Being watched and keeping watch

 Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi at Avot 2:1 offers the following cautionary advice:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה, דַּע מַה לְּמַֽעְלָה מִמָּךְ, עַֽיִן רוֹאָה וְאֹֽזֶן שׁוֹמַֽעַת, וְכָל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ בְּסֵֽפֶר נִכְתָּבִים

Contemplate three things and you will not come to the grip (literally ‘hands’) of transgression. Know what is above from you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds being inscribed in a book.

With modern technology and the widespread use of surveillance devices and data capture, most of us have spent so long being watched, recorded and digitally summarised that we have become accustomed to this state of affairs and are little concerned with it. Our indifference is a product of the fact that we do not feel personally watched, listened to or data-captured: all of this is done by third parties for their interest. We are watched and overheard in the name of public safety and security, and our data is stored and retrieved principally by online businesses that offer a quasi-symbiotic relationship: we give them our data and they, in return, seek to offer us news, opinions and products that are more likely than not to appeal to our preferences and our prejudices.

Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi was not concerned with third-party interests. He viewed constant and detailed surveillance as something of which we should be aware. Indeed, even if were not there at all, we should adjust our behaviour so as to take it into account. This would be to our benefit since, being conscious of our every act and word being a matter of record, we should take great care what we do and say.  Professional footballers at the highest level have already learned to appreciate this.  They have long known that there is little to be gained, and much to be lost, by committing a foul against a player from the opposing team when the referee is watching them. And now, with the introduction of VAR technology, they can expect their every indiscretion to be recorded and played over again and again in slow motion.

Our mishnah supports this practice and goes further. Surveillance and the compilation of a permanent record is the prerogative of God Himself. It is axiomatic that God is omniscient and therefore possesses a perfect record of every facet of our existence in this world. Since He is also our judge, his perfect record of our every moment constitutes the evidence upon which our lives are assessed. The evidence is incontrovertible and there is no mechanism by which it might be challenged. All we can do, when faced with it, is offer an explanation or excuse.

Arguably, even the attempt to explain or mitigate our more reprehensible conduct is futile since there is nothing we can say, or even think, that is not already known to God. The Sefat Emet derives support for this proposition from our mishnah. Expanding on his words, it seems that the three-part list of a seeing eye, a hearing ear and a complete record corresponds to the three ways a human can serve God: through actions, speech and thought. The divine seeing eye can perceive the innermost and most private thoughts we harbour in our brains; the divine ear catches every syllable and every sound we generate when communicating with God, with others and even with ourselves; and God also records for eternity. We should strive to bear all three in mind. Our consciousness of the seeing eye and the hearing ear should be sufficient to motivate us to do that which is correct and good in at least our own eyes—but if that doesn’t inhibit us from doing wrong, we should remember the perfect record.  

Other commentators have read this mishnah differently. The Me’iri, for instance, sees the references to the seeing eye, hearing ear and the record book as having a less practical but more theologically focused meaning. In a lengthy and detailed appraisal of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi’s words, he connects their three reference points, respectively, to belief in God’s existence, belief in God’s providence and belief that sin is followed by punishment. He specifically rejects the Sefat Emet’s approach, objecting that if the record book refers to God’s knowledge, it effectively duplicates the role of the seeing eye, and it is presumably in response to this objection that the Sefat Emet crafts his explanation that the eye, ear and record correspond to the thoughts, words and actions through which we serve—or disobey—the Almighty.

Of the two approaches, I confess that I do prefer that of the Sefat Emet, if only because, in addressing the way to avoid sin, it obliquely embraces the prospect of God recording the good things we do, say and think too.

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A message for man, a message for the many

We return to Akavya ben Mahalalel’s mishnah (Avot 3:1) which we considered here just before Pesach in the context of the human decision-making process: we asked how much time, and indeed how much honesty, we need to expend both in deciding that our actions are important enough to think about carefully and in devoting sufficient time to make them. To refresh our memories, his teaching in full reads like this:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה. דַּע מֵאַֽיִן בָּֽאתָ, וּלְאָן אַתָּה הוֹלֵךְ, וְלִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עָתִיד לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן.

מֵאַֽיִן בָּֽאתָ: מִטִּפָּה סְרוּחָה. וּלְאָן אַתָּה הוֹלֵךְ: לִמְקוֹם עָפָר רִמָּה וְתוֹלֵעָה. וְלִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עָתִיד לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן: לִפְנֵי מֶֽלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא

Reflect upon three things and you will not come to the grip of transgression. Know from where you came, where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give a judgement and accounting.

From where you came—from a putrid drop; where you are going—to a place of dust, maggots and worms; and before whom you are destined to give a judgement and accounting—before the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

I’ve laid out the mishnah in two sections: this shows clearly that, the first time round, the three things are listed by themselves, while second time through they are accompanied by what Akavya ben Mahalalel regards as the right thing to be thinking about.  Since Tannaim are notoriously sparing with their words, much thought has been given to the apparently long-winded presentation of this teaching, which could simply have read (in English):

Reflect on three things and you will not come to the grip of transgression. Know that you came from a putrid drop, that you are going to a place of dust, maggots and worms, and that you are destined to give a judgement and accounting before the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

Some commentators have intuited that the reason for this apparent prolixity is that there are actually two separate teachings here, addressed to different people. Thus the Noam Elimelech understands that there are two archetypes among those who seek to pursue God and live in accordance with His will. One is the person whose aspirations soar ever upwards.  He views God and His creations with wonder and excitement; he rejoices that he lives in a world where he has the chance to demonstrate his love of God and his devotion to His commandments, and he looks forward to the world to come. This person can address Akavya’s issues without need for a prompt from their author since his mind admits of no doubt: where does he come from? From a miraculous process that implants a noble soul into the physical body. Where is he going? To an eternal life after death in which he, as a faithful servant, is assured of his reward? And before whom does he give an account of himself? Before God, his Lord and Master to whom he has dedicated his very existence.

The other archetype seeks closeness to God through the opposite route. He is deeply in awe of the world and its Creator and is constantly aware of his inadequacy and insignificance, and the transient nature of his bodily existence. He seeks to purify his soul through the pursuit of humility and through purging himself of even the suspicion of sin. For him, since he lives in constant terror of transgressing God’s commandments, Akavya provides the answers: remember your low, insignificant origin and the fate that awaits the body that you might be tempted to preen and pamper—and never forget that you are accountable to the Ultimate Authority for your every act, word and thought.

But there are many other possible explanations for the two-part arrangement of this mishnah.

For Gila Ross (Living Beautifully), one part—presumably the second—speaks to a damage limitation exercise regarding one’s soul, How does one return one’s soul unblemished to its Maker? The mishnah spells it out. But the other part refers to the actions that we are about to take and using the questions as a sort of check-list for examining one’s own motivation (this theme takes us back to the theme of our previous post on this topic, mentioned above).

Another example comes from Rabbi Shlomo P. Toperoff’s Lev Avot. For him, recognition by the individual of his or her personal past should be a trigger for thinking about one’s collective past too. He writes:

“[Recognition of an individual’s past] to help us to acknowledge the miracle of our collective survival.

This leads us to the historical interpretation of the words ‘Know whence you came’. We are a people of history, links in an endless chain of tradition. We cannot detach ourselves from the past with its sublime teachings and eternal truths …”.

The same applies to where we are going as a nation, and before Whom we continue to be called to account. So this mishnah, second time through, applies to each of us, while the first version applies to Israel as a collective, to the Jewish people as a whole. May we take to heart the moral of this mishnah and satisfy the giving of an account and the great reckoning that will surely follow it.

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Thinking of doing something wrong?

Akavya ben Mahalalel (Avot 3:1) gives us three things to think about if we seek to avoid transgressing Jewish law and breaching the norms of Jewish morality:

דַּע מֵאַֽיִן בָּֽאתָ, וּלְאָן אַתָּה הוֹלֵךְ, וְלִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עָתִיד לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן. מֵאַֽיִן בָּֽאתָ: מִטִּפָּה סְרוּחָה. וּלְאָן אַתָּה הוֹלֵךְ: לִמְקוֹם עָפָר רִמָּה וְתוֹלֵעָה. וְלִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עָתִיד לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן: לִפְנֵי מֶֽלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא

Know from where you came, where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give an account of yourself. From where you came—from a putrid drop; where you are going—to a place of dust, maggots and worms; and before whom you are destined to give a judgement and accounting—before the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

Human decision-making processes have been a subject of extensive study in recent times. The late Nobel Economics laureate Daniel Kahneman took this topic from the academic sphere to the popular arena in his best-selling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. One of the most impressive things about his book is not his discussion of the way we make decisions but the vast array of research data and results that he cites, a body of learning that testifies to the near-obsessive nature of our desire to understand why we choose to do one thing over another.

Kahneman’s conclusion can be summarized as follows. Since our lives are shaped by a virtually uninterrupted sequence of decisions as to what to do or not do (choosing to nothing is also a decision), we can only navigate our day by shifting the vast majority of our decisions to a sort of autopilot, leaving just a small number of decisions to be made on the basis of conscious thought. For example, our daily routine for getting up and dressed in the morning requires consciousness but not a great degree of conscious thought (“thinking fast”), while our deciding whether to upgrade our cell phones may consume a considerable amount of time and brain-space (“thinking slow”).

The speed at which we make a decision has a direct effect on how we understand our relationship with God, the Torah and our fellow humans, but that direct effect is ambivalent. Our sages have long taught us that our kavanah, the intention and thoughts that precede the fulfilment of a mitzvah, is important: the more we understand and appreciate the consequences of what we do and our reason for doing it, the more laudable and worthy of reward are our deeds. Against that, the value of a deed is in the doing of it. Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner (Nefesh HaChaim) presses this point: an action done without thought remains an action, while a thought without an action has no substance to it.  And Rabbi Eliezer Berkovitz speaks up for actions that require no thought: is this not how the obedient soldier functions best—when each order (and a mitzvah is an order) is met with immediate execution, not careful deliberation on the part of the soldier instructed to carry it out?

In truth, Jewish philosophy places a value both on the deed and on the thought, since human existence is comprised of them both. But some commentators do show a preference for one over the other. Thus Rabbi Asher Weiss (Rav Asher Weiss on Avos) writes the following:

“Anybody with any sense should consider his ways and plan his path in advance. Before he does anything he should ask himself, “From where have you come? Where are you going to? Based on your experience in the past, what benefit will you gain from the act that you are about to do? Is it correct and worthwhile, or perhaps will the loss outweigh the gain? Could silence perhaps be a better course than speaking?”

In an ideal world, this would be the ideal approach to making a decision. But the reality often poses challenges that the ideal finds difficult to handle. One is that, for most decisions we make in our daily lives and that demand careful thought, it can be hard to see how where we have come from as being a criterion we can helpfully apply. And one of the factors that most commonly makes us stop in our tracks and think carefully is the absence of relevant past experiences that might guide us—for if we had their benefit our decision might not detain us long. Likewise, it is in those situations where we are not about to choose between right and wrong, between gain and detriment, that we find it most difficult to reach a decision at all.

Let us go back to the opening of Akavya ben Mahalalel’s mishnah, before the three things to the reason for the teaching itself:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה

Reflect upon three things and you will not come into the grip of transgression. 

Within the context of seeking to avoid sin, the advice of the mishnah makes sense. If you are the person who is contemplating whether to sin or not, you may gain inner strength and self-discipline from asking yourself: who am I? Am I entitled to do this, and what will the consequences be—both in the here and now and for my long-term emotional and spiritual future?

The efficacy of this advice however depends on a number of variables. One is our ability to recognize which decisions require deep and careful thought and which do not. We all have God-given instincts and impulses, and the decision whether to review and assess them at all itself requires serious consideration.  Secondly, we have to be totally honest with ourselves. Akavya ben Mahalalel is concerned with situations in which we may decide to commit a transgression. This already suggests that we are, as probably the vast majority of humans are, at least prepared to contemplate breaking the rules. For many people the decision they are thinking about is not whether to sin or not, but whether and, if so, how they can justify the sin they would like to commit.

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If Plan A fails, there's always an alternative

The concept of a back-up plan is commonplace in modern culture—but did our ancient Sages understand it too? There is some evidence that they did. In Parashat Vayishlach (Bereishit 32:9, per Rashi) we learn how Jacob devised a threefold plan to counter the imminent threat of conflict with his alienated twin Esau: if gifts didn’t buy Esau’s favour and prayer didn’t secure Jacob’s safety, Plan C was to prepare for battle.

A recent post (“Mishnah, motive and mind-games: can you make the right decision?”, here) discusses the teaching of Akavyia ben Mahalalel at Avot 3:1:

עֲקַבְיָא בֶּן מַהֲלַלְאֵל אוֹמֵר: הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה. דַּע מֵאַֽיִן בָּֽאתָ, וּלְאָן אַתָּה הוֹלֵךְ, וְלִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עָתִיד לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן. מֵאַֽיִן בָּֽאתָ: מִטִּפָּה סְרוּחָה. וּלְאָן אַתָּה הוֹלֵךְ: לִמְקוֹם עָפָר רִמָּה וְתוֹלֵעָה. וְלִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עָתִיד לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן: לִפְנֵי מֶֽלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הו

Reflect upon three things and you will not come to the hands of transgression. Know where you came from, where you are going, and before whom you will give an account of yourself. Where did you come from? A putrid drop. Where are you going? To a place of dust, worms and [other] worms. And before whom will you give an account of yourself? Before the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

This is the second Mishnah in Avot to open with the words: “Reflect upon three things and you will not come to the hands of transgression”. We find them in the opening Mishnah to the second perek where Rebbi teaches:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה, דַּע מַה לְּמַֽעְלָה מִמָּךְ, עַֽיִן רוֹאָה וְאֹֽזֶן שׁוֹמַֽעַת, וְכָל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ בְּסֵֽפֶר נִכְתָּבִים

Reflect upon three things, and you will not come to the hands of transgression: Know what is above you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds being inscribed in a book.

Many commentators have asked why Rebbi, who redacted the tractate, felt it necessary to include both his prescription for sin avoidance and that of his distinguished precursor, and there are many answers. I’ve just come across a fresh one, thanks to Rabbi Asher Weiss’s recently published two-volume set, Rav Asher Weiss on Avos. There he writes:

“It would seem that the method of Akavya ben Mahalalel does not apply at all times; it is only to be employed when a person’s yetzer hara seeks to overcome him. It is not recommended that a person constantly consider where he came from and where he is heading. Doing so will likely lead him to sadness. It is, moreover, only effective for a short period, while thinking about it constantly is likely to make it less effective. He should instead use this method only when his yetzer hara is about to overcome him and he cannot otherwise prevail against it.

By contrast, Rebbi’s advice offers a pathway upon which a person should treat constantly. He should remember that there is a ‘watchful eye, an attentive ear, and all your deeds are recorded in a book’—Hashem looks into his heart and soul at every moment…”

In other words, we are instructed to try Rebbi’s approach first. That’s Plan A and it’s for everyone. Plan B, Akavya ben Mahalalel’s prescription, is only applicable where the yetzer hara is particularly stubborn.

Pirkei Avot being full of mussar, it is unsurprising that it offers not only a Plan C but a Plan D, though they are not expressed in precisely the same terms. Plan C is to learn Torah for its own sake, which distances a person from sin (Avot 6:1, per Rabbi Meir). Then if that doesn’t work, Plan D is to carry on learning Torah but get stuck into one’s day job too. This should have the effect of making oneself so heavily engaged in one’s studies and discharging one’s work and family obligations that all thought of sinning is forgotten (Avot 2:2, per Rebbi’s son Rabban Gamliel).

Well, readers, which do YOU find the most efficacious—and why?

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Abraham and the three mysterious men

At the beginning of parashat Vayera the Torah tells of three men whose journey takes them past Abraham while he sits by the entrance to his tent. Who are these men? Are they Abraham’s righteous allies Aner, Eshkol and Mamre? Are they angels in disguise? Do they even exist outside Abraham’s consciousness, being no more than players in a profoundly important dream?

R’ Avraham Weinberg of Slonim, in his Bet Avraham, offers an unusual mussar-driven explanation, that the narrative is purely figurative. The three “men” are actually the three things a person should contemplate if he wishes to avoid falling into the grips of sin: the seeing eye, the hearing ear and the understanding that all his actions are stored on permanent record. These are the three things which Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi identifies at Avot 2:1.

How does Avraham react when he sees these “men”? He urges them “al no ta’avor me’al avodecha” (“Please don’t pass by your servant”). With God’s help we can keep these three ideas in the forefront of our minds; without that help we will fail.

Is this just a bit of airy-fairy chassidut? No. We should see it as a tactful reminder to us, when we learn Torah—and particularly Bereshit (Genesis)—that we should not just nod approvingly at the conduct of our forefathers but should make a positive effort to internalise the moral principles that underpinned their lives even before the Torah was given.

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