WHEN THE CHATTING HAS TO STOP?

Pirkei Avot speaks twice about what we might call ordinary day-to-day conversation. At Avot 1:5 Yose ben Yochanan Ish Yerushalayim cautions men engaging in too much casual chatting even with their own wives—and how much more so should they not converse overmuch with other people’s wives. The consequences, which are grim, are listed in this mishnah:

כָּל הַמַּרְבֶּה שִׂיחָה עִם הָאִשָּׁה, גּוֹרֵם רָעָה לְעַצְמוֹ, וּבוֹטֵל מִדִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה, וְסוֹפוֹ יוֹרֵשׁ גֵּיהִנֹּם

One who excessively converses with one’s wife causes evil to himself, neglects the study of Torah and ultimately inherits Gehinnom.

Responses to this teaching range from bristling hostility at its attitude towards women in general to warm endorsement of the need for a man to respect boundaries in his dealings with his own and other people’s wives. Some also focus on the word שִׂיחָה (sichah, here meaning “chatter”), urging men to treat women with respect as their intellectual equals rather than refuse to engage them on matters of a more serious nature.

Conversation also features in a later mishnah that focuses not so much on quantity as on quality. At Avot 3: Dosa ben Horkinas teaches

שֵׁנָה שֶׁל שַׁחֲרִית, וְיַֽיִן שֶׁל צָהֳרָֽיִם, וְשִׂיחַת הַיְלָדִים, וִישִׁיבַת בָּתֵּי כְנֵסִיּוֹת שֶׁל עַמֵּי הָאָֽרֶץ, מוֹצִיאִין אֶת הָאָדָם מִן הָעוֹלָם

Morning sleep, noontime wine, children's talk and sitting at the meeting places of the ignoramus drive a person from the world.

I believe that the children’s talk referred to here is children’s talk between adults, not between adult and child. Speaking to a child in a childish manner is so often a vital part of the child’s education in the use of language, the art of communication and the gradual acquisition of cognitive and conceptual understanding. But it can be an embarrassment to listen to adults speaking with one another as though they were children.

Avot returns to the theme of conversation in a context that is neither age- nor gender-specific, in the lengthy Baraita at 6:6 that lists the 48 boxes that an aspiring Torah scholar is to tick if he is to obtain and then retain his Torah learning. One of these is to practise ְּמִעוּט שִׂיחָה (miyut sichah, minimizing ordinary conversation). From the context it is plain that the problem with sichah is not one of inviting greater sexual intimacy or of grooming a prospective sexual partner, but rather of bitul zeman—wasting time that might otherwise be spent on more productive activities in the pursuit of Torah.

Some of the more serious Torah scholars of bygone generations took the limitation or even the avoidance of ordinary conversation to extremes. Thus Rabbi Asher Weiss (Rav Asher Weiss on Avos vol.2) states, citing Midrash Shir HaShirim Rabbah, that for every piece of unnecessary speech that enters a person’s ear, a Torah matter leaves. But Rabbi Weiss then tempers this extreme position with an observation about life in the real world:

“…[T]his is not the way for most people. We may infer from Chazal’s expression “limited conversation” that we are only to lessen our involvement. … Human nature dictates that we cannot completely withdraw from light conversation and the way of the world”.

The need to speak to other people cannot be denied but, like so many other things in Avot, the difficulty lies not in the principle but in the practice. Here it is difficult to draw firm guidelines. One person’s being polite or friendly is another person’s being flirtatious or suggestive. And I would not be as brave as Rabbi Weiss as to write the words “human nature dictates…”, bearing in mind that so much of the challenge that we face in our own lives lies precisely in the battle to resist what human nature dictates.

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Nothing to do with real women after all?

The third and final part of Avot 1:5 contains one of the more troublesome statements for modern-day readers of Avot, when Yose ben Yochanan Ish Yerushalayim counsels his pupils not to have too much sichah (idle chatter) with women, and particularly with other men's wives. There are many apologists for this teaching, though some commentators sound a little condescending in their justifications of this statement.

It is however possible to explain this part of the Mishnah in a completely different way, one that has nothing to do with women and with men’s attitudes to women. The explanation runs like this. “Woman” in this context does not refer to female human beings. Rather, it is a metaphor for the yetzer hara, the seductive evil inclination that we all possess, men and women alike. It is well known that humans cannot exist, procreate and develop their own character if they have no yetzer hara at all, or if they have one but pay no attention to it—but they should not engage overmuch with it.

Taking the metaphor further, the chachamim note that one should not engage in too much sichah with “one’s friend’s wife” either. This is because many socially destructive activities, of which adultery is the most obvious example, require the cooperation of one’s own yetzer hara with someone else’s.  Take care, therefore, not to let your evil inclination engage with the evil inclination of your friend.

Is this explanation implausible and far-fetched? One can make out a case for “woman” being a metaphor for the evil inclination, a symbol of seduction, persuasion and guile that will ensnare a good person of either gender and lead him or her off the desired path in circumstances in which brute force is not available or effective. Such a use of “woman” as a metaphor for the yetzer hara has a counterpart in the Book of Proverbs, where the temptation to abandon one’s Judaism and follow idol worship is described as “a strange woman, a foreign woman” (Proverbs 2:16-17, per Rashi, who makes the same association at 6:24), a woman who forgets the husband of her former days. The same alien woman is also depicted as “the lusting soul” whose influence runs counter to a person’s intellect (Proverbs 7:5, per Gersonides). Later, the “foolish woman” says to passers-by who are devoid of understanding: “stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten secretly is more pleasing” (Proverbs 9:13-17, this being generally taken as an allusion to the attractions of adultery). 

The question facing us today is whether we can stretch the metaphor further and generalize this sort of use of the word “woman” into an indication of every direction in which the evil inclination can pull a person. If we do, there is at least some precedent in the Cairo Geniza, where the first folio of a midrashic text (Document T-S e4.10) deals with metaphorical interpretations of the theme of the ‘wife’ in the Torah based on a treatment of the “good woman” as the good inclination and the “evil woman” is the yetzer hara.