Me, judgemental? No way!

The principle that we should judge others favourably is enshrined in one of the most cited mishnayot in Avot, where Yehoshua ben Perachyah teaches:

הֱוֵי דָן אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם לְכַף זְכוּת

Judge every man on the scale of merit (Avot 1:6).

This maxim gets bandied about so often that we can easily be blinded to it by that most troublesome of ailments, Mishnah Fatigue. This post urges us to refresh our view of it and to recalibrate our responses in two common situations that require our judgement.

First, a preliminary point. While much of the first chapter of Avot appears to be addressed specifically to judges, lawyers and the legal process, from the earliest commentators onwards this maxim has been taken to refer to the judgements we all make in our daily lives. Jewish judicial proceedings are mainly concerned with matters of evidence and proof, not with the moral standing of the litigants. However, we cannot avoid making moral judgements if we are to live our lives in accordance with the standards laid out in Avot. Thus when Nittai Ha’Arbeli (1:7) advises us to distance ourselves from a bad neighbour and to refrain from teaming up with a wicked person, it is assumed that we must take a plainly judgemental view as to who such people are if we are to act upon this guidance.

The two following scenarios indicate typical situations in which we may find ourselves, where we indulge in judgement without perhaps even realising that we are doing do. 

1.        Why isn’t s/he married, then?

Marriage—and nowadays many a permanent partnership that may not technically qualify as marriage—forms an important part of Jewish life. Throughout the ages it has been a popular activity within all sectors of Jewish society to help friends and acquaintances find an ideal match. Once upon a time this activity, though open to all, was largely the prerogative of the shadchan or shadchanit, the matchmaker. In recent times this activity, like so many others, is assisted by computer dating services.

At any given time, there are a good many Jews who are single. They may only just have reached a stage in their lives in which they are old and/or mature enough to marry. They may have yet to meet a person to whom they are confident to commit the rest of their lives. They may be widowed or divorced. They may be driven by career considerations that are so fulfilling that cannot look beyond them. Tragically, they may through no fault of their own be mamzerim.  And there are other reasons too.

When Yehoshua ben Perachyah teaches us to judge others favourably, this warning extends into the habits of thought that we can easily slip into when it comes to matchmaking. If a person has reached a relatively advanced stage in life without finding a partner, there is a temptation to think “why hasn’t s/he married? There must be something wrong with that person”, or “why is s/he so picky, rejecting so many eligible partners? What’s that person’s problem?”  This is a realm in which we should resist the tendency to form opinions when we don’t know what lies inside the hearts and minds of our fellow humans. 

2.        Would you give this man a donation?

The giving of tzedakah, charitable donations—like marriage—is an ancient and hallowed institution of Jewish life. Solicitations come in many forms: glossy brochures that vaunt the credentials of large institutional charities, mass online appeals and, at the bottom end of the market, individuals who go door-to-door or visit synagogues on weekday mornings. The credentials of major charitable institutions and foundations are easy to establish: accounts are prepared, audited and submitted for examination. But what of the individual who collects in person? How do we know who is a genuine charitable cause—and who is not?

Earlier this month the synagogue at which I was praying was visited one morning by a man who sought funds for major surgery for one of his children. At the end of the prayer service he made a speech in which he explained that this surgery could only be performed in the United States and at great expense; that the need to raise funds meant that he had to leave his job in order to do so; and that he could not support his family. The man’s speech was polished and had clearly been given on many occasions. It was supported by a well-presented flyer that reiterated his needs and gave details for the giving of donations, though it appeared to me that these details had been prepared separately and then scanned on to the document.  The man himself was smartly dressed and evidently well fed. He carried with him a portable credit card reader.

My first thought was that I should not trust this appeal; that the man was a professional and highly skilled beggar who was clearly successful at his job. But then I found myself wondering whether Yehoshua ben Perachyah’s teaching would let me reach that conclusion. After all, the need for surgery for the man’s daughter might be perfectly genuine and it might have been his desperation that led him to present his petition in a form that certainly troubled me (it did not seem to worry most of my fellows in the synagogue, who did not hesitate to donate). In the end, I too made a donation—a modest one, I admit—and made a mental note to myself that any reward for the performance of this mitzvah should go to Yehoshua ben Perachyah rather than to me.

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There are many other instances in which it is easy to slip into judgemental mode and to judge others harshly in one’s professional life and at home. School teachers, medical practitioners, sales assistants—no-one is totally immune. But if we do make critical or damning judgements of others, we should at least be aware that we are doing so and ask ourselves if we are justified in what we decide.

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Snap judgements

An Avot mishnah for Shabbat: Perek 4 (parashat Behar)

Continuing our series of erev Shabbat posts on the perek of the week, we now turn to Perek 4.

Judging by appearances—it’s something we all do. But should we? Rabbi Meir forces us to consider if we should, at Avot 4:27:

אַל תִּסְתַּכֵּל בְּקַנְקַן, אֶלָּא בְּמַה שֶּׁיֶּשׁ בּוֹ, יֵשׁ קַנְקַן חָדָשׁ מָלֵא יָשָׁן, וְיָשָׁן שֶׁאֲפִילוּ חָדָשׁ אֵין בּוֹ

Don’t look at the vessel, but at what’s inside it. There are new vessels that are filled with old wine, and old vessels that don’t contain even new wine.

Rabbi Meir is not merely talking about wine. He is referring to every occasion on which we let ourselves be guided by superficial impressions. But is he being realistic?

We live in a world where appearances are important. If a person wears a police uniform or a soldier, we immediately determine that person’s role and, often, their rank or status. We assume that charedi garb or hippie get-up are measures of their wearer’s religious or cultural preferences. Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow) argues that reliance on these snap assessments is the only way to navigate life in a world such as ours which is laden with messages and constantly changing situations.

But Rabbi Meir enjoys support too. The popular rock number by Bo Diddley, “You can’t judge a book by the cover”, has been performed or recorded on countless occasions by artistes as distinguished as The Rolling Stones since its release in 1962. Another song, “The cover is not the book”, is known to a new generation of children following the release of the “Mary Poppins” movie in 2018. Going back to earlier times, Rambam summarises (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot De’ot 5:9) the way a Torah scholar should appear in public, raising the implication that anyone who confirms to these norms will be judged as one.

Taking things at face value is an impressively powerful marketing tool. Toothpastes, for example, never seem to deliver the same set of sparkling white teeth as the model who appears on the promotional material. But that is only a fraction of the reality with which we live. Who has not purchased a large packet of breakfast cereal or a bloated bag of so-called artisan chips/crisps, only to find that much of it is empty? Or, in the world of pascal gastronomy, bought a manufactured product bearing a label that proclaims kasher lePesach in large print and the words le’ochlei kitniyot in print so small you need a microscope to read it. We do judge the container, but the product can so easily let us down.

There is another aspect to judging by appearance, a rather more sinister one. At many junctures in the long, hard history of Jewish life in the Diaspora, we have been required to wear distinctive and sometimes deliberately degrading clothes or badges so that non-Jews can instantly and without inquiry ascertain our religious status. Can we learn anything from this? Perhaps we can say that, just as we can’t judge wine by looking at the vessel (or, in modern parlance, by reading the label on the bottle), we should not impose external appearances on others where the effect is to humiliate them or to deny their individuality.

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"You can't judge a book by looking at the cover"

You can't judge an apple by looking at a tree
You can't judge honey by looking at the bee
You can't judge a daughter by looking at the mother
You can't judge a book by looking at the cover

These lyrics, popularized by Bo Diddley, the Rolling Stones and many other performers, embody the teaching of Rabbi Meir at Avot 4:27:

אַל תִּסְתַּכֵּל בְּקַנְקַן, אֶלָּא בְּמַה שֶּׁיֶּשׁ בּוֹ, יֵשׁ קַנְקַן חָדָשׁ מָלֵא יָשָׁן, וְיָשָׁן שֶׁאֲפִילוּ חָדָשׁ אֵין בּ

Don’t look at the vessel, but at what’s inside it. There are new vessels that are filled with old wine, and old vessels that do not even contain new wine.

I recently had an opportunity to put this teaching into practice. Browsing the shelves of Jerusalem’s iconic Pomeranz bookshop, I came across a commentary on Pirkei Avot that had previously escaped my attention: Jewish Ethical Wisdom From Pirkei Avot by Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins (Mazo Publishers, 2020). Unable to resist the temptation, I bought it.

My initial feeling about this book was not positive, since I started with the preliminaries. The front cover reminded me that the Americans and the English may share many common cultural characteristics—but they take quite a different view of self-promotion. As a generalization, Americans are very much more confident in their promotion of goods and services while the English are diffident and hide behind a wall of understatement. Neither approach reflects the Maimonidean norm that lies between the stridently boastful and the unhelpfully uninformative, but this book definitely falls on the American side of this border.

The cover eye-catchingly declares that this book is “The Only Pirkei Avot Edition According to Topic Themes”.  While there are not many Avot books that take this line, this one is not actually unique in that regard--even though four of this book’s five distinguished endorsers also seem to think it is. Torah Dynamics: Pirkei Avot Looks at Life, by Samson Krupnick and Morris Mandel, published in 1991, arranges its discussion of Avot under 24 topic headings. Then there is Rabbi Dan Roth’s Relevance: Pirkei Avos for the Twentieth Century (2007), which tackles topics while running them in the order they appear in Avot. Both are currently available on the Feldheim website and I wonder how these two books could have escaped everyone’s attention.

Now for the author. Rabbi Elkins is clearly a prolific author: the brief bio that faces the  Contents page describes him as having written over 55 books, no mean achievement. One of these, Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul, made the New York Times bestseller list, and the cover itself proclaims Rabbi Elkins to be “Winner of the National Jewish Book Award”, which indeed he was in 1965 with Worlds lost and found; discoveries in Biblical archeology. Both these books are actually co-authored. The Englishman and the intellectual property lawyer in me are both uncomfortable with the absence of any mention here of co-authorship, but I imagine that this is something that troubles me more than it troubles others.

Anyway, once we get past these preliminaries, there’s still the book to consider. The first thing one can say about it is that it is highly accessible and easy to read. The text, including the footnotes, benefits from a large, clear font. It’s not a long work—just 160 pages inclusive of glossary and a short bibliography—and it spans over 30 focal topics. Most of these topics are covered in brief but one, Learning and Teaching, is disproportionately long, thus fairly reflecting the content of Avot itself.

Rabbi Elkins’ approach in general uses the mishnayot of Avot as a series of springboards from which to jump into issues that are of current interest or social relevance. He does so by drawing on quotations which span a wide variety of sources both religious and secular, which he deploys in order to elucidate points that are often based on his own experiences. Readers may not all feel happy at the choice of sources whose quotes appear, but this book is not addressed to readers who would rather take offence at the identity of a quoted source than give thought to the words quoted (cited authors Rabbis Louis Jacobs and Yitz Greenberg, both of whom have been known to raise the occasional hackle).

The content, length and drift of each essay make them collectively a handy reference point for anyone who finds him- or herself called upon to prepare a short and lively devar Torah. Also, with its tendency to prick consciences gently rather than destroying readers completely, as do some tomes on Avot, it’s probably a useful book to take with you to shul on the High Holy Days, to peruse when the going gets heavy and one’s concentration flags.

This work does not pretend to be a state-of-the-art scholarly treatise with doctoral pretensions, and that is a valuable selling point. While sages and scholars may write books of more lasting value, books written by congregational rabbis for ordinary people have a great advantage. A minister who is in daily contact with regular folk can usually be relied upon to have a firm grasp of their dreams and aspirations, their peeves and their foibles. Potential readers of books on Avot are not all striving to be saints or holy ascetics, but many of them would like to be better people if they could—and if someone could give them a few words of encouragement and advice. Books like this one, which talks of anger, doubt, friendship and responsibility, will always have a market and can do much good.

To conclude, I’m glad I didn’t judge this book by the cover and I’m sure that there are many people out there in the big wide world who will appreciate it.

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Portrait of a prophet: another reason for not judging by appearances

Rabbi Yisrael Lifschitz’s Tiferet Yisrael commentary on tractate Kiddushin (at 4:14) tells a story that deserves our attention at a time when Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Judgment, is fast approaching. This story, as told by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski in Visions of the Fathers, runs as follows:

A desert king heard of the greatness of Moses, and sent his finest artists to bring back a portrait of him. He then submitted the portrait to his physiognomists to study it and describe Moses’ character. They reported that the portrait revealed a man who was vain, arrogant, lustful, greedy, and degenerate. Inasmuch as this was in sharp contrast to what he had heard of Moses, the king went to the Israelite encampment to see for himself.

Upon meeting Moses, the king saw that his artists had indeed captured every minute detail, and he could not understand how his physiognomists could be so far off course. Moses explained to him, “Your physiognomists can interpret only the innate characteristics with which a person was born. All they said of me was true insofar as those were the traits that I was born with. However, I struggled to overcome them and to transform my character”.

In terms of Pirkei Avot, the story illustrates the following:

• The association of power with self-discipline and control of one’s yetzer hara (evil inclination) rather than physical prowess (4:1);
  
  
• The danger of judging by appearances (4:27);
  
  
• The importance of admitting the truth rather than denying it (5:9).

The story additionally reflects the notion that self-control goes further than making sure one does the right thing and forbears from doing the wrong thing. True self-control goes further because its proper exercise can help a person to change even his or her inclinations and inherent middot, personal qualities.

We generally assess people by reference to the way they behave. This can be misleading since humans tend to do their good deeds in public and commit their bad ones when they are out of the public eye (sadly the media have reported a string of examples in recent years of public benefactors who were also private predators). We never however see a person’s private desires and inclinations. These are the province of God alone, and it is He alone who judges us as the sort of individuals we aspire to be.