SQUEEZING THE IN-BETWEEN TIME

Much of Pirkei Avot deals, directly or by inference, with the need to establish a good lifestyle balance between four key ingredients of a meaningful Jewish life:  learning Torah, performing mitzvot and good deeds, earning one’s keep and attending to one’s basic needs. While each of these four elements is vital, their relationship to one another is not constant. It is obvious that there must be times when one or other is in the ascendant.

In terms of being the priority element by default, Torah does well enough. It has its own dedicated perek, the sixth—and we learn that there is a direct proportionality between Torah and life itself (Hillel at 2:8). However, Torah does not have everything its own way. Thus it is not Torah but good deeds that are the main thing (Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel at 1:17); Torah is most efficacious only when blended with an occupation and, when undiluted, causes sin (Rabban Gamliel at 2:2). But if one forsakes Torah learning, the burdens of government and a worldly occupation are thrown upon him (Rabbi Nechunyah ben Hakanah, 3:6). Food, drink and sleep are essential, but only in small quantities if a person wishes to maximize his pleasure in learning Torah (6:4. There are many more examples.

Of particular note is Rabbi Meir’s call to minimize one’s business activities in order to engage more substantially in learning Torah at 4:12:

הֱוֵי מְמַעֵט בְּעֵֽסֶק וַעֲסוֹק בַּתּוֹרָה, וֶהֱוֵי שְׁפַל רֽוּחַ בִּפְנֵי כָל אָדָם, וְאִם בָּטַֽלְתָּ מִן הַתּוֹרָה, יֶשׁ לָךְ בְּטֵלִים הַרְבֵּה כְּנֶגְדָּךְ, וְאִם עָמַֽלְתָּ בַּתּוֹרָה הַרְבֵּה, יֶשׁ שָׂכָר הַרְבֵּה לִתֶּן לָךְ

Minimize your business activity and engage in Torah. Be humble before every person. If you neglect the Torah, there will be many excuses for you; if you toil much in Torah, there is much reward to give to you.

The first and third segments of this mishnah point clearly to the relationship of Torah to other activities, and there are many commentators who explain this mishnah in a somewhat artificial manner by weaving humility into the balance of Torah learning versus the arguably lesser priorities.

As a personal observation, I’d like to comment on something that affects the balance of Torah study, good deeds, parnasah and personal wellbeing, and that is time.

It’s easy to imagine an ideal day in which, at any given time, a person is doing one of the four things. Here we have a sort of zero-sum game in which there is no moment in which one is not locked into one of the four. Do more of one and you do less of the others, but A + B + C + D always comes out to the same one, complete day. In practice I don’t think this is the case.

Our contemporary lifestyles should warn us to be sensitive to the many challenges we face if we do not wish to watch potentially productive time to fall through the cracks in our day.

One such challenge is posed by choice in a materialist society. Which shirt to wear; which items to select on a menu; which car to buy; which method to fund the purchase of a house or apartment; which school or group to send one’s children—these are just some of the choices that not only demand the consumption of time but, in at least some cases, invade the time spent in pursuit of one’s Torah learning or day job. Some choices are more important than others, but the time consumed by them is not necessarily proportional to their overall importance (picking the right wallpaper or fabric pattern, for example).

Even apart from choice, our good use of time is always subject to bitul, the cancellation of the moment because we do nothing with it. Standing at bus stops and railway platforms, wating for one’s turn at the barber or in the dentist’s reception room, watching advertisements while awaiting the beginning of a program one wishes to view: these are unproductive uses of time and, because of their frequency and inevitability, it is easy to acquiesce and write this time off as lost.

A challenge of a different kind is posed by our own reactions when faced with a decision-making process. Anyone who has worked in the financial sector or in business deadline, usually one that is inherently arbitrary and not imposed by the employees who seek to meet it, so often means skipping meals, working nights, missing regular shiurim and so on. But there is little or no reciprocity here. It is most unusual to hear of anyone who has consciously missed a deadline in order to attend a shiur, or who has taken time off work in order to finish learning a masechta. To the outside observer it might look as though work has gained ascendancy over Torah, though I am sure that we would all be quick to assert that this is not so.

So, to return to Rabbi Meir, we can say with him: “Minimize your business activity and engage in Torah”, while recognizing that there may be real and serious limits as to how this might be done and also accepting that, with the best will in the world, the time saved by minimizing business activity is unlikely to translate precisely into time gained for Torah learning.

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