Showing posts with label Empathy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Empathy. Show all posts

Thursday, 21 August 2025

OLD CONCEPTS, NEW WORDS

Ivrit—the spoken Hebrew of contemporary Israel—shares with every other ancient language the challenge of expanding its vocabulary to accommodate the modern world. Computers, telephony, advances in the identification, and the diagnosis and treatment of disease all demand constant innovation of terminology. So too do the disciplines of politics, economics, sociology and psychology.


There are no ancient Hebrew words that correspond to the English terms “sympathy” and “empathy”.  “Sympathy” is generally rendered ahadah, and empathy as empatiyah, two terms with which the authors of the mishnayot and baraitot of Avot would have been entirely unfamiliar.  However, both sympathy and empathy are what we would rightly regard today as basic human emotions. Family and social life would be intolerable without them, and much of the entertainment industry depends on its popularity for its ability generate these feelings in a paying audience

Where do we find either of these concepts in Avot? R’ Yisrael Miller (The Wisdom of Avos) discusses the pair of them at Avot 6:6, which lists all 48 of the qualities that are said to contribute to one’s ability to acquire knowledge and understanding of Torah. One of these qualities is this:

נוֹשֵׂא בְעוֹל עִם חֲבֵרוֹ

Bearing the yoke together with one’s friend.

Commenting on this Baraita, R; Miller writes:

“This is the quality of empathy, a word so commonly misused that we have to clarify its true meaning. ‘Sympathy’ means to feel for the other person, while ‘empathy’ means to feel what the other person is feeling. … ‘Sharing the yoke’ means to try as best we can to develop empathy by imagining ourselves in the other person’s place, even when we have never been there.”

He adds that this applies as much to happy occasions as to sad ones, then goes on to ask the obvious question: what does the possession of empathy have to do with acquiring Torah? His answer is an affirmation of an observation made by R’ Simcha Zissel Ziv: developing an understanding of Torah involves learning to comprehend what we do not yet comprehend—not only additional facts but new perspectives, which require us to step outside ourselves to see the subject from a different point of view.  The need to step outside one’s own experience and mindset is actually presupposed by Hillel at Avot 2:5 when he teaches (among other things):

אַל תָּדִין אֶת חֲבֵרָךְ עַד שֶׁתַּגִּֽיעַ לִמְקוֹמוֹ

Do not judge your fellow until you have stood in his place. 

Whether the quality demanded here is empathy, sympathy or both is unclear—but is plain is that some form of stepping outside one’s own mind and into someone else’s is expected before making a pronouncement on another person’s feelings, intentions and consequent actions. The tie-in between sympathy/empathy and judging of a fellow human is also apparent at Avot 6:6, where the item that immediately follows sharing the yoke in the list of 48 qualities of a ben Torah is to be מַכְרִיעוֹ לְכַף זְכוּת (“Judging [him] favourably”). This juxtaposition allows one to infer that the ability to judge others fairly and favourably is somehow a consequence of being able to enter their mindset.

Empathy and sympathy feature elsewhere in Avot too. Thus we see the teaching of Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar at Avot 4:23:

אַל תְּרַצֶּה אֶת חֲבֵרֶֽךָ בְּשַֽׁעַת כַּעֲסוֹ, וְאַל תְּנַחֲמֵֽהוּ בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁמֵּתוֹ מֻטָּל לְפָנָיו, וְאַל תִּשְׁאַל לוֹ בְּשַֽׁעַת נִדְרוֹ, וְאַל תִּשְׁתַּדֵּל לִרְאוֹתוֹ בְּשַֽׁעַת קַלְקָלָתוֹ

Do not pacify your friend at the height of his anger; do not comfort him while his dead still lies before him; do not ask him about his vow the moment he makes it; and do not try to see him at the time of his degradation.

I can sympathise with a person for being angry when I see an objective basis for him to be angered—but it is well-nigh impossible to feel the extent of another’s anger, especially when it is fuelled by other causes that were hitherto bottled up. Not comforting the person who is in the process of burying his dead is an injunction to avoid sympathy that is simply mistimed—and gloating over a person’s shame when he is embarrassed or humiliated by something that was his own fault is something one should try to avoid. We may have no sympathy at all for his stupidity and firmly believe that it serves him right and that he got what he deserved. But if you can empathise with his present predicament you will leave him to lick his own wounds, just as you would almost certainly prefer if you were in the same position.

So, conclude, the Tannaim clearly appreciated the qualities of sympathy and empathy, even though they may have had no convenient verbal label for them.

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For a fascinating set of notes on the origins of ahadah and empatiya, lovingly prepared by ChatGPT, click here

Sunday, 5 May 2024

For rabbinical consumption only?

Is Pirkei Avot just a bunch of stuff written by rabbis for other rabbis? Sometimes it might just feel that way.

We learn in Avot 5:17:

אַרְבַּע מִדּוֹת בְּהוֹלְכֵי בֵית הַמִּדְרָשׁ: הוֹלֵךְ וְאֵינוֹ עוֹשֶׂה, שְׂכַר הֲלִיכָה בְּיָדוֹ. עוֹשֶׂה וְאֵינוֹ הוֹלֵךְ, שְׂכַר מַעֲשֶׂה בְּיָדוֹ. הוֹלֵךְ וְעוֹשֶׂה, חָסִיד. לֹא הוֹלֵךְ וְלֹא עוֹשֶׂה, רָשָׁע

There are four types among those who attend the study hall (Bet Midrash). One who goes but does nothing gets a reward for going. One who does [study] but does not go to the study hall gets a rewards for doing. One who goes and does is a chasid. One who neither goes nor does is wicked.

This teaching, at face value, has nothing to offer the ordinary man or woman in the street. Rather, it appears to have something only to those who have elected to spend their days in learning Torah and who manifestly have contrasting attitudes towards the nature of their commitment.

The Kozhnitzer Maggid offers an imaginative explanation that has nothing to do with Batei Midrash in the physical sense at all.

Torah learning, indeed all forms of learning and spiritual growth, take place inside a person’s heart and mind. That is the “study hall” of our mishnah. Now let’s look at the four types of person it describes.

The first has the necessary skill and ability to touch the heart of others, regardless of their level of knowledge or commitment. But he fails to capitalise on the opportunity to do so. Maybe he is just unsuccessful; maybe he never really tries.

The second doesn’t make the effort to plumb the depths of another person’s psyche or intellect. However, whether through his behaviour or his demeanour he manages to influence that person just the same.

The third has the ability to touch another’s heart and mind—and does so successfully, contributing to that other’s spiritual, emotional or intellectual growth. He is the chasid (for our purposes, chasid basically indicates a really good person).

Finally we find the person who has no empathy with others, does not understand them and has no real interest in doing so. He or she never even makes the effort. This is not the sort of person we should seek to be.

As can be seen, this breakdown of inspirational and non-inspirational characters works well not only for Torah educators but for parents, counsellors, role models and close friends. We can all learn from it and, in doing so, be of great assistance to those we have the power to encourage or inspire.

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Sunday, 11 February 2024

Share the burden, feel the pain?

In light of the current crisis facing not just Israel but world Jewry I would like to share with you a passage I recently came across in “Lightening the load” by R’ Reuven Leuchter, Mishpacha, 23 January (full text here). He writes:

The suffering around us isn’t just a cause for weeping — it’s a call for avodah. Our times demand from us the middah described in Pirkei Avos as nosei b’ol im chaveiro; literally, sharing our friend’s burden. Being nosei b’ol means seeing everything that your friend is going through, including the subtle difficulties you wouldn’t notice with a superficial glance. This is a necessary step toward helping your friend or providing emotional support, but it’s also significant in itself. Even when we can’t help, we must not remain indifferent to our fellow Jew’s plight. If we can’t alleviate our friend’s difficulty, the least we can do is acknowledge it.

To work on being nosei b’ol, we have to dispel a common misunderstanding. Being nosei b’ol doesn’t mean feeling other people’s pain. If we understand the severity of their hardship, we will inevitably be emotionally affected. But if we try to approach the plight of our fellow with our heart alone, we risk getting sucked into the quicksand of despair. Becoming too emotionally involved actually prevents us from helping others, because when someone is sinking in quicksand, only someone standing on firm ground can help him.

The beginning of being nosei b’ol is not to feel for the other person, but to think about him. To take a moment to step into his shoes and just think about his world, without searching for solutions. What is it like to live in his situation, day in and day out? How does it impact him physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially? We’re often blind to the difficulties our friend experiences because we don’t think about his life. Even caring comrades can be oblivious to the most painful aspects of their friend’s situation, simply because they never thought it through.

To be nosei be’ol im chaveiro, literally pulling the yoke with one’s fellow humans and sharing their burden, is one of the 48 qualities associated with acquiring Torah skills and living in accordance with its precepts (see Avot 6:6). You don’t have to judge another person before you share their load. Indeed, Avot 2:5 suggests that, since we never stand in another person’s shoes, as it were, we should not even try to do so. You do have to think about others—not just in the abstract or when reminded, but in way that the result of your thoughts may be helpful to them. Yes, it is a tall order, but when our brethren are so greatly in need of help we should at least make the effort, even if this means overcoming the myriad distractions that come between us and our thoughts for others.

R' Leuchter writes: “The beginning of being nosei b’ol is not to feel for the other person, but to think about him”. It’s easy to extrapolate from this a message that we should not feel for others, but that’s not what he is saying. Of course we should have feelings; we wouldn’t be human if we were devoid of them. But an increased awareness of other people’s predicaments is only the beginning. If we don’t think meaningfully about their plight, what value are our feelings—to ourselves and to others?

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