"Peace": it all depends what you mean

The midrashic propensity of Aaron to make peace—and to pursue it even at the expense of literal truth—is well recorded in commentaries on Avot and has been frequently discussed in Avot Today. The commentaries attach themselves to Hillel’s teaching at Avot 1:12:

הֱוֵי מִתַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל אַהֲרֹן, אוֹהֵב שָׁלוֹם וְרוֹדֵף שָׁלוֹם, אוֹהֵב אֶת הַבְּרִיּוֹת, וּמְקָרְבָן לַתּוֹרָה

Be among the disciples of Aaron—love peace, pursue peace, love creatures and draw them close to Torah.

But here’s a story that, while cited in support of this great man’s pursuit of peace, may not strike the right note to modern eyes. I found this passage in When a Jew seeks wisdom: The Sayings of the Fathers, by Seymour Rossel:

“If Aaron learned that a husband and his wife were about to divorce, he would hurry to the husband and say ‘I come because I hear that you and your wife are not getting along, and that you wish to divorce. But think of this: if you should divorce your present wife and marry another, you cannot be sure that your marriage would be better. For at the first quarrel that you have with your second wife, she will remind you that you are quarrelsome and no good, otherwise your first marriage would not have ended in divorce. Let me be a pledge that you and your present wife can be happy if you will both try”.

The source given for this is given as “Legends 3:329”, but the book gives no clue as to which legends these are, and I certainly don’t know. There is however a highly similar passage in one of the minor tractates of the Talmud Bavli, Kallah Rabbati 3, that reads (in translation) like this:

When [Aaron] heard of a husband and wife who had quarrelled, he would go to the husband and say to him, ‘[I have come] because I heard that you have quarrelled with your wife; if you should divorce her it is doubtful whether you will find another like her or not; and further, should you find another and quarrel with her, the first thing she will say to you will be, “You must have behaved in a like manner towards your first wife” ’. In consequence of this all Israel, men and women, loved him.

Unlike the other Aaron-the-peacemaker tales, where the great man shuttles between hostile parties and reconciles them, in these passages we see him take a very one-sided view of the husband’s marital relationship. We have no idea of how the wife views the husband. Perhaps the feeling that the marriage should end is mutual, but Aaron does not ask about this possibility. More to the point, the extent to which Aaron’s intervention establishes peace in a meaningful manner is unclear. It seems that he is not so much mending bridges and bringing peace; rather, he is urging one party to a suboptimal relationship to remain within that relationship because there is a possibility that his second marriage might be equally suboptimal or even more so.

Finally, if was ever the case in bygone times that a man would be happy with his wife because another person had made a pledge to that effect, as the first version of this story states, my personal assessment of human nature in contemporary society suggests that it is not the case now. So, I believe, we are entitled to ask whether, in these stories, Aaron is really pursuing peace—or is he kicking a personal problem down the road, or maybe asking the parties to an unhappy relationship to pretend that their problems don't exist?

For comments and discussion on Facebook, click here.