The times they are a'changin...or are they?

For the observant practising Jew it is axiomatic that the Torah is eternal and unchanging. It is the blueprint for the creation of the universe (Bereishit Rabbah 1:1) and the words with which God’s will is expressed are eternally valid. Truth being a complex and multifaceted concept, we accept that the Torah has shivim ponim—“seventy faces”—meaning that, while it is an absolute value, the meaning it reveals to us may depend on the place from which we view it. This is the Torah’s strength: it offers both permanence and flexibility. The enduring relevance of the Torah also helps explain the high level of respect given to commentaries throughout the generations: we still study the Targum Onkelos and the explanations of Rashi, Ramban and others because the passage of time has not raised a barrier to their relevance.

Although Pirkei Avot is a major component of the Torah sheb’al peh, the Oral Torah, our sages’ commentaries on this tractate do not command the same level of appreciation or acceptance through the ages. This is unsurprising. Avot addresses the social, political, spiritual and emotional dimensions of our lives—and these in turn are conditioned by factors that are constantly subject to change. But even apparently obsolete comments may have something to teach us.

A good example of this is the commentary of Rabbenu Yonah on Avot 2:3, where a mishnah of Rabban Gamliel the son of Rebbi reads:

הֱווּ זְהִירִין בָּרָשׁוּת, שֶׁאֵין מְקָרְבִין לוֹ לְאָדָם אֶלָּא לְצֹֽרֶךְ עַצְמָן, נִרְאִין כְּאוֹהֲבִין בְּשַֽׁעַת הַנָּאָתָן, וְאֵין עוֹמְדִין לוֹ לְאָדָם בְּשַֽׁעַת דָּחֳקוֹ׃

Be careful with the government, for they befriend a person only for their own needs. They appear to be friends when it is beneficial to them, but they do not stand by a person at the time of his distress.

On this Rabbenu Yonah comments:

“When you have no more money to give them, even if it is because you are really financially pressed, they will have no mercy on a poor man. They will impoverish you and forget the old friendship, because that is all in the past. This is the simple meaning of the mishnah.

However, if this is what it actually meant, it would be a slur against kings, God forbid, and that cannot be. The world continues to exist through sovereigns who dispense law and justice. No one in the world can be as truthful as a king, as he has no need to flatter others or to fear them. There is nothing to prevent a king following the path of justice…” (tr. Rabbi David Sedley).

We do not live in an era of monarchs who wield absolute power over their subjects, and the kings and queens we encounter today are in the main constitutional rulers whose powers, if any, are token. What’s more, the propositions Rabbenu Yonah articulates here seem preposterous. How is it that the continued existence of the world depends on sovereigns? And surely it is unimaginable that no one in the world can be as truthful as a king! So how could Rabbenu Yonah have written what he did?

Rabbi Shimon ben Zemach Duran (the Rashbatz) suggests that Rabbenu Yonah only wrote what he did because he was afraid of the kings of his time. But can this be so? There’s a verse in Proverbs (Mishlei 21:1) that reads:

פַּלְגֵי־מַ֣יִם לֶב־מֶ֭לֶךְ בְּיַד־יְהֹוָ֑ה עַֽל־כׇּל־אֲשֶׁ֖ר יַחְפֹּ֣ץ יַטֶּֽנּוּ׃

The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.

On this, Rabbenu Yonah comments:

“The goal of the hearts should be to fear God and not to fear the anger of a king. A person should ask mercy of God and hope and raise his eyes towards Him, for He tilts the heart to wherever he wants”.

These do not read like the words of a man who quakes with fear at the prospect of incurring a monarch’s anger. So what does his extraordinary explanation of our mishnah in Avot really mean? I think that there is more to it than meets the eye.

The first part of Rabbenu Yonah’s comment tells the mishnah as it really is. Rabban Gamliel warns us that government—whether in the form of kings, counsellors or politicians—is a career in which those who participate in it expect to enrich themselves or at least derive some form of benefit from those whom they purport to serve. It is an early expression of the sentiment that “they’re only in it for what they can get”, a view which, if cynical, is born of our experiences of being governed throughout the ages.

The second part of the comment is entirely tongue-in-cheek and it is really a subtle and pointed piece of mussar (moral chastisement) addressed to absolute rulers: Only if you dispense law and justice does the continued existence of the world depend on you (see Avot 1:18).  So why do you not respect the truth (which also features in Avot 1:18)? If your actions are just, you have nothing to fear from it. And if there is nothing to prevent you, a king, from following the path of justice, why don’t you? It is no accident that Rabbenu Yonah’s commentary on our mishnah ends with the words:

“For even if a king has his own ideas and has the ability to act as he sees fit, in truth he has no power to harm or to help, except by the will of the Living God, the eternal king”.

We have no old-style kings today, but across the world there are many regimes governed by the tyranny of an individual over a terrorised people. For such rulers and those whom they govern, Rabbenu Yonah’s words remain highly relevant.

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Watering down a warning

Politicians! Can you trust them? Should you trust them? Or are they just so many clowns? In many parts of the world we are in the throes of elections and therefore in need of the guidance of a piece of advice from Pirkei Avot that is as crisply relevant today as it was two millennia ago. It comes from Rabban Gamliel ben Rebbi in Avot 2:3:

הֱווּ זְהִירִין בָּרָשׁוּת, שֶׁאֵין מְקָרְבִין לוֹ לְאָדָם אֶלָּא לְצֹֽרֶךְ עַצְמָן, נִרְאִין כְּאוֹהֲבִין בְּשַֽׁעַת הַנָּאָתָן, וְאֵין עוֹמְדִין לוֹ לְאָדָם בְּשַֽׁעַת דָּחֳקוֹ

Be careful with the government, for they befriend a person only for their own needs. They appear to be friends when it is beneficial to them, but they do not stand by a person at the time of his distress.

The meaning of this message is clear and no-one who lives in any country that claims to be a representative democracy should need any explanation.

But there are commentaries on Avot that appear to deny the relevance of this mishnah to our generation. R’ Chaim Druckman (Avot leBanim) points out that there are some old editions of Rambam’s commentary that qualify this teaching with the words בימי קדם (“in earlier days”), and those of the Me’iri which add בדורותיהם (“in their generations”), in other words in the era of the mishnah—but no longer, and therefore without pointing an accusing finger at the governments under which Rambam and the Me’iri were writing.  According to R’ Druckman, it is reasonable to suppose that these extra words were inserted in order to pass the office of the censor, which would have been an arm of the government itself. If so, it is easy to see why, in our time when there is no equivalent degree of state censorship, these words should be omitted.

I have two comments to make.

First, if Pirkei Avot was also taught orally and without interruption from the time Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi redacted it (c.180-200 CE), those students who were familiar with this mishnah would had studied it before its effect was watered down in order to escape the censor’s attention; it would thus be an easy job to delete the added word as soon as censorship ceased to be an issue.

Secondly, the added words do reflect a significance between the days of the Tannaim and the contemporary political scene.  In times gone by, in the absence of any printed or electronic media, contact between ordinary citizens and those holding government positions (or seeking to do so) would have been mainly personal: it is more difficult to say “no” to a person who is standing before you and speaking with you face-to-face than it is to reject the blandishments of those seeking your support when they are delivered remotely. It is therefore far easier for us to dismiss their promises and aspirations as being vacuous or self-seeking than it would have been for our ancestors—which is why the advice of Rabban Gamliel was particularly appropriate in his era, even though it still holds true for ours.

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It's what Hillel said -- but is it what he meant?

I don’t often have a chance to read The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, but my attention was drawn to an item it ran last week under the headline “Local leaders invited to White House for discussions”.

The story goes like this. As part of the White House’s Building a Better America program, leaders from Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri were invited to Washington, D.C., to discuss how government and local leaders can partner to strengthen communities. The leaders included Jay Lewis, president and CEO of Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City, who said he was honoured to represent Kansas City and the Jewish community at the White House. Emphasising the importance of such meetings he commented:

“Pirkei Avot teaches us, ‘do not separate yourself from your community. Throughout the centuries, it has been so important for the Jewish community to have a close relationship with government leaders”.

Jay Lewis gets full marks for identifying Avot as the source of his quote (it’s Hillel, at Avot 2:5). But that’s not the end of the matter. Avot also teaches us not to become too familiar with the government (1:10) but rather to be wary of politicians’ self-interested motives (2:3).  Avot does not advocate having a close relationship with government leaders.

When Hillel teaches that one should not separate oneself from the community, it is pretty well universally understood that he is addressing individuals who might be about to go off on a limb and do their own thing: they should stay with the community, not seek to escape from it. He is not addressing communities at all.

Here is another mishnah for Jay Lewis—and this time it’s one that works in his favour:

כָל הָעוֹסְקִים עִם הַצִּבּוּר יִהְיוּ עוֹסְקִים עִמָּהֶם לְשֵׁם שָׁמָֽיִם, שֶׁזְּכוּת אֲבוֹתָם מְסַיַּעְתָּם, וְצִדְקָתָם עוֹמֶֽדֶת לָעַד, וְאַתֶּם, מַעֲלֶה אֲנִי עֲלֵיכֶם שָׂכָר הַרְבֵּה כְּאִלּוּ עֲשִׂיתֶם

Those who work for the community should do so for the sake of Heaven, since the merit of their ancestors will aid them, and their righteousness shall endure forever. “And you”, [says God,] “I shall credit you with great reward as if you have achieved it [yourself]” (Avot 2:2, per Rabban Gamliel ben Rebbi).

Working for, with and, when need be, against the community—if it is done for Heaven’s sake and not with any ulterior motive or personal agenda—is to be encouraged. It will bring its own reward.

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Praying for Putin?

This is the full version of a post that was first published yesterday on the Judaism Reclaimed Facebook page.

Ukraine continues its struggle to survive in the face of the massive military invasion by its powerful Russian neighbour. This invasion has taken its toll on Ukraine’s Jewish community. Many have fled, leaving family, friends and possessions behind them. Families have been separated amidst heart-rending scenes of chaos and panic. Unbelievably, those who choose to remain and defend their land are charged by the Russian government with being neo-nazi collaborators. These events raise a difficult question for Russian Jews. Are they required to pray for the welfare of their state and its leaders

The default position in Pirkei Avot is that every Jew in every land should follow the guidance of Avot 3:2, where Rabbi Chanina Segan Kohanim teaches: 

“Pray for the peace of the government (in Hebrew, malchut) since, if it were not for fear of it, a man would swallow his neighbour alive”. 

Before discussing the applicability of this teaching today, it is helpful to contextualise it. Rabbi Chanina lived, and died, in Israel at a time of chaos and anarchy. The Romans, having occupied the whole of Israel and the Levant, were the ruling power – the malchut. Nowhere in Israel was more anarchic than Jerusalem, where the power struggle between different religious and nationalist factions resulted in the great tragedy of Jew-on-Jew murders which the Roman governors had no great interest in preventing. The Jewish authorities too were powerless to stop this carnage. Indeed, the members of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish court, absented themselves from the Lishkat HaGazit (the sole location from which they could discharge judicial functions relating to capital offences) so that they could avoid passing the death sentence on Jewish murderers. This decision was arguably taken on the basis that, since so many Jewish lives were already being lost and the death penalty was no longer an effective deterrent, it was folly to address the escalating mortality rate among Rome’s Jewish subjects by killing even more of them. In this context, Rabbi Chanina could be said to have been urging his co-religionists to pray that the Romans should have the time and the resources to intervene and stop this senseless internecine slaughter.

Nothing in Rabbi Chanina’s words indicates their scope or spells out that they apply only to Roman governance of Israel. The Bartenura therefore reads this Mishnah widely, applying it even to the duty of the Jew who lives in any other (i.e non-Jewish) nation of the world. Not all commentators are so worldly, however. The Ritva, for example, learns it is a maxim for one’s spiritual development: the malchut of which one should stand in fear is that of the One Above, since it is He alone who judges the way we manage our lives.

But who or what is really the focal point of this Mishnah? Tosafot Yom Tov notes that it refers to the peace of the malchut, not the melech (“king”). Since governmental structures are almost always hierarchical, ordinary citizens are most likely to encounter the ruler’s enforcers – government inspectors, tax collectors and other members of the lower echelons of power. These people too should be prayed for, in the hope that they will discharge their duties in a manner that is neither unfair nor burdensome. The Tiferet Yisrael picks up on the same terminological point. He observes that, while there is always a malchut, there may be no melech at all. He cites Rome in the days of the Republic and, in more recent times, the democratic cantonal governance of Switzerland.

While the words of the Mishnah indicate that the great evil which it seeks to avoid is anarchy, traditional commentators have shown that this Mishnah is flexible and can been subjected to many different interpretations. One might therefore expect a variety of approaches to the question that opens this essay: do we pray for the welfare of an oppressive government that is led by a dictator or tyrant, and which may implement policies that are harmful to or downright destructive of Jewish interests and values?

Some commentators adhere rigidly to the notion of prayer even when the government is hostile to Jewish interests. Writing in Germany in the mid-19th century, Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch urges that one should not merely pray for the well-being of the state but should actively promote its interests. Rabbi Marcus Lehmann goes further: “Even an unfair and despotic government is a thousand times better than anarchy and no government at all”. It is ironical that the staunchest exponents of support for the state, regardless of its nature, should come from the jurisdiction that spawned state-sponsored genocide.

In the wake of the atrocities of the Second World War, Jewish scholars, politicians and historians have generated between them a vast literature on the relationship of the Jew to the State. This intense focus has not however been directed at the meaning and relevance today of Rabbi Chanina’s Mishnah.

Numerous popular post-War writers on this Mishnah do not cite the Holocaust and the Third Reich in Hitler’s Nazi Germany as imposing any limitations on the need to pray for the welfare of the State. For some who survived that war the topic may have been too fresh and raw for them to tackle, or the duty not to pray for such a regime may have been so obvious as not to need stating. In this category we find Rabbi Shalom Noach Berezovsky’s Netivot Shalom, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau’s massive Yachel Yisrael and the Be’er Avot of Rabbi Mordechai Mendel Frankel-Teumim. There are also Rav Ovadyah Yosef who, in Anaf Etz Avot—a pirush on Avot that spans some 400 pages—this Mishnah receives little more than half a page. More recently, Irving Greenberg’s Sage Advice—a work that is not short of opinions—leaves this Mishnah with the Romans. The decision not to address the relevance of this Mishnah to modern dictators and their regimes is not limited to commentators from the orthodox camp. Judah Goldin’s The Living Talmud: the Wisdom of the Fathers and Kravitz and Olitzky’s Pirke Avot: a Modern Commentary on Jewish Ethics reflect the same trend

Others touch upon the case of the problematic regime in such indirect terms that one might entirely miss their relevance to our question. Thus Reuven P. Bulka, Chapters of the Sages, writes: “Certain governments, as has been the pattern in Jewish experience were fear-inspiring and even tried to interfere with the Jew’s attempts to actualize Jewish responsibilities It would seem that we are praying for something that goes against our theological responsibilities”. The text continues in the same vein and the reader is left to decide for himself what this means.

Two American commentaries do however meet the issue of the tyrannical regime full-one. The first, Irving M. Bunim’s Ethics from Sinai, describes the gullibility of those who would deny the possibility of Nazi-style genocide, citing reasons that echo the terms of Rabbi Y. Y. Weinberg’s letter to Hitler in 1933. For Bunim one’s prayer should be not so much for the welfare of the government as for “good conditions” since it is the absence of peace and tranquility that turns humans into beasts of the jungle. The second, Rabbi Marc D. Angel, in the Koren Pirkei Avot, would curtail the application of this Mishnah so as to avoid praying for the welfare of the wicked. He writes that “praying for the welfare of the government is relevant only if the government itself is just. If the government is immoral, one should certainly not pray for its welfare”, making specific reference to the Nuremburg trials and the role played by judges and others in enforcing laws that by no standard of morality could be justified.

This Mishnah forms the religious basis for reciting the prayer of HaNoten Teshua in the Diaspora and is therefore the source of a well-known Anglo-Jewish institution, the Shabbat morning Prayer for the Royal Family. This prayer, which is usually recited in English, encompasses the well-being of the ruling monarch (at the time of writing, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II) and the Royal Family. On the basis that the Head of State is only a constitutional monarch, the text of this prayer also covers the elected government of the day:

“May [God] put a spirit of wisdom and understanding into her heart, and into the hearts of all her counsellors, that they may uphold the peace of the realm, advance the welfare of the nation, and deal kindly and justly with all the House of Israel.”

While it is never possible to ascertain with certainty the extent to which one’s prayers are positively acted upon by God, the period within which this prayer has been regularly recited in British synagogues spans more than a century in which British Jews have been able to exercise an increasing range of civil and religious rights in their host country. It is also the period in which the government published the Balfour Declaration and subsequently voted in favour of the establishment of an independent Jewish State of Israel.

 The text of this prayer does not endorse the policies of “my country right or wrong” and plainly does not endorse the initiation and pursuit of any government policies that are inimical or hostile to Jewish interests. It is bland and appears to be written in such a manner as to avoid giving offence to those whom it is articulated. A draft of this nature may be said to implement the guidance of Rabbi Chanina while not straining the conscience of inhabitants of even the most corrupt and contrary regimes.