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.

Comparisons with Balaam: why Abraham, not Moses?

Yesterday I posted a piece on Avot 5:22, which contrasted the qualities exemplified by Abraham and Balaam and, by extension, by those who follow them.

Why does this Mishnah pick Abraham as the gold standard by which to evaluate Balaam and find him lacking? Would not Moses have been a better measure of comparison? There is nowhere any suggestion that Moses was deficient in the three areas of excellence associated here with Abraham: he too had a generous outlook (Shemot 32:30-32), a meek spirit (Chullin 89a) and a humble soul (Bemidbar 12:3). He was an exact contemporary of Balaam, while Abraham lived six generations earlier. Both Moses and Balaam had top-class prophetic talents (Bemidbar Rabbah 14:20; Berachot 7a). Further, the placing of this mishnah within the fifth perek almost invites comparison with Moses rather than Abraham: whereas the other mishnayot dealing with Abraham and his exceptional qualities come right at the beginning of this perek, the only other mishnah in it which deals with Moses is found immediately preceding this one.

Because this mishnah is dealing with middot (character traits and qualities) rather than mitzvot and averot (positive and negative commands), we may have an answer. There is a qualitative difference between those who lived before the Giving of the Torah at Sinai and those who lived subsequently.

Before Sinai, there were two measures of a man’s worth: one was in the way he developed and acted in accordance with his personal qualities, the other being his adherence to the seven Noahide Laws to which all of mankind is universally subject. After the Giving of the Torah, the Jewish people could also be measured in terms of their service to God through the performance of mitzvot and the avoidance of averot that were revealed at Sinai. By comparing Abraham with Balaam, this mishnah compares like with like, contrasting two personalities who were ostensibly playing by the same Noahide rules.

There is another possible answer. Balaam is quite conscious of the role played by the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in securing a permanent relationship between God and the Children of Israel. He makes a great show of setting himself up as being their equal. The Patriarchs between them built seven altars on which to make offerings before God, so Balaam instructs Balak to do likewise on the assumption that he must exceed or at least equal the performance of the Patriarchs if he is to obtain a chance to break the bond they had forged with God. Since Balaam is seeking to undermine the covenant first made with Abraham and only later confirmed with his descendants, it is with Abraham and not Moses that Balaam is to be compared.

The appropriate nature of the Abraham-Balaam comparison is suggested by two further considerations. The first, which appeals to scholarship, is the intertextuality of the stories of the Akedah, where Abraham is ordered to sacrifice his son Isaac, and the engagement of Balaam to destroy the Jewish people. Both Abraham and Balaam saddle their asses early in the morning and take two lads with them; both are stopped by an angel before killing their companion. In both episodes they climb mountains and there is a burnt offering. Finally, both episodes end with a blessing for the Jewish people.

The second consideration appeals to our affection for symmetry and balance: Abraham is the righteous person who appeals to God in order to save a wicked people from destruction, while Balaam is the wicked person who appeals to God in order to achieve the destruction of a righteous people. Further, while Balaam seeks a generous reward for cursing the Children even though he fails in this mission, Abraham spurns a generous reward that is his for the taking after he secures the defeat of the Five Kings.

Lawgiver takes law into his own hands: what does Avot say?

The Torah reading for this week's Jewish sabbath begins the book of Exodus (Shemot). The first few chapters introduce Israel's slavery in Egypt and briefly describe the formative years of Moses -- the leader and lawgiver whose story runs through to the end of the Jewish bible.

One event in this week's reading has continued to attract discussion for two millennia or more. It is Moses' departure from Pharaoh's household in search of his brethren, swiftly followed in the Torah narrative by the killing of an Egyptian man who was beating a Jew (Exodus 2:11-12).

Nehama Leibowitz ("Moses seeks out his brethren", Studies in Shemot: Exodus, 1981) observes that this is the first of three instances at the beginning of Exodus in which Moses intervenes to protect a victim from an aggressor. She comments that they reflect on Moses' character as a champion of the cause of justice. Here Moses comes to the aid of a Jew against a non-Jew. He later intervenes in a fight between two Jews (Ex. 2:13) and then, when Jethro's daughters get into difficulties with Midianite shepherds (Ex. 2:17), he takes the cause of one non-Jew against another.

In the Bible's account of Moses killing of the Egyptian, we learn that "He looked this way and that way" and did not strike the fatal blow until "he saw that there was no man..." What does this mean?

Taken literally, the Torah's words suggest that, since Moses did not wish to be seen killing the man, he looked both ways to make sure that there was no witness. For example Rabbi Yaakov Zvi Mecklenburg (HaKetav veHakabalah, 1839) thinks not. Rather, Moses was looking to see if there was any real man among the Jews who was prepared to stand up for the underdog -- but he saw no such person. The Netziv (Ha'Amek Davar) fastens on to Moses' penchant for due process under the law: he looked in vain to see if there was anyone to whom he could appeal for legal protection.

In here review, Nehama Leibowitz cites Rabbi Ze'ev Wolf Einhorn (the Maharzav), who focuses on the teaching of Hillel in Pirkei Avot 2:6 that, "in a place where there is no man, strive to be one", which he interprets in light of similar terminology in Isaiah 59:15-16 ("The Lord looked round ... He saw that there was no man ... so His own arm brought them victory").

The idea of taking the initiative, acting decisively when no-one else is available, able or willing to do so, can certainly be found in Hillel's words. We may however wonder if this was the meaning that Hillel intended them to have. This is because he spoke these words within a longer mishnah that addresses fear of God, piety and the ability to learn and teach Torah. Another point to ponder is whether we would even need a mishnah to teach us the imperative importance of decisive action, when an episode in the Torah -- Pinchas' killing of Zimri and Cozbi (Numbers 25:6-16) -- has taught us this already.

Thoughts, anyone?