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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