Four ways to tackle a mishnah

Gila Fine (The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic, Maggid, published earlier this year) describes four ways in which we can respond to a Talmudic text. It seems to me that what she writes is equally valid with regard to any Mishnaic text that relates to middot (guidance on best behavioural practice) and therefore especially to Pirkei Avot.

When faced with a mishnah that appears inimical to our views or hostile to our values, the application of Gila Fine’s analytical framework gives us a choice of four options:

Rejection: the distance between the mishnah’s teaching and the reader is so great that it ceases to be a source of religious authority for the reader, who simply walks away.

Accommodation: the reader is so determined to relate to the mishnah that he or she will accept its values in their totality, sacrificing one’s own personal opinions and identity in the process.

Subjection: the reader is enabled to relate to the mishnah as a result of interpreting or misinterpreting it in a way that is compatible with personal values and contemporary thought. In this way, “the text loses its integrity so that the readers may maintain theirs”.

Negotiation: the reader retains his or her opinions but does not discard those expressed in the mishnah. We must accept ourselves for what we are—but must also accept our ancient teachings for what they are too. Having done so, we must engage in dialogue with the text and negotiate a living and meaningful relationship.

Prima facie, this fourfold categorisation of approaches to the teachings of the Tannaim and Amoraim should be extremely helpful. It ideally enables us to understand more fully the positions of commentators on Pirkei Avot. When we read any of the commentaries, and particularly those written in English since the end of the Second World War, we should soon be able recognise the writer’s attitude towards not just mishnayot but on social, political and religious matters too. The only problems, it seems to me, lie in the fact that so many commentators hedge their bets, as it were, either by offering explanations from more than one viewpoint or by appearing to take a position that does not clearly belong to a single category. Of the four, rejection and accommodation are easy to identify, but subjection and negotiation may appear to blend into each other and subjection may arguably be the fruit of negotiation.

Here's a practical exercise that you can apply to yourselves.

I have listed three teachings from Avot below and invite you to monitor your own reaction to them. Ask yourselves in all honesty how you treat them. Do you (i) reject them entirely, (ii) buy into them unquestioningly, (iii) recast the text in a way that you feel comfortable with or (iv) accept your discomfort with the text but try to accommodate yourself to it?

As alternative, you can check these teachings out in your favourite commentary and categorise the author’s comments. Do they reflect the same approach throughout or is the author’s technique eclectic?

Example 1: Most regular Avot readers have such strong opinions about the third part of Yose ben Yochanan Ish Yerushalayim’s teaching at Avot 1:5 (the notorious bit about not speaking too much with married women) that I’ve decided to pass it over in favour of the less heavily debated first and second parts of it:

יְהִי בֵיתְךָ פָּתֽוּחַ לִרְוָחָה, וְיִהְיוּ עֲנִיִּים בְּנֵי בֵיתְךָ

Let your home be wide open, and let the poor be members of your household. 

How do you respond? Reject? Submit? Accommodate? Negotiate?

Example 2: At Avot 3:17 Rabbi Akiva opens his mishnah with the following:

שְׂחוֹק וְקַלּוּת רֹאשׁ, מַרְגִּילִין אֶת הָאָדָם לְעֶרְוָה

Jesting and frivolity accustom a person to sexual promiscuity.

This is expressed as a statement of fact rather than as an injunction, which gives much scope for all four of the approaches Gila Fine outlines.

Example 3: At Avot 4:11 Rabbi Yonatan says:

כָּל הַמְקַיֵּם אֶת הַתּוֹרָה מֵעֹֽנִי, סוֹפוֹ לְקַיְּמָהּ מֵעֹֽשֶׁר, וְכָל הַמְבַטֵּל אֶת הַתּוֹרָה מֵעֹֽשֶׁר, סוֹפוֹ לְבַטְּלָהּ מֵעֹֽנִי

Whoever fulfils the Torah in poverty will ultimately fulfil it in wealth; and whoever neglects the Torah in wealth will ultimately neglect it in poverty.

Like Example 2, this is also a statement. But is it a statement of fact or a statement of probability? Does it require compliance? What is it doing here?

I accept that Gila Fine’s fourfold categorisation was not designed for the purpose of this exercise, but I do hope that it can help us achieve a greater and deeper understanding—not of the mishnayot of Avot but of our own responses to these ancient teachings.

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What does it mean to take care?

An Avot Mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Ki Teitze)

This week’s pre-Shabbat post returns to Perek 2.

There is no piece of advice that is given—or ignored—more frequently than the injunction: “Take care!”   From our earliest days as children, we hear these words from our parents and elders. When we grow up, the refrain is taken up by our partners and peers, and when we grow old we receive them from our children. It doesn’t matter what we are doing: going out in the rain, playing in the park, climbing a ladder, lifting a suitcase or descending the stairs. We are always told: “Be careful! Take care!” The most annoying thing about this instruction is that it usually comes without the information we really need to know about what care needs to be taken and how we should take it.

Given the prevalence of this unwanted advice, it is almost a disappointment to read Avot 2:18, where Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel teaches three lessons. The first two of them are clearly connected, since both address prayer, and they are at first sight no more than the usual caution to take care:

הֱוֵי זָהִיר בִּקְרִיאַת שְׁמַע וּבִתְפִלָּה. וּכְשֶׁאַתָּה מִתְפַּלֵּל, אַל תַּֽעַשׂ תְּפִלָּתְךָ קְבַע, אֶלָּא רַחֲמִים וְתַחֲנוּנִים לִפְנֵי הַמָּקוֹם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: כִּי חַנּוּן וְרַחוּם הוּא, אֶֽרֶךְ אַפַּֽיִם וְרַב חֶֽסֶד, וְנִחָם עַל הָרָעָה

Be zahir (careful) in reciting the Shema and in tefillah (prayer). When you do pray, do not make your prayers routine, but [pleas for] mercy and supplication before the Almighty, as it says: “For He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in lovingkindness, and He has a gentle touch with the bad…”

Why does Rabbi Shimon take the trouble to tell us to be careful when we say Shema and when we pray? Is it not obvious that we should do so? And why should we take the trouble to study and internalise this message? If we are seriously committed to our religious practice, aren’t we doing it anyway? And, if we are not, this advice is hardly going to change us.

Rabbenu Yonah, the Bartenura and the commentary ascribed to Rashi explain that this mishnah addresses the need to say Shema at the right time. But since this is in any event a matter of halachah, Jewish law, we might wonder why it might be necessary to add a Mishnaic warning to take care. Perhaps sensing this, the Me’iri posits that the reason for taking care in reciting Shema and prayer is that it enhances one’s recognition of one’s Creator and one’s ability to become close to Him. The Chida (Ahavah beTa’anugim) sees it as being literally a wake-up call, since Shema and tefillah are the first two big events we have to deal with after we have dragged ourselves sluggishly out of bed. Another possibililty is that this mishnah is a corrective, since a person might be tempted to cut corners in saying Shema and tefillah in order to leave more time to learn Torah (R’ Chaim Pelagi, Einei Kol Chai; R’ Dovid Pardo, Shoshanim LeDavid).

The Shema and prayer aren’t by any means the only things our Sages tell us to take care over. For example, in the fourth perek Rabbi Yehudah tells us (Avot 4:16) to be zahir in our learning. There’s also another we find for being careful: in Avot 1:1 the Men of the Great Assembly warn us to be matunim badin (painstakingly careful in judgement). Again, I would have assumed that it was a no-brainer that judges should take care in deciding the cases before them, so why should there be any need for a warning?

I sometimes wonder if there isn’t some connection between these two mishnayot. Judges are told to be matunim, while people reciting Shema or praying are told to be zahir. Why aren’t judges told to be zehirim and why aren’t we supposed to be matunim?

With judges there is an extra element of taking care. This ideally involves hearing and discussing a case and then taking a break, sleeping on one’s reason for reaching a conclusion and then reassessing it afresh. That is the highest form of taking care since it not only demands a careful rethink but also allows a judge’s subconscious thoughts and perspectives to come to the forefront of his mind.  We want our judges to be matunim, to leave that space for mature reflection, rather than for them to be merely zehirim.

But when we recite Shema or pray, our care-taking is of a different order. Yes, we must be zehirim, we must say the words correctly, at the due time and with the necessary degree of thought and intention—but we may not be matunim and take a break in order to consider our performance of these commandments in greater depth.  We must complete the task of recitation or prayer in a single session,

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Truth, Science and Metaphor: where mishnah meets midrash

We live in an age in which truth has, for many people, ceased to be an absolute quality but the product of individual choice. You have your truth, I have mine. This choice between competing truths is often based on an earlier choice as to which of a number of competing narratives one accepts. The concept of the relative truth needs no further explanation here, but there is one truth-related issue that affects some of the mishnayot in Avot: the use of metaphor and parable in establishing the meaning of a teaching.

An obvious candidate for explanation via non-literal devices is Avot 5:23, where Yehudah ben Teyma says:

הֱוֵי עַז כַּנָּמֵר, וְקַל כַּנֶּֽשֶׁר, רָץ כַּצְּבִי, וְגִבּוֹר כָּאֲרִי, לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹן אָבִֽיךָ שֶׁבַּשָּׁמָֽיִם

Be bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer and mighty as a lion to do the will of your Father in Heaven.

The basic idea is that someone who wants to serve God should do so in the optimum manner, doing His will with speed, efficiency and good grace, even if it involves a good deal of effort. But, rabbis being what they are, many have mined aggadic material in order to bring out further meanings.

R’ Shlomo Toperoff does this in Lev Avot in a manner which, though traditional and well precedented by many commentators from earlier eras, may make uncomfortable reading for the modern reader who might mistake aggadic traditions for scientific truths. Here are a couple of examples:

“[A] characteristic of the eagle is that it flies with its young on its back, and this serves a dual purpose. The eagle teaches its young to fly at a tender age, but it also shows gentleness and concern for its young by protecting it from the arrows of missiles … The eagle carries its young above its wings so that no harm befall it…”

and

“The Rabbis add, ‘As the gazelle, when it sleeps, has one eye open and one eye closed, so when Israel fulfils the will of God He looks on them with two eyes, but when they do not fulfil the will of God He looks at them with one eye’…”.

As for eagles’ wings, we have a reference point in the Torah itself where, at Shemot 19:4 and Devarim 32:11 we read of being carried on eagles’ wings as being the epitome of safe, protected travel; we also understand the contrast between the eagle’s fierce and predatory attitude towards its prey and the care it expends on its young. But, unless there has been a dramatic change in nature or in the behaviour of birds, we can see that eagles do not actually carry their young on their backs as they fly through the air. If the egrets could even mount the parent bird’s back, they would fall off in the course of its flight. This would have been known to the Tannaim too, since eagles were far more common in earlier times when humans occupied less of the planet and the environment was more favourable to their lifestyle.

As for deer, the few mammals that sleep with an eye (or two) open include dolphins, whales, and fruit bats. Giraffes enter a state of semi-somnolence in which their eyes remain half open and their ears twitch. The deer family, however, do not. No matter, the midrash on Shir HaShirim (‘Song of Songs’) is not teaching us nature studies: it contains a different, more profound message. The notion of God’s oversight of our lives being proportionate to our attention to His will is important and it does not depend on the literal truth of the midrash.

We face a dilemma when dealing with metaphors that apparently contradict science. Do we teach them as they stand, as countless generations of our forebears have done, do we explain the moral they encapsulate but make excuses for their factual accuracy—or do we take them as literal truths?

I ask this question because I have had some troubling conversations on this topic. One was with a friend who became angry and disaffected with his Judaism when it was pressed upon him by a friendly and respected rabbi that the gestation period for snakes was seven years (Bechorot 8a; sadly, the object of this aggadah was not to teach anything about snakes but to illustrate the wisdom of our sages). The other was with a contemporary rabbi who insisted—and still insists—that birds can fly on a single wing, notwithstanding all practical and theoretical considerations to the contrary (see Tosafot to Shabbat 49a on the tale of Elisha ba’al kanofayim).

My feeling is that we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater and discard a colourful if sometimes literally inexact body of aggadic scholarship that has served us so well throughout our history. We should however be on our guard and make it plain, when teaching it, that what we are concerned about is the message, not the factual scenario through which the message is transmitted.

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Balancing priorities

Two mishnayot in Avot discuss the relative importance of the many commandments  that govern the life of the practising Jew. At 2:1 Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi says:

וֶהֱוֵי זָהִיר בְּמִצְוָה קַלָּה כְּבַחֲמוּרָה, שֶׁאֵין אַתָּה יוֹדֵֽעַ מַתַּן שְׂכָרָן שֶׁל מִצְוֹת, וֶהֱוֵי מְחַשֵּׁב הֶפְסֵד מִצְוָה כְּנֶֽגֶד שְׂכָרָהּ, וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה כְּנֶֽגֶד הֶפְסֵדָהּ

Be as careful with a minor mitzvah as with a major one, for you do not know the rewards of the mitzvot. Consider the cost of a mitzvah against its reward, and the reward of a transgression against its cost.

Then, at 4:2 Ben Azzai adds:

הֱוֵי רָץ לְמִצְוָה קַלָּה, וּבוֹרֵֽחַ מִן הָעֲבֵרָה, שֶׁמִּצְוָה גוֹרֶֽרֶת מִצְוָה, וַעֲבֵרָה גוֹרֶֽרֶת עֲבֵרָה, שֶׁשְּׂכַר מִצְוָה מִצְוָה, וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה עֲבֵרָה

Run to pursue a minor mitzvah but flee from a transgression, because a mitzvah brings another mitzvah, and a transgression brings another transgression since the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah, and the reward of transgression is transgression.

The commentators concede that terms such as “minor mitzvah” and “major mitzvah” demand explanation since God in His wisdom chose not to do so. A stock explanation for this omission is that, if we knew which mitzvot carried the big rewards and which the small rewards, we would naturally focus on the big ones only and neglect the rest.

On the subject of rewards, many commentators make reference to the Jerusalem Talmud (Pe’ah 1:1), which points out that the same reward—a long life—is received for performing two mitzvot that  are polar opposites, as it were: honouring one’s father and one’s mother (Shemot 20:12), which is reckoned to be one of the very hardest mitzvot to perform, and shooing away the mother bird before taking her eggs (Devarim 22:7), regarded as one of the very easiest. The conclusions we are invited to draw are that, as Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi says, we do not (and indeed cannot) know how God chooses to reward those who carry out His orders, and the reward cannot on the available evidence be related to the ease or hardship that attends their performance.

Honouring one’s parents and shooing away the mother bird are often stated to be the only two mitzvot in the Torah that offer a long life in return. But this is not so. There is a third and it is found in Devarim 25:13-15: the commandment to have weights and scales for measuring one’s merchandise.

Now, if honouring one’s parents is a major mitzvah and shooing away the mother bird is a minor one, where does that leave the mitzvah of having just weighing apparatus? I have yet to find a commentator on Avot who asks this question. It might be suggested that this mitzvah is sometimes hard and sometimes easy to perform and that, therefore, the reward depends on the level of effort or difficulty faced by the person keeping it. This answer has the attraction that it invokes another mishnah in Avot, at the very end of the fifth perek (5:26), where Ben He He teaches: לְפוּם צַעֲרָא אַגְרָא (“According to the effort is the reward” or “where there is no pain there is no gain”).   However, this mishnah can also be applied to honouring one’s parents and shooing away mother birds.

Maybe the solution lies in an explanation I heard Rabbi Yehoshua Hartman give many years ago in a talk on the Maharal. It runs like this. Every mitzvah attracts two rewards: there is a standard reward for the tick-the-box act of completing the mitzvah, and there is a second reward which is attached to a variable scale, depending on difficulty in completing it and on other external factors. This would mean that “long life” (in the next world, I believe) would be the standard rate for both honouring one’s parents and shooing away the mother bird, while a further reward awaits those who struggled to do so.

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Care in teaching: the need for quality control

 An Avot Mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Shofetim)

This week’s pre-Shabbat post returns to Perek 1.

At Avot 1:11 Avtalyon gives us the first of only three teachings in Avot that are couched in the form of a narrative:

חֲכָמִים, הִזָּהֲרוּ בְדִבְרֵיכֶם, שֶׁמָּא תָחֽוֹבוּ חוֹבַת גָּלוּת וְתִגְלוּ לִמְקוֹם מַֽיִם הָרָעִים, וְיִשְׁתּוּ הַתַּלְמִידִים הַבָּאִים אַחֲרֵיכֶם וְיָמֽוּתוּ, וְנִמְצָא שֵׁם שָׁמַֽיִם מִתְחַלֵּל

Scholars, be careful with your words. For perhaps you will be exiled to a place of bad water. The students who follow you might drink the bad water and die, and the Name of Heaven will be desecrated.

Once it is appreciated that ‘water’ is a metaphor for Torah and that ‘bad water’ is bad Torah teaching, the meaning of this parable is plain: if you, the chacham, are careless in the way you impart Torah to your students, they may misconstrue or misunderstand God’s message. They will then damage the Torah further when in turn they teach it erroneously to students of their own. Having done so, they are liable to be punished—and this will be a chillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name.

R' Ovadyah Hedayah (Seh LaBet Avot) points out the irony that is buried within this tale. Here we have talmidim of a rabbi who follow him and, who despite their learning from him in good faith, are guilty of a chillul Hashem. If one of those talmidim should through his inadvertence or negligence unwittingly bring about the death of another person, in Torah times he would have had been exiled to one of the orei miklat (“cities of refuge”) and—because his Torah education was understood to be a priority—his rabbi had to go into exile with him.

Our tradition of Pirkei Avot learning is never so narrow as to admit only one meaning per mishnah, and sometimes we find explanations that are quite surprising. According to the Chida (Chasdei Avot) the chillul Hashem is not the fault of the chacham but of his talmidim: it is they who cause death and destruction through their impaired capacity to absorb Torah. The moral of the mishnah would thus be that the chacham should be ultra-cautious in choosing his words and, it seems to me, in conducting regular quality control tests by examining his talmidim regularly to seek out signs of error or deviation from true Torah teaching. This process should ideally start at the moment that talmidim are selected, to weed out those who lack the ability to understand what is being taught and the maturity to handle it (per R’ Eliezer Papo, Ya’alzu Chasidim).

Like the words of the written Torah, the guidance of tractate Avot is intended to speak to us at all times and in every generation. We can thus take away from Avtalyon’s teaching a message that applies to parents, medical practitioners, accountants, lawyers and indeed anyone whose words will be given the weight of authority and which may cause havoc if distorted or taken out of context.

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From Gay to Garber: will Harvard be singing a new tune?

Few of us will have had time to forget the circumstances leading to the resignation of Claudine Gay as Harvard’s University President, or the immense shock and pain felt by the Jewish community over her official stance on statements concerning genocide of the Jews. Ms Gay has since been replaced by Alan Garber (“born … in a Jewish household”, per Wikipedia), who is seeking to reduce the level of tension and anxiety in what was, until recently, one of the world’s most revered and respected institutions.

The Harvard Gazette reported yesterday as follows:

University President Alan Garber urged the campus community to seek opportunities for unity in a time of divisiveness on Tuesday at the first Morning Prayers ceremony of the new academic year at Memorial Church’s Appleton Chapel.

Garber opened his address with words of advice from the Talmudic compendium Pirkei Avot, or “Ethics of the Fathers,” traditionally read on the Sabbath. “Find yourself a teacher,” he said. “Win yourself a friend, and be one who judges everyone by giving them the benefit of the doubt.”

Garber, who took the helm of the University at a time of unrest over the war in Gaza, echoed themes he touched on during Monday’s Convocation, urging members of the community to seek common ground, treat one another with empathy and respect, and learn from the rich diversity of views on campus.

He explained that finding a teacher means seeking out people “whose experiences, skills and perspectives are different from your own, and whose knowledge and wisdom often exceed yours,” and “winning yourself a friend” requires offering “companionship, empathy, concern, support, and trustworthiness.”

“We’re all too adept at recognizing the flaws of our antagonists and even of our friends,” Garber said. “It’s tempting to interpret the actions of others in the worst possible light. It is better for all of us to do the opposite.”

Garber shook his head at recent headlines saying the nation’s colleges and universities have no choice but to brace for continuing disruption and unrest. He called it a “dismal notion” at an institution like Harvard, which is “pushing the limits of understanding, pursuing genuine excellence in every domain, and making ourselves, our University, and the world better.” 

These impediments can be avoided. “This is not a time to brace ourselves,” he said. “This is a time to embrace once another. We can do so by always keeping that third precept in mind. Be one who judges everyone by giving them the benefit of the doubt. By reserving judgment, we make it possible for others to know that they are part of this community and that this community cares for them.”

Garber said the key was “to bring to day-to-day interactions the same commitment to inquiry and discovery that we bring to our intellectual pursuits. If and when tensions among us rise, I hope that we will approach each other not only as fellow human beings, but as potential teachers and friends”…

Professor Garber’s mention of Pirkei Avot—in this case the teaching of Yehoshua ben Perachyah at Avot 1:6—is the latest example of the citation of mishnayot in order to make a political point (see also the speeches of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro here and here).  

In this instance one can see why this mishnah is chosen: it reminds its audience that Harvard is about teaching; it sends out a positive message of friendship and it arguably also encourages people not to judge each other as individuals and not collectively.  The message has a Jewish origin but is of universal application.

I wonder whether any other message from Avot was considered and then rejected. At Avot 4:1 Ben Zoma teaches: “Who is honoured/respected? The person who honours/respects others”. But perhaps asking the Harvard faculty and student body to honour or respect one another is demanding too much.  At Avot 3:18 Rabbi Akiva reminds us that we are all created in God’s image—but this would scarcely impress those who do not believe in God. And Hillel at Avot 1:12 urges us to love peace and pursue it. Maybe, given the chasm that separates different definitions of “peace” in Israel, in Gaza and on the Harvard campus itself, this would not be a consensus teaching after all.

I’d be curious to discover what readers think of Professor Garber’s statement and the appropriateness of his choice of Avot citation.

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A spade to dig with

Like many confirmed bloggers and Facebook post-creators, I spend more time writing my own material than I do in reading what others have to say. I do however try to allocate some time each day to reading the posts and comments of my Facebook friends, most of whom I have never met in person.

I recently read a Facebook post (see link below) that greatly moved me. The author is Eliezer Diamond and it leads with the words “This is a tough one to write”.  The reason why this post was difficult to write is apparent from the opening paragraph, which reads:

I had an appointment with my prostate cancer oncologist this past Wednesday. My children have stressed to me the importance of one of them being present at my appointments going forward, and so one of my daughters, who is a medical professional, was part of the virtual meeting. The doctor in question was the one with whom I have had a difficult relationship, but in this appointment she was a model of clarity and patience – due, in part, to my having asked in a recent message that she address me as Rabbi Diamond. I hated making that request – our rabbis tell us not to use a rabbinic title as “a shovel with which to dig,” in other words as a means of receiving preferential treatment, but playing the rabbi card was the only means I could think of to get her to treat me respectfully. I thanked her at the end of the appointment for her having explained my situation so clearly.

According to the World Cancer Research Fund, prostate cancer is the fourth most commonly suffered form of the disease. The American Cancer Society adds that it affects one man in every 12. Rabbi Diamond writes about his condition in a way that is both matter-of-fact and sensitive. I wish him a refuah shelemah, as I’m sure other readers will do too.

I was particularly struck by Rabbi Diamond’s sensitivity to the rights and wrongs of asking to be addressed as “Rabbi”. Hillel touches on this issue at Avot 1:13 where he teaches that one who exploits the crown of the Torah will fade away, but the metaphor of using the Torah and, by implication, one’s status as a Torah scholar as a “spade to dig with” comes from Rabbi Tzadok at Avot 4:7 where he builds on Hillel’s apothegm and says:

אַל תַּעֲשֶֽׂהָ עֲטָרָה לְהִתְגַּדֶּל בָּהּ, וְלֹא קַרְדּוּם לַחְתָּךְ בָּהּ, וְכַךְ הָיָה הִלֵּל אוֹמֵר: וּדְאִשְׁתַּמֵּשׁ בְּתַגָּא חֲלָף, הָא לָמַֽדְתָּ, כָּל הַנֶּהֱנֶה מִדִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה, נוֹטֵל חַיָּיו מִן הָעוֹלָם

Do not make the Torah a crown to magnify yourself with, or a spade with which to dig. So Hillel used to say: one who make personal use of the crown of Torah will fade away. Accordingly anyone who benefits from the words of Torah removes his life from the world.

Should one make use of one’s Torah status for personal benefit? Our sages were clearly anxious not to do so. In one famous episode (Yerushalmi, Shevi’it 4:2, 35b) R’ Tarfon, caught by guards when eating what turned out to be his own figs, saved himself from a beating by crying out “Prepare shrouds for Tarfon”.  Even though he didn’t invoke his rabbinical status, the fact that his unusual name, linked with his massive repute as a Torah scholar, led to his being spared was something that troubled him for the rest of his life.

This respect that Rabbi Tarfon had for the principle of not using Torah as a spade to dig with is all the more remarkable when one considers that what is at stake here is only a middah, a character refinement, and not a mitzvah, a commandment. In the case of almost every commandment, when one’s life is in danger one is not merely permitted but required to transgress it. However, where all that was at stake here was a recognition that it is best practice not to take advantage of the Torah or one’s Torah status, there is somehow less leeway.

In our daily lives, living within society at large, taking advantage of one’s name and status is not seen as a harmful practice per se. Indeed, it is often regarded as one’s entitlement or as a necessity—even if there is arguably an element of deception at play. I can cite an example drawn from my own experience.

Back in 1977 my wife and I moved into a house on a new estate at the edge of Dublin. When we moved in, the public telephone network had not yet been extended to our area. Eventually, telephone services became available but it was difficult to get a phone line. After we had been on the waiting list for well over a year, it became apparent that a small number of our neighbours had been given phone lines. These fortunate souls, by some strange curious coincidence, were all connected by bonds of family or friendship to the Fianna Fáil party, which was then in office. At this point my wife decided to take the initiative. She called the telephone company and insisted that it was imperative for “Doctor Phillips” to be given a telephone at the earliest possible opportunity. The person at the other end of this call did not ask what sort of doctor I was, and therefore never knew that I was not a doctor of medicine but a doctor of philosophy. Even now, nearly 50 years after the event, my feelings are split between guilt at leaping up the queue for installation of our phone and delight at having secured a positive result in the absence of local protetzia.

To conclude, my admiration for Rabbi Diamond’s sensitivity to this issue and I’m sure that, had I been a rabbi, I would have done exactly the same thing.

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