Teaching a Golem good manners

An anonymous Mishnah at Avot 5:9 tells us how to tell a chacham—a wise and almost by definition well-behaved person—from a golem, a somewhat uncouth and unmannered soul, someone who is not yet the finished product:

שִׁבְעָה דְבָרִים בְּגוֹלָם וְשִׁבְעָה בְּחָכָם, חָכָם: אֵינוֹ מְדַבֵּר לִפְנֵי מִי שֶׁגָּדוֹל מִמֶּֽנּוּ בְּחָכְמָה וּבְמִנְיָן, וְאֵינוֹ נִכְנָס לְתוֹךְ דִּבְרֵי חֲבֵרוֹ, וְאֵינוֹ נִבְהָל לְהָשִׁיב, שׁוֹאֵל כְּעִנְיָן וּמֵשִׁיב כַּהֲלָכָה, וְאוֹמֵר עַל רִאשׁוֹן רִאשׁוֹן וְעַל אַחֲרוֹן אַחֲרוֹן, וְעַל מַה שֶּׁלֹּא שָׁמַע אוֹמֵר לֹא שָׁמַֽעְתִּי, וּמוֹדֶה עַל הָאֱמֶת, וְחִלּוּפֵיהֶן בְּגוֹלָם

Seven things characterize a golem, and seven characterize a chacham. A chacham does not speak before one who is greater than him in wisdom or age. He does not interrupt his fellow's words. He does not answer precipitately. His questions are on the subject and his answers to the point. He responds to first things first and to latter things later. As to what he did not learn, he says "I did not learn that." He concedes the truth. The golem is the opposite.

What is this all about? The Maharam Shik explains that it is all about derech eretz, good behaviour, the way a person should handle him- or herself when dealing with others. Startlingly he tells us that this mishnah is placed here in Avot for the specific benefit of the chacham who spends his days in the Bet Midrash, the house of study, because that is a place where he will find no-one to teach him good manners.  From this comment one can infer Maharam Shik’s attitude towards the hurly-burly of the Bet Midrash, where it often seems to the interested outsider that there are more people speaking than listening and that interrupting one’s learning partner in the middle of a sentence is compulsory.

Avot provides another clue as to how one should behave towards others with whom one learns. At Avot 2:15 R’ Eliezer teaches that one should treat one’s chaver, one’s learning partner, with the same degree of respect that one expects to receive oneself. No-one enjoys being interrupted, by being asked off-the-point questions or by having to listen to one’s partner making apparently authoritative pronouncements on matters that les beyond his or her knowledge. Worst of all is the situation in which one’s learning partners positively know that they are wrong but they refuse to accept the truth and cling stubbornly to the fiction that they are somehow right really, or that they don’t deserve to be wrong. This being so, the principle of reciprocity calls for us not to conduct ourselves in any way that we would find annoying or offensive if others do the same to us.

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Are you voting for a golem?

Tomorrow Israel’s voters head for the polls for the fourth time since April 2019. With so many political parties and near equilibrium between the coalitions likely opposing each other, the formation of a government is likely to be achieved only after a lengthy round of negotiations, compromises and trade-offs.

Who should we vote for? Some voters opt for the party whose policies most closely reflect their own aspirations. Others seek to support personalities who appeal to them. Others still cast their vote in accordance with what might best be described as a sort of tribal loyalty. But motivation means nothing: when it comes to the count, each vote is of equal weight.

What does Pirkei Avot have to offer tomorrow’s voters? I would suggest they take a close look at Avot 5:9, an anonymous mishnah that talks about the golem—not the fictional golem that was reputedly created by the Maharal of Prague and now the subject of plays, stories and even movie and TV productions, but a boorish, uncultivated person who generally has no idea how to behave in civil society.

This mishnah reads as follows:

There are seven things that characterise a golem, and seven that characterise a wise man.

• A wise man does not speak before someone who is senior to him in wisdom or age;
• He does not interrupt another person while that other person is speaking;
• He does not give a hasty response;
• His questions are relevant and his answers are accurate;
• He deals with first things first and last things later;
• As what he did not learn, he says: "I did not learn”;
• He concedes the truth.

With the golem, the reverse of all these is the case.

These seven criteria need little explanation. A person who pre-empts discussions and interrupts others is not ideally equipped to engage in dialogue and consensus-based decision-making. Hasty responses often require amendment, explanation, apology and subsequent retraction. Relevance and accuracy, not rhetoric and acrimony, should be the standards by which a politician’s engagement with others is measured. The need to recognise priorities and then prioritise them is a prerequisite for anyone who is responsible for discharging a multiplicity of duties. Admitting that one doesn’t know something can be hard, but it is safer than pretending knowledge or understanding that does not exist. Finally, admitting that one is wrong is not merely honest; it helps to gain the trust and respect of those to whom the admission is made.

Now, friends and (where relevant) fellow Israelis, before you next cast a vote for a candidate who will be responsible for your safety and your well-being, for how your taxes are spent and for whether you will be able to hold your head high as a respected member of the human race, before you do any of this—just ask yourself the following questions:

• How many of the seven signs of a golem constitute an accurate description of the candidate for whom I propose to vote?
• Why should any electorate be prepared to elect to its legislature any person whose personal standards of conduct fall far short of the listed items?
• In the light of the extent to which office-holders and potential office-holders do not match up to the Avot 5:9 standards, is there any wonder that so many people have little or no respect for them and are becoming increasingly reluctant to vote?

Before any reader leaps to a conclusion, I must state that this is not a party political post. Many readers, on reading the seven criteria, may assume that I have one particular prominent politician in mind, but this is not the case. The golem syndrome can be found in very many current and prospective members of the Israel Knesset and it is not confined to the members or activists belonging to any single party. I am myself a “floating voter” who is currently contemplating the prospect of voting for my third different party in three years. My points are the following:

• We should be prepared not only to recognise major deficiencies that many of our politicians possess but to call them out and criticise them (the press and online media have made both this process and the publication of its findings increasingly effective in recent times);
• We should demand higher standards of behavioural integrity from our politicians, thereby making it easier for people to listen respectfully and critically to what they say and to engage with them in terms that are constructive, not vituperative;
• We should regard Avot 5:9 as setting at least a minimum requirement for the behaviour of elected representatives and their rivals.

The Golem, speaking first and interrupting others

The characterisics of the golem (an immature person) and the chacham (the wise person) are contrasted by the mishnah at Avot 5:9. This mishnah lists seven criteria that identify a person as being one or the other. In particular, a golem is someone who, in debate or discussion with others, speaks ahead of someone better entitled than himself to do so, and a golem is also a person who interrupts others once they have started to speak and are, so to speak, in full flow -- regardless of their seniority.

Who speaks first?

Among chachamim, one who has more knowledge because he has learned more than another takes precedence in speaking over one who is sharper and better at reasoning but knows less (per Tiferet Yisrael), while one who asserts that he is more knowledgeable takes precedence over one who does not (per Rabbi Shmuel de Uçeda, Midrash Shmuel, basing this conclusion on a slightly different text of Avot from that normally found today). This raises interesting problems because humility is a sign of a chacham (Avot 6:1, 6:6), so one would not expect a genuine chacham to advertise himself as such. However, another sign of a chacham is that he recognizes and speaks the truth, so he could hardly deny being a chacham if he is one.

Knowledge versus reasoning is not the only issue at stake when it comes precedence. Wisdom versus age is another. So who speaks first? Thus (i) one should accord precedence to a chacham who is younger and let him speak first even if he is one’s junior in years; while (ii) one should also accord precedence to an older person even if he is not so wise (Rabbi Avraham Azulai, Ahavah BeTa’anugim).

There is an obvious conundrum here: if you are wiser but younger than your colleague, he is older but not as wise as you. So, as a matter of logic, each should let the other speak first. This scenario potentially risks turning comically into a polite but unending dialogue along the lines of “After you!” “No, after you!” “No, no. Please! I insist, you go first.” However, it does give two people the opportunity to show and express respect for one another, which in itself is a desirable outcome (as in Avot 4:1).

Interrupting others

Experience of life tells us that, particularly in wider society, interrupting others is a regular part of daily life. Whether it is appreciated or not, it is far more tolerated than in previous generations when proverbs such as “children should be seen and not heard” were more widely respected.

It is difficult to ascertain the point at which interruption became so widely accepted: this practice may have developed in post-Second World War western culture, when ownership of telephones became more widespread and charges for calls were made on the basis of their duration. Money could thus be saved by cutting conversations short.

In any event, interruption of the speech of others appears to be here to stay, and it is particularly apparent in conversations conducted with the elderly and the hard-of-hearing. It is easy to assume that someone who speaks slowly and haltingly has finished speaking when they have only paused for breath, and a person with poor hearing may not even realize that he is speaking through someone else’s words.

Letting someone else speak first is a status-based quality, since it accords greater respect to those of us who enjoy some seniority. In contrast, letting someone finish speaking and not interrupting them is an egalitarian principle: an older or wiser person must show this respect to even a much younger and less knowledgeable speaker. Why? Because interruption can cause the younger person much distress (Rabbenu Yosef ben Shushan, cited in Mishnat Avot). and because it treats what he has to say as being of little worth (Ri Chiyyun, Milei deAvot, ibid).

Regardless of the age of the speaker, there are still further reasons in support of this Mishnah. Interruption of others is not only a sign of arrogance (per Rabbenu Yonah); it might also be quite unnecessary if it turns out that the words interjected by the interrupter are those that the speaker was in the process of saying (Rabbi Moshe Shik, Chidushei Aggadot Masechet Avot) and the mere fact of being stopped in full flow can knock a speaker off his stride and confuse him (Tiferet Yisrael).

Incidentally, we should not be thinking merely of a dialogue between two discussants: breaking into a conversation to which a person is not a party, for example where two people are having an argument and a bystander chooses to interject his own contribution, is just as much covered by the ground-rules for non-interruption (Rabbi Shimon ben Tzemach, Magen Avot).

So the moral of the mishnah, for us all to absorb, is that we should respect the entitlement of others to speak and, if they are older/wiser, let them have their say first even if we propose to disagree and set them right. Likewise, conversations are to be shared, not owned, and one of the best ways to share a dialogue is to resist the temptation to control or monopolise it by interrupting others.

Would you know a golem if you saw one?

The anonymous mishnah at Avot 5:9 lists seven distinguishing features that enable us to spot who is a chacham -- a wise person -- and who is a golem. Among other things the chacham lets others who are older or wiser speak before he does. He doesn't interrupt others in the middle of a sentence. He doesn't ask questions that are stupid or irrelevant but, when he faces a question, he answers it properly -- and he concedes the truth rather than obstinately arguing that black is white. This chacham is clearly something of a role model whom we should emulate. Not so, the golem. But who or what is a golem and would we recognise one if we saw him in the street?

The golem is a well-known character in popular literature, but that genre was not in vogue 1800 years ago. In short, the golem is an animated anthropomorphic being who is created entirely from inanimate matter (usually clay or mud). The word in Mishnaic times meant a shapeless mass or something that was in an unfinished state. In Modern Hebrew the word means “idiot” or “dummy"; it is not a compliment.

Rabbi Eliezer Prins (The Lehmann-Prins Pirkei Avoth, translated by C. H. Moore) renders "golem" as “an immature person” and on balance I feel that this is the word that best fits the meaning of the Mishnah.

The golem may be contrasted with two other characters encountered in Avot who are spoken of in pejorative terms: the bur (often translated "boor") and the am ha’aretz (someone with low aspirations regarding Torah and education). Our golem may simply lack good manners and not be very clever, or he may be quite bright and knowledgeable but nonetheless quite unable to behave in an appropriate manner. Of all the suggested meanings and explanations of the golem, the one I like best comes from the Lehmann-Prins Pirkei Avoth.:

[T]he term גלם [Hebrew for 'golem'] does not mean an ignorant man or, what is the same thing for many, an uncultured person. A golem is, however, a person who may even master Torah learning, but it does not master him; that is, he does not show it in his actions. …He is still immature and his practice falls short of his theory. One can imagine a golem who has more theoretical knowledge than a chacham; he may be a “walking encyclopedia,” able to expound on any subject, but his knowledge does not inspire his actions and he will remain a golem despite all his knowledge.

The Mishnah may convey to some readers the impression that everyone in the world is either a golem or a chacham. This is clearly not what it means. If we make a candid assessment of our friends and family we are likely to conclude that most people are somewhere in between. The mishnah however has a particular objective in identifying the behavioral characteristics that mark a person out as being one or other of these polar opposites, and that is to give those of us in the middle a chance to think about ourselves.

The message here for those of us who occupy the middle ground is this: we have the potential to move in one of two directions. We can either tighten up on our self-discipline, reduce our propensity to show off and speak with greater honesty in the hope of qualifying as a chacham, or we can let ourselves slip, slough off the unwanted dead skin of good manners, please ourselves as we wish, and be viewed as a golem. We have the free will and the choice is ours.

Letting others be heard

The change of government in Israel has attracted much comment, both domestically and abroad. Analysts have looked at the advantages and disadvantages of the new coalition, its strengths and its weaknesses. Some have even looked at its proposed legislative programme and its chances of turning it into law. There is however one topic that has received very little comment: the appalling standard of behaviour of many of the Members of the Knesset (MKs).

Pirkei Avot (at 5:9) teaches that one of the seven signs of a golem is that he or she interrupts the words of someone else who is speaking. Presumably this applies equally to someone who howls and screams when someone else attempts to speak, thus effectively preventing them from being held at all. Applying this standard to MKs, I am concerned that the golems in the Knesset could form a coalition of their own, since there sadly seem to be more than 61 of them -- from both the religious and the non-religious parties.

Avot also reminds us of the inconvenient fact that all of us -- even MKs -- are created in the image of God (3:18). One might feel tempted to draw from this mishnah the conclusion that one should at least accord some outward form of respect to other people, whatever thoughts we may cherish in our hearts and minds.

This post does not intend to recite some of the disgusting things said, and the disgraceful dispersions cast, by MKs on one other, whether inside the Knesset or beyond it -- comments, slurs and allegations that have nothing to do with party politics. It only wishes to make the point that it is only by paying respect to others that we are entitled to receive any respect ourselves (4:1). Regretfully, this post records that far too many MKs have placed themselves beyond any entitlement to receive respect from this quarter.

It would be a wonderful thing if Israel's Jewish parliamentarians could reflect a small corner of their Jewish heritage by behaving and speaking towards one other in a more appropriate manner, especially when the eyes of the world are upon them.