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.
