LET’S STICK TOGETHER. REALLY?

Hillel is quite firm on the point. At Avot 2:4 the first of his five teachings is

אַל תִּפְרוֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר

Do not separate from the community.

In many (probably most) versions of Pirkei Avot these words are repeated verbatim by Rabbi Tzadok at Avot 4:7 as the first of his three teachings.

As happens so often in Avot, these few terse words are susceptible of an apparently unlimited range of meanings and practical applications. This is because they deal with a topic that is of universal relevance—the relationship of the individual to the group in philosophical, moral, religious, economic, psychological and sociological terms.

For us Jews, the obvious situation in this teaching applies is where an individual finds himself embedded within a community that is going astray. Maimonides has no doubts here. Separate yourself from wrongdoers who transgress the will of Heaven even if it means leaving town and finding yourself a convenient cave; anything and everything is better than remaining within a community that is actively defying the commandments of God. For Rabbi Eliezer Papo (a.k.a. the Pele Yo’etz) however, the opposite path must be taken: stick to the community wherever it goes and whatever it does. Even the wicked and idolatrous King Achav was rewarded with victory because he fostered achdut—unity—among his people, and the first galut lasted only 70 years, even though our forebears committed every sin in the book, because the people still stuck together. The second galut, however, in result of our lack of achdut, continues.

Rabbi Yaakov Hillel (Eternal Ethics from Sinai, vol.2) suggests a novel view of Hillel’s teaching, based on the Arizal. For him, not separating from the community is an intellectual and spiritual response to the challenge of prayer. He writes:

The Arizal teaches that “before one begins his prayers in the synagogue … he should accept upon himself the commandment of  ‘Love your fellow man as yourself’. And he should have in mind to love each and every Jewish person as he loves himself because, through this, his prayers will ascend, linked to the prayers of all Israel”.

This does not address the issue of separation from the tzibbur, but redefines it in terms of making a positive effort to identify with the prayers of other Jews. But what if we know our fellows and feel intuitively that we are not straining to pray for the same outcomes? Is it permitted or even possible to detach our prayer from theirs?

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CONFRONTED BY HUMILITY? WHAT DO YOU DO?

This is a serious question. Every type of human behaviour either elicits or demands an appropriate response. If someone displays anger towards me, I know that this is a corrosive middah and that it is never right and generally wrong to respond with a display of anger of my own. Not just in Pirkei Avot (see eg Avot 5:14, 6:6) but throughout Jewish ethical writings, anger is regarded as a destructive personal quality, akin to avodah zarah—idolatry—because a person possessed by it is no longer in control of himself. Likewise, if someone greets me with a happy smiling face I should respond in like kind (Avot 1:15).  When a person displays boastful arrogance, I should not seek to compete or contradict: that is likely to cause anger. If someone is in a quiet, contemplative mood I should recognize the fact and give him time and space. And so on.

But what should we do when faced with a display of humility? The importance of this middah, which is emphasized in Avot (eg Avot 4:4, 4:12, 6:6), is further underlined by the Maharal in Netivot Olam, where he lists it as the foremost requirement for learning Torah, by Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Psishcha, who calls it a chiyuv de’oraita (a Torah obligation), by Rambam in his Pirush Mishnayot, and by many others. Do displays of humility call for any response at all?

I ask this question because of the superficial similarity between true humility from its evil twin, false humility (a.k.a. false modesty)—an annoying trait that our sages identify and which in reality is a form of boastfulness or conceit. A species of this middah that I have encountered several times over the years is found where someone who is giving s shiur cites a question, describes its difficulty, lists the various sages who have not offered a satisfactory answer to it, and then announces that, despite his relative insignificance when compared with these gedolim of previous generations, he is humbly submitting the answer. If the speaker was truly humble, would he really announce his humility?

Publicly one cannot say anything without running the likely risk of embarrassing the speaker in public, and this would be contrary to the teaching of Rabbi Elazar haModa’i at Avot 3:15. In addition, in the context of a shiur, whether the speaker is humble or not is less important—and less interesting—than whether the answer he has given is correct, or at least tenable.  Privately one might speak to him and tactfully rebuke him, but this in turn raises the question whether the Torah mitzvah of rebuking another (endorsed by Avot 6:6), applies only to the breach of mitzvot or also to a display of poor behaviour such as false humility.

My guess is that, in most situations, the correct thing to do is—nothing. At least that way one avoids giving positive offence, which itself is something.  Comments, anyone?

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WORK, EFFORT AND MONEY

Rabban Gamliel ben Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi tosses a familiar bone of contention to the pack of commentators at Avot 2:2 when he teaches:

יָפֶה תַּלְמוּד תּוֹרָה עִם דֶּֽרֶךְ אֶֽרֶץ, שֶׁיְּגִיעַת שְׁנֵיהֶם מַשְׁכַּֽחַת עָוֹן, וְכָל תּוֹרָה שֶׁאֵין עִמָּהּ מְלָאכָה סוֹפָהּ בְּטֵלָה וְגוֹרֶֽרֶת עָוֹן

Beautiful is the study of Torah with derech eretz [taken here to mean some sort of day job or gainful employment by which to support oneself], for the toil of them both causes sin to be forgotten. Ultimately, all Torah study that is not accompanied with work is destined to be of no worth and to cause sin.

Reading through the sages over the ages, one can identify two camps. There are those, led by Rambam, who take this teaching at face value. Someone who doesn’t work and expects to be supported by others is in essence a parasite and his attitude is a chillul Hashem, a denigration of God’s name. On this theme, at Avot 4:7 where Rabbi Zadok teaches that one should not use the Torah as a spade to dig with, Rambam explains his position at extraordinary length, pulling no punches. In short, such a person forfeits his life in the World to Come—and anyone who argues otherwise has either misunderstood or disregarded the words of the sages on this matter.

Rambam however appears to be in the minority, just as much now as he was in his own times. The opposition has maintained, among other things, that Rambam didn’t mean his words to be taken literally, that Torah learning would suffer—and the Jewish world with it—if people were not supported in their full-time learning, that learning to the exclusion of working for a living is the optimal solution and that, if we all studied Torah full time, our work would be done by others. In the world today a very large number of scholars are supported in full-time Torah study, whether for life or a limited period, and they are unlikely to be militant supporters of Rambam’s position.

So much attention is given to the “work or not to work” issue that the last few words are sometimes overlooked. Living off the charity of others is said to be גוֹרֶֽרֶת עָוֹן (“goreret avon”, something that drags sin in its wake). Why should this be the case? After all, if Torah has the quality of being able to refine a person’s thoughts and conduct, learning Torah to the exclusion of everything else should have the opposite effect.

Rambam’s younger contemporary Rabbenu Yonah explains these words thus:

Idleness leads to poverty, which will inevitably lead to sin and many other evils. The poor man will be eager to receive gifts, and “only one who hates gifts will live” [Mishlei 15:27]. As a result, he will flatter others, wicked people included, in order to receive more gifts. When the gift money runs out he will resort to theft and gambling [based on Ketubot 58a], bringing home what he stole from the poor to ward off death by starvation. At this desperate stage he loses all restraint and will not stop until he has transgressed all of the mitzvot in the Torah, for one sin leads to another [Ben Azzai, Avot 2:1] (trans. Rabbi David Sedley).

This grim picture, based on impeccable primary sources, is hard if not impossible to reconcile with full-time learning today. Aside from the contentious notion that anyone in full time learning can be truly described as “idle”, modern Jewish society lives with a system that has greatly expanded since the end of the Second World War whereby full-time Torah study is mainly paid for and sponsored by Jewish communities themselves. Beyond the provision made by Jewish communities for the support of this sort of Torah scholarship, most countries today provide some sort of welfare support that covers at least the bare necessities of the unemployed, the unemployable and the seriously dedicated Torah scholar.

Does this mean that Rabban Gamliel is wrong and that full time Torah learning is no longer likely to cause sin? No. There are other ways in which a person can err. Theft, refusing to repay a loan and indeed “all the mitzvot of the Torah” are exactly that—statutory wrongs that are contained in the Written Law.  But Avot is a tractate that is addressed to middot, the qualities of a person’s character and the way one behaves, and this means looking beyond the Tanach, towards something more deeply ingrained in what we are and how we feel.

When a person works to support himself or supplement his income, he internalizes an important connection between three cardinal elements that shape his life: time, effort and money. If he needs money, he must expend effort and, in doing so, consume time that might be spent doing other things (in this instance, learning Torah). By working to secure money to support himself, he comes to appreciate the value of his effort and the cost to him in spending that effort which could have been put to good use in his studies. This should make his learning all the dearer to him because the time and effort put into to working are the price he pays for doing it.

The situation is quite different where a person’s support comes automatically from a source that is not contingent on his time and effort. He will not have had to “buy” his learning time, and this raises the danger that, since he has no personal commitment to raising his support, he will come to take it for granted. In short, he is at risk of forgetting to feel grateful. And that, in terms of one’s middot, can be called a sin.

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WHERE EAGLES DARE TO LEARN

Rabbi Yishmael’s teaching at Avot 3:16 has been transmitted through the generations for a couple of millennia without attracting anything that might be described as consensus as to what it means. It’s a three-part mishnah and the final segment is quite intelligible. The problem lies with the two bits that appear ahead of it.

The mishnah goes like this:

הֱוֵי קַל לְרֹאשׁ, וְנֽוֹחַ לְתִשְׁחֽוֹרֶת, וֶהֱוֵי מְקַבֵּל אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם בְּשִׂמְחָה

A rough idea of what it might mean in full can be obtained by reading two contemporary translations by organizations dedicated to spreading the word, as it were: Chabad and ArtScroll:

Be yielding to a leader, affable to the black-haired, and receive every man with joy (Chabad).

Be yielding to a superior, pleasant to the young, and receive everyone cheerfully (ArtScroll).

Some idea of the other translations and meanings that have been ascribed to it can be found in an earlier blogpost, “Playing With Power”, here.

One thing that almost all the diverse explanations on this mishnah have in common is that they relate them to how we get on with, or deal with, other people. But, given the diverse and imaginative manner in which mishnayot in Avot are understood, it’s odds-on that an exception will appear somewhere or other—and I’ve just found one.

The commentator in question is Rabbi Shalom Hedaya, whose Seh leBet Avot was extracted by his son Rabbi Ovadyah Hedaya from his VaYikach Ovadyah and published in 1971.  Seh leBet Avot is notable for two things. One is its question-and-answer format; the questions are set out in the inside column of each page and the answers he gives appear next to the outer margin, giving the reader a chance to read the questions and have a stab at answering them himself before reading the suggested solution.  The other is the author’s passion for relating each mishnah in Avot to another one—very often the one preceding it. This sometimes leads to explanations that seem somewhat contrived, but it also leads to some unexpected connections between teachings that might otherwise be missed, as well as coming up with something completely different—as happens here..

How does Reb Shalom tackle Rabbi Yishmael’s teaching? He fastens on to the word קַל (kal, meaning “light”) and instantly senses a tie-in with the only other occasion קַל appears in Avot, at 5:23 where Yehudah ben Teyma teaches:

הֱוֵי עַז כַּנָּמֵר, וְקַל כַּנֶּֽשֶׁר, רָץ כַּצְּבִי, וְגִבּוֹר כָּאֲרִי, לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹן אָבִֽיךָ שֶׁבַּשָּׁמָֽיִם

Be bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer and mighty as a lion to do the will of your Father in Heaven. 

For Reb Shalom, this is a clue that Rabbi Yishmael is not talking about interpersonal relations; he is talking about learning Torah. Just as the eagle is קַל, soaring into the sky, so too should the serious talmid chacham be קַל with regard to his head (לְרֹאשׁ), letting his thoughts ascend to the lofty heights. Not only that; he will be וְנֽוֹחַ לְתִשְׁחֽוֹרֶת (no’ach letishchoret), able to plumb the darkest recesses of Torah wisdom, the root of being שְׁחֽוֹרֶ, dark, which also suggests the early morning before daybreak).  Once he has reached the heights of Torah study and mined its profundities, he is ready to greet all others with simchah, true happiness, knowing that he is fully equipped to learn from each person he meets—this being the message of Ben Zoma at Avot 4:1.

I wonder how Rabbi Yishmael would have viewed this line of thinking.

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