When people eat each other

Avot 3:2 is one of those mishnayot that seems to generate a surprising amount of comment and analysis, despite its brevity. There Rabbi Chanina segan HaKohanim teaches:

הֱוֵי מִתְפַּלֵּל בִּשְׁלוֹמָהּ שֶׁל מַלְכוּת, שֶׁאִלְמָלֵא מוֹרָאָהּ, אִישׁ אֶת רֵעֵֽהוּ חַיִּים בְּלָעוֹ

Pray for the peace of the government; for were it not for fear of it, a man would swallow his neighbour alive.

This mishnah is not one of those cryptic messages that sages have sought to decipher for the past two millennia: it is apparently straightforward in its meaning. The rule of law is a condition of civilised life. Indeed, it is fundamental to not just the Jewish world but to all adherents of the Noahide Code. Without government there is anarchy. We talk of man eating his fellow man, but the nations of the world have a more apt metaphor, that of dog-eat-dog. When we devour each other, we are no better than animals.

Not so straightforward is the explanation given by Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov, cited by Rabbi Mark Dratch in Foundations of Faith, a collection of insights into Avot by Rabbi Norman Lamm. For this early Chassidic master the word מוֹרָאָהּ (mora’ah, “fear of it”) does not refer to fear imposed on citizens by the government, but rather to the fear experienced by the government authorities themselves—this being fear for their own survival. As Rabbi Lamm puts it,

“[Reb Moshe Leib] reads the mishnah thus. Pray for the peace of the government, for if not for fear of its own survival it would permit every man to swallow his neighbor alive. Politicians, all those in authority, do not care for anything more than their own welfare, the survival of the establishment of which they are a part. They could not care less if society as such would fall into total disarray, one man swallowing the other alive. It is just that this anarchy and chaos would jeopardize the government itself, and that is why they are interested in “law and order”. Nevertheless, better a selfish government, whose only motivation is perpetuation of its own political rule, than the wild chaos of anarchy. That is why Judaism has ordained: pray for the peace of the government”.

I’m not sure that this is right.

In the first place, we have seen in our own lifetimes how some governments—notably those of the Assad regime in Syria and what passes for government in Haiti—would appear to depend on the preservation of a situation in which the government’s opponents are played off against each other, thereby weakening both themselves and their enemies. Where governments thrive on anarchy and depend on it for their own survival, we must be careful what we pray for.

Secondly, one can challenge the unsupported proposition of “better a selfish government, whose only motivation is perpetuation of its own political rule, than the wild chaos of anarchy”.  Do the facts on the ground suggest that the regimes of Hitler and Stalin are in any meaningful sense ‘better’ than anarchy? And why should it be assumed that the emotive term ‘anarchy’ is to be equated with ‘wild chaos’? China before the Red Revolution had a largely agrarian peasant population that practised an ancient and apparently stable way of life before it was organized into a regime of Communism. The real threat there was poverty, a condition that is sadly endemic in most parts of the world.

Nonetheless, it is incumbent on us to pray for the peace of the realm. Peace, in its true and absolute form, is one of the three pillars on which the world stands (Avot 1:2)—even if it is in short supply.

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Addendum: here's a list of earlier posts on the same mishnah

• Canadian canaries in the coalmine here
• Praying for the welfare of a bad government here
• Syria after Assad: a question for Avot here
• On the march with Pirkei Avot here