SUMMONING UP ASSISTANCE FROM THE PAST

After advocating the virtues of combining Torah study with some sort of trade or occupation, Rabban Gamliel ben Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi addresses the position of those who work for the community. He teaches this:

וְכָל הָעוֹסְקִים עִם הַצִּבּוּר יִהְיוּ עוֹסְקִים עִמָּהֶם לְשֵׁם שָׁמָֽיִם, שֶׁזְּכוּת אֲבוֹתָם מְסַיַּעְתָּם, וְצִדְקָתָם עוֹמֶֽדֶת לָעַד, וְאַתֶּם, מַעֲלֶה אֲנִי עֲלֵיכֶם שָׂכָר הַרְבֵּה כְּאִלּוּ עֲשִׂיתֶם

Those who work for the community—let them do so for the sake of Heaven; for the merit of their ancestors shall aid them, and their righteousness shall endure forever. And as for you [says God]. I shall credit you with great reward as if you have done [it].

The obvious meaning of this teaching is that it’s a tough task to work on behalf of any community, and certainly a Jewish one—which is probably what Rabban Gamliel had in mind. Community service takes a person away from the comfort zone of learning and plunges one into a routine that is often unpredictable and uncontrollable, and invariably unending. One needs to summon up the skills of a diplomat plus a good deal of patience and foresight if any community’s interests can be truly advanced—and the more diverse the community, the greater the number of stress lines that divide it.  If God sees you doing your best, He will, as it were, let you cash in on the merits of your ancestors. This is presumably on the basis that one’s ancestors were meritorious.

Jewish ancestry is a treasure trove of real and also possibly imagined merits. The three Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were so renowned for theirs that we invoke them in the latter part of birkat hamazon (grace after meals). Closer to our own time, many of us may have had pious and saintly grandparents or great grandparents who, we are confident, must have clocked up a multitude of merits on account of their persistence and adherence to the faith in the face of persecution, material deprivation, financial hardship and assimilation. So, while we toil on behalf of the community, we seek to draw upon the righteousness and the good deeds of our forebears and hope that this will give us that extra resource to pull us through.

Assuming that we are able to draw on the merits of our forebears—whether we know what those merits might be or not—we can then extract a limmud mussar from the mishnah: if we succeed in our efforts on behalf of the community, as the Me’iri suggests, we should not go into self-congratulatory mode and imagine that success is simply the product of our efforts. Rather, we should appreciate that our achievements at the present time are also a product of the past, through the tradition of education and performance of God’s will that have forged the capable leaders that we are today.

But are these the merits that Rabban Gamliel has in mind? His words do not specify whose merits are meant and Rabbeinu Yonah suggests that this mishnah is actually referring to the merits of the elders and ancestors of the community itself. If the community is deserving, then its leaders and askanim, the individuals who take responsibility for getting everything done, will succeed. In other words, Rabbeinu Yonah implies that each community gets the leaders it deserves.

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