Our three best friends

At Avot 4:13 we learn that there’s more to being good than getting rewarded, and more to being bad than being punished. According to Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov our good and bad deeds effectively speak for us. Our actions, personalised in this way, can thus supply clues as to our motivation: they can expose our grace and generosity when we do good things—and the malice and madness with which we do the opposite. He explains:

הָעוֹשֶׂה מִצְוָה אַחַת, קֽוֹנֶה לּוֹ פְּרַקְלִיט אֶחָד, וְהָעוֹבֵר עֲבֵרָה אַחַת, קֽוֹנֶה לּוֹ קַטֵּגוֹר אֶחָד, תְּשׁוּבָה וּמַעֲשִׂים טוֹבִים כִּתְרִיס בִּפְנֵי הַפּוּרְעָנוּת

Someone who fulfils one mitzvah acquires for himself one advocate; but someone who commits one transgression gains himself one accuser. Repentance and good deeds are like a shield against retribution.

In other words it’s not enough to say simply that “actions speak louder than words”. In Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov’s view the actions speak both for themselves and for the person who commits them.  One’s actions are a matter of record. According to Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi (Avot 2:1) they are, so to speak, filmed, taped and recorded in writing. But the reasons for doing what we do are quite another matter. And that’s what our mishnah is about.

Gila Ross (Living Beautifully) describes the workings of this Mishnah in the following way:

A person gets a court summons. He has three friends to whom he reaches out for help.

His first friend says, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you”.

The second friend says, “You know what? I’ll come with you all the way to the courthouse, but from there you are on your own”.

His third friend says, “I will come, and I will be a character witness for you”.

Each of us has these three friends in our lives: Our first friend is the possessions that we have. They accompany us through life but, the moment life is over, they’ve gone. We can’t take any of our possessions with us. Then we have our family and our loved ones who are great friends throughout life. When a person passes on. They will accompany him until burial. Beyond that, they can’t really be with the person. There’s only one friend who stays with us all the way through to our accounting in the Next World. These are our actions and our good deeds; they are our character witnesses.

This idea of being accompanied into the Next World by nothing but one’s good deeds and Torah learning has a good Avot pedigree, being spelled out in a baraita at 6:9. But, however attractive this prospect appears, we are supposed—as Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov reminds us here—to remember the downside. It’s not just our friends who stick with us to the end and testify to our character. Our ‘enemies’ do so too—and there’s enough room in the metaphorical celestial courtroom for every one of them.

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When Beruria went missing

Beruria is one of the most colourful characters in the Talmud. An outstanding Torah scholar in her own right, she was the daughter of Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon and the wife of Rabbi Meir, two towering figures in the age of the Tannaim. One of the best-known stories of Beruria is found in the Babylonian Talmud, at Berachot 10a:

There were once some outlaws in the neighbourhood of Rabbi Meir who caused him a great deal of trouble. Rabbi Meir accordingly prayed that they should die. His wife Beruria said to him: How can you establish [that such a prayer should be permitted]? Is it because it is written “Let hatta'im cease” [Tehillim 104:35]? But is it written hot'im [sinners]? It is written hatta'im [sins]! Now, look at the end of the verse: “and let the wicked men be no more”. Since the sins will cease, there will be no more sinners! Rather pray for them that they should repent, and then there will be no more wicked people. He did pray for them, and they repented.

What does this have to do with Pirkei Avot?

At Avot 4:24 Shmuel HaKatan teaches that we should not rejoice at the fall of our enemies.  In his Lev Avot, R’ Shlomo Toperoff quotes Chief Rabbi Dr Hertz as teaching that we are not even commanded to hate our enemies: our task as Jews is not to curse but to bless, to receive insults but not to deliver them. R’ Toperoff then brings the tale of Beruria to illustrate the correct Jewish response to evil behaviour in others.

But he doesn’t. Beruria is edited out of the text. Lev Avot reads like this (at p.258):

“Commenting on Ps.104:35, ‘Let the sins be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more’, the Rabbis point out that the text does not refer to ‘sinners’ but to ‘sins’. Thus with the eradication of sins, there will be no wicked on earth. For this reason R. Meir says, ‘One should not pray for the death of the wicked but that they should turn their hearts to God and repent of their wickedness’ [Ber.10a]”.

I’ve not (yet) found any early version of this tale that omits reference to Beruria and I’m quite mystified as to how it happened here. The passage in the Talmud to which R’ Toperoff refers is so well known that he is unlikely to have erred through ignorance, and he was not known to have a negative attitude towards women.

The advice and assistance of readers (both women and men) on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

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Avoid offence, make a fence

An Avot mishnah for Shabbat (perek 1: parashat Pinchas)

It’s back to the beginning again as we return to Perek 1 for another round of pre-Shabbat posts.

The first Mishnah in the first chapter of Avot begins by establishing how the chain of Torah tradition passed all the way down from the Giving of the Law at Sinai to its being received by the Men of the Great Assembly in the fifth century BCE. This was a tough time. Prophecy was fading away and the Jewish people had come to understand that, from now on, they were to navigate through life with the guidance of only their own understanding of the Torah. This being so, it was apparent that the Torah needed to be protected if it was to protect those to whom it was given. Our Mishnah therefore concludes with the third of three instructions from the Men of the Great Assembly:

עֲשׂוּ סְיָג לַתּוֹרָה

Make a fence around the Torah.

What sort of protection does the Torah need? Essentially, there are two main threats to its integrity. One comes from its deliberate or inadvertent misinterpretation; the other, which our mishnah addresses here, is the concern that its adherents will transgress Torah laws though their failure to perform or obey them properly. A classic example relates to observance of the rule that one must not do creative work on Shabbat, the seventh day of the week. This holy day is “fenced in” by adding to it a little bit of both the day before and the day after, to give a little leeway for those good souls who seek to work right to the very last minute and may, in doing so, slip up. This is presumably why, in its Avot page online, Chabad.org actually translates סְיָג (seyag, “fence”) as “safety fence”.

Here's an additional and perhaps surprising explanation: fence in your words so that they do not become a burden on the people who have to listen to you. This is especially the case when speaking words of Torah: one’s words should be carefully suited to match the subject matter, the occasion and the audience to whom they are addressed. This is not a modern attempt to make the Mishnah more meaningful to contemporary readers. It comes from the Me’iri (1249-1315) in his Bet HaBechirah. The Me’iri also cites a tale from the Mishlei HaArav concerning a certain wise man who was excessively long-winded. When asked why he spoke at such length he replied: “So that simple folk will understand”, to which he received the retort: “By the time the simple folk understand, the intelligent folk will be bored out of their minds”.

In reality, while a teacher of Torah (or indeed of anything else) can with relatively little effort adapt his words to a single talmid and will hurt no one else even if he repeats himself 400 times (see the story of Rav Perida, Eruvin 54b), the task becomes exponentially harder with each additional addressee. When dealing with a class full of students, each with their specific aptitudes and requirements, it is hard to establish a fence round one’s words that protects those who are quick on the uptake without imposing an insurmountable barrier for those who are less fortunate. I recall a piece of advice I received from a junior colleague early in my own teaching career: “The trick is to say everything three times without repeating yourself even once”.

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In pursuit of inner peace

When I saw the title of Rebbetzin Shira Smiles’ article in Torah Tidbits 1571 (Parashat Chukkat)—“Cheerful Countenance”—I immediately assumed that she was writing about the teaching of Shammai, who urges us at Avot 1:15 to greet everyone with a cheerful countenance.  I was however quite wrong. The subject of her essay was a teaching by Shammai’s colleague and contemporary, Hillel.

At Avot 1:12 Hillel exhorts us to be talmidim, disciples of the peace-loving Aaron, in our actions as well as our attitude:

הֱוֵי מִתַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל אַהֲרֹן, אוֹהֵב שָׁלוֹם וְרוֹדֵף שָׁלוֹם, אוֹהֵב אֶת הַבְּרִיּוֹת, וּמְקָרְבָן לַתּוֹרָה

Be among the disciples of Aaron—love peace and pursue peace, love people and draw them close to the Torah.

Unlike many people who write on Aaron’s peace-making proclivities, Rebbetzin Smiles does not recite the well-known stories of his shuttle diplomacy between hostile parties in order to encourage them to make peace. She does however allude to it in the course of her bringing an unusual explanation of Hillel’s teaching by Rabbi Tzvi Meyer Zilberberg. She writes:

“One does [not] have to seek out arguments to make peace. Rather, one should love peace and aspire to develop it within himself. One should do his best to avoid conflict with others and look for the goodness in people around him. To be happy for others and not to be jealous of others’ successes. When we develop feelings of love and peace within ourselves it will radiate peace and goodness to others as well”.

The sentiments expressed here cannot be faulted. Avoidance of conflict with others is inherent within at least two mishnayot of Avot that press us to cultivate humility (4:4, 4:12) and another that emphasises the value of self-control (4:1). Likewise, we learn that it is good to share the happiness of others (the Torah specifically points to Aaron as demonstrating this quality) and not to be jealous of them (4:28).  Developing feelings of love and peace within ourselves is also an important part of our personal growth: this is founded on rejoicing at our lot (4:1, 6:6). Nonetheless I have some reservations about this paragraph and whether it represents Hillel’s intentions.

The classical commentators (including Avot deRabbi Natan, Rambam, Bartenura, Me’iri, Rashi, R’ Chaim Volozhiner) send the student straight to Aaron’s role as an intermediary between disputants. Indeed, Rabbenu Yonah adds that it is not enough to love peace in one’s heart: there has to be action too.

Some modern writers do however connect Hillel’s teaching to the quest for inner peace. Thus R’ Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of the Fathers) contrasts the pursuit of inner peace through fulfilling one’s mission in life with the illusory and transitory inner peace that can be achieved through drug abuse and the quest for money. For R’ Reuven P.Bulka (Chapters of the Sages) the pursuit of physical real-world peace is only a preliminary to a greater ideal: Hillel’s mishnah is depicting a progression from peace merely as a societal norm to a fundamentally more meaningful peace based on “a love of humankind and a concern for its development” in order to give life direction and purpose.  I’m sure that Hillel would have little objection to this fine sentiment, but wonder whether he would have recognised his teaching within R’ Bulka’s words.

Ultimately, nothing can alter the fact that, on a simple reading of Hillel’s teaching, his words do not appear to focus on our inner growth, particularly since they finish with an encouragement to draw other people to the Torah. If Hillel had been addressing the need to acquire inner tranquillity and then radiate it out so that it can be felt by others, he could surely have found a clearer way to express himself. Among modern commentators R’ Yaakov Hillel (Eternal Ethics from Sinai) writes of the importance of attracting others to the Torah through demonstrating humility and contentment with one’s lot—but he does so in the context of a description of Hillel’s qualities rather than as an explanation of his teaching in this mishnah.  

I also have trouble with the statement: “When we develop feelings of love and peace within ourselves it will radiate peace and goodness to others as well”. As an ideal, it is wonderful. However, I respectfully doubt that it is an efficacious means of pursuing peace in empirical terms. However much love and peace I feel within myself and radiate to the best of my ability, it has never once created peace between my quarrelling grandchildren and is certainly less effective than distracting them with a promise of an ice cream. And, outside of family life, I can say much the same about my experiences of dispute resolution in a more adult context.

Ultimately, I believe that Hillel was focusing on real-life disputes that demanded a peaceful solution for the sake of the peace of mind of the disputants, not on the inner growth of the peace-seeker—but I’m prepared to be persuaded that I’m wrong.

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Mishnah, motive and mind-games: can you make the right decisions?

At Avot 3:1 Akavya ben Mahalalel delivers one of the sternest, grimmest, most frightening teachings to be found in the whole of the tractate:

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

Reflect upon three things and you will not come to the hands of transgression. Know where you came from, where you are going, and before whom you will give an account of yourself. Where did you come from? A putrid drop. Where are you going? To a place of dust, worms and [other] worms. And before whom will you give an account of yourself? Before the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

The plain meaning of these words is not hard to detect. In case we should feel tempted to give ourselves airs and graces, we should recall that we start our lives as random bits of biological effluent and end them as nutrients for invertebrate nematodes. Notwithstanding our humble beginnings and maggot-ridden end, we will still have to answer, after our deaths, for the things we did when we were still alive.

As with practically all of Pirkei Avot, this teaching—while it cannot be misunderstood—is built up as a springboard for quite different messages. Some see it as a deliberate frightener, a way to encourage sober thought about our existence in this world and our trial in the next. The worms are there to add to the reader’s discomfort. Their teeth are as sharp as needles and the reference to two different types of worm embraces both those who burrow in from outside and those who burrow out from within. But Jewish tradition and modern science have parted company: it is now generally accepted that the body feels neither pain nor pleasure once it is dead, and any vermeologist will tell you that worms do not have teeth.

A more sophisticated explanation, offered by R’ Elimelech of Lizhensk (Noam Elimelech) and R’ Avraham of Slonim, does not turn on worms but creatively addresses the duplication of the three questions. This duplication relates to two types of Jew. One is in awe of the majesty of God and the wondrous World He has created; the other remains in terror of the punishment God may inflict on him if he errs. Both have the potential to sin. If you ask Akavya ben Mahalalel’s three questions to each of these two individuals in turn, they will process them in entirely different ways. How so?

The first type of Jew, whose eyes are fixed on God’s awesome nature and his place within the great order of things, has no need to be told the answers since he already has his own: his soul comes from right under the Throne of Glory of God on high; his body comes from the same earth as Adam. He is heading for the World to Come, a place where all Jews are guaranteed a share and where their souls can bask in the eternal gleam of the Shechinah (God’s presence). There he will stand in judgement before God, who is all-wise and ever-merciful, the true judge who has always loved His creatures and His chosen people.

 The second, whose gaze is firmly fixed on the ground before him in abject terror of transgressing God’s will, has his answers provided for him by the words of this Mishnah.

For R’ Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, this mishnah is designed to help us view ourselves as being on a journey, since all of life is a journey. Just as one traveller might ask another where he has come from and where he is going, so we too should ask ourselves the same questions when working our way through the journey of life.

Stretching even further from the plain meaning of our mishnah we find Gila Ross (Living Beautifully), having offered a conventional explanation, uses it as a basis for more general advice:

These questions can also be asked about an action that you are about to take. Know where you’re coming from and what your motive is; examine that motive. Sometimes it’s easy to say, “I’m doing this for the good”, but really there’s a niggling, deeper motive in there that’s not healthy. Second, where are you going? Where will this action take you? Is it going to take you where you want to go? Or is it going to take you away from your goals? Third, know that you will have to give an account. Don’t think that your action doesn’t have an effect on the people around you; it influences the people with whom you come into contact...

When we ask these three questions about the action that we are about to take, it develops within us a healthy attitude t help us make the right choices.

The treatment of the “giving account” part of the mishnah as addressing our need to look to the consequences of one’s actions in this world is a theme picked up back in the classic commentary of Irving M. Bunim in Ethics from Sinai where he writes:

Consequences may spread out from our action or failure to act; and like ripples spreading from a pebble dropped into a pond, the consequences may accelerate in speed and increase in speed and pressure as they move outward.

However, we already have a mishnah in the second perek (Avot 2:13) in which R’ Shimon ben Netanel urges us to see the consequences of our actions, so why the repetition of this message?

I believe that all the explanations of this mishnah have something to offer contemporary students of Avot, but that not every explanation will meet the needs of every Jew. We cannot pick and choose our own halachot, the laws that bind us, but we can choose the explanation of a middot-driven mishnah that is most compatible with our individual personalities and characteristics.

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Make yourself a Rav?

Not one but two mishnayot in Avot teach the same maxim in the same words. At Avot 1:6 Yehoshua ben Perachyah says עֲשֵׂה לְךָ רַב (aseh lecha rav, literally “Make for yourself a rav” (meaning “a master” or “a teacher”: see note on translation, below), and these words are repeated by Rabban Gamliel at Avot 1:16.

The traditional understanding of these words is that an individual should have a go-to person as a useful source of all or any of the following: advice, objective and balanced criticism, understanding, empathy and inspiration. This understanding was subject to occasional qualifications. For example, even a rabbi needs to make for himself a rav, and the need to do so remains even if the only person available to fulfil this role is his junior or is less knowledgeable. Some explain that rav is a singular noun: with just one teacher a person will not be confused by conflicting messages; for others, one rav is the minimum requirement: the more, the better. There is even an opinion that one can make for oneself a rav by buying appropriate books.

The words aseh lecha rav do not have a reflexive character to them. They instruct one to make someone or something into a rav for oneself, not to make oneself into a rav. Nonetheless, some commentators have seen these words as in invitation or an injunction to do exactly that.

The idea of turning oneself into a rav is popular in some Chasidic circles. R’ Yehudah Leib of Ger explains that one should treat oneself as one’s own rabbi, keeping a watchful eye on what one does so that one doesn’t wander from the derech yesharah (the “right path”). R’ Yisrael the Maggid of Kozhnitz adds that you should do this whenever your yetzer hara seeks to deny you a chance to perform a mitzvah by telling you that you are not worthy of it.

Our Chasidic brethren were not the first to come up with this suggestion. In Midrash Shmuel, the 16^th century scholar Rabbi Shmuel de Uçeda made it too—but with a different slant. For him, making oneself a rabbi comes with the corollary that one should get out and about, travelling from town to town and spreading words of Torah. Even if you don’t find anyone to teach, don’t worry—you can still make yourself a friend to others.

Could it ever have been intended that each of us should make ourselves into a rav? Most people are qualified neither by their learning nor by their temperament to be a rabbi in the sense in which we use the word today. However, it is easier to acquire an active conscience and an acute sense of the difference between right and wrong than it is to master the Talmud and its commentaries—and making oneself a rav in the latter sense can be equated with being able to subject oneself to self-discipline, the classical definition of a gibor, a strong person, according to Ben Zoma at Avot 4:1.

Overall, it’s surprising how many different explanations we find for the apparently clear and unambiguous words aseh lecha rav. But this is a reflection of the ingenuity of the Jewish people in turning the words of their teachers again and again, each time finding something new. Long may we and our sages continue to do so.

Translation note

Is rav better translated as ‘teacher’ or ‘master’, or should it be left untranslated and therefore leaving the mishnayot open to wider interpretation? Here’s what some of the English translators say:

Teacher: R’ Asher Weiss, ArtScroll translations, R’ Lord Jonathan Sacks, Irving M. Bunim, Chanoch Levi, R’ Yaakov Hillel, R’ Moshe Toperoff, Philip Birnbaum, Herbert Danby and the majority of translations.

Master: David N. Barocas (tr. Me’Am Lo’ez), R. Travers Herford (cf ‘maitre’ in David Haddad’s French translation)

Rav: R’ Tal Moshe Zwecker, R’ Yisroel Miller (Gila Ross opts for ‘Rabbi’).

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"I'm gonna make you love me"

An Avot baraita for Shabbat (Parashat Balak)

Continuing our series of erev Shabbat posts on the perek of the week, we return to Perek 6.

Readers of a certain age may recall a soul number popularised in the late 1960s by Diana Ross and the Supremes, together with the Temptations. Its title was also a catchy refrain, “I’m gonna make you love me”. While the precise means by which this objective might be achieved lie somewhere beyond the parameters of discussion on Avot Today, the need to be loved occupies an important position in Pirkei Avot.

The first Baraita in Perek 6 opens with the words

כָּל הָעוֹסֵק בַּתּוֹרָה לִשְׁמָהּ זוֹכֶה לִדְבָרִים הַרְבֵּה, וְלֹא עוֹד, אֶלָּא שֶׁכָּל הָעוֹלָם כֻּלּוֹ כְּדַאי הוּא לוֹ. נִקְרָא רֵֽעַ, אָהוּב,

Whoever studies Torah for its own sake merits many things; not only that, but the entire world is worthwhile for him. He is called “friend”, “beloved”...

Avot 6:6 goes even further, listing being loved as one of the 48 things through which a person acquires Torah.

There’s an obvious problem here. While we can love others—whether they love us back or not—there is no mechanism that can be guaranteed to trigger love for us in someone else’s heart. Love is an emotion; it is not subject to rational analysis. How often do we see the heartbreak of lovely souls whose love for another is not reciprocated. So how do we understand these baraitot?

The simplest answer is to say that “beloved” (in Hebrew, ahuv) means “beloved by God”, but this doesn’t solve any problems. Rabbi Akiva (Avot 3:18) has already established that, even if God were to prefer those of us who study Torah for its own sake, we are all still dear to God because we are created in His image. So it must mean something else.

Rabbis Nachman and Natan of Breslov suggest that ahuv here means “loved by oneself”. Strange as this may seem, there is good reason to adopt this view. We are commanded to love others as we love ourselves—and until we love ourselves properly we cannot demonstrate the right level of love for others. However, this still requires us to explain what connection, if any, exists between self-love and (i) learning Torah for its own sake and (ii) the acquisition of Torah per se. Stretching the word ahuv well beyond its normal meaning, R’ Mordechai Frankel-Te’omim (Be’er HaAvot) suggests that it embraces all types of love that a person has for mitzvot between him and God and other people: someone who lacks this quality is by definition lacking in the degree of interest and commitment one needs in one’s learning in order to make it effective. Ultimately, though, it seems to me that we are left with questions we cannot convincingly answer.

Incidentally, these baraitot in Avot are not the only occasions on which being loved is mysteriously and apparently linked with learning Torah. Twice a day, in the paragraph that immediately precedes the recitation of the Shema, we are required to recite a blessing that is a sort of “love sandwich”: it opens with a declaration that we are loved by God and closes with a declaration that we are loved by God. The “filling” in the sandwich is a prayer that God in His mercy should help us to learn His Torah. This invites us to speculate as to why our desire to learn Torah, with God’s assistance if and when it is available, should come wrapped in His love for us. R’ Chaim Friedlander (Siftei Chaim, Rinat Chaim: Bi’urei Tefillah) offers a possible explanation: the greatest act of love that God has shown to us is His gift to us of the Torah: we should seek to reciprocate this demonstration of love by loving Him in return, as the first paragraph of the Shema requires of us.

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The Topper Rov: a missing page in Jewish history

No, there is no Topper Rov. This title was however an affectionate appellation and a play on words based on phonetic similarity with the surname Toperoff.

Rabbis come and rabbis go. Some make a name that resounds through the ages, while others are little noticed and soon forgotten. I doubt that many readers of this post will have heard of Rabbi Shlomo Pesach Toperoff, but I hope that they will not object if I write a few words about him.

R’ Toperoff was a pulpit rabbi in North East England. While Gateshead is famously known as a leading contemporary powerhouse of Torah scholarship, numerous other communities existed during the past century. These included Sunderland, where R’ Toperoff served as the minister of the Ryhope Road shul from 1934 to 1951, and Newcastle upon Tyne, where he held various positions before he made Aliyah in 1973.  A son-in-law of the saintly scholar Rabbi Tzvi Ferber (author of Higionei Avot), he wrote in his retirement an English-language commentary on Avot which he entitled Lev Avot: A comprehensive commentary on the Ethics of the Fathers.

In the Foreword to Lev Avot, the then Chief Rabbi Sir Immanuel Jakobovits welcomed it with the comment that “The literary output of Anglo-Jewish Rabbis is none too prolific” [this book was published in 1984, six years before Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was to rectify this situation virtually single-handed with the first of his remarkably popular series of books and writings].  

The style of the book may strike the modern reader as being often somewhat stilted, formal and non-colloquial, as if to echo the solemnity of the Soncino Chumash and the Authorised Prayer Book that were popular in the United Kingdom in the pre-ArtScroll era. Given its slightly archaic flavour, I was surprised to discover that it was reprinted in the United States as late as 1997 under the same title but with the word Lev omitted. I do not know whether anyone apart from me has ever read it; nor have I ever seen any mention made of it in either popular or scholarly writings. If any reader has information to the contrary, I am eager to receive it.

Lev Avot is a strange book. Explaining each mishnah and baraita, R’ Toperoff draws on sources as varied as the Babylonian Talmud, the works of the Me’iri, the Rashba, Rabbenu Yonah, Rav Kook and occasionally Graetz, as well as numerous authors unknown to me, who are referenced solely by their surnames (Lev Avot lacks both footnotes and a bibliography). In each instance the commentary is rounded off with text described as ‘Hasidic Lore’. This feature is quite perplexing, since it is often difficult or even impossible to relate the relevant Chasidic tale to the mishnah or baraita in question. My feeling is that the book would have read better and been far more useful to its readership if the ‘Hasidic Lore’ component was either enlarged and made more relevant to Avot or simply omitted.

The commentary section is interesting as an historical perspective on Jewish life in post-War Britain. The author deprecates the downward trend in public morality and the decline in quality of Jewish education in the absence of Jewish schools. He also offers some highly personal and occasionally original insights into the mishnayot and baraitot of Avot which I hope to mention in future posts.

By the way, when I found my copy of Lev Avot in a small store dedicated to the sale of second-hand and unwanted books and articles to raise money for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, it was in perfect condition—but for the fact that someone had brutally ripped out from it a leaf upon which were printed pages 27 and 28. I should love to know what this gentle and mildly-spoken rabbi might have written that would have attracted the ire of the book’s original owner. Once again, if any reader can enlighten me, I shall be most grateful.

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

Above: R' Toperoff (middle row, third from the left) is easily identifiable by his clerical collar.

Whether anyone has ever read Lev Avot or not, R’ Toperoff deserves an honourable mention for something he did not write for publication but which was avidly consumed by those who laid their hands on it. From 1942 to 1946 he took it upon himself to write a monthly news-and-views bulletin that was sent to every one of the young Jewish men and women from Sunderland who were called up for military service. The entire sequence of bulletins has since been published as a 300-page book, Sunderland Jewry at War. The bulletins contain a good deal of material generated by third parties too: extracts from letters from those on active service, quizzes and even reports on local football teams and sporting events. Together they constitute a remarkable and moving compendium of information about Jewish life during World War 2: they are at the same time poignant, tragic, funny, courageous and immensely moving.

Like rabbis, commentaries on Pirkei Avot come and go. Some are remembered, others sink without trace. But if R’ Toperoff is to be remembered for only one thing in his life, it should be for this.

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Me, judgemental? No way!

The principle that we should judge others favourably is enshrined in one of the most cited mishnayot in Avot, where Yehoshua ben Perachyah teaches:

הֱוֵי דָן אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם לְכַף זְכוּת

Judge every man on the scale of merit (Avot 1:6).

This maxim gets bandied about so often that we can easily be blinded to it by that most troublesome of ailments, Mishnah Fatigue. This post urges us to refresh our view of it and to recalibrate our responses in two common situations that require our judgement.

First, a preliminary point. While much of the first chapter of Avot appears to be addressed specifically to judges, lawyers and the legal process, from the earliest commentators onwards this maxim has been taken to refer to the judgements we all make in our daily lives. Jewish judicial proceedings are mainly concerned with matters of evidence and proof, not with the moral standing of the litigants. However, we cannot avoid making moral judgements if we are to live our lives in accordance with the standards laid out in Avot. Thus when Nittai Ha’Arbeli (1:7) advises us to distance ourselves from a bad neighbour and to refrain from teaming up with a wicked person, it is assumed that we must take a plainly judgemental view as to who such people are if we are to act upon this guidance.

The two following scenarios indicate typical situations in which we may find ourselves, where we indulge in judgement without perhaps even realising that we are doing do. 

1.        Why isn’t s/he married, then?

Marriage—and nowadays many a permanent partnership that may not technically qualify as marriage—forms an important part of Jewish life. Throughout the ages it has been a popular activity within all sectors of Jewish society to help friends and acquaintances find an ideal match. Once upon a time this activity, though open to all, was largely the prerogative of the shadchan or shadchanit, the matchmaker. In recent times this activity, like so many others, is assisted by computer dating services.

At any given time, there are a good many Jews who are single. They may only just have reached a stage in their lives in which they are old and/or mature enough to marry. They may have yet to meet a person to whom they are confident to commit the rest of their lives. They may be widowed or divorced. They may be driven by career considerations that are so fulfilling that cannot look beyond them. Tragically, they may through no fault of their own be mamzerim.  And there are other reasons too.

When Yehoshua ben Perachyah teaches us to judge others favourably, this warning extends into the habits of thought that we can easily slip into when it comes to matchmaking. If a person has reached a relatively advanced stage in life without finding a partner, there is a temptation to think “why hasn’t s/he married? There must be something wrong with that person”, or “why is s/he so picky, rejecting so many eligible partners? What’s that person’s problem?”  This is a realm in which we should resist the tendency to form opinions when we don’t know what lies inside the hearts and minds of our fellow humans. 

2.        Would you give this man a donation?

The giving of tzedakah, charitable donations—like marriage—is an ancient and hallowed institution of Jewish life. Solicitations come in many forms: glossy brochures that vaunt the credentials of large institutional charities, mass online appeals and, at the bottom end of the market, individuals who go door-to-door or visit synagogues on weekday mornings. The credentials of major charitable institutions and foundations are easy to establish: accounts are prepared, audited and submitted for examination. But what of the individual who collects in person? How do we know who is a genuine charitable cause—and who is not?

Earlier this month the synagogue at which I was praying was visited one morning by a man who sought funds for major surgery for one of his children. At the end of the prayer service he made a speech in which he explained that this surgery could only be performed in the United States and at great expense; that the need to raise funds meant that he had to leave his job in order to do so; and that he could not support his family. The man’s speech was polished and had clearly been given on many occasions. It was supported by a well-presented flyer that reiterated his needs and gave details for the giving of donations, though it appeared to me that these details had been prepared separately and then scanned on to the document.  The man himself was smartly dressed and evidently well fed. He carried with him a portable credit card reader.

My first thought was that I should not trust this appeal; that the man was a professional and highly skilled beggar who was clearly successful at his job. But then I found myself wondering whether Yehoshua ben Perachyah’s teaching would let me reach that conclusion. After all, the need for surgery for the man’s daughter might be perfectly genuine and it might have been his desperation that led him to present his petition in a form that certainly troubled me (it did not seem to worry most of my fellows in the synagogue, who did not hesitate to donate). In the end, I too made a donation—a modest one, I admit—and made a mental note to myself that any reward for the performance of this mitzvah should go to Yehoshua ben Perachyah rather than to me.

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

There are many other instances in which it is easy to slip into judgemental mode and to judge others harshly in one’s professional life and at home. School teachers, medical practitioners, sales assistants—no-one is totally immune. But if we do make critical or damning judgements of others, we should at least be aware that we are doing so and ask ourselves if we are justified in what we decide.

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When morality precedes the law

The very first comment the Bartenura makes at Avot 1:1 is that this tractate differs from all the others in that, while they are all founded on mitzvot contained in the Torah, Avot is based on mussar and middot (moral chastisement and principles of good behaviour). The first mishnah in Avot comes to tell us that, while other nations may have the same rules of good conduct, theirs are based on human reasoning while that of Avot was given at Sinai along with the Torah.

But were the principles of Jewish middot and mussar given together with the Torah at Sinai? To put it another way, we can ask which comes first—Torah or the basics of good behaviour?

There is a midrashic teaching that the Torah existed even before the world was created and that it was used as its blueprint. The notion that Torah comes first is buttressed by a verse from Proverbs,

יְהוָה קָנָנִי רֵאשִׁית דַּרְכּוֹ קֶדֶם מִפְעָלָיו מֵאָז

God made me [i.e. Torah] as the beginning of His way, the first of His works of old (Mishlei 8:22),

which is even quoted in a baraita near the end of Avot (at 6:10), but in another context.

The position is different in the context of human conduct. There, middot—the acquisition of good personal qualities and characteristics—arguably precede Torah.

There are several sources for this surprising proposition. In Psalm 94 we read:

אַשְׁרֵי הַגֶּבֶר אֲשֶׁר תְּיַסְּרֶנּוּ יָּהּ וּמִתּוֹרָתְךָ תְלַמְּדֶנּוּ

Happy is the man to whom You inflict mussar, God, and teaches him from Your Torah (Tehillim 94:12).

The mention of mussar—the instruction that leads to the improvement of a person’s middot—comes first, bearing the implication that one must first master oneself before seeking to master the Torah.

 In the Talmud (Berachot 5b) we find Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai listing Torah as one of three things that can only be acquired through prior suffering. The Maharal in the introduction to his Derech Chaim appears to equate this suffering with mussar.

Further, the kabbalist Rabbi Chaim Vital (Sha’arei Kedushah, chelek 1, sha’ar 2) maintains that the Torah is only given to a person once there has been a tikkun hamiddot (‘repair of middot’) since, in its absence, the Torah cannot dwell in him. The Maharal, along similar lines, analogises mussar as the keli (“vessel”) in which a person’s Torah learning may be held. Also, citing a midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 9) that derech eretz (good interpersonal skills) preceded the giving of the Torah by 26 generations, he appears to liken it to the soil in which the roots of the tree of Torah grow deep so that the tree cannot be budged from where it stands.

When God created the world, in His wisdom, and for whatever reason He chose, he did not give the Torah to any of the 20 generations that preceded the Flood. Nor was there a Sinaitic revelation before such outstanding characters in Jewish history as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or Joseph (the midrashic tradition that the Patriarchs kept the Torah raises many difficult questions for those who take it literally, and it is easier to learn from it that they were so sensitive to God’s will that they intuited what God wanted of them and acted accordingly).

Now here’s the big question. So (i) God waited 26 generations before giving the Torah at Sinai, (ii) derech eretz comes before the Torah and (iii) mastery of middot and mussar is a prerequisite for learning Torah. Can we conclude from these propositions that, if the generations before Moses had recognised and acknowledged God for what we understand Him to be, and if they had perfected their behaviour towards one another and the development of their character traits, God would not have needed to give the Torah at all?

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The third worm

An Avot mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Chukkat)

Continuing our series of erev Shabbat posts on the perek of the week, we return to Perek 5.

There are three worms in Pirkei Avot. Two—the rimah (at 3:1 and 4:4) and the tole’ah (3:1—are what one might call conventional worms. But the third, which we meet in this week’s perek is anything but ordinary: it is the miraculous shamir. At Avot 5:8 we learn of 10 things that, the Tannaim agreed, were created at the very end of the sixth Day of Creation, just before all creative work ceased for Shabbat. They are:

פִּי הָאָֽרֶץ, פִּי הַבְּאֵר, פִּי הָאָתוֹן, הַקֶּֽשֶׁת, וְהַמָּן, וְהַמַּטֶּה, וְהַשָּׁמִיר, הַכְּתָב, וְהַמִּכְתָּב, וְהַלֻּחוֹת

The mouth of the earth [that swallowed Korach]; the mouth of [Miriam's] well; the mouth of [Balaam's] donkey; the rainbow; the manna; [Moses'] staff; the shamir; writing, the inscription and the tablets [of the Ten Commandments].

The shamir, which may possibly not have been a worm, was a tiny creature that, in our tradition, was vested by God with the power to cut the huge stones that were used in the construction of Solomon’s Temple.  For two millennia the notion that a tiny worm might cut into solid rock was regarded by many as a laughable fantasy, but the discovery in 2019 of the bivalve shipworm lithoredo abatanica changed all that. This small, unprepossessing creature burrows into limestone and excretes it, creating an as-yet unsolved puzzle as to how it derives its nutrients.

The corpus of the Mishnah deals with law and (in the case of Avot) best principles of behaviour and conduct.  It is not a treatise on natural history. So what is this shamir doing in Avot? What can we learn from it today?

For the father-and-son team of Rabbis Baruch and Amos Shulem (Avot Uvanim) the creation of the shamir resonates an earlier mishnah (Avot 2:13). There Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel recommends that we take steps to foresee possible problems ahead. When God created humans he gave Adam and Eve free will. Had they opted to obey His instruction not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, the human race would have lived happily ever in a sin-free world. The Temple, with its mechanism for atonement, would not have been needed and creation of the shamir would not have been called for. From this we learn that even God, in creating the world and everything in it, took the precaution of engaging in an act of creation that was purely conditional. We too should guard against events and misfortunes that may not ultimately occur.

The Ben Ish Chai (Birkat Avot) offers another answer. The ‘stone’ the shamir burrows into is the yetzer hara, the inclination to take an evil course of action.  But no matter how hard the stone is, the shamir represents the potential of even flesh-and-blood creatures such as ourselves to break it into pieces. This is learned by a kal vechomer: if even a small, weak worm can achieve this effect, how much more should we, bigger and possessed of greater strength and will-power, be able to do the same.

Though he does not mention it here, the Ben Ish Chai has support in the Gemara for use of the word ‘stone’ to refer to the yetzer hara: at Sukkah 52a, citing a verse from Ezekiel, ‘stone’ is deemed to be one of seven metaphors by which the yetzer hara is identified in Tanach. The vulnerability of stone to a slow but unremitting attack from a substance less strong than itself is also acknowledged by Rabbi Akiva’s resolution that, if the constant drip of water can wear away a rock, so too, through persistent study, might the words of Torah eventually penetrate even his then-unlearned mind (Avot deRabbi Natan 6:2, citing Job 14:19).

But there is more to the success of the shamir, and by implication to our own success, than this story suggests. Our achievements are not just credited to ourselves. There is a further ingredient—a vital ingredient without which there can be no success. As R’ Mordechai Dov Halberstam (Knesset Yisrael) comments, our efforts depend on the will of God too. We recognise this on Chanukah, when we give thanks for the victory of the Hasmoneans over the Greeks, the triumph of the weak over the strong.

 If you enjoyed this post or found it useful, please feel welcome to share it with others. Thank you. 

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More to say about saying less

Our previous post discussed Shammai’s advice that we should say a little but do a lot (Avot 1:15), an aphorism that parallels the popular proverb “actions speak louder than words”. This advice is not the only thing that Avot has to say on the topic. Later in the same chapter, at 1:17, Rabban Shimon the son of Rabban Gamliel teaches:

כָּל יָמַי גָּדַֽלְתִּי בֵּין הַחֲכָמִים, וְלֹא מָצָֽאתִי לְגוּף טוֹב מִשְּׁתִיקָה, וְלֹא הַמִּדְרָשׁ עִקָּר אֶלָּא הַמַּעֲשֶׂה, וְכָל הַמַּרְבֶּה דְבָרִים מֵבִיא חֵטְא

All my life I have been raised among the wise, and I have found nothing better for the body than silence. The essential thing is not study, but deed. And one who speaks excessively brings sin.

At first glance, this mishnah seems to echo the sentiment expressed by Shammai—but it does more than that. It praises both silence and action, and it cites excessive speech as a cause of sin.

This post takes a look at the final part of this teaching, that “one who speaks excessively brings sin”.

A preliminary point is that it is natural to assume that “speaking excessively” means “speaking excessively in relation to one’s deeds”—but that is not what the words say. At least in theory a person can speak too much but still demonstrate a great deal of activity. Does the performance of many good deeds justify, or even permit, an excess of verbiage? So far as I’m aware, this question remains unanswered. I invite readers to let me know if this is discussed anywhere.

Moving on to the third part of our mishnah, R’ Chaim Druckman cites an explanation by R’ Moshe Almosnino, presumably drawn from his Pirkei Moshe. This explanation ties the notion of excessive speak causing sin directly to Shammai’s instruction to say little but do a lot. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel relates both to the role of the teacher since it is teacher who should rein in his or her words or face the consequences.

The situation R’ Moshe Almosnino contemplates is where the teacher preaches lofty ideals and principles but can be seen to neglect them in his or her own personal life. It is here that we learn that the instruction to “don’t do what I do, do what I say” is a recipe for disaster. Particularly in fields such as mussar and fear of God, the teacher must be seen to walk the walk and talk the talk if credibility is to be maintained. If you teach fine morals during the day but go clubbing with your debauched and drunken friends at night, you will not only destroy your own good name and reputation. You will also, through your egregious hypocrisy, effectively invalidate everything you have taught your students up till now.

Outside the world of kodesh, I can think of a couple of examples. One concerns a school teacher who patiently explains to the children in his class all about the dangers of cigarette smoking, but is later spotted with a cigarette in his mouth while he was parking his car in the school playground. The second involves a driving instructor who, while clearly a capable driver, persists in driving in an unacceptable manner, saying: ”I can do this because I’ve passed my test. You can’t, because you’ll fail your test if you do”,

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Don't just say less -- say "less"!

This is the first of two posts on the principle that it is better to be sparing with one's words.

From the teachings that have been passed down to us, we see that the rabbis of the mishnah tend to express themselves very much more succinctly than their successors. This is a natural consequence of their shaping a body of law and lore—the Torah sheb’al peh (the Oral Torah)—that was designed to be learned by heart and passed down the generations via the close and intensive relationship of rabbi to talmid. The more words used, the more that had to be memorised and understood and, the greater number of words used in transmitting a teaching, the greater the risk of error.

The need to express oneself with economy is encapsulated in two mishnayot in the first chapter of Avot. One focuses simply on the quantity of words, when Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel states that whoever increases words increases sin (Avot 1:17). The other contrasts words with deeds, when Shammai (Avot 1:15) teaches:

אֱמוֹר מְעַט וַעֲשֵׂה הַרְבֵּה

“Say little—but do much”.

This aphorism is so brief that it can be explained in many ways and need not be confined to the context of learning Torah. A classic example of this is the biblical account of Abraham’s welcome for the three travellers (Bereshit ch.18), where he offers them bread and water but then delivers them a positive banquet. The opposite, saying much but doing little, is a phenomenon with which many of us are uncomfortably aware. Many examples may be found in a category of verbiage known as politicians’ promises.

A quite original explanation of אֱמוֹר מְעַט וַעֲשֵׂה הַרְבֵּה is offered by R’ Chaim Volozhiner in his Ru’ach Chaim and echoed by his son R’ Yitzchak Volozhiner’s Milei deAvot. For them the background to Shammai’s teaching has a somewhat introspective flavour to it. Picture a person who is engaged—as we should all be, if we are honest with ourselves—in a programme of self-improvement. He or she is setting out to learn more Torah, cope better with the demands of prayer and increase both the quantity and the quality of one’s conduct towards others.

For such a person, the big question is not what to do. The Torah already tells us that. Instead, we want to know how to evaluate our performance. Have we learned enough already? Do we need to do even more mitzvot, or perform the same ones again at a higher level?

While God watches and records our every effort (Avot 2:1), He does not provide a running feedback service. We might feel that, because we are performing at a higher level than we did before, we can pat ourselves on the back—but is this permitted? No, says Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai in the context of Torah learning: if you increase your learning, you are only doing what you were created for in the first place (Avot 2:9).  

Shammai, in our mishnah, reinforces the same message. According to R’ Chaim’s reading, one should say of one’s performance only the one word: “מְעַט”.  In other words, we must recognise that however well we do and however much we have accomplished, it is only small fry when we compare it with the deeds that still remain to be completed.

By saying of our own achievements “מְעַט”, we remind ourselves of our own limitations and, ideally, this will assist us to view our efforts not with pride but with humility. Once we have recognised this, we should be inspired and incentivised to push ourselves to the next level.

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Keeping faith -- or merely defining it?

The word אֱמוּנָה (emunah, usually translated as “faith” or “belief”) occupies a major place in theology and an honoured one in halachah, where the BaHag (Baal Halachot Gedolot), according to the Ramban, places emunat Hashem, faith in God, above and prior to the 613 commandments listed in the Torah. However, it doesn’t get much space in Pirkei Avot.

Is this really so? The evidence suggests that this is correct. It’s not one of the three things on which the world stands (Avot 1:2) or one of the three things that keeps it going (Avot 1:18). We are not told to have it, cultivate it, strengthen it or even use it.  Indeed, its only mention in the entire tractate is pretty marginal: in the baraitot that constitute the sixth and final perek, where there is a list of 48 things through which Torah is acquired (Avot 6:6), emunat chachamim (“faith in the sages”) is squeezed in between “having a good heart” and “accepting suffering”. Avot also tells us that God can be ne’eman (“trusted”) to reward us for serving Him (2:19, 2:21) and that anyone who learns Torah for its own sake will be ne’eman (here meaning “faithful”).

There’s actually a lot of fuddle and muddle as to what emunah means and as to how it differs from bitachon, also sometimes rendered “belief” but also “trust” and, in modern Hebrew, “security”. While Jewish thinkers and scholars do not always apply these words consistently, I think that there is a rule of thumb that can help us here. Both emunah and bitachon deal with a state of mind in which an individual accepts a proposition or fact as being true without being able to prove that it is so, emunah and its derivatives (e.g. ma’amin, a believer) tends to refer more frequently to belief in something relating to the past—for example God’s role in creating the world, or the occurrence of miraculous events such as the splitting of the Reed Sea—while bitachon tends to refer to a belief that relates to a future event or state of affairs. There are however many exceptions, where emunah relates to the future.

In ‘Marriage’, a short piece penned by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks for The Times newspaper in 2000, R’ Sacks has this to say:

“We have paid a heavy price for misunderstanding one of the key words of the Hebrew bible, emunah, usually translated as ‘faith’. … [W]e have for centuries thought of faith as a kind of knowledge: intuitive, visionary, perhaps, but cognitive. On this view, to have faith is to know, or believe, certain facts about the world. That is not the Jewish view at all”.

This view, however erroneous it might be, seems to have gained the support of Rambam, who in his Sefer HaMitzvot lists knowledge of God as the first of the 613 mitzvot, occupying the place we might have expected to be filled by ‘belief in God’. R’ Sacks continues, and this is where things get interesting:

“Emunah is all about relationship. It is that bond by which two persons, each respecting the freedom and integrity of the other, pledge themselves by an oath of loyalty to stay together, to do what neither can do alone. It means, not ‘faith’ but ‘faithfulness’, the commitment to be there for one another, especially in hard times. In human terms, the best example is marriage. In religious terms, it is what we call a covenant, of which the classic instance is the pledge between God and an ancient people, Israel, on Mount Sinai thirty-three centuries ago”.

R' Sacks’ comments about human relationships work well for the example of marriage—but it is hard to fit within his explanation the sort of relationship that is described as emunat chachamim. This is because, while marriage is a two-way relationship, our belief, our trust, our confidence in our sages cannot enjoy the same degree of reciprocity. A rabbi must be independent, free from the pressures and obligations of those whose she’elot he answers, if he is to be free from any suspicion of being influenced by them. We, the flock, must follow our shepherds. And where they lead us should be determined by their following the great guide book that is the Torah and its literature, rather than by our telling them where it is that we must go. If that is not the case, we have dispensed with the need for chachamim and there would be no further need to believe in them.

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Just get out of my hair!

An Avot mishnah for Shabbat: Perek 4 (parashat Korach)

At Avot 4:23 Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar teaches four things about respecting the personal space that others need at certain times:

אַל תְּרַצֶּה אֶת חֲבֵרֶֽךָ בְּשַֽׁעַת כַּעֲסוֹ, וְאַל תְּנַחֲמֵֽהוּ בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁמֵּתוֹ מֻטָּל לְפָנָיו, וְאַל תִּשְׁאַל לוֹ בְּשַֽׁעַת נִדְרוֹ, וְאַל תִּשְׁתַּדֵּל לִרְאוֹתוֹ בְּשַֽׁעַת קַלְקָלָתוֹ

Do not [try to] calm your friend down at the height of his anger; don’t [seek to] comfort him while his dead still lies before him; don’t question him about his vow the moment he makes it; and don’t endeavour to see him at the time of his degradation.

There’s much to be said about this mishnah but this post looks only at the last bit (in bold text).

When someone has been caught something wrong or has just suffered a major setback—desertion by one’s life partner, for example—they may crave a bit of quiet time and solitude in which to think seriously about what has happened, to decide how to react and what to do next. The last thing they want is the intrusive company of others offering advice or unwanted comments. This can apply even to well-meaning companions who sit there, empathising with them and waiting for a distressed friend to open his or her heart and tell them all about it. In a modern context the intrusion may be inflicted by journalists and paparazzi who sense a juicy news story in another’s misfortune.

In our crowded and joined-up world, no one can disappear forever. Eventually even the most ashamed and embarrassed people will have to rejoin human society one way or another. When that happens, we find another mishnah in Avot waiting in the wings. According to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya (Avot 2:13) the “good path” a person should take in their life is to be a good friend. When does one act the good friend? Answer: not before a person is ready to receive that friendship.

Like much of Pirkei Avot, in this mishnah there are no cast-iron rules as to how its guidance is to be applied. A proper approach to putting Avot into practice demands that we first assess every situation in its context, in the light of common sense—a commodity that we struggle to acquire in a rapidly-changing world where yesterday’s norms are tomorrow’s no-nos.

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The kindness you give, the kindness you crave

At Avot 2:1 Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi opens with a piece of advice that accurately reflects the impossibility of defining in real terms what it means to do the right thing:

אֵיזוֹ הִיא דֶֽרֶךְ יְשָׁרָה שֶׁיָּבוֹר לוֹ הָאָדָם, כָּל שֶׁהִיא תִּפְאֶֽרֶת לְעֹשֶֽׂיהָ וְתִפְאֶֽרֶת לוֹ מִן הָאָדָם

Which is the derech yasharah, the right path that one should choose for oneself? Any that is considered praiseworthy by the person who acts upon it and also gains him the praise of others.

For those who like to know where they stand, who enjoy the binary features of halachah (“Is it permitted or forbidden?”, “Is it pure or impure?”) and who appreciate the formal, predictable structure of prayer and Temple services, the pursuit of the right path in Avot epitomises the vague, amorphous nature of middot. Not everyone is comfortable with the thought that getting things right in one’s real life is so often a question of “it all depends”.

Here’s an example drawn from real life of the uncertainty of best behavioural practice, one that highlights the need to get things right.

Let me introduce you to two fine Jewish women. We shall call them Wendy and Mabel. Both care deeply for their fellow humans and are actively involved in providing help and support for those who are ill or recovering from illness. But their perspectives on this noble task are quite different.

Wendy is a firm advocate of ‘tough love’. She believes that, even if a person is unwell or in recovery, they should be expected to do as much as possible to help themselves, particularly in terms of feeding, washing and dressing themselves. In her view, this enables the people for whom she cares to retain their human dignity. She respects their autonomy and treats them as adults, only substituting her own effort for theirs when she sees that they are in difficulty. This approach, she feels, also speeds their recovery and makes it easier for them to regain their position in the world once they are fully functional.

Mabel takes the opposite view. For her, anyone who is ill or recovering needs to be removed as far as possible from having to look after themselves. They both need and deserve to be wrapped in cotton wool. The important thing is to get them better as quickly as possible by maximising the support they need when they are at their most needy. If this means pampering them and insulating them from responsibility for their own maintenance and well-being, so be it.

Which approach is the right one, the derech yasharah?  A serious student of best Jewish conduct might well ask this question. But anyone who does so will be demonstrating a failure to understand the difference between halachah and middot.

The truth is that both approaches are potentially correct, but the facts of each situation will determine which one should be adopted.  Some patients resent being nannied while others need and even crave it.  The same applies to non-patients too, in many social scenarios. For example, some women appreciate and enjoy a spot of old-fashioned courtesy when a man holds a door open for them, while others regard it as behaviour that is sexist, patronising and insulting.   

Whether one or other approach is the right one is decided by the recipient of the care. For some, Wendy will be harsh and inconvenient, while others will feel that Mabel is suffocating them with kindness. It can also be the case that a person is a Mabel-style maximalist when giving help and support to another, but a Wendy-type when it comes to receiving it.

Ultimately, before performing any putatively good act on or on behalf of another person, it pays to know one’s ‘victim’.

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