Three big no-nos: not so bad after all

Here we are in the month of Elul, when all Jews who take their religion seriously prepare for the impending Days of Awe, for repentance, divine judgement and a chance to start the new year with a clean slate. Many of us undergo a sort of spiritual spring-clean, shaking the dust off our complacency, throwing out old bad habits and ideally exchanging them for brand new, good ones. This exercise comes with a caution: don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The Netivot Shalom, writing on last week’s Torah reading from Parashat Shofetim, reminds us that everything we have comes from God, and that includes our bad habits too. Since it is axiomatic that, God being good, everything that emanates from Him is good too, we must remember to check out the inherent virtue in even our character traits that are ostensibly bad.

By way of example he cites the Mishnah at Avot 4:48 at which Rabbi Elazar HaKappar says: “Jealousy, lust and glory remove a person from the world”. Yes, they do—but only if they are abused. Jealousy between scholars leads to more scholarship, and not only among Torah scholars. Lust is a precondition for the continued repopulation of the world. The Netivot Shalom gives no example of the benefits of glory, but the Hebrew word in the Mishnah, kavod, equally well translates as “honour” or “respect”, both of which are fine if you give them to others and only damaging when you seek to receive them.

So, when checking out even your worst tendencies and habits, don’t eliminate them from your behavioural make-up without first seeing which bits of them can be put to good use.

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A hang-out for sages or a cause for jealousy?

We recently discussed the curious proposition of Yose ben Yo’ezer Ish Tzeredah (Avot 1:4) that we should wrestle in the dust of wise men’s feet. This time we take a look at the same rabbi’s teaching which precedes it: “Let your home be a meeting place for the wise”. 

This proposition is not at first sight a delphic utterance or enigma: its meaning is plain and does not demand any complex or profound explanation. Thus the Bartenura, endorsing the position of the Rambam, leans that one should make one’s home the natural go-to place for any chachamim to gather together. The benefit for the host is obvious: it is impossible for him or her not to absorb some words of wisdom from them. For Rabbenu Yonah the mishnah contains the subtle implication that, in order to make your home a natural habitat for the wise, you must first attend to your own reputation: if you are not well regarded, they will be unwilling to step inside.

The thing that caught my attention is the fact that so many later commentators, while not negating this standard explanation, are so determined to look beyond it, even to the point of straining the literal meaning of Yose ben Yo’ezer’s words. Rabbi S. R. Hirsch appears to consider the mishnah as referring to a modest meeting between just the host and his wise guest, whom he should welcome warmly and from whom he should gain the maximum benefit from the latter’s Torah knowledge. R’ Meir Lehmann’s take is that, in the (likely) event that one cannot make one’s home a bet midrash, one should make the local bet midrash one’s home. In his Ruach Chaim, R’ Chaim Volozhiner advises us to fill our homes with the sages’ books, so that we can ‘meet’ them head-on by reading and digesting their words. R’ Yisrael Meir Lau (Yachel Yisrael) adds that welcoming a Torah scholar into one’s home brings not merely spiritual but also material blessing.

Why do so many later scholars look beyond the plain meaning of the Mishnah? While endorsing it as an ideal, might they also be thinking of the its possible real-world repercussions?

The issue is this. Most of the mishnayot in Avot offer guidance that is ideally directed at us all. Judging others favourably (1:6), greeting others with a smile (1:15), being pleasantly respectful to one’s seniors and one’s juniors (3:16), not gloating over the misfortunes of your foes (4:24) and not influencing the masses to sin (5:21) are typical examples of such advice: the more people follow it, the better it is for everyone. But can the same be said for letting one’s home be a meeting place for the wise?

The literal words of the mishnah carry the seeds of a problem because they appear to be most efficacious in a small community (such as Tzeredah) in which only one such home is opened up as a hang-out for sages. While hosting the wise and making one’s home a meeting place for them is not exactly a zero-sum proposition, the more people open their homes to such meetings, the fewer will be the number of available wise folk and people for the host to welcome in so that they can hear the words of the wise—and the more difficult it will be for any individual to establish his or her home as the place for such praiseworthy get-togethers.

What does this mean in practice? While competition among sages and talmidei chachamim is encouraged because it improves our overall level of Torah knowledge, the same cannot be said about competition between householders. Given the known quality of human nature, it is quite possible to imagine a situation in which a home owner, jealous that a neighbour’s home has attracted gatherings of sages, endeavours to attract better sages and bigger audiences by offering more lavish refreshments. This works to the advantage of those with bigger entertainment budgets rather than those with better personal reputations. One can also imagine the almost tangible buzz of kavod that a person may experience if it is his or her house that becomes the venue of choice for such meetings.

Might it be these concerns that drive more recent commentators to look for non-literal interpretations?

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Gratitude versus jealousy: keeping it in the family

At Avot 4:28 Rabbi Elazar HaKappar issues a stern warning: “Jealousy, desire and honour remove a person from the world”. Most traditional commentators on Avot add little to this warning since it largely speaks for itself, but the more recent trend is to frame it within the context of modern life. An example of this trend which I recently came upon is found in Rabbi Dan Roth’s Relevance: Pirkei Avos for the Twenty-First Century, a book on which I shall have more to say in a later post. Referring to this teaching, Rabbi Roth opens with the following passage:

A number of years ago, a woman in my shul was diagnosed with leukemia. She was pregnant at the time, and in order to increase her chances of survival, she was forced to undergo an abortion. Even after the abortion, she remained in critical condition.

After she had recovered, her husband went to share the good news with Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, who had been involved with the family throughout the illness. He mentioned to Reb Chaim that he and his wife intended to make a seudas hoda’a [a thanksgiving meal]. Reb Chaim advised them against it.

“Take the money you were going to use for the seuda”, said Reb Chaim, “and distribute it amongst the needy.  And then, instead of making a large seuda for many people, make one only for your children. People today find it hard to rejoice in other people’s good fortune, and by making a large commotion you will just be bringing an ayin hara [evil eye] upon yourselves”.

Reb Chaim’s comment is a sad reflection on our generation, underscoring our inability to share in other people’s joy and truly revel in their happiness. This inability is the root cause of jealousy. If it is difficult for people to wholeheartedly celebrate with a woman who has just recovered from a potentially fatal illness, how much more so are people hard-pressed to feel genuinely happy when they see neighbors building an addition onto their homes or driving a new car. Unfortunately, far too often we resent them and the good things in their lives.

I wonder if I am alone in finding this passage difficult.

The first thing that struck me was that anyone might be jealous of the husband in the first place. While he was plainly both grateful and relieved that his wife recovered from her leukaemia, the fact remains that they had both tragically lost their unborn child. Where a person is threatened with the loss of two precious assets but in the event loses only one of them, would this really generate jealousy in others? On the other hand, the real source of any jealousy may not be the wife’s recovery but the fact that the family might be viewed as having received a greater degree of divine attention than that enjoyed by others.

Secondly, while I should never wish to comment critically on the words of a great contemporary Torah sage without first seeking to understand the wider context in which those words were spoken, I find it hard to accept that Rabbi Kanievsky should make a broad generalisation to the effect that people today find it hard to rejoice in other people’s good fortune.  On a personal level, that has not been my experience of the normal reaction of my fellow Jews who have been invited to share the celebration of another’s good fortune. More to the point, Avot also teaches the importance of judging others in a favourable light (Avot 1:6). That teaching is phrased in the singular, suggesting that it is primarily addressed to the way we view fellow humans as individuals, but I do not believe that it precludes us from taking the same non-judgemental stance with regard to pluralities such as communities as a whole.

It may be that the proposed seudas hoda’a was likely to be on a scale of ostentation that would have been offensive or inappropriate. If this were so, the suggestion that it be restricted to close family members might be constructive and indeed desirable, but the rabbi would surely have been able to make it without casting the credentials of other potential invitees in a pejorative light.

I am therefore hesitant to take this story at face value and invite readers’ comments in the hope of enlightenment.