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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