LIVING IN A WORLD TURNED UPSIDE-DOWN

Among the values that Pirkei Avot promotes, none Is hammered home more powerfully than truth. At Avot 1:18 Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel classes it with peace and justice as one of the three values upon which life on Earth depends. Acceptance of the truth is one of the signs of someone who is not a golem (Avot 5:9), and acknowledging the truth is listed as one of the 48 qualities demanded of anyone who wishes to acquire Torah (Avot 6:6).

Why should we need to emphasize the value of truth? In an ideal world this exercise should be unnecessary.  Any group of humans that depends upon cooperation also depends on trust, and the establishment of trust itself depends on reciprocity. If there is no mutuality of trust, there is no basis on which to opt for collective behaviour and the division of responsibility within that group.  However, we know that—at least on a short-term basis—in any group where truth is respected and mutual trust is established, an individual can obtain an advantage through not respecting the truth.  This is the business model for fraudsters, confidence tricksters, cheating spouses and others. And it is this sort of deviation from the truth that Avot 1:18 in particular seems to be addressing.

Now, however, there is another threat to the universality of the acceptance of the value of truth: this comes in the form of the creation of so-called alternative narratives and conspiracy theories that are not based on the provability of facts but on the plausibility or attractiveness of the narrative itself.  If anyone has yet to be persuaded of the power of these creations, they should read Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, a contemporary account of how political and social pressure can be conjured almost out of nowhere by the persuasive power of an appealing alternative narrative.

It struck me this week that our perplexed reaction on confronting these “alternative realities” and our struggle to live in a society based upon a palpable fiction has been described in almost prophetic detail by Charles Dodgson (alias Lewis Carroll) in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. In these two remarkable works we find the protagonist, Alice, grappling with Humpty Dumpty's proposition:

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less".

This places the meaning of all vocabulary—the tool of communication—in the realm of the entirely subjective and deprives well-accepted terms of their shared meaning. Where is no shared understanding of meaning, there can be no meaningful debate.

Elsewhere in Carroll’s stories Alice’s perceptions of justice and fairness, authority and status, law and order are so firmly contradicted that she struggles to maintain them. She is forced to question her own identity—and even her own existence. This is pretty well how we live in today’s world, where basic human values and assumptions have ceased to be normative.

So far as Pirkei Avot is concerned, truth is a key value—and the essence of truth is that it establishes what is real and what is not. But there is no teaching in Avot that the concept of “reality”. There isn’t even a word in Mishnaic Hebrew that accurately describes the term as we understand it today. Does any mishnah or baraita in Avot talk about how we are to accept the reality as it is, particularly when our Sages themselves question the concept?  The Gemara (Pesachim 50a) suggests that the world we see before our very eyes, our perceived reality, is just an upside-down version of the real reality. Where does this lead us? Any

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SMALL DUTY, BIG REWARD?

One of the most popular topics for discussion in Avot is the designation of mitzvot: which commandments are big, as it were, and which are not? The first place where this issue arises is at Avot 2:1, where Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi teaches us to treat all mitzvot with care since we can’t know which carry a large reward (or punishment) and which do not. In his own words:

הֱוֵי 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 rewards, and the rewards of a transgression against its cost.

This is not like saying “Be as careful with a small dog as a big one, since you don’t know how badly it bites”. The response of a dog can be ascertained empirically, but the response of God cannot. Even when we receive a reward, we can’t be sure which mitzvah it’s for, or whether that mitzvah—even if we could identify it—was a major one or not.

There are various ways in which we can categorize mitzvot and then list them. For example:

Mitzvot may be owed towards God, other people or ourselves

They may be derived from the Torah, from the Oral Law, or from custom

Importance may depend on the immediate circumstances and not on their inherent value (thus a mitzvah that one is in the middle of performing will normally take precedence over any other mitzvot, and pikuach nefesh—the saving of a life—overrides positive and negative commandments).

In this context I was interested to read the following passage by Rabbi Hershel Schachter (Rav Schachter on Pirkei Avos), one of the few in which he does not cite his esteemed Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Solveitchik:

“[Historically, some mitzvos may take on greater significance, even they may be deemed objectively less valuable”.

Then, after summarizing the classic midrashim that argue against the rescue of the Jewish People from slavery in Egypt on the basis that we were just as much idolators as the Egyptians who enslaved us, he continues:

“The Midrashim …tell us that Bnei Yisroel did not change their names, their language, or their dress. In other words, by retaining their Jewish names, speaking Loshon HaKodesh, and dressing differently than the Mitzrim, the Jewish People remained distinctive.

Interestingly, the Rambam writes (Peirush HaMishnayos) that speaking Loshon HaKodesh is an example of what our Mishnah labels a mitzvah kalah, which should nevertheless be scrupulously performed. … Thus it turns out that the Jewish People merited geulah from Mitzrayim on the strength of mitzvos that we would consider among the less important ones!”

Rav Schachter draws further support for the notion that what is considered an important mitzvah may depend on the time and place from the suggestion of the Meshech Chochmah (Vayikra 26:44) that, when the Jewish people are in exile, “nationalistic” mitzvot are important than purely religious ones. In contrast, when we are in Israel, religious mitzvot increase in importance as against the rest.  Rav Schachter’s example of the Jews earning their right to redemption from Egypt by clinging to three mitzvot that help shape national identity bears this out.

Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi is right. We cannot second-guess the relative value of mitzvot—not in absolute terms and not in relative terms either, since circumstances change and, with them, our duties towards God, other people and ourselves. We must recognize the value of all mitzvot but at the same time concede that we cannot establish for ourselves which are the major, which the minor.

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WHAT IT MEANS TO BE LOVED—AND WHY

Being loved is not just something to which we aspire—and which we enjoy when it happens to us. It’s also a prerequisite for being a “Pirkei Avot person”, someone who seeks to improve their middot and live a life that balances their responsibilities towards God, to other people, and to themselves.

Twice in the baraitot in the sixth and final perek does the quality of being אָהוּב (“loved”) get a mention. First, at Avot 6:1, it appears as a reward rather than an aspiration when Rabbi Meir lists it among the 29 merits that attach to anyone to studies Torah for its own sake and not for any ulterior motive. The baraita at Avot 6:6 goes further: it is listed among the 48 things that form the package of personal attributes one needs in order to master one’s Torah studies.

Two questions beg to be asked.

First, why does being loved feature so importantly in a tractate on the perfection of human behaviour when it is an attribute that generally lies beyond any of us to achieve by ourselves? Secondly, is there a yardstick by which one can measure whether a person is loved or not?

On the first question, one can speculate that an element of pre-Kantian reciprocity was in the minds of our Sages: ask yourself what qualities in other people causes you to love others, then seek to emulate them in the way you deal with others in turn. While subjective considerations will always be important (one person’s endearing quality is another’s pet aversion), reciprocity works quite well as a rough-and-ready reckoner of the path in life one should take.

As for the second question, empirical evidence suggests that it is quite hard to be entirely unloved. We have all seen how many villains have loving mothers and loyal spouses. But if practically everyone is certain of being loved by at least one other person, the threshold for being אָהוּב is extremely low and would completely devalue the teachings in Avot.

The classic commentators do not greatly help us to answer either question, and most later and contemporary commentators have followed their example. When being loved is found in lists of 29 and 48 attributes respectively, and there is so much to say about many of the others, passing over the need to be אָהוּב is unsurprising.

So what can we glean from our rabbis? The Rambam and Bartenura offer no discussion of baraitot of the sixth perek. For Rabbenu Yonah it is self-evident that all the world loves a Torah scholar; if this was ever true, it is manifestly not the case today. For Rabbi  Chaim Volozhiner (Ru’ach Chaim), אָהוּבmeans being loved by God. However, since it is axiomatic that God loves all His creatures, this is a box that every Jew cannot help but tick. A less inclusive way for many people to tick the same box is by simply loving God: as Proverbs teaches: “I love those who love Me” (Mishlei 8:17). Rabbis Nachman and Natan of Breslov offer an easy alternative: אָהוּב means “being loved by oneself”, something that most of us can accomplish with little effort.

Some explain these baraitot by giving “beloved” a tweak. So for Rabbi Yitzchak Magriso (Me’am Lo’ez) the word really means “lovable”: if you are the sort of person that people love, you will attract more people who wish to teach you Torah.

Among modern psychologists too there is little to help us. Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of the Fathers) tells us that one who loves others is beloved but offers neither example nor precedent. Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka (Chapters of the Fathers) is silent.  

All of this is both perplexing and disappointing. One can justify being loved by others as a desirable consequence of learning Torah for its own sake, as Avot 6:1 states, but I feel that a good argument for including in the budding Torah student’s must-have list remains to be made.

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PAIN, JOY AND "MARKING THE GOOD"

I recently came across this paragraph from The Commentator ("The Independent Student Newspaper of Yeshiva University"):

[Rabbi Avi] Berman, who had just landed from Israel, spoke about the University’s two-year efforts in advocating and praying for the return of the hostages held in Gaza. The return of all of the living hostages to Israel happened while Berman was in Israel, so he took a moment to reflect and thank Hashem. In discussing the halachic implications of making a bracha on the return of the living hostages while there are still Jewish bodies held in Gaza and much uncertainty on the stability of the peace plan in Israel, Berman looked to Pirkei Avot. He explained that “even when there is pain mixed with joy we still have an obligation to mark the good.” 

I have no idea which mishnah was in Rabbi Berman's mind when he was quoted here. Can anyone help me?

You can check out the full text of this article here.

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