The Power of Three

Two is company, three is a crowd” (Old English proverb)

In practice, much of the art of good behaviour is not just a matter of doing the right thing. It is a matter of not doing the wrong thing when there are others watching you. For example, going round with a big smile on your face (Shammai, Avot 1:15) is only meritorious when there are others to smile at. Grinning into the mirror above your washbasin counts for nothing. It is thus the presence of others that defines the parameters of applicability of normative good manners.

At Avot 3:15 Rabbi Elazar haModa’i teaches, among other things, the following:

הַמַּלְבִּין פְּנֵי חֲבֵרוֹ בָּרַבִּים, אַף עַל פִּי שֶׁיֵּשׁ בְּיָדוֹ תּוֹרָה וּמַעֲשִׂים טוֹבִים, אֵין לוֹ חֵֽלֶק לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא

Someone who humiliates his friend in public (literally “among the many”), even if he has Torah and good deeds to his credit, has no portion in the World to Come.

The thrust of this teaching needs no explanation. It is an exhortation to us to have regard for the feelings of other people and not to put them to shame in front of others. The threat is that, if we do not take due regard for them, whatever benefit we may hope to obtain in one’s afterlife will be lost forever.

The Sefat Emet poses a question on this teaching: who or what is the public? It is possible, he observes, that just three people might satisfy this criterion.

Three is the public for a related issue: when one person speaks words that arguably transgress the laws of lashon hara (impermissible speech about another person), there is a leniency where those words have already been spoken in front of three people. There is a presumption that whatever a person says in front of three others may be repeated since the person who first says them, knowing that everyone has a friend who will repeat it back to the person spoken about, will have taken care to say nothing derogatory in the first place. But this, while vesting significance in the number three, has no obvious practical bearing on Rabbi Elazar haModa’i’s teaching.

The Sefat Emet, it seems, is out on a limb since what constitutes בָּרַבִּים (“in public”) is not a question that troubled our major commentators. Rambam, Rabbeinu Yonah, the Me’iri, Rashi, the Bartenura and the Ruach Chaim are among those for whom it appears to hold no interest or relevance at all. A swift survey of the literature ancient and modern shows that the main issue in this mishnah is the severity of the offence of embarrassing another person in public, whatever the means of embarrassment and whatever the circumstance.

Why then has the Sefat Emet asked this question?

I think we can assume that the Sefat Emet was fully aware of the severity of shaming others in public. But he may have been looking at this mishnah from the point of the person who has shamed or humiliated his friend. 

In his Notzer Chesed, Rabbi Yitzchak Isak Sufrin of Komarno comments that such is the severity of shaming one’s fellow that one is compelled to appease him בָּרַבִּים. This being so, it is of course important to know how many people are necessary as an audience for the act of contrition and appeasement.  Now we see why the comment of the Sefat Emet is not merely relevant but important. While words spoken wrongly and shamefully about another person may travel unceasingly around the planet, the Sefat Emet wants to know if we must have a measure of rachmanut, mercy, on the wrongdoer too. He need only find three people before whom to offer his apology.

This question has obvious implications for people who are shamed and humiliated on the social media, through TikTok, X or other channels where information goes viral with rapid intensity. The Sefat Emet does not answer this question, but it is presumably for poskim today to weigh it up. Three looks like a promising answer, since that is the minimum number of judges to constitute a Beit Din—but all we have at present is a “perhaps”.

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Put not your trust in princes

Tehillim 146:3 opens with a line that has become so much a part of colloquial English that many people have no idea of its origin in the book of Psalms:

אַל-תִּבְטְחוּ בִנְדִיבִים בְּבֶן-אָדָם שֶׁאֵין לוֹ תְשׁוּעָה

Put not your trust in princes nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.

Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber, in the first volume of Si’ach Tzvi—his commentary on the siddur—explains this verse by reference to the question posed by Hillel at Avot 1:14:

אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי

If I am only for myself, who am I?

For Rav Ferber the whole point of this verse in Tehillim is therefore to encourage us to seek to rely on our own efforts instead of trusting others since they can’t be expected to have our interests at heart. And it’s not just princes that one shouldn’t trust. Even בֶן-אָדָם, our own child, even if we have imbued him with our own ru’ach.

This explanation deserves comment. In the first place, Avot already cautions us explicitly not to rely on the powers that be, as Rabban Gamliel ben Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi cynically observes at Avot 2:2:

הֱווּ זְהִירִין בָּרָשׁוּת, שֶׁאֵין מְקָרְבִין לוֹ לְאָדָם אֶלָּא לְצֹֽרֶךְ עַצְמָן, נִרְאִין כְּאוֹהֲבִין בְּשַֽׁעַת הַנָּאָתָן, וְאֵין עוֹמְדִין לוֹ לְאָדָם בְּשַֽׁעַת דָּחֳקוֹ

Be careful with the government, for they befriend a person only for their own needs. They appear to be friends when it is beneficial to them, but they do not stand by a person at the time of his distress.

Rav Ferber does not however cite this teaching.

Secondly, in Higionei Avot, Rav Ferber’s commentary on Pirkei Avot, there is not even a smidgeon of reciprocity in his commentary on Hillel’s teaching at 1:14.  He makes no mention of not putting one’s trust in princes. Instead, he discusses ִ אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִיwithin the context of a person’s need to find the level that is right for him when he tries to balance within himself the competing middot of arrogance and humility. Likewise, he makes no reference to Tehillim in 146:3, where he discusses the “government” in Rabban Gamliel’s mishnah as government by one’s evil inclinations.

All of this leads me to ask whether, without noticing, we practise double standards when appraising the methodology of our rabbinical scholars. There seems to be a thriving cottage industry in trawling the words of Maimonides in search of contradictions and inconsistencies, which are then endlessly analysed for clues of his true position on philosophy or religion. Yet with relatively recent commentators such as Rav Ferber one might be justified in concluding that he is demonstrating the multifaced nature of our ancient teachings and canonical literature, which can be explained and illuminated in so many different ways.

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A concept decommissioned: fear of sin

At Avot 3:11 we find the first of three similar and arguably related teachings by Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa:

כֹּל שֶׁיִּרְאַת חֶטְאוֹ קוֹדֶֽמֶת לְחָכְמָתוֹ, חָכְמָתוֹ מִתְקַיֶּֽמֶת. וְכֹל שֶׁחָכְמָתוֹ קוֹדֶֽמֶת לְיִרְאַת חֶטְאוֹ, אֵין חָכְמָתוֹ מִתְקַיֶּֽמֶת

One whose fear of sin takes precedence over his wisdom—his wisdom endures. But one whose wisdom takes precedence over his fear of sin—his wisdom does not endure.

To the contemporary reader there is a sort of imbalance between the two halves of this equation. We all know what wisdom is. We value it, pursue it if we can, make great personal sacrifices in order to obtain it and are prepared to pay handsomely for the advice and guidance of those who have more of it than we do. Many of the most respected and highly-paid professions in the modern world are wisdom-based: physicians, lawyers, accountants, actuaries, economists provide obvious examples.

Fear of sin, in contrast, is a closed book to most people who live in the world today. The concept is incapable of bearing any meaning unless one first ascertains what is meant by “sin”, an idea that has faded from Western society along with the religion-based morality of what was once the domain of Christianity. While “fear of sin” still has some traction in those small pockets of society that practise Judaism, it cannot compete for popularity against the tide of moral relativism that promotes the notion that, if it feels right, do it because it’s right for you. For society at large, “fear of sin” is a concept that, to all intents and purposes, has been decommissioned and put out to graze in the Garden of Ideas that have Outlived Their Usefulness.

When this mishnah was first taught, its audience would have understood clearly that fear of sin meant fear of transgressing the laws and mores of the Torah. This could be viewed as fear of losing one’s Olam Haba (World to Come), fear of punishment or retribution, or fear of falling short of the expectations of a God who, though kind, merciful and forgiving of sin, was entitled to expect more of His people than that they throw His kindness back at him. But what is the connection between wisdom and fear of sin that demands that the former will not take root, as it were, in the absence of the latter?

Rabbi Shlomo P. Toperoff (Lev Avot) asks this question and offers an answer if, perhaps a little rhetorical, is also a little prophetic, given the way the world has evolved since he wrote these words in 1984:

“It is generally conceded that wisdom is pursued by many people today. We possess a plethora of schools, colleges and universities, but too often the wisdom acquired is divorced from the fear of sin, resulting in angry and rebellious students who are ready to overthrow the Establishment…

Wisdom built on the rock foundations of fear of sin will endure and save civilisation, but wisdom not preceded by fear of sin will eventually destroy the world”.

Like the mishnah, Rabbi Toperoff does not specify any particular sin. But in the quest for wisdom, one can hypothesize that no human understanding can pass the test of being regarded as wisdom unless it first confirms to the criteria of truth—and failure to respect and accept the truth is the sin that most effectively devalues anything that purports to be wisdom. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel (Avot 1:18) already classes truth as one of the three virtues that is a necessary condition for sustaining the world, and the mishnah at Avot 5:9 stigmatises one who fails to accept the truth as a golem, an unformed, incomplete being.

The events on campus that have unfolded since 7 October 2023, conspicuously in the United States but also in many other countries, have shown that objective, analytical scholarship and debate have too often given way to selective use of sources, confirmation bias, fake news that is taken to be genuine until the contrary is proven, and the pre-emptive adoption of partisan conclusions that are accepted as being self-evident and therefore in no need of verification. One wonders how much of the accepted wisdom of the day will ever stand up to scrutiny in the long run, when scholarship based on fear of falsehood is allowed to have its say. Or will it all be too late by then?

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