YOU’RE A WASTE OF SPACE!

Devotees of the British sitcom Fawlty Towers will recall with glee an episode in which Basil Fawlty calls his waiter Manuel “a waste of space” and hits the Spaniard on the head with a spoon. Devotees of Pirkei Avot may however recall the mishnah at Avot 4:3 in which Ben Azzai teaches:

אַל תְּהִי בָז לְכָל אָדָם וְאַל תְּהִי מַפְלִיג לְכָל דָּבָר, שֶׁאֵין לָךְ אָדָם שֶׁאֵין לוֹ שָׁעָה, וְאֵין לָךְ דָּבָר שֶׁאֵין לוֹ מָקוֹם

Do not scorn any man, and do not discount any thing. For there is no man who has not his hour, and no thing that has not its place.

This mishnah does not quite address the Fawlty Towers scenario, in that what Basil Fawlty challenges is Manuel’s claim to space—in other words a place—rather than time. But the sentiment is there: the mishnah teaches us not to write off any person or object as being entirely without worth, and that is precisely what Basil Fawlty is going to the hapless Manuel.

Commentators on Ben Azzai’s teaching have often gone way beyond its literal meaning. For R’ Chaim Volozhin (Ruach Chaim), for example, it means that one should not write off another individual in reliance upon the words of a third party; the Ruach Chaim then goes far beyond that, suggesting that it is an injunction not to steal from anyone—and this in turn means not stealing from a poor person by not returning his greeting. Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of the Fathers) turns the mishnah from a negative to a positive: one should look for and build upon the part of any person that is of worth. This perspective is very much in keeping with Yehoshua ben Perachya’s advice at Avot 1:6 to judge others meritoriously.

Rashi, the Bartenura and the Me’iri are more concerned with what might happen if you write off or underestimate someone who hates you, since the time may come when he will have the upper hand. The assumption here is that, taking his threat seriously (possibly a practical example of being ro’eh et hanolad, looking ahead to events that have yet to unfold: see Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel at Avot 2:13).

The Chasid Yaavetz, following Rabbenu Yonah, takes a different path which is premised on the assumption that Avot, being an ethical tractate, is more concerned in character-building than in offering practical hints for a person’s survival. By this view, we should train ourselves to appreciate that everyone and everything is created by God and for His glory (Avot 6:11). Basically, if we can’t see what use a person is, and reckon him to be a waste of time, space or anything else, the fault lies with us for failing to look hard enough to see where that person’s worth lies.

Ultimately we are faced with a real-world challenge here. This mishnah charges us with accepting that there is an inherent value in others that is sufficient for us not to dismiss them as worthless. But in the contemporary world we encounter so many individuals, in person and more frequently via the various media, that there is not time in the day to assess and appreciate their worth. On the basis of “thinking, fast and slow” (Daniel Kahneman) we have to create a strategy for swiftly assessing if people are worth reading or listening to without stopping to take stock of each one. Maybe this is why Hillel (Avot 2:5) urges us not to judge others at all unless we are standing in their place.

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