sitting with a panel of non-experts. He cannot say: “I know I’m right, based on my expertise in this area—and if I was judging the case myself I would do so on the basis of my expertise. It’s only my humility that caused me to hear this case with other judges in the first place”.  It would be a strange species of humility that enables a single judge effectively to overrule his colleagues in this manner. I leave the last word with Rabbi S. R. Hirsch:

“[O]ne who impudently seeks to force his own decision upon others only exposes thereby his deficiency in wisdom and scruples, as well as his foolish conceit”.  

"You can't judge a book by looking at the cover"

You can't judge an apple by looking at a tree
You can't judge honey by looking at the bee
You can't judge a daughter by looking at the mother
You can't judge a book by looking at the cover

These lyrics, popularized by Bo Diddley, the Rolling Stones and many other performers, embody the teaching of Rabbi Meir at Avot 4:27:

אַל תִּסְתַּכֵּל בְּקַנְקַן, אֶלָּא בְּמַה שֶּׁיֶּשׁ בּוֹ, יֵשׁ קַנְקַן חָדָשׁ מָלֵא יָשָׁן, וְיָשָׁן שֶׁאֲפִילוּ חָדָשׁ אֵין בּ

Don’t look at the vessel, but at what’s inside it. There are new vessels that are filled with old wine, and old vessels that do not even contain new wine.

I recently had an opportunity to put this teaching into practice. Browsing the shelves of Jerusalem’s iconic Pomeranz bookshop, I came across a commentary on Pirkei Avot that had previously escaped my attention: Jewish Ethical Wisdom From Pirkei Avot by Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins (Mazo Publishers, 2020). Unable to resist the temptation, I bought it.

My initial feeling about this book was not positive, since I started with the preliminaries. The front cover reminded me that the Americans and the English may share many common cultural characteristics—but they take quite a different view of self-promotion. As a generalization, Americans are very much more confident in their promotion of goods and services while the English are diffident and hide behind a wall of understatement. Neither approach reflects the Maimonidean norm that lies between the stridently boastful and the unhelpfully uninformative, but this book definitely falls on the American side of this border.

The cover eye-catchingly declares that this book is “The Only Pirkei Avot Edition According to Topic Themes”.  While there are not many Avot books that take this line, this one is not actually unique in that regard--even though four of this book’s five distinguished endorsers also seem to think it is. Torah Dynamics: Pirkei Avot Looks at Life, by Samson Krupnick and Morris Mandel, published in 1991, arranges its discussion of Avot under 24 topic headings. Then there is Rabbi Dan Roth’s Relevance: Pirkei Avos for the Twentieth Century (2007), which tackles topics while running them in the order they appear in Avot. Both are currently available on the Feldheim website and I wonder how these two books could have escaped everyone’s attention.

Now for the author. Rabbi Elkins is clearly a prolific author: the brief bio that faces the  Contents page describes him as having written over 55 books, no mean achievement. One of these, Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul, made the New York Times bestseller list, and the cover itself proclaims Rabbi Elkins to be “Winner of the National Jewish Book Award”, which indeed he was in 1965 with Worlds lost and found; discoveries in Biblical archeology. Both these books are actually co-authored. The Englishman and the intellectual property lawyer in me are both uncomfortable with the absence of any mention here of co-authorship, but I imagine that this is something that troubles me more than it troubles others.

Anyway, once we get past these preliminaries, there’s still the book to consider. The first thing one can say about it is that it is highly accessible and easy to read. The text, including the footnotes, benefits from a large, clear font. It’s not a long work—just 160 pages inclusive of glossary and a short bibliography—and it spans over 30 focal topics. Most of these topics are covered in brief but one, Learning and Teaching, is disproportionately long, thus fairly reflecting the content of Avot itself.

Rabbi Elkins’ approach in general uses the mishnayot of Avot as a series of springboards from which to jump into issues that are of current interest or social relevance. He does so by drawing on quotations which span a wide variety of sources both religious and secular, which he deploys in order to elucidate points that are often based on his own experiences. Readers may not all feel happy at the choice of sources whose quotes appear, but this book is not addressed to readers who would rather take offence at the identity of a quoted source than give thought to the words quoted (cited authors Rabbis Louis Jacobs and Yitz Greenberg, both of whom have been known to raise the occasional hackle).

The content, length and drift of each essay make them collectively a handy reference point for anyone who finds him- or herself called upon to prepare a short and lively devar Torah. Also, with its tendency to prick consciences gently rather than destroying readers completely, as do some tomes on Avot, it’s probably a useful book to take with you to shul on the High Holy Days, to peruse when the going gets heavy and one’s concentration flags.

This work does not pretend to be a state-of-the-art scholarly treatise with doctoral pretensions, and that is a valuable selling point. While sages and scholars may write books of more lasting value, books written by congregational rabbis for ordinary people have a great advantage. A minister who is in daily contact with regular folk can usually be relied upon to have a firm grasp of their dreams and aspirations, their peeves and their foibles. Potential readers of books on Avot are not all striving to be saints or holy ascetics, but many of them would like to be better people if they could—and if someone could give them a few words of encouragement and advice. Books like this one, which talks of anger, doubt, friendship and responsibility, will always have a market and can do much good.

To conclude, I’m glad I didn’t judge this book by the cover and I’m sure that there are many people out there in the big wide world who will appreciate it.

Name-calling: a call for respect

The very first word of the first mishnah of the first chapter of Pirkei Avot is a name: Moshe (“Moses”). This seemingly innocent mention of a name elicits a question from R’ Ovadyah Hedaya (Seh leBet Avot). How could R’ Yehudah HaNasi, when compiling this tractate, refer to Moshe as Moshe? Is there not a well-established principle of Jewish law that a talmid, a pupil, does not call his teacher by his personal name—even after his death?  (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De'ah 240:2 and 242:15). Moshe is the teacher of us all, which is why he alone of all our leaders in the Jewish bible, is given the epithet “Rabbenu” (“our teacher”). Is it not then disrespectful for the anonymous author of this mishnah to call this great man “Moshe”, and for R’ Yehudah HaNasi, when redacting it, to leave it unamended?

R’ Hedaya offers an answer. Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi is entitled to refer to the humblest of all men as “Moshe” because it is not his real name. Following his birth he would have received a name from his parents, and it is only once Pharaoh’s daughter has found and claimed him that he is given the name Moshe with the explanation Ki min hamayim mishisihu (“For I drew him from the water”: Shemot 2:10).

Although the Torah refers to him as Moshe throughout the rest of the Torah, this is out of respect for the noble life-saving action of his rescuer. In essence, however, it is only a substitute for the name that it would be disrespectful for us, his talmidim to call him. And what was his birthname? The Torah does not record it, but midrash puts forward no fewer than 10 of them. R’ Hedaya suggests Tov (per R’ Meir at Sotah 12a) or Tuvyah (per R’ Yehudah, ibidem).

Notions as to what constitutes respect clearly vary in time and space and as between the generations. When I attended school in London back in the 1950s and later in the more permissive age of the “Swinging 60s”, no child would dare to call a teacher by their first name to their face, though we all did behind their backs. Now in Israel I note that practices are very different, depending on the school, and its religious orientation.

Slightly changing the subject, I’d like to invite further exploration of the way we refer to one another.

Later in Avot we learn that one should not embarrass another person in public (Avot 3:15). Though it may not be immediately apparent, this has a good deal to do with names. Within the Jewish community there are many people who prefer to use their Hebrew name because their “English name”, which appears on their birth certificates and in their passports, causes them embarrassment. To call them by the name their parents chose for them may not only embarrass them but can cause considerable offence.

This same applies not only to Jews but to everyone, regardless of religion, race and nationality. Over the years I have had numerous friends who have sought to bury their awkward or unloved forenames or middle names, and I expect that I am far from alone in witnessing people being teased for having names that caused them grief.  

The use of an embarrassing if genuine name is not always intended to be hurtful. Often the offenders are parents who chose a child’s name with a very good reason and who, having always used that name, find it difficult or upsetting to switch to another.

Ultimately, it seems to me, our objective should be to avoid upsetting or annoying others. We should give them their due respect, however apparently trivial their feelings may seem to us.  This is part and parcel of R’ Chanina ben Dosa’s advice (Avot 3:13) that, if we want our actions to be pleasing to God, we should act in such a way as to make them pleasing to our fellow humans too.