YOU’RE A WASTE OF SPACE!

Devotees of the British sitcom Fawlty Towers will recall with glee an episode in which Basil Fawlty calls his waiter Manuel “a waste of space” and hits the Spaniard on the head with a spoon. Devotees of Pirkei Avot may however recall the mishnah at Avot 4:3 in which Ben Azzai teaches:

אַל תְּהִי בָז לְכָל אָדָם וְאַל תְּהִי מַפְלִיג לְכָל דָּבָר, שֶׁאֵין לָךְ אָדָם שֶׁאֵין לוֹ שָׁעָה, וְאֵין לָךְ דָּבָר שֶׁאֵין לוֹ מָקוֹם

Do not scorn any man, and do not discount any thing. For there is no man who has not his hour, and no thing that has not its place.

This mishnah does not quite address the Fawlty Towers scenario, in that what Basil Fawlty challenges is Manuel’s claim to space—in other words a place—rather than time. But the sentiment is there: the mishnah teaches us not to write off any person or object as being entirely without worth, and that is precisely what Basil Fawlty is going to the hapless Manuel.

Commentators on Ben Azzai’s teaching have often gone way beyond its literal meaning. For R’ Chaim Volozhin (Ruach Chaim), for example, it means that one should not write off another individual in reliance upon the words of a third party; the Ruach Chaim then goes far beyond that, suggesting that it is an injunction not to steal from anyone—and this in turn means not stealing from a poor person by not returning his greeting. Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of the Fathers) turns the mishnah from a negative to a positive: one should look for and build upon the part of any person that is of worth. This perspective is very much in keeping with Yehoshua ben Perachya’s advice at Avot 1:6 to judge others meritoriously.

Rashi, the Bartenura and the Me’iri are more concerned with what might happen if you write off or underestimate someone who hates you, since the time may come when he will have the upper hand. The assumption here is that, taking his threat seriously (possibly a practical example of being ro’eh et hanolad, looking ahead to events that have yet to unfold: see Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel at Avot 2:13).

The Chasid Yaavetz, following Rabbenu Yonah, takes a different path which is premised on the assumption that Avot, being an ethical tractate, is more concerned in character-building than in offering practical hints for a person’s survival. By this view, we should train ourselves to appreciate that everyone and everything is created by God and for His glory (Avot 6:11). Basically, if we can’t see what use a person is, and reckon him to be a waste of time, space or anything else, the fault lies with us for failing to look hard enough to see where that person’s worth lies.

Ultimately we are faced with a real-world challenge here. This mishnah charges us with accepting that there is an inherent value in others that is sufficient for us not to dismiss them as worthless. But in the contemporary world we encounter so many individuals, in person and more frequently via the various media, that there is not time in the day to assess and appreciate their worth. On the basis of “thinking, fast and slow” (Daniel Kahneman) we have to create a strategy for swiftly assessing if people are worth reading or listening to without stopping to take stock of each one. Maybe this is why Hillel (Avot 2:5) urges us not to judge others at all unless we are standing in their place.

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A vanishing hatred

Ben Azzai teaches an important pair of principles at Avot 4:3:

אַל תְּהִי בָז לְכָל אָדָם וְאַל תְּהִי מַפְלִיג לְכָל דָּבָר, שֶׁאֵין לָךְ אָדָם שֶׁאֵין לוֹ שָׁעָה, וְאֵין לָךְ דָּבָר שֶׁאֵין לוֹ מָקוֹם

In English: “Do not scorn any man, and do not be disdainful of any thing, for there is no man who does not have his hour, and no thing that does not have its place”.

This post discusses the first of these principles.

According to Rambam and Rabbenu Yonah, the point Ben Azzai makes is that, if you do not underestimate another person, even someone of no account, he will have no reason to hate you. Who might this person be? It could be someone who currently has no feelings towards you or (according to Me’iri) someone who hates you already. Either way, even if this person is utterly insignificant, don’t take his potential for hatred lightly since it may be in his power to harm you. Indeed, as all three of these eminent commentators accept, if you do take this person seriously, you may find that it is also in his power to benefit you.

Though there are some outliers (Maharal’s Derech Chaim, for example, links this teaching to the unique mazal of each individual), this understanding, shared by Bartenura and the commentary attributed to Rashi, appears to have shaped the consensus view of the meaning of Ben Azzai’s teaching from the days of the Rishonim until relatively recently, when it has been more extensively explored and the focus on the notion of personal animosity abandoned.

Is this drift away from the traditional explanation justified? Let us first see how it works. Examples of later, non-traditional approaches that violate neither the meaning of the words of the mishnah nor the ethos of Pirkei Avot include the following:

• 
  “The only way to earn esteem and respect for yourself is to esteem and respect other people, for in that way you are showing respect to your Creator.  … [A] man who is a criminal or a fool is a human being just like you and, if you cannot find anything to say in his praise, then rather say nothing, but you have no right to despise him…” (The Lehmann-Prins Pirkei Avoth);
  
  
• “Everything in life has its purpose, every person has a potential meaning (sic) possibility, however distant and remote it might seem from the superficial view. It is obligatory upon each individual to see the good and the potential of other individuals” (Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka, Chapters of the Sages);
  
  
• “[I]f everyone and everything that exists has time and space by Divine decree, in a universe governed by His will, each person, creature, and object is automatically due a certain respect and reverence” (Irving M. Bunim (Ethics from Sinai);
  
  
• “Each person and each object has value, even if that value is not always manifest. Each person, at some point in life, may rise to greatness…” (Rabbi Marc D.Angel, The Koren Pirkei Avot).

What then has happened to the notion of taking account of the hatred of others and the possibility of being harmed by them? Has this idea become old-fashioned and in need of replacement by a more relevant explanation of Ben Azzai’s words? Or do we now live within a society in which the need to avoid being dismissive of others and to underestimate their potential for hatred has become so deeply self-understood that it no longer requires to be taught?

Maybe the real reason is that, being uncomfortable at the thought that our attitude towards others might cause them to hate us, we prefer to read a more congenial message into Ben Azzai’s admonition.