ONLY HALF A GOLEM?

Pirkei Avot is a tractate that embraces many forms of human life. We find within it a microcosm of society—Jewish the chasid and the tzadik, the bold and the bashful, the brilliant and the boorish, the wise and the wicked, the confident and the confused—and, at Avot 5:9, the golem.  This is how the mishnah reads:

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 to the point. He responds to first things first and to later things later. As for what he did not learn, he says "I did not learn." He concedes the truth. With the golem, the reverse is the case.

Precisely that the anonymous author of our mishnah intended when he deployed that term we do not know, and Jewish folklore has invested the word with a secondary meaning that has largely blotted out its original meaning. Be that as it may, the mishnah invites us to ask an obvious question: can there be such as thing as half a golem?

Rabbi Yisroel Miller (The Wisdom of Avos) raises this issue when he writes:

“The mishnah … seems to imply that there is no middle ground between wisdom and golem-ness, though perhaps possessing some but not all of the seven characteristics is an in-between state”.

The mishnah is correct to imply that there is no middle ground between being a chacham and a golem, as a purely definitional matter. The Bartenura bases his understanding of the concept of ‘golem’ from the term ‘golmei keilim’ in the Mishnaic tractate of Keilim, where it describes vessels that are incomplete because part of the manufacturing process remains to be done. Applying this idea to the golem in our mishnah, a person is a golem whether he has ticked only one of the seven boxes, as it were, or managed six. It is his incompleteness that gives him his status. Tosafot Yom Tov supports this position, additionally citing Rambam in support. In modern parlance we might refer to our Mishnaic golem as someone who is “not quite the finished article”.

Adoption of this approach to defining ‘golem’, the word need not be a pejorative term at all. Our golem may be an intellectual, who adopts a generally respectful attitude towards others with whom he associates and whose mode of thinking is accurate and precise—but who has yet to cultivate the self-restraint necessary to resist the urge to interrupt others.

There is an interesting corollary to our understanding of what it means to be a golem: the process of becoming a chacham is clearly reversible. Just as a person can acquire and then master the seven qualities listed in the mishnah, so too can he lose them. From my personal observation and experience in the secular world, teaching in a university, I am convinced that it requires a great deal of effort, patience and will-power to hear another person out without interruption when you know (and therefore assume that you understand) more than they do—particularly when that other person is a junior colleague. It is equally hard to resist the temptation to answer a question with a response that is spontaneous and witty but sadly lacking in references or support.

So how would I address Rabbi Miller’s point? I would conclude that there is a middle ground between wisdom and golem-ness, and it is occupied by the wise man who sometimes lets his standards slip.

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