From a stranger to a good friend

When Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai asked his five top students to get out of the Beit Midrash in order to go and see what was the good path that one should choose for oneself, he received a range of answers. The relevant mishnah in Avot (2:13) reads like this:

אָמַר לָהֶם: צְאוּ וּרְאוּ אֵיזוֹ הִיא דֶּֽרֶךְ טוֹבָה שֶׁיִּדְבַּק בָּהּ הָאָדָם. רַבִּי אֱלִיעֶֽזֶר אוֹמֵר: עַֽיִן טוֹבָה. רַבִּי יְהוֹשֻֽׁעַ אוֹמֵר: חָבֵר טוֹב. רַבִּי יוֹסֵי אוֹמֵר: שָׁכֵן טוֹב. רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן אוֹמֵר: הָרוֹאֶה אֶת הַנּוֹלָד. רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר אוֹמֵר: לֵב טוֹב. אָמַר לָהֶם: רוֹאֶה אֲנִי אֶת דִּבְרֵי אֶלְעָזָר בֶּן עֲרָךְ מִדִּבְרֵיכֶם, שֶׁבִּכְלַל דְּבָרָיו דִּבְרֵיכֶם

[Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai] said to them: “Go and see which is the best trait for a person to acquire”. Said Rabbi Eliezer: “Magnanimity of spirit [literally A good eye”]. Said Rabbi Yehoshua: “A good friend”. Said Rabbi Yose: “A good neighbour”. Said Rabbi Shimon: “To see the consequences of one’s actions”. Said Rabbi Elazar: “A good attitude [literally A good heart”].  [Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai] said to them: “I prefer the words of Elazar the son of Arach to yours, for his words include all of yours”.

Rabbi Elazar ben Arach might appear to be the “winner” in this “contest”, but that would be to over-simplify a complex mishnah. Each of the five answers which Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai received is valid and correct. The essential difference between them is that Rabbi Elazar ben Arach’s answer is expressed in general terms, whereas each of his four colleagues points to a specific example or instance of a “good path” to pursue in fulfilling one’s aims in life.

Of the “losers”, Rabbi Yehoshua seems to have the least to offer. In the first place his words are so epigrammatic that we do not know what they mean. Is he referring to the virtues of having a good friend, or of being a good friend to someone else? Secondly, is not friendship arguably sufficiently covered within Avot and Jewish ethical literature in general to be taken as read?

In an attempt to make something of this teaching, commentators in our times have greatly enriched it. For example Rabbi Yisroel Miller (The Wisdom of Avos) writes:

Picture one of your acquaintances whom you don’t dislike but are not particularly close to. His life seems to be going OK as far as you know. Now imagine that you read in his diary: “My bones shudder. My soul is utterly confounded… I am wearied with my sigh, every night I drench my bed in tears. My eye is dimmed because of anger, aged by my tormentors”. Besides your surprise at his poetic writing style, wouldn’t you feel a wave of compassion for this tormented soul whose sufferings you were totally aware of?

 This man’s words, Rabbi Miller reminds us, are part of the regular Tachanun we recite most days—and our sages of old told us to say them because, for every one of us in one way or another, they are a true expression of our feelings.  We should therefore look at this casual acquaintance and appreciate that he too, like every human, experiences feelings like this without our awareness of them. Rabbi Miller continues:

Look again at your neighbour, bring out your compassion, and say “I can’t take away his pain (especially since I don’t know what it is, but I can add a small measure of joy and comfort to his life by trying to be his friend”. After focusing on one acquaintance, move on to another, and little by little your circle of love begins to grow and you become transformed.

I’m very moved by these words. Has Rabbi Miller simply provided a fanciful and idealistic cadenza with which to grace a somewhat mundane teaching, or is there more to it?  Recalling how Rabbi Yehoshua befriended the poor young Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, as mentioned in the Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer, I should like to think that he would warmly welcome Rabbi Miller’s explanation.

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Being watched and keeping watch

 Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi at Avot 2:1 offers the following cautionary advice:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה, דַּע מַה לְּמַֽעְלָה מִמָּךְ, עַֽיִן רוֹאָה וְאֹֽזֶן שׁוֹמַֽעַת, וְכָל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ בְּסֵֽפֶר נִכְתָּבִים

Contemplate three things and you will not come to the grip (literally ‘hands’) of transgression. Know what is above from you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds being inscribed in a book.

With modern technology and the widespread use of surveillance devices and data capture, most of us have spent so long being watched, recorded and digitally summarised that we have become accustomed to this state of affairs and are little concerned with it. Our indifference is a product of the fact that we do not feel personally watched, listened to or data-captured: all of this is done by third parties for their interest. We are watched and overheard in the name of public safety and security, and our data is stored and retrieved principally by online businesses that offer a quasi-symbiotic relationship: we give them our data and they, in return, seek to offer us news, opinions and products that are more likely than not to appeal to our preferences and our prejudices.

Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi was not concerned with third-party interests. He viewed constant and detailed surveillance as something of which we should be aware. Indeed, even if were not there at all, we should adjust our behaviour so as to take it into account. This would be to our benefit since, being conscious of our every act and word being a matter of record, we should take great care what we do and say.  Professional footballers at the highest level have already learned to appreciate this.  They have long known that there is little to be gained, and much to be lost, by committing a foul against a player from the opposing team when the referee is watching them. And now, with the introduction of VAR technology, they can expect their every indiscretion to be recorded and played over again and again in slow motion.

Our mishnah supports this practice and goes further. Surveillance and the compilation of a permanent record is the prerogative of God Himself. It is axiomatic that God is omniscient and therefore possesses a perfect record of every facet of our existence in this world. Since He is also our judge, his perfect record of our every moment constitutes the evidence upon which our lives are assessed. The evidence is incontrovertible and there is no mechanism by which it might be challenged. All we can do, when faced with it, is offer an explanation or excuse.

Arguably, even the attempt to explain or mitigate our more reprehensible conduct is futile since there is nothing we can say, or even think, that is not already known to God. The Sefat Emet derives support for this proposition from our mishnah. Expanding on his words, it seems that the three-part list of a seeing eye, a hearing ear and a complete record corresponds to the three ways a human can serve God: through actions, speech and thought. The divine seeing eye can perceive the innermost and most private thoughts we harbour in our brains; the divine ear catches every syllable and every sound we generate when communicating with God, with others and even with ourselves; and God also records for eternity. We should strive to bear all three in mind. Our consciousness of the seeing eye and the hearing ear should be sufficient to motivate us to do that which is correct and good in at least our own eyes—but if that doesn’t inhibit us from doing wrong, we should remember the perfect record.  

Other commentators have read this mishnah differently. The Me’iri, for instance, sees the references to the seeing eye, hearing ear and the record book as having a less practical but more theologically focused meaning. In a lengthy and detailed appraisal of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi’s words, he connects their three reference points, respectively, to belief in God’s existence, belief in God’s providence and belief that sin is followed by punishment. He specifically rejects the Sefat Emet’s approach, objecting that if the record book refers to God’s knowledge, it effectively duplicates the role of the seeing eye, and it is presumably in response to this objection that the Sefat Emet crafts his explanation that the eye, ear and record correspond to the thoughts, words and actions through which we serve—or disobey—the Almighty.

Of the two approaches, I confess that I do prefer that of the Sefat Emet, if only because, in addressing the way to avoid sin, it obliquely embraces the prospect of God recording the good things we do, say and think too.

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I did it all myself

At Avot 4:1 Ben Zoma succinctly and a little surprisingly defines four personalities that are well known in Jewish circles: the wise, the strong, the rich and the respected. Of the rich person he teaches:

אֵיזֶהוּ עָשִׁיר, הַשָּׂמֵֽחַ בְּחֶלְקוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: יְגִֽיעַ כַּפֶּֽיךָ כִּי תֹאכֵל, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ וְטוֹב לָךְ, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה, וְטוֹב לָךְ לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא

Who is rich? One who is happy with his lot, as it states (Psalms 128:2): "If you eat of the effort of your hands, you are happy and it is  good for you" (Tehillim 128:2); "you are happy" in this world, "and it is good for you" in the World to Come.

Rabbi Yehudah Leib of Gur maintains that this statement is demonstrably true. It’s only when a person makes the effort to do something himself that he truly appreciates its value: he has invested a bit of himself in it.  In contrast, the pleasure one gets from acquiring something that one has not made is of a lesser quality: it is people who acquire without effort who tend to be dissatisfied with what they have and always want more.

Anyone who has ever had a small child—or been one—may recall a common experience. Picture the following scenario. It is Friday night, the table is laid and the silverware sparkles in the light of the Shabbat candles. The smell of fresh warm challot pervades the house. Enter one small child, clutching a grubby item that vaguely resembles a challah roll, baked by the child at school. Proudly the child shoves his own manufacture under the challah cloth along with the sleek brown loaves baked by his mother.  It’s time for hamotzi and the challah cloth is lifted. Beaming with the happiness of achievement, the child looks with pride at the result of his handiwork. He knows that his mother’s challah is of a far higher quality but he will insist on eating his own—and maybe on others taking a nibble too—because it is a monument to his own achievement.

As adults we tend to grow out of this phase and regard it as a natural part of growing up. Don’t we become more discerning as we mature? Isn’t it, well, childish to take pride in something we can objectively assess as being second-rate?  No, it isn’t. And we should never allow ourselves to lose the connection between the effort we expend and the pleasure we derive from it. As Ben He-He says at Avot 5:26,

לְפוּם צַעֲרָא אַגְרָא

According to the effort, so is the reward.

This need not mean a Divine reward for the fulfilment of mitzvot and the performance of good deeds. It can equally mean the internal reward one receives in terms of the satisfaction experienced by doing something oneself.

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A golem in the Human Zoo: are we all on the spectrum?

Avot 5:9 is an anonymous mishnah and it reads like this:

שִׁבְעָה דְבָרִים בְּגוֹלָם וְשִׁבְעָה בְּחָכָם, חָכָם: אֵינוֹ מְדַבֵּר לִפְנֵי מִי שֶׁגָּדוֹל מִמֶּֽנּוּ בְּחָכְמָה וּבְמִנְיָן, וְאֵינוֹ נִכְנָס לְתוֹךְ דִּבְרֵי חֲבֵרוֹ, וְאֵינוֹ נִבְהָל לְהָשִׁיב, שׁוֹאֵל כְּעִנְיָן וּמֵשִׁיב כַּהֲלָכָה, וְאוֹמֵר עַל רִאשׁוֹן רִאשׁוֹן וְעַל אַחֲרוֹן אַחֲרוֹן, וְעַל מַה שֶּׁלֹּא שָׁמַע אוֹמֵר לֹא שָׁמַֽעְתִּי, וּמוֹדֶה עַל הָאֱמֶת, וְחִלּוּפֵיהֶן בְּגוֹלָם

There are seven things that characterize a golem, and seven that characterize a wise man. A wise man does not speak before one who is greater than him in wisdom or age. He does not interrupt his fellow's words. He does not hasten to answer. His questions are relevant and his answers are to the point. He responds to first things first and to later things later. As for what he did not hear, he says "I did not learn [this]." He concedes the truth. With the golem, the reverse of all these is the case.

No doubt there is a perfectly good reason why we do not learn this mishnah in the name of the person who taught it. Perhaps it was unclear which of several Tannaim had authored it. Maybe it is a composite mishnah culled from a variety of sources. Nowadays such a mishnah might be best taught under cover of anonymity for fear of its author being tarnished with the broad brush of political rectitude. Would the woke brigade permit the stigmatising of the golem?

The golem in this mishnah is best left untranslated, since the word even in its untranslated form is so redolent of secondary shades of meaning.

For most commentators on Avot, this mishnah is an invitation to consider how a person should behave in polite society. The seven behaviours listed here are a sort of code of conduct that can be read as the point of departure for a relationship between teacher and student, two fellow students or indeed any individuals who wish to exchange thoughts and ideas with one another. When a relationship matures, these rules of conduct may easily be relaxed without giving offence—but they should be observed until cordial familiarity is established.

For Rambam, however, this mishnah may mean more than this. The following passage in Menachem Kellner’s Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism caught my eye:

“Maimonides’ radical intellectual elitism … is another example of a position forced upon him by the epistemology of the theory of the acquired intellect. … [I]ndividuals born of human parents who have not achieved a minimum level of intellectual perfection are subhuman”.

Kellner then quotes Rambam’s Moreh Nevuchim i.7:

“You know that whoever is not endowed with this form [of the intellect] … is not a man, but an animal having the shape and the configuration of a man”

Kellner then quotes further from the Moreh Nevuchim at iii.51, where Rambam states that such people, whose intellect has not been perfected,

“…do not have the rank of men but have among the beings a rank that is lower than the rank of man but higher than the rank of apes”.

But what does Rambam say specifically about the golem in his commentary on the mishnah?

Rambam is clearly concerned to distinguish from one another the various characters who have either failed to perfect their intellects or have succeeded in doing so. While most of his comments on Avot are short and to-the-point, he opens his discussion of our mishnah by distinguishing the boor, the am ha’aretz, the golem, the chacham and the chasid—of whom only the golem and the chacham are of immediate relevance.

The golem is someone who possesses some ethical and intellectual virtues, but neither are perfected: they are confused, mixed up and somewhat lacking and Rambam labels him as “crude” (translation of R’ Eliahu Touger), rather like a utensil made by a craftsman but still in an unfinished, incomplete state. A possible English rendition of this is that such a person is a “rough diamond”. Thus the golem stands in contract with the chacham, the wise man, is a person who has perfected both his intellectual and his moral qualities.

The golem cannot therefore be equated with the subhuman entity described in the Moreh Nevuchim. Could that role be designated for the boor (fortuitously the word means roughly the same in English and Hebrew)?  Of him Rambam writes, in our mishnah, that he possesses neither intellectual nor moral virtues—but nor does he demonstrate any intellectual or moral vices. He is to all intents and purposes empty, like a field that lies fallow. But being empty of intellectual vices and virtues does not make him subhuman. This is because being empty of a behavioral quality or characteristic is surely not the same as being unable to acquire it at all.

In the modern world the exercise of dividing humanity up into different types has become more nuanced and we ask questions that did not trouble most of our earliest scholars. For example, what does this mishnah teach us about the person who ticks only three or four of the ‘golem boxes’? Is it possible that a person is part golem, part chacham? And are all seven indicators of equal weight or are some of greater, if not critical, importance? We would probably agree today that any given person will possess signs of both the chacham and the golem, and that we are all located at different points on the ‘chacham-golem spectrum’.

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Gehinnom: Some like it hot...

Writing in this week’s Jewish Press, Rabbi Moshe Meir Weiss (“Investing in ‘Hell Insurance’”) writes:

Every month, we pray when we bentch Rosh Chodesh that Hashem should grant us “Yiras Shamayim v’yiras cheit – Fear of Heaven and fear of sin.” Practically speaking, fear of sin includes fear of punishment which results from our sins. Sometimes, that punishment translates into retribution in this world, primarily for sins between us and our fellow man. For sins against Hashem, we fear the frightening retribution of Gehinnom, “hell.” Since the Mishna in Pirkei Avos informs us that the fires of Gehinnom are 60 times hotter than the fires in this world, that means they are 60 times hotter than the oven in the matzah bakery. That’s very hot indeed! [emphasis added]

I was astonished to read this. There is no such mishnah in Avot and I consider it quite reprehensible for a rabbi, a teacher of Torah and a person whose qualifications and learning give him access to so large an audience, should so mis-state the content of Avot.

Gehinnom does get a mention in Avot. Thus in Avot 1:5 the chachamim in the mishnah of Yose ben Yochanan Ish Yerushalayim teach that

כָּל הַמַּרְבֶּה שִׂיחָה עִם הָאִשָּׁה, גּוֹרֵם רָעָה לְעַצְמוֹ, וּבוֹטֵל מִדִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה, וְסוֹפוֹ יוֹרֵשׁ גֵּיהִנֹּם

“…everyone who talks too much with his wife causes evil to himself, neglects his Torah learning, and his end is that he will inherit Gehinnom.”

This mishnah certainly does not refer to sins between man and God, and offers no indication as to the temperature of the netherworld.

Two further mishnayot in the fifth perek make reference to Gehinnom. The anonymous mishnah at Avot 5:22 concludes with a warning to the disciples of Balaam:

אֲבָל תַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל בִּלְעָם הָרָשָׁע יוֹרְשִׁין גֵּיהִנֹּם וְיוֹרְדִין לִבְאֵר שַֽׁחַת, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וְאַתָּה אֱלֹהִים תּוֹרִידֵם לִבְאֵר שַֽׁחַת, אַנְשֵׁי דָמִים וּמִרְמָה לֹא יֶחֱצוּ יְמֵיהֶם, וַאֲנִי אֶבְטַח בָּךְ

“…but the disciples of the wicked Balaam inherit Gehinnom and descend into the well of destruction, as it states: “And You, God, let them go down into the well of destruction—men of bloodshed and deceit, they will not live half their days. And, for my part, I will trust in you”.

This mishnah doesn’t even specify any transgressions that will condemn a person to Gehinnom; rather, it discusses bad attitudes.

A nearby mishnah, in the name of Yehudah ben Teyma ( Avot 5:24) also addresses bad attitudes, which is not surprising if one remembers that this tractate is about behaviour and attitudes rather than commandments and transgressions. It teaches:

עַז פָּנִים לְגֵיהִנֹּם, וּבֽוֹשֶׁת פָּנִים לְגַן עֵֽדֶן. יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶֽיךָ, יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ וֵאלֹהֵי אֲבוֹתֵֽינוּ, שֶׁיִּבָּנֶה בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ בִּמְהֵרָה בְיָמֵֽינוּ, וְתֵן חֶלְקֵֽנוּ בְּתוֹרָתֶֽךָ

“The brazen [go] to Gehinnom; the bashful, to paradise. May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our fathers, that the Holy Temple be rebuilt speedily in our days; and grant us our portion in Your Torah”.

Neither of these two mishnayot amplify on the nature of Gehinnom. The source upon which Rabbi Weiss might wish to rely is a passage of aggadata in the Babylonian Talmud, at Berachot 567b. It reads there:

“Five things are a sixtieth part of something else: namely, fire, honey, Sabbath, sleep and a dream. Fire is one-sixtieth part of Gehinnom. Honey is one-sixtieth part of manna. Sabbath is one-sixtieth part of the world to come. Sleep is one-sixtieth part of death. A dream is one-sixtieth part of prophecy”.

The reference to Gehinnom is not picked up elsewhere in this sugya, which is located in the middle of a fascinating stream of consciousness passage on the substance, quality and meaning of dreams.

Without in any sense wishing to minimise the seriousness of offences against Hashem, I do feel that embellishing the message with non-existent references to Avot is not the best way to go about getting the message across.

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