Don't do it just because you can!

Taking a simplistic view of Jewish life, we can divide our day between (i) things we absolutely must do, (ii) things we are told to do as a sort of optional extra, (iii) things we are allowed to decide for ourselves whether we do them or not, (iv) things we are told not to do but there may be no problem if we do them, and (v) things we are prohibited from doing. When we study the Torah, much of what we learn involves looking at particular actions and trying to decide which category they belong to.

Much if not most of Pirkei Avot addresses the third category: activities where we have an option or a discretion as to whether we do them or not. The tractate helps to sensitise us and make us more aware of the consequences of our actions.

As we have mentioned before, Rabban Gamliel ben Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi (Avot 2:3) teaches:

הֱווּ זְהִירִין בָּרָשׁוּת, שֶׁאֵין מְקָרְבִין לוֹ לְאָדָם אֶלָּא לְצֹֽרֶךְ עַצְמָן, נִרְאִין כְּאוֹהֲבִין בְּשַֽׁעַת הַנָּאָתָן, וְאֵין עוֹמְדִין לוֹ לְאָדָם בְּשַֽׁעַת דָּחֳקוֹ

 Be careful with the government, for they befriend a person only for their own needs. They appear to be friends when it is beneficial to them, but they do not stand by a person at the time of his distress.

While the normal meaning of this mishnah is plain, there is another way of reading it that mines it for some fairly heavy mussar (moral chastisement). We do so by translating the Hebrew word רָשׁוּת (“rashut”, meaning “the government”) as “permission”.  If we take this route, we then have to reinterpret the rest of the mishnah. Who is it now that befriends a person for its own sake but deserts him at a time of need? The only plausible answer is a person’s yetzer hara, the urge to perform acts that may be downright evil, certainly illegal or, as in our case, merely undesirable.

Is there any source for this? Yes. The Torah (Vayikra 19:2) requires us to be kedoshim, holy people, because God himself is holy. On this verse, Rashi cites a midrash which explains that being holy entails being perushim, people who separate themselves from sexual immorality and other sins. Ramban picks up on this: perushim in his view means more than separating oneself from that which is forbidden. How so?

According to Ramban we must distance ourselves from not only that which is forbidden but also with that which we are permitted to do, if by doing a permitted act we commit a chillul Hashem (a desecration of God’s name) and damage our own reputation at the same time. Examples are not hard to come by. The drinking of alcoholic beverages is permitted under Jewish law, but a Jew who knocks back half a bottle of whisky and carouses through the streets at 3.00am, singing bawdy songs at the top of his voice, can expect that neither his reputation nor that of God will benefit from this exercise. Rather, the opposite: people will view him as a drunken nuisance and a poor ambassador for the religion to which he aspires.  This sort of conduct is called being a naval birshut haTorah (a despicable person with the rashut of the Torah).

R' Chaim Druckman (Avot leBanim) cites this explanation of rashut in his discussion of Rabban Gamliel’s mishnah above, and he is not alone in offering it since it can be found three centuries after Ramban in R’ Shmuel de Uzeda’s Midrash Shmuel. However, it does seem to strain the meaning of the rest of the mishnah and, despite its powerful message, the injunction not to be a naval birshut haTorah does not seem on the face of it to be the message that Rabban Gamliel had in mind.

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