Being careful: theory and practice

Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi teaches (Avot 2:1) a much-discussed principle—that one should take as much care when fulfilling a light or minor commandment as when performing a heavy or major one. In his own words:

וֶהֱוֵי זָהִיר בְּמִצְוָה קַלָּה כְּבַחֲמוּרָה, שֶׁאֵין אַתָּה יוֹדֵֽעַ מַתַּן שְׂכָרָן שֶׁל מִצְוֹת, וֶהֱוֵי מְחַשֵּׁב הֶפְסֵד מִצְוָה כְּנֶֽגֶד שְׂכָרָהּ, וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה כְּנֶֽגֶד הֶפְסֵדָהּ

Be as careful with a minor mitzvah as with a major one, for you do not know the rewards of the mitzvot. Consider the cost of a mitzvah against its rewards, and the rewards of a transgression against its cost.

We normally take this mishnah as a single lesson in how to handle God’s commandments and then go off into lengthy discussions of how you can tell the mitzvot apart in terms of their weightiness. But in reality there are two separate issues here. The first, as the Sefat Emet points out, is to take care when performing every mitzvah, regardless of its apparent magnitude or importance. The second is that it is not for us to assess the significance of any mitzvah, or the insignificance of any transgression, whatever our personal feelings on the subject. We simply do not have the data that enables us to do this.

The Sefat Emet adds that it is the zehirut—the care taken in performing a mitzvah—that determines the reward for its performance, along with the effort involved in performing it (here he cites Ben Heh Heh at Avot 5: 26: “According to the effort, so is the reward”).

We are just ordinary mortals seeking to carry out God’s will. Our problem is that what constitutes zehirut is not the same for every mitzvah. In the case of circumcision, the berit milah, standards of care are set at a professionally high level, which is why most parents who are bound by this commandment will assign its performance to a person who has been trained to display the requisite level of care and expertise. Other mitzvot are more problematic because there is no objective standard of “being careful”. A good example is that of nichum avelim, comforting mourners during the days that follow a close relative’s funeral. How many times have people caused more upset than comfort with well-meaning (and often true) statements such as “it must be a great relief for you now that s/he is out of their misery at last”, “at least you have three other children” or attempts to distract a mourner with irrelevancies such as “how long have you lived in this house?”

But every situation in which a person visits a mourner is the same, and taking care means tuning in to the needs of the person one is seeking to comfort. Let me cite a couple of situations where the bounds of zehirut were not immediately clear, and where they turned out to be quite different.

In the first case I was visiting the late Dayan Isaac Lerner of the London Beth Din, who was sitting shiva for a sibling. It was a mid-day visit and, when I arrived, I found that the Dayan, whom I did not know well, was quite alone, apart from a family member who was preparing food in the kitchen. I could hardly leave and return later when there were more people present so I sat down opposite him. I felt quite uncomfortable, but the Dayan clearly sensed my anxiety and put me at my ease by saying he welcomed the company. We talked for an hour or so and the time seemed to pass quickly; the Dayan steered the conversation towards a subject that deeply interested him: the role of prophecy in the Book of Malachi which I had recently learned and which, I discovered, he knew by heart. I soon realised that my role in the nichum avelim, my zehirut, was to concentrate on following his leads, to show I was following his train of thought and to let him guide the conversation towards his own lofty ideas on peace between generations and the end of days.

In the second case I was visiting the late Marcus Witztum, an exuberant, colourful character and restaurateur in North West London. Again it was a mid-day visit and the avel, who was not well known to me, was alone. Here the zehirut was quite different. Marcus did not want someone to talk with; he wanted someone to talk to. In short, he was lonely and needed an audience rather than words of comfort. Apart from the occasional nod, smile or gesture, there was really nothing else I could do—but that was all that was required of me. When I left, Marcus thanked me warmly for being with him, through I felt I had done nothing.

So, what does zehirut mean in practice? I guess it take a lifetime to learn.

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Care in teaching: the need for quality control

 An Avot Mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Shofetim)

This week’s pre-Shabbat post returns to Perek 1.

At Avot 1:11 Avtalyon gives us the first of only three teachings in Avot that are couched in the form of a narrative:

חֲכָמִים, הִזָּהֲרוּ בְדִבְרֵיכֶם, שֶׁמָּא תָחֽוֹבוּ חוֹבַת גָּלוּת וְתִגְלוּ לִמְקוֹם מַֽיִם הָרָעִים, וְיִשְׁתּוּ הַתַּלְמִידִים הַבָּאִים אַחֲרֵיכֶם וְיָמֽוּתוּ, וְנִמְצָא שֵׁם שָׁמַֽיִם מִתְחַלֵּל

Scholars, be careful with your words. For perhaps you will be exiled to a place of bad water. The students who follow you might drink the bad water and die, and the Name of Heaven will be desecrated.

Once it is appreciated that ‘water’ is a metaphor for Torah and that ‘bad water’ is bad Torah teaching, the meaning of this parable is plain: if you, the chacham, are careless in the way you impart Torah to your students, they may misconstrue or misunderstand God’s message. They will then damage the Torah further when in turn they teach it erroneously to students of their own. Having done so, they are liable to be punished—and this will be a chillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name.

R' Ovadyah Hedayah (Seh LaBet Avot) points out the irony that is buried within this tale. Here we have talmidim of a rabbi who follow him and, who despite their learning from him in good faith, are guilty of a chillul Hashem. If one of those talmidim should through his inadvertence or negligence unwittingly bring about the death of another person, in Torah times he would have had been exiled to one of the orei miklat (“cities of refuge”) and—because his Torah education was understood to be a priority—his rabbi had to go into exile with him.

Our tradition of Pirkei Avot learning is never so narrow as to admit only one meaning per mishnah, and sometimes we find explanations that are quite surprising. According to the Chida (Chasdei Avot) the chillul Hashem is not the fault of the chacham but of his talmidim: it is they who cause death and destruction through their impaired capacity to absorb Torah. The moral of the mishnah would thus be that the chacham should be ultra-cautious in choosing his words and, it seems to me, in conducting regular quality control tests by examining his talmidim regularly to seek out signs of error or deviation from true Torah teaching. This process should ideally start at the moment that talmidim are selected, to weed out those who lack the ability to understand what is being taught and the maturity to handle it (per R’ Eliezer Papo, Ya’alzu Chasidim).

Like the words of the written Torah, the guidance of tractate Avot is intended to speak to us at all times and in every generation. We can thus take away from Avtalyon’s teaching a message that applies to parents, medical practitioners, accountants, lawyers and indeed anyone whose words will be given the weight of authority and which may cause havoc if distorted or taken out of context.

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