Earlier this week I took a little time out from my busy schedule to go downtown with my son to a Jerusalemite bar with a big screen. There, over a pleasant beer or two, we cheered on Israel’s national football (soccer) team as the took on the might of Italy in a World Cup qualifying match. It was a real thriller: Israel looked to have taken the lead but their goal was disallowed. They then twice did take the lead, only to be overhauled by the stylish Europeans. Ultimately having scored a late equaliser, they conceded an even later goal that proved to be decisive. We lost 5-4 but we made a real contest of it and could hold our heads high.
What has this to do with Pirkei Avot? The tractate pinpoints
many character failings, but on a casual reading it seems that none of the
sages who contributed to it had anything to say about complacency. The Israel
team, reflecting what some people have unkindly suggested is a national
characteristic, appeared to be afflicted by a tendency to concede a goal very
soon after scoring one of their own. It is as though the players, having
greatly exerted themselves to secure the lead, relaxed a little and slid down
from the peak of intense concentration to which they had previously ascended.
So where in Avot do we find any discussion of complacency
and the need to avoid it? If we are honest with ourselves, there isn’t one.
Neither Biblical Hebrew nor the modern version spoken in Israel today have a
word that exactly matches it. The closest we get to it is arguably the modern
usage of שַׁאֲנַנוּת (sha’ananut),
which suggests smugness verging on indifference.
However, Avot does nudge us towards a recognition of the
need to guard against complacency. In Avot 5:24 Yehudah ben Teyma teaches:
הֱוֵי עַז
כַּנָּמֵר, וְקַל כַּנֶּֽשֶׁר, רָץ כַּצְּבִי, וְגִבּוֹר כָּאֲרִי, לַעֲשׂוֹת
רְצוֹן אָבִֽיךָ שֶׁבַּשָּׁמָֽיִם
Be as brazen as a leopard, light
as an eagle, swift as a deer and strong as a lion to do the will of your Father
in Heaven.
We are all supposed to do the will of our Father in Heaven. For
every practising Jew that comes with the territory, and it’s so well embedded
in the Written Torah that it would be otiose to repeat that obligation in the
Oral Law. In other words, we are supposed to look at the animals and see what
we can learn from them.
The deer cannot afford to be complacent either. As a popular
and nourishing repast for predators, the deer must be ever vigilant and ready
to flee at a split-second’s notice if it is not to be a big cat’s dinner. According
to Rabbi Menachem Mordechai Frankel-Teomim (Be’er HaAvot) this mishnah
goes further, with the deer epitomising the epithet zerizim makdimim
lemitzvot (“Enthusiasts are first to fulfil the commandments”), a middah
that is quite incompatible with an attitude of complacency.
There is also an overarching mishnah at Avot 1:13 in which Hillel teaches:
דְלָא מוֹסִיף
יָסֵף
The one who does not increase will decrease.
Complacency suggests holding to where one is, resting on one’s
laurels rather than contemplating how to better oneself, whether in material or—more
importantly for the committed Jew—spiritual terms.
To conclude, the mussar of Avot does address
complacency, albeit in a somewhat indirect matter which is results from the
lack of an apt term with which to describe it.
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