With great respect! Honouring others today

The background

It is inevitable that some bits of Pirkei Avot are more popular and more frequently cited than others. Even within the same mishnah some teachings are clearly more favoured. A good example is Avot 4:1, where Ben Zoma asks and answers four questions: who is (i) wise, (ii) strong, (iii) rich and (iv) honoured? Modern writers tend to cite and discuss the first three questions much more frequently than the fourth.

A possible explanation of this bias is that we are daily more concerned with matters of wisdom and the acquisition of knowledge, with inner and outward strength and with wealth than we are with issues involving honour. The notion of according honour to others does have a somewhat archaic, almost chivalric, sound to it—and, in days gone by, honour was something to which a person was principally entitled by virtue of status. Thus honour was part of the package of benefits to which one might be entitled if one were a monarch, the kohen gadol (high priest), a regular kohen, a Torah scholar, someone who had reached an advanced age, or a parent.

The Hebrew text of the fourth part of Avot 4:1 opens with:

אֵיזֶהוּ מְכֻבָּד, הַמְּכַבֵּד אֶת הַבְּרִיּוֹת

This is usually translated along the lines of “Who is the person who is honoured? The one who honours [other] people”.

There then follows a proof verse:

שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: כִּי מְכַבְּדַי אֲכַבֵּד וּבֹזַי יֵקָֽלּוּ

As it is said: “For those who honour Me I will honour, and those who treat Me insultingly, they will be made light of” (I Samuel 2:30).

The problem

The word translated in this mishnah as “honour” is kavod. The accuracy of this translation is beyond challenge and it is accepted in all the leading translations of Pirkei Avot. However, there is a problem in terms of colloquial nuance. “Honour” is a word that suggests in many circumstances something special and perhaps unusual; it not a term that crops up on a daily basis in our speech. This means that the relevance of Ben Zoma’s teaching in our everyday lives is minimised.

Ben Zoma clearly did not intend the word kavod to apply only to kings, high priests, parents and lofty personages. This is plain from his stipulation that the person who is honoured is one who honours all other people: the object of one’s kavodis beriot (literally “creations”), meaning “all other people by virtue of the fact that they have been created, not by virtue of their status or office”.

Many years ago Rabbi David Rowe suggested to me that the word kavod might in many contexts be more appropriately translated as “respect”, and it seems to me that this meaning of the word works very well here. While we may think it strange—and even somewhat facetious--to speak of the need to “honour” a storekeeper, taxi driver, waitress, healthcare receptionist or bank clerk, it makes good sense to view our relationships with them in terms of respect. And if we respect them in the way we speak to them and deal with them, it is unsurprising that they should reciprocate by treating us with respect too, even if this does not automatically on every single occasion.

The questions

How, then, should we go about respecting other people? I’ve listed some random suggestions below. Of the items listed, some are already included elsewhere in Pirkei Avot or are arguably mitzvot in their own right. They are, in no particular order:

• Greet others in a pleasant manner.
• Address others by their name if you know it, but don't call them by their first name where it would be inappropriate to do so.
• Speak to others in a calm tone of voice, regardless of one’s mood.
• Don’t stare into space or check your phone when someone is speaking to your face.
• Don’t interrupt others but let them finish what they are saying before you next speak.
• Don’t put the phone down on someone before the conversation is concluded.
• If you disagree with others, at least offer to give them a reason.If you are unable to keep a promise made to another person, tell that person rather than let them find out for themselves.
• When you have an appointment or are meeting someone at a specified time, do not be late and keep the other person waiting.

This is an “entry level” list, to apply to everyone else. Obviously, one may be obliged to do more when dealing with people whose status entitles them to receive a greater degree of respect, or even actual honour. Do you agree with these suggestions—and can you add to them?

Keeping honour at a distance

Avot 6:6 has a hit-list of criteria that have to be met by anyone who seeks to acquire knowledge of the Torah. There are theoretically 48 such criteria, of which one is to distance oneself from kavod.

Kavod, loosely translated as “honour”, is extensively discussed in Avot -- both in its positive and its negative aspects. But what is its connection to an individual's ability to acquire Torah.

If nothing else, the quest for kavod can be a major distraction. The urge to be honoured can be almost overwhelming, both in the case of those who actually deserve it and for those who believe they do. However, it's not all bad: even if one shouldn't seek it for oneself, it can be a wonderful thing to give to other people.

Apart from unanimously cautioning that honour and the quest for it is dangerous, what else do our Sages say about kavod and the need to keep away from it? Most commentators on Avot have little or nothing to say, since the meaning of this criterion is self-evident. Nevertheless, some later rabbis have added to it. Here are some perspectives.

• Someone who should by now have learned much Torah but hasn’t should not let his sense of lack of kavod distance him from going to the Bet Midrash (House of Study) to carry on learning (Rabbi Chanoch Zundel ben Yosef, Anaf Avot).
• It is best practice to keep kavod distant even when one has earned it and is receiving it from others but to be careful about not making a show of distancing oneself from it in order to flaunt one’s humility (Rabbi Yosef Yavetz).
• On the theme of literally keeping one's distance, one should take a detour rather than walk past people who are sitting down but would have to stand up respectfully if a much honoured person were to pass them (Rabbi Shmuel de Uçeda, Midrash Shmuel).

One aspect of kavod that the commentaries tend not to discuss is the actual process by which a Torah scholar seeks to obtain it.

It is taken as axiomatic that, if you chase after honour, it runs away from you but, if you run away from it – a policy in line with this teaching in Avot – it will seek you out. That however is the theory. In practice there is a blatant asymmetry: while everyone should flee from honour, honour does not run after everyone. In the real world we see for ourselves that honour runs after very few people indeed, and even then it rarely runs, or even breaks into a leisurely trot. Honour often plods after those who deserve it at a snail’s pace, reaching them many years after they have deserved it and sometimes long after they have already died.

But that's not all. Even when honour arrives, it may be the wrong sort of honour: it may be bestowed by someone whose opinion doesn’t count for much. Being honoured by someone you don’t have much respect for may feel almost as bad as not being honoured at all.

A Torah-true student will not fret about whether honour chases after him since that is not why he learns Torah. His glory-seeking colleague will however go through paroxysms of angst, asking himself questions such as: “how can I tell people I deserve honour without actually telling them?” “what means can I deploy to make sure that people notice me when I’m doing all the things I should be honoured for?” and “why am I still not being honoured when I am no worse than others who are?” All of this can be highly distracting for a person who is supposed to be focusing on accumulation of Torah understanding and not seeking honour -- and it will do little to foster the respect he has for others.

Not chasing after honour but keeping it at a respectable distance is not just a message for Torah students. In the secular world we have seen countless instances of people buying, or seeking to buy, medals, titles and positions of power and influence so that others will honour them. Even if they succeed in their acquisition, can they look themselves in the mirror and truly respect themselves.

Pirkei Avot and Pirates of the Caribbean

There’s a running gag in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). It concerns the Pirates’ Code. Is this Code a set of binding rules or does it merely offer guidelines? Much excitement and swashbuckling action turns on the answer to this question, since a pirate who considers the Code to offer no more than suggestions for correct conduct is free to decide whether to comply with it or not.

Much the same considerations apply to Pirkei Avot. Do its moral precepts form a binding code of conduct, to be honoured and respected by all? Or is it simply a list of preferences that any individual can respect or discard at his discretion? Rabbi Elazar Ezkari in his Sefer Charedim, regards much of the content of Avot as binding law, but most other scholars take a more flexible view.

Conceived for children’s entertainment, this Pirates of the Caribbean movie can actually be a valuable didactic tool in explaining how law and morality affects any self-regulating minority. At the top of the tree, as it were, it depicts norms that are universally binding, both on the population at large and on pirates. The obvious example are the laws that make piracy illegal and require the punishment of pirates. Then, by analogy to norms that are relevant only to Jews, there are norms that are applicable only to pirates. Thus the Pirates’ Code is addressed only to pirates and may only be invoked by them. And, similarly to Pirkei Avot, the Pirates’ Code is observed strictly by some but viewed by others as mere guidance.

The analogy between the Pirates’ Code and Pirkei Avot cannot however be stretched too far. It is plain from the movie that, when a pirate treats the Code as mere guidance, he does so in order to further his self-interest. With Avot, however, it is understood that the breach of any of its provisions should only be done with the objective of performing some greater good. An obvious example is the advice to greet everyone with a happy, smiling face (Avot 1:15) since we sadly encounter many situations in life in which a more solemn demeanour is more appropriate.

Incidentally, in Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, the position taken by the librettist is apparently that obligations entered into between pirates are regarded as being absolutely binding precisely because they are a matter of honour rather than legally enforceable commitments.

Nice things for the righteous: a privilege or a responsibility

Towards the end of Avot (at 6:8) there is a Baraita that calls for a bit of attention. It starts off like this:

Rabbi Shimon ben Yehudah used to say in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, “Beauty, strength, wealth, honour, wisdom, old age, venerable old age and children are fitting for the righteous and fitting for the world”. 

It then breaks off into a string of proof verses that either do or don't prove the point of the Baraita, whatever that might be.  The usual reading of this teaching is that the eight things listed in it are, well, fitting for the righteous (a class of people who are sometimes assumed to be rabbis).

Looking againat this Baraita, I wondered whether it might actually convey quite the opposite meaning to the normal one.  This would be the case if the eight things listed are not rewards or privileges, but instead impositions for anyone who posssesses them. In other words, this is a list of burdens that place responsibility on whoever is burdened with them.  How does this work? Let us take each term in order:

·     Beauty: a person’s physical beauty is a snare and a delusion, an external asset that deteriorates over time. An earlier Mishnah (4:27) has already warned us of the danger of taking people at face value, and the Book of Proverbs (31:30) emphasizes that it is a false value (“Favor is false and beauty is vanity”). Only a person with a strong moral backbone can be sure to cope with the pressures and expectations placed upon them by the perception of others that they are beautiful.

·     Strength: As Ben Zoma explains above (4:1), strength is defined in terms of the ability to exercise self-discipline in controlling oneself.  Given the powerful pull of a person’s evil inclination, having the strength to overcome it would seem to be an essential and ever-present weapon in the tzaddik’s armory of middot. The sad lot of the tzaddik is that his evil inclination is stronger than that of others, so he has need of greater strength to combat it (Sukkah 52a).

·     Wealth: Hillel the Elder has already taught (2:8), “the more the wealth, the more the worry”. Again, strength of character and moral rectitude are required if a person is to pass the test of affluence.  While we can all be rich—since the one who is truly rich is the person who is content with his portion (4:1)—this is something that applies to everyone, whether they are tzaddikim or otherwise.

·     Honour: of the eight items listed in this Baraita, none is as potentially toxic as honour: it is the only one that has the potential to kill a man spiritually stone dead (4:28). An ordinary individual runs the risk of chasing honor when it is as yet unearned, and of letting it get to his head even if it has been fairly earned. A tzaddik will however be able to handle its toxicity and treat it in the way Avot prescribes, by giving it to others (4:1 again) and by according it to the Torah (4:8)

·      Wisdom: like honor, wisdom can be dangerous in the hands of someone who lacks the requisite moral framework within which to utilize it. Pharaoh invoked wisdom when deciding to deal with his “Jewish Problem” (Exodus 1:10: "Come, let us deal wisely with them..."): this misdirected wisdom could have resulted in the extinction of the Children of Israel but instead caused Pharaoh’s personal humiliation and the destruction of his own fighting force. Balaam’s attempts at prophecy could not harm Israel but his wise counsel did, when he advised Balak on how to break the desert nation’s commitment to God (Numbers 31:16).  Few men of their generation were as wise as King David’s counsellor Achitophel (Chagigah 15b; Bemidbar Rabbah 22) and King Saul’s chief herdsman Doeg (Chagigah 15b; Tehillim Rabbah 52:4), yet their intellectual prowess was ill matched with their scheming politics. The harsh reality is that wisdom is only safe in the hands of someone who can be trusted—and that is a massive responsibility, as Moses discovered when he was the only person who possessed the necessary wisdom to resolve his people’s disputes (Exodus18:13-26).

·     Early old age: 60 or thereabouts is the time when a person becomes conscious of the fact that, while he may feel no different on the inside, he is starting to look old. Without a firm moral basis that supports a tzaddik, the drive to “have a final fling” or to yield to what is euphemistically called a “midlife crisis” can be overwhelming.

·     Venerable old age: the Talmud (Shabbat 152a) reports the words of Barzillai the Gileadite (2 Samuel 19:35) to the effect that, on reaching the ripe old age of 80, there was no longer much pleasure to be derived from life in the King’s court.  The diminution of one’s senses of sight, taste and hearing can weigh heavily on someone whose pleasures depend on them, but a tzaddik will not complain to God about his sad and feeble state. Rather, he should be well equipped to be able to take the disappointments and the tribulations of advanced old age as a time to recall with gratitude his earlier days and the opportunities he once had to serve others. Now is the time to reflect on the opportunities that he can give others to do acts of kindness for him.

·     Children: one does not need a Torah source to support the proposition, evidenced by life itself, that bringing up children can take its toll on even a loving parent. The price one pays for parenting can be steep in terms of time, effort, frustration, sleep deprivation, temper control and general inconvenience. Nor is there any point at which one can predict that the responsibility for raising one’s children will end. For a true tzaddik none of this is a burden.

Of things and people, honour and glory

The very last bit of Pirkei Avot, the baraita that concludes the sixth perek (6:11), is generally translated along the following lines: 

Everything that God created in His world, He only created for His glory, as it is said: "Everything that is called by My name and for My glory, I created it, formed it, I made it too"; it also says: "God shall reign for ever and ever”.

The verse translated as "Everything that is called by My name and for My glory, I created it, formed it, I made it too" is found in from Isaiah 43:7. This appears to be a proof verse relating to the Creation of the World.

When I looked up this verse to check on its context, I was quite surprised to discover several things:

• The verse comes from a prophetic passage which Isaiah recites after King Hezekiah of Judah recovers from illness. Isaiah warns that the Babylonians will drive the inhabitants of Judah into exile and plunder all Hezekiah's treasures. Having painted this gloomy picture of the people’s sufferings, he then speaks of how they will return to God and become a light unto the nations. Eventually there will be an ingathering of the exiles.  This is the point at which verse 43:7 appears.

• The verse really seems to mean "Everyone who bears My name, whom I created for My glory, whom I fashioned and also made" and it refers to people, not to things.

• Commentators on Pirkei Avot all treat the verse as referring to things, while commentators on the Book of Isaiah, with only one exception, treat it as referring to people.

• Commentators on Pirkei Avot appear to pay no attention to the verse's real meaning, while commentators on the Book of Isaiah make no mention of this verse's treatment in Avot.

Since Pirkei Avot is a tractate that deals with human behaviour, the traditional translation at the top of this blogpost looks out of place. If however one opts for the verse's real meaning one gets something like this:

Everyone whom God created in His world, He only created for His glory, as it is said: "Everyone who bears My name, whom I created for My glory, whom I fashioned and also made"; it also says: "God shall reign for ever and ever”.

This makes much better sense in the context of Avot, and not just because it deals specifically with people and not rocks, trees and giant pandas. The bigger reason why it makes sense lies in the word "glory".  This word is a poor and imperfect rending of the Hebrew word kavod, often translated as "glory" but also meaning “honour”, “splendor”, “abundance”, “riches”, “dignity”, "importance", "respect" and “reverence”.  

If that were not enough, the word kavod comes with enough religious and social baggage to fill a container ship. It is both really good and fatally bad; it must not be sought after but has to be given -- and if you give it, it comes back to you.  Most significantly, the word appears in around 9% of the mishnayot and baraitot that comprise the six chapters of Avot. All of this, to my mind, justifies a radical reassessment of the last words of Avot and some fresh learning from them.