OUT OF ORDER

An anonymous mishnah at Avot 5:9 raises a curious conundrum. 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 on the subject and his answers are to the point. He responds to first things first and to later things later. Concerning that which he did not learn, he says "I did not learn." He concedes the truth. With the golem, the reverse of all these is the case.

The mishnah starts by mentioning the golem—an unpolished, uncultivated individual who does not know how to behave—and then the wise man, the chacham. Would it not therefore be logical for the mishnah to list the characteristics of the golem first and then contrast them with the chacham? Indeed, the mishnah itself says that dealing with first things first and to later things later is one of the tests of the chacham, so why does its author not follow his own advice? Alternatively, if the qualities of the chacham and not the golem are to be listed, should not the mishnah have started by saying: “There are seven things that characterize a wise man, and seven that characterize a golem”?

The commentators have less to say about “first things first” than about the other six tests of a person’s status, and there seems to be a general feeling among them that dealing with things in the order in which they are raised is a general guideline and not in any sense a binding rule: Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau (Yachel Yisrael) points out that there are perfectly respectable exceptions to it. Rabbenu Yonah, for example, notes that it may be necessary to deal with the later matter earlier in order to make it easier to deal with the first one.

Perhaps the last word should be left with the Tiferet Yisrael. At base, any sign of organization of a person’s thoughts indicates the presence of a degree of wisdom. But we may not be in a position to judge whether there is any sort of order.  I tried to explain this in my book, Pirkei Avot: A Users’ Manual, in the following manner:

Why did God issue commandments in the order He did, rather than sorting them out the way we now do? Presumably He gave them in the order which, in His wisdom, He deemed most appropriate under the circumstances in which they were first revealed, bearing in mind the capabilities of the people to whom they were revealed. We actually do the same ourselves. A parent might be heard to instruct a young child in the following manner before he steps foot outside the family home: “Have you got your hat and gloves? Do take some spare tissues with you. Your lunchbox is on the middle shelf of the fridge. Don’t forget your keys! Do you have your travel pass? If you want an apple, there are some in the fruit bowl. You are not going out in your socks: put those shoes on!” These instructions are not categorized by subject-matter (i.e. clothing, food, travel logistics) and look quite random to us. However, a thoughtful parent may have headed the list with those things the child was least likely to bother with (hat and coat, spare tissues) and finished it with those things the child was least likely to forget (apple, shoes).

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MAN – MADE IN THE IMAGE OF MAN

One of the mishnayot in Avot that superficially appears to have nothing to do with middot and mussar—advice that guides our behaviour and addresses our less noble thoughts—is a teaching by Rabbi Akiva that starts like this (Avot 3:18):

חָבִיב אָדָם שֶׁנִּבְרָא בְּצֶֽלֶם, חִבָּה יְתֵרָה נוֹדַֽעַת לוֹ שֶׁנִּבְרָא בְּצֶֽלֶם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: כִּי בְּצֶֽלֶם אֱלֹהִים עָשָׂה אֶת הָאָדָם

Beloved is man, for he was created in [God’s] image; with even greater love is it made known to him that he was created in the image, as it says, "For in the image of God, He made man" (Bereishit 9:6).

Knowing how much God love His human creations, a category to which we all belong, may inspire a warm feeling inside us, but it is hard to pinpoint a way in which this knowledge, of itself, is a game-changer in our daily lives.

Many scholars accept the view of Rabbi Shmuel di Uceda, in his commentary-cum-compendium Midrash Shmuel, that this teaching constitutes a warning that the act of murder is deserving of capital punishment. Since every human being is created in the image of God, the killing of any human is a form of erasure or diminution of the image of God—whatever that term might mean in relation to an incorporeal deity.

But there are other approaches which make up with their originality for what they lack in terms of literal accuracy. Thus, citing the Venetian scholar Rabbi Moshe Chafetz, Rabbi Norman Lamm (Foundation of Faith, ed. R’ Mark Dratch) takes a slight liberty with the mishnah—part of the Oral Law—by shifting a comma of which Rabbi Akiva would surely have been unaware, since he lived around 600 years before any form of punctuation was introduced into Hebrew. Nevertheless, what he writes is thought-provoking.

In short, by shifting the comma so that instead of following Elokim it follows b’tzelem, the meaning of the verse from Bereishit shifts from the usual

“for in the image of God, He made man"

to

“for in [his, i.e. man’s] image, God made man”.

Rabbi Akiva is now taken to say that God creates each man in his own individual image, with his own essence, his own characteristic being. It is each person’s own tzelem that gives him or her their own metaphysical value, their differentness and their absolute uniqueness.

Now we can ask what is our take-away message in terms of middot and mussar? Arguably it is that, if God has gone to the trouble of creating each person as an individual, we should be careful to recognize their unique personal qualities and should take care not to commoditise them or judge them in general terms. Each person must be assessed on the basis of their individual qualities—and respected because those qualities and their potential to use those qualities are hard-wired into them by God.

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WHEN THE CHATTING HAS TO STOP?

Pirkei Avot speaks twice about what we might call ordinary day-to-day conversation. At Avot 1:5 Yose ben Yochanan Ish Yerushalayim cautions men engaging in too much casual chatting even with their own wives—and how much more so should they not converse overmuch with other people’s wives. The consequences, which are grim, are listed in this mishnah:

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

One who excessively converses with one’s wife causes evil to himself, neglects the study of Torah and ultimately inherits Gehinnom.

Responses to this teaching range from bristling hostility at its attitude towards women in general to warm endorsement of the need for a man to respect boundaries in his dealings with his own and other people’s wives. Some also focus on the word שִׂיחָה (sichah, here meaning “chatter”), urging men to treat women with respect as their intellectual equals rather than refuse to engage them on matters of a more serious nature.

Conversation also features in a later mishnah that focuses not so much on quantity as on quality. At Avot 3: Dosa ben Horkinas teaches

שֵׁנָה שֶׁל שַׁחֲרִית, וְיַֽיִן שֶׁל צָהֳרָֽיִם, וְשִׂיחַת הַיְלָדִים, וִישִׁיבַת בָּתֵּי כְנֵסִיּוֹת שֶׁל עַמֵּי הָאָֽרֶץ, מוֹצִיאִין אֶת הָאָדָם מִן הָעוֹלָם

Morning sleep, noontime wine, children's talk and sitting at the meeting places of the ignoramus drive a person from the world.

I believe that the children’s talk referred to here is children’s talk between adults, not between adult and child. Speaking to a child in a childish manner is so often a vital part of the child’s education in the use of language, the art of communication and the gradual acquisition of cognitive and conceptual understanding. But it can be an embarrassment to listen to adults speaking with one another as though they were children.

Avot returns to the theme of conversation in a context that is neither age- nor gender-specific, in the lengthy Baraita at 6:6 that lists the 48 boxes that an aspiring Torah scholar is to tick if he is to obtain and then retain his Torah learning. One of these is to practise ְּמִעוּט שִׂיחָה (miyut sichah, minimizing ordinary conversation). From the context it is plain that the problem with sichah is not one of inviting greater sexual intimacy or of grooming a prospective sexual partner, but rather of bitul zeman—wasting time that might otherwise be spent on more productive activities in the pursuit of Torah.

Some of the more serious Torah scholars of bygone generations took the limitation or even the avoidance of ordinary conversation to extremes. Thus Rabbi Asher Weiss (Rav Asher Weiss on Avos vol.2) states, citing Midrash Shir HaShirim Rabbah, that for every piece of unnecessary speech that enters a person’s ear, a Torah matter leaves. But Rabbi Weiss then tempers this extreme position with an observation about life in the real world:

“…[T]his is not the way for most people. We may infer from Chazal’s expression “limited conversation” that we are only to lessen our involvement. … Human nature dictates that we cannot completely withdraw from light conversation and the way of the world”.

The need to speak to other people cannot be denied but, like so many other things in Avot, the difficulty lies not in the principle but in the practice. Here it is difficult to draw firm guidelines. One person’s being polite or friendly is another person’s being flirtatious or suggestive. And I would not be as brave as Rabbi Weiss as to write the words “human nature dictates…”, bearing in mind that so much of the challenge that we face in our own lives lies precisely in the battle to resist what human nature dictates.

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"YOU'RE A WASTE OF SPACE!"

One of the messages that Pirkei Avot most persistently hammers home is that it is unwise to judge other people—whatever we may be tempted to think of them. We can’t know why they do what they do unless we are standing in their place (Hillel, 2:5). If we do judge them, we should look at them favourably if at all possible (Yehoshua ben Perachyah, 1:6). In any event, judgement should be a collective exercise, not the prerogative of the individual (Rabbi Yishmael ben Yose. 4:10).

A further encouragement not to judge others, one that is not couched in the vocabulary of judgement but of vilification or scorn, is found in the words of Ben Azai (Avot 4:3):

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 anyone, and do not disdain any thing, for there is no one who does not have his hour, and no thing that does not have its place.

Scorning other people, writing them off as what Basil Fawlty would call “a waste of space”, is in essence a judgmental process. We size someone up, we write them off as being worthless, we deem them to be literally “useless”.

In the real world, where humans are trained or expected to perform a multitude of functions, every one of us—if we are honest—is in most respects useless. A person may be generally useful as a spouse, a parent, a friend or community member, but useless if what you are seeking is a dentist, a plumber or a fourth hand for bridge.  We do not write each other off for being useless in this sense and it is fairly certain that this scenario is not what Ben Azai had in mind.

I believe that Ben Azai’s message comes to reinforce that of Ben Zoma at Avot 4:1, that a person is wise who learns from everyone. If everyone has something to teach you, you can hardly point to anyone and declare them to be “a waste of space”.

We do however have a problem. Let us suppose that someone appears to be useless. Ben Azai tells us that everyone has their hour. But what if that hour has already passed, and their usefulness has been spent, as it were? What happens if they have nothing left to offer?  May we not write them off even then? Or are we supposed to take them seriously and treat them with respect in case they still have another hour to come, another moment of significance? And how can we assume that they can no longer teach us anything?

These are not, possibly with justification, issues that trouble our commentators—but the Torah narrative in Sefer Bereishit may furnish us with an answer. After the Flood and the episodes that take place shortly after it, we hear no more of Noach, though he lives for hundreds of years. He is often characterized as a spent force, a man who had his moment but never succeeded in building upon it, a sad soul who sunk into an abyss of alcoholic obscurity from which he could not emerge—or chose not to.

But maybe Noach’s inactivity was itself teaching us a lesson. His sons and subsequent generations took up the story of human life on Earth, but Noach did not take any steps to interfere with them. For many if not most parents it is very difficult to let one’s children grow in terms of taking the reins of responsibility and leading their lives in directions that they have chosen for themselves. Yet this is what Noach did. Perhaps his apparent inactivity was the result of a conscious decision to trust his descendants to take their own decisions and to decide for themselves whether they wished to obtain his advice or not. And that is an important lesson for us all.

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WICKED!

Considering how few words the Tannaim used when teaching, it is hardly surprising that their teachings have generated so many comments and explanations. From our own experience, we see how words that are taken out of context—or which are never given a context in the first place—can be twisted, misunderstood or merely interpreted in so many different ways that the impact of their brevity is lost. In modern times, two “classics” come to mind. The first is the instruction “To avoid suffocation keep away from children”—which only carries a useful meaning when printed on a polythene bag. The second, “Stand in boiling water for two minutes”, requires a different context entirely, being a cooking instruction for a canned pudding. Fortunately, the words of our Mishnaic sages are less extreme cases but, even so, they demand some form of context or background—and may attract several competing explanations.

At Avot 2:18 Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel says:

אַל תְּהִי רָשָׁע בִּפְנֵי עַצְמֶֽךָ

Do not be wicked bifnei atzmecha (“before yourself”, “inside yourself”, “on your own”)

The precise meaning of this injunction, and of the words bifnei atzmecha, is unclear, as we see from our commentators. No context is supplied and the Tanna points to no particular objective. For the Rambam, this teaching means not judging oneself as a wicked person. The Bartenura (with whom the commentary ascribed to Rashi agrees) says it means not doing something today if tomorrow you will regard yourself as being evil for having done it. Rabbenu Yonah, author of the Sha’arei Teshuvah, puts a teshuvah-related spin on it: don’t regard yourself as being wicked since you always have the option to repent. He then adds, with an eye on Yom Kippur and Divine judgement, that you should regard yourself as half-guilty and half-innocent: your next action might then lead either to acquittal or condemnation. As for the Me’iri, his take on Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel’s words is that, if you regard yourself as being wicked when you are not, you may come to do things that are wicked. More recently, the Ru’ach Chaim reads here a caution against looking righteous and wrapping yourself in tallit and tefillin when you are inwardly seething with evil thoughts.

One can travel even further in a quest for an explanation. Thus Rabbi Yaakov Hillel (Eternal Ethics From Sinai) picks up on a Gemara (Berachot 8a) that teaches that anyone who has a synagogue in his city but prays by himself is a shochen ra, a bad neighbour. Perhaps this then is the clue: since bifnei atzmecha can also be understood as meaning “on one’s own”, Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel must have been cautioning against praying at home by home. Alternatively, according to Rabbi Hillel, a person who brazenly defies our Sages by praying by himself is automatically deemed “wicked”. Rabbi Yehoshua Heschel of Monstritch turns this idea on its head: one is only allowed to view oneself as wicked, sinful and downright inadequate if one prays with other people, by analogy of the blend of spices and herbs that made up the ketoret—the incense offering in the Temple—which would be invalidated by the absence of the foul-smelling chelbanah. In such a case, one can feel wicked in the safe knowledge that one’s wickedness is cancelled out by the company one keeps.

How much of this speaks to us today? These analyses do not reflect our way of looking at the world—or ourselves—in an era in which the vocabulary of obedience and deviancy has so greatly changed. Words like ‘sin’ are marginalized and have faded from daily parlance; ‘evil’ is now a convenient epithet for someone with whom one has a major disagreement and ‘wicked’ is now a popular musical-turned-movie (run the word through your favourite browser if you don’t believe me).  But our mishnah is not lost.

Coming to the rescue is Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of The Fathers), who examines the Tanna’s pronouncement from his own perspective as a psychiatrist.  Do not think of yourself as an inherently bad person, he counsels. Rather, view yourself as a person who is fundamentally good but who has done bad things. Condemn the act, not the actor. This explanation might even be what Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel had in mind, and it is closer to his words than some of the explanations we reviewed earlier.

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A REWARD IN HAND

An anonymous mishnah at Avot 5:17 assesses and contrasts four categories of individual who have (or lack) pretentions to be engaged in Torah learning. It runs like this:

אַרְבַּע מִדּוֹת בְּהוֹלְכֵי בֵית הַמִּדְרָשׁ: הוֹלֵךְ וְאֵינוֹ עוֹשֶׂה, שְׂכַר הֲלִיכָה בְּיָדוֹ. עוֹשֶׂה וְאֵינוֹ הוֹלֵךְ, שְׂכַר מַעֲשֶׂה בְּיָדוֹ. הוֹלֵךְ וְעוֹשֶׂה, חָסִיד. לֹא הוֹלֵךְ וְלֹא עוֹשֶׂה, רָשָׁע

There are four types among those who attend the study hall. Someone who goes but does nothing has gained the rewards of going. Someone who does [study] but does not go to the study hall has gained the rewards of doing. One who goes and does is a chasid. One who neither goes nor does is wicked.

This is not one of the red-hot mishnayot that make Avot so exciting; it looks almost like a rote exercise in patting people on the head for going out to learn Torah in public, whether they can be seen and can share their learning with others, rather than sit with their books before them at home—where for all we know they might be playing Minecraft on their iPads.

Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezrich gives this teaching a Chasidic make-over in his inimitable manner by focusing on the second of the four stereotypes described in our mishnah, the הוֹלֵךְ וְאֵינוֹ עוֹשֶׂה (oseh ve’eino holech, who “does but doesn’t go”). This person earns a reward for the learning he does, but he fails to “go”, to progress from the level he has already attained to a higher level as a result of his learning.  His reward is therefore בְּיָדוֹ (beyado, literally “in his hand”), meaning “from the action of his hand” rather than being a reward for the internalization of his thoughts and his understanding of what has been learned—and for his growth in Torah.

This is a neat and elegant way to convey the message that the value of learning is in what understands rather than in the time spent sitting in a shiur, a lecture theatre or a library, going through the motions but emerging quite unchanged by that exercise. However, this meaning of לֵךְ וְאֵינוֹ עוֹשֶׂה and בְּיָדוֹ cannot be what the author of our mishnah intended. If it were, it would be impossible to comprehend the first part of the mishnah which speaks of the opposite case, the הוֹלֵךְ וְאֵינוֹ עוֹשֶׂה (holech ve’eino oseh, the one who “goes but does not do” any learning). By Reb Dov Ber’s reckoning this would be the person who rises in his level of learning and still receives a reward even though he has done nothing.

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WHERE—AND HOW—SHOULD WE LOOK FOR OUR HAPPINESS?

At Avot 4:1 Ben Zoma teaches (among other things):

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 (Tehillim 128:2): "If you eat of the effort of your hands, you are fortunate and it is good is to you"; “you are fortunate" in this world, "and it is good for you" in the World to Come.

The notion that happiness and the feeling that one is wealthy are contingent on being happy with what one has is a popular truism that seems to be expressed in many different ways and in every culture with which I am familiar. Jewish literature is rich in teachings that support it. We all know, as humans, that we want more than we have and that, once we obtain the object of our desire, we begin to want something else, something better or more appropriate for our needs. We know this because, if we are honest with ourselves, at one stage or another in our lives we have personally experienced it.

The party line is eloquently expressed by Rabbi Yisrael Miller (The Wisdom of Avot) where he writes, citing Rav Yerucham Levovitz:

… [W]e can all find happiness and success inside ourselves, and need not—and should not—allow our happiness to depend on external factors or circumstances; and with this understanding, “thank Hashem, I am happy always”.

A baraita in the sixth and final perek emphasizes this notion with specific reference to the Torah scholar and citing the same verse in Tehillim. At Avot 6:4 we learn:

כַּךְ הִיא דַּרְכָּהּ שֶׁל תּוֹרָה: פַּת בְּמֶֽלַח תֹּאכֵל, וּמַֽיִם בִּמְשׂוּרָה תִּשְׁתֶּה, וְעַל הָאָֽרֶץ תִּישָׁן, וְחַיֵּי צַֽעַר תִּחְיֶה, וּבַתּוֹרָה אַתָּה עָמֵל, אִם אַתָּה עֽוֹשֶׂה כֵּן, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ וְטוֹב לָךְ, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה, וְטוֹב לָךְ לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא

Such is the way of Torah: Bread with salt you shall eat; water in moderation you shall drink, and upon the ground you shall sleep. Live a life of deprivation and toil in Torah. If so you do, "If you eat of the effort of your hands, you are fortunate and it is good is to you"; “you are fortunate" in this world, "and it is good for you" in the World to Come.

It is possible to employ an objective test in order to establish that a person is fortunate. However, prima facie it seems both unnecessary and wrong to tell a person that they are happy or to prescribe in blanket terms that they will be happy. Happiness is experienced by every individual in a unique manner and to a unique degree.

One can go further in questioning the utility of the teachings in Avot concerning happiness, since there are a number of unstated assumptions that underpin the notion of true happiness being the feeling of being happy with one’s lot. For example:

If I want something that I do not have, I am discontented.

If I want something and God does not provide for me to obtain it, I am criticizing God’s assessment of what I am entitled to have and therefore implicitly consider Him unfair.

My being happy is a conscious choice, an exercise of my free will.

My lot consists of what I have or can access for myself, and not what I should have or need to have—but do not.

These assumptions, like the notion that one should be happy with one’s lot, are important because they play out in a person’s behaviour and response to factors that go beyond personal contentment. They therefore affect middot, norms of behaviour, and are not absolutes. This means that, while we can cheerfully endorse the idea that it is good to be content with one’s lot, we can drill it full of exceptions. Thus we can recite all 13 of the bakashot, the requests that form the heart of the weekday tefillah, without fear. We can seek to make provision for the needs of our family and, to a lesser extent, our wider community even if, in doing so, we make demands for things that we do not want.

Rabbinical thought does not challenge these teachings of Avot, but it does examine them in a variety of ways that make them less sententious and more appealing. Thus, for example, the Ben Ish Chai (cited in Mima’ayanot Netzach) explains that the “lot” (chelek in Hebrew) with which a person is happy is the chelek of his assets that he allocates to the benefit of the poor. He can rejoice in the fact that, by giving away this portion, he increases his own portion in the world to come.

I would like to suggest that there is a practical use for the concept of being happy with one’s lot. 

In our lives we inevitably find there are things we don’t have but would wish to acquire, as well as, less often, things we do have but which we neither need nor want.  Why not use the criterion of happiness with one’s lot as a sort of yardstick by which to measure our position regarding what we do and don’t want.  When contemplating whether to acquire or indeed pray for something, we should ask: “can I honestly say that it will make me happier?”  Likewise, when retaining or hoarding something, or dealing with another person’s requests that are made of us, we should ask: “can I honestly say that the loss of this article or acceding to this request will make me less happy?” This mental audit of our wish lists may not bring us to a state of permanently radiant happiness, but it will force us to confront the question of how much our happiness means to us in material, social, emotional and intellectual terms.

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WHEN IT’S RUDE TO ANSWER THE PHONE

In terms of modern etiquette, making and taking calls—particularly on smartphones—has developed its own set of behaviours. Often we can identify a caller, which gives us the option of letting the phone continue to ring, dismissing the call or answering it. Video calls can be accepted as such or only as audio calls, depending on one’s mood, location and respectability of appearance. We can put one person on hold while we speak to someone else, and so on. If we guess why the caller is trying to contact us, we can decline the call but send an instant message by text or voice in order to anticipate the need to talk at all.

Sometimes a caller is offended by the response of the person called, where it is not the hoped-for one. One such situation arises when the recipient answers the phone, only to tell the caller that he or she is far too busy to speak and then terminating the call. Many people find this behaviour unacceptably rude. “Why bother answering my call,” they complain, “when they don’t have the time to deal with me?” It’s insulting and suggests that the caller is of no worth at all.  Rabbi Shimshon Dovid Pincus (introduction to She’arim beTefillah) tells us that there is no greater honour that we can bestow upon others than the gift of our time. To deny another person one’s time is therefore the greatest snub one can administer. All this means that it is better not to answer at all than to answer with the “I’ve no time” response.

The position described in the previous paragraph is understandable—but is it best practice?

In the first place it is not correct to assume that, if giving another one’s time is the greatest honour, then not giving one’s time is the greatest insult. The opposite of giving honour (more accurately its negative) is simply not giving honour, ust as the opposite of giving someone an ice-cream is not giving someone an ice-cream. In each case, whether the negative of a particular act is good, bad or quite neutral is a value judgement based on other criteria.

Secondly, in Pirkei Avot we learn from Yehoshua ben Perachyah that we should not be inclined to presume the worst in other people. He teaches (Avot 1:6):

הֱוֵי דָן אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם לְכַף זְכוּת

Judge every person on the scale of merit.

This means giving others the benefit of the doubt in situations in which their behaviour, though objectively unacceptable or even inexcusable, may in fact be justified by circumstances of which we have no knowledge.  This principle is underlined by a teaching of Hillel later in the same tractate (Avot 2:4):

אַל תָּדִין אֶת חֲבֵרָךְ עַד שֶׁתַּגִּֽיעַ לִמְקוֹמוֹ

Do not judge your fellow until you have stood in his place. 

If we are honest with ourselves we will concede that, however annoying it is when others have answered your call only to tell you they can’t deal with you now, it is something we have quite likely done to others without feeling any sense of guilt. Common instances of this are where, for example,

The caller is phoning at a time other than one which you have told him you are free to talk;

You know that the caller will call repeatedly if you don’t answer the call or dismiss it;

The call is coming in just before Shabbat and you are frantically juggling a set of immediate commitments;

You know that the caller seeks to repeat a request that you have already refused and that nothing will come from discussing the matter again until there is a change in circumstances.

If we feel quite justified do this ourselves, we should be prepared to accept that others may feel exactly the same way.

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LET’S HANG ON TO WHAT WE GOT…

At Avot 3:10 Rabbi Dostai ben Yannai teaches in the name of Rabbi Meir a lesson that most of us would regard as easy to understand but extremely hard to apply:

כָּל הַשּׁוֹכֵֽחַ דָּבָר אֶחָד מִמִּשְׁנָתוֹ, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: רַק הִשָּֽׁמֶר לְךָ וּשְׁמֹר נַפְשְׁךָ מְאֹד פֶּן תִּשְׁכַּח אֶת הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר רָאוּ עֵינֶֽיךָ. יָכוֹל אֲפִילוּ תָּקְפָה עָלָיו מִשְׁנָתוֹ, תַּלְמוּד לוֹמַר: וּפֶן יָסֽוּרוּ מִלְּבָבְךָ כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּֽיךָ, הָא אֵינוֹ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ עַד שֶׁיֵּשֵׁב וִיסִירֵם מִלִּבּוֹ

Anyone who forgets even a single word of this learning, the Torah considers it as if he had forfeited his life. As is stated, "Just be careful, and very much guard your soul, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen" (Devarim 4:9). One might think that this applies also to one who [has forgotten because] his studies proved too difficult for him; but the verse continues "and lest they be removed from your heart, throughout the days of your life." From this we see that one does not forfeit his life unless he deliberately removes them from his heart.

For any Jew learning Torah today, the task is in many respects incomparably harder than it was for the Sages of the Mishnah: Rabbi Dostai and his contemporaries had ‘only’ to master the canonical books of the Tanach plus the Oral Law that Rabbi Yehudah eventually organized into the Six Orders of the Mishnah and the accompanying teachings that became known as baraitot, toseftot and midrash. They never had to face the task of conquering what was to become a possibly exponential growth of literature ranging from the commentaries and codifications of the Rishonim through to the generally far more voluminous output of the Acharonim.  On the other hand, without the convenience of the printed text and the luxury of online data retrieval, anything they failed to commit to memory or were able to explain cogently to others was liable to be lost forever.

The Chasid Yavetz places this mishnah within the context of the arrangement of teachings in the third chapter of Avot. There it follows a series of six mishnayot that deal with different aspects of Torah: sharing it with others, not turning away from it but adhering to it, the importance of studying it with others and the need to resist the temptation to be distracted while learning it.  Once we have mastered these matters, we are all set for a promising role as a talmid chacham—someone who is wise in the ways of the Torah—but there is still one thing left to address.

Explains the Chasid Yavetz, there is a parallel between the pursuit of Torah and the pursuit of profit in the business world. Most of us are probably familiar with the types of businessmen that inhabit our commercial world. Discounting those poor souls who really don’t have a clue, there are three other personalities in the business world: those who make money and don’t know how to hang on to it, those who know exactly how to hang onto it but never seem to be able to make it, and those happy folk who possess the knack of making money and the wherewithal to safeguard it. So too in the world of Torah, we see those who know how to learn but can’t retain it, those who would retain it well if they could but remember it, and those who are not only good at learning but keep their knowledge and their understanding secure. The Chasid Yavetz bases his categorization on the proof verse from Devarim and the two verses that precede it, though he could equally have treated it as an echo of the -authored “four types of Torah student” mishnah at Avot 5:15.

The obvious line of protection against forgetting one’s Torah is the principle of “let’s hang on to what we got”, this being the practice of regularly revising what we have learned. Curiously, this important learning technique is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the tractate of Avot—though there is something of a tradition that incorporates it. We learn Avot from Pesach to Shavuot, the period of sefirat ha’omer (this being 49 days), but only 48 elements of acquiring Torah are listed in the baraita of Avot 6:6. Each day of the sefirat ha’omer corresponds to one of those 48 elements, leaving the 49^th and final day for chazarah (“revision”). I heard this from Rabbi Eli Brunner zt’l, who heard it from Rabbi Elya Lopian. If anyone has an authentic source drawn from our earlier Sages, can they please let me know.

I don’t suppose that many, and perhaps any, serious and sincere contemporary Torah scholars would ever go about deliberately forgetting any part of their Torah learning except possibly where they had mis-learned it in the first place and had to put it right out of their minds before seeking to re-learn it properly. But there may be another form of forgetting that is more than merely accidental but certainly not malicious. An argument in Jewish law may be complex, built on the interrelationship of several different propositions—and sometimes when we apply layers of halachic propositions one after another we reach a result that is so absurd or self-evidently wrong that we deliberately reject it and start again. It may be that, in this process of rejection, a valid Torah proposition is set aside too and is subsequently forgotten. I like to think that our God, being all-knowing and merciful, would not condemn this form of forgetfulness.

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TALKIN’ ABOUT OUR GENERATIONS…

There is a pair of mishnayot in Avot that look totally out of place in a tractate that is concerned with the criteria that our Sages lay down for good behaviour. They read like this (Avot 5:2-3):

עֲשָׂרָה דוֹרוֹת מֵאָדָם וְעַד נֹֽחַ, לְהוֹדִֽיעַ כַּמָּה אֶֽרֶךְ אַפַּֽיִם לְפָנָיו, שֶׁכָּל הַדּוֹרוֹת הָיוּ מַכְעִיסִין וּבָאִין, עַד שֶׁהֵבִיא עֲלֵיהֶם אֶת מֵי הַמַּבּוּל

עֲשָׂרָה דוֹרוֹת מִנֹּֽחַ וְעַד אַבְרָהָם, לְהוֹדִֽיעַ כַּמָּה אֶֽרֶךְ אַפַּֽיִם לְפָנָיו, שֶׁכָּל הַדּוֹרוֹת הָיוּ מַכְעִיסִין וּבָאִין, עַד שֶׁבָּא אַבְרָהָם אָבִֽינוּ וְקִבֵּל שְׂכַר כֻּלָּם

There were ten generations from Adam to Noah. This is to teach us the extent of God's tolerance; for all these generations angered Him, until He brought upon them the waters of the Flood.

There were ten generations from Noah to Abraham. This is to teach us the extent of God's tolerance; for all these generations angered Him, until Abraham came and reaped the reward for them all.

Since the Mishnah is not a work of history, it is implicit that there is more to these teachings than the transgenerational narrative suggests.  Much attention is paid to important philosophical issues such as the withholding of punishment from generations that were deserving it or the fairness of giving Abraham the reward for meritorious acts of others, as well as theological issues relating to the imputation of human qualities such as forbearance and anger to an inscrutable Deity whose characteristics are beyond human comprehension. But there is one topic that is generally ignored: the counting of generations.

The problem these mishnayot raise is this. Counting Adam as 1 and Abraham as 20, as the genealogical chronology of the Torah suggests, there are only 19 generations (you can try this yourself with a box of matches: if you lay out 20 in a row, the number of gaps, representing the generations, will only total 19).

Paul Forchheimer (Maimonides’ Commentary on Pirkey Avoth) asserts that Noah belongs only to the first mishnah. He brings no support for this assertion, but Tosafot Yom Tov, the Maharal in his Derech Chaim and the Anaf Yosef see provide it for him. The Torah itself challenges this view, though since, though the first mishnah ends with God bringing his punishing Flood, we discover at Bereshit 9:28 that Noah lived for another 350 presumably quite unrewarding years—thus taking him well beyond that cataclysmic event and placing him firmly in the second mishnah.  Another reason for including him in the second grouping is that, at the end of this period, God is not in punishment mode but is distributing rewards. Noah, whom the Torah describes as a tzaddik and who is the instrument through which God saves humanity, would appear to belong more to the generations that earned rewards—even if they were withheld—than the generations that deserved to be wiped out.

Ultimately the question that should concern us is not which mishnah or mishnayot contains Noah but, rather, what the anonymous author of these teachings is trying to teach us. This should not be hard to establish. The main actor in each mishnah is God. It is an oft-repeated axiom that we are supposed to emulate His ways. Just as He is merciful, so too should we be merciful, and so on (Shabbat 133b). Transposing this axiom to our pair of mishnayot, the lesson is clear: just as He is patient and tolerant, we too should be patient and tolerant; and just as He is not hasty to hand out rewards to those who are not fit to receive them, so too should we exercise the same caution.

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