Big brother, or book learning?

For some people the third of Rebbi’s teachings at Avot 2:1 has a slightly menacing flavour:

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 hands of transgression. Know what is above you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds are inscribed in a book.

The fictional nightmare of George Orwell’s 1984, a world of constant surveillance of the actions of individuals, became a reality years ago. We have become quite used to security cameras and to developments in computing and AI that create the uncomfortable impression that there are machines out there that know more about ourselves than we do. Many commentators on Avot, even in earlier generations, were quick to remind us that God sees and hears everything we do—and that nothing is omitted from His database of human actions, words and thoughts.

Rabbi Yaakov Hillel (Eternal Ethics from Sinai) brings a refreshing perspective to the part of the mishnah that mentions how our deeds are written in a book. For most of us the message of Rebbi is a cautionary one: don’t do it or, if you do it, don’t imagine that you can get away with it without being noticed. But Rabbi Hillel finds a positive message in it too.

Many of us are occasionally motivated to raise our game, as it were, and cultivate a more spiritual attitude towards the way we live in this, our physical and materialistic world. But from where can we derive our spiritual inspiration?

The path to one’s spiritual elevation isn’t tangible; it isn’t something that can be seen. We don’t normally experience spiritual visions and, if we started telling people we were having them, they would likely consider us likely candidates for psychiatric care. Likewise, though a baraita at Avot 6:2 mentions a Heavenly voice emanating daily from Mount Horeb (Sinai), our non-prophetic ears are not equipped to pick up celestial soundbites. That leaves only books.

Our Sages old and new have left us with a rich literary heritage in terms of Jewish subject matter: halachah, mussar, midrash, kabbalah, chassidut, philosophy and much more besides. If we find the right books, we can grow from them, enriching our understanding, our commitment and ultimately our closeness to God. So, explains, Rabbi Hillel, when our mishnah states that “all your deeds are inscribed in a book”, we can take this to mean that all our deeds—the deeds which we consciously seek to emulate or implement in our own lives—are already written down in the kodesh books we read. All we have to do is follow the instruction we find in the printed word.

Comments and discussion of this post can be found on Facebook here.

Orphaned, unloved

I’m sad to say that I’ve just picked up another abandoned commentary on Pirkei Avot from the streets of Jerusalem. This time it’s Melitz Yosher al Pirkei Avot, by Rabbi Reuven Melamed, rosh mesivta at Ponevezh Yeshivah and a talmid muvchak of the celebrated mashgiach of Ponevezh, Rabbi Yechezkel Levenstein ztz”l.

Self-published in Bnei Brak 1990, this book is in mint condition and shows signs of never having been opened. It is handsomely produced, with clear, vowelised Hebrew for the mishnayot and baraitot and well-spaced, unpointed text for the commentary itself.

I look forward to dipping into this little book and reporting on some of its more interesting content. Meanwhile, does any reader know anything of this book and its author?

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Postscript

On the same topic, readers may remember that not long ago I found another unwanted edition of Avot that contained two commentaries—the Tiferet Tzion of Rabbi Yitzchak Ze’ev Yadler and the Kerem Chemed of his grandson Rabbi Yehudah Rabinowitz (see earlier post on Facebook and on the Avot Today blog)—which I picked up from a street sale for the princely sum of 10 shekel. I’ve been sampling the Tiferet Tzion daily over my breakfast and can testify to it being a gentle, traditional commentary that takes pleasure in delving into the Gemara in order to highlight or illustrate the teachings in Avot. Even though I’ve not yet finished the first perek, I’m delighted to say that I’ve got far more than 10 shekels-worth of value for my purchase.

A couple of books: can you help?

I have a large collection of commentaries on Pirkei Avot, most of which I have picked up from second-hand bookshops, shemot (old and unwanted books on Jewish topics which, featuring God's name in Hebrew, await a respectable burial), or from the piles of abandoned books that periodically spring up in odd corners of Jerusalem (for an explanation of this phenomenon see my recent Facebook post on "The Reading Tree" at https://www.facebook.com/GrandpaJeremy).

One abandoned book I picked up last week is Benei Yehudah, a handsome and apparently unopened commentary on Avot which draws on content from several members of the same family. The contributors in question have the surnames Litsch, Rosenbaum and Segal and appear to have originated in Pressburg (now Bratislava). Some introductory words are penned by a Rabbi Matityahu Weinberg. The book itself was privately published in Jerusalem in 2007 and has no International Standard Book Number (ISBN).

A second commentary on Avot, given to me by a friend this week, is written by a Rabbi Eliezer Levi. Published in Tel Aviv in 1956 under the unpretentious and descriptive title Pirkei Avot, it is a slim volume that also contains the popular mishnaic commentary by Rabbi Ovadyah MiBartenura. The author had previously written a book on prayer, Yesodot HaTefillah.

If any reader has any information about either of these commentaries or their authors, I'd be really grateful if they could share it with me. I find it very useful to know a bit about the background to commentaries on Avot since the author often had a specific reason -- religious, political or personal -- for sharing his thoughts on Avot or for using its content as a vehicle for transmitting his own ideas.

When books speak volumes: another perspective on rebuke

I recently posted a piece ("A Good Telling-Off?, here) on the importance of loving a rebuke. Let me return briefly to the same topic now.

This morning I found an article on Newsday, all the way from Zimbabwe. Titled "One Jewish secret to success: The Talmud". The author, Alexander Maune, is a Research Fellow at UNISA, Pretoria, which I once had the pleasure of visiting in my days as an academic. After opening with Ben Bag Bag's mishnah at Avot 5:26 about learning Torah ("turn it over, turn it over, for everything is in it..."), Maune brings a quote I'd never seen before, from Israel Gollancz -- not a rabbi but Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London for 27 years until his death in 1930. Gollancz writes:

“How safely, we lay bare the poverty of human ignorance to books, without feeling any shame".

Gollancz goes on to describe books as those silent teachers who

“... instruct us without rods or stripes, without taunts or anger, without gifts or money; who are not asleep when we approach them, and do not deny us when we question them, who do not chide us when we err, or laugh at us if we are ignorant.”

I do not know the source from which this quote comes, but it intrigues me. More to the point, I have always assumed that the references to rebuke in Avot mean a telling-off of the interpersonal variety. But there is no reason why a book should not be the medium through which a good telling-off -- or at least some sharp conscience-pricking -- can be effectively administered. If nothing else, a person can read and re-read the same passage of moral guidance and think about it in his own time and his own way. In contrast, a face-to-face rebuke can be confrontational and cause the person being reprimanded instinctively to put up the defensive drawbridge and seek to deflect the force of the rebuker's attack.

Rabbi Eliezer Papo (the 'Pele Yo'etz') would probably take the same view. He suggests that it is possible to carry on serving God even after you have died. His suggestion: write a book on rebuke and moral chastisement. If you write a learned tome on Talmud or Torah, the chances are that no-one will read it. But if you write something a bit lighter, that pertains to human behaviour,

Alexander Maune's article can be read here.