"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.

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

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