Tracing one's steps back to Avot

At the beginning of May I posted “Taking steps, or taking a path”. This piece reviewed Rabbi Avigdor Miller’s ‘Ten Steps to Greatness’, pointed out how they reflected earlier teachings in Pirkei Avot and invited readers to submit their own suggestions for acquiring greatness—which sadly none of them did.

Here’s another ten-point list to consider. This time the author is the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and it was published in The Times newspaper on 5 January 2008 under the title ‘Resolutions’. For a Jewish readership the same piece was hosted on his own website under a different title: “Count your blessings and begin to change your life”. R’ Miller’s list was aimed at making people great, while that of R’ Sacks had the less ambitious aim of changing people only to the extent of making them happier with their portion in life. As with R’ Miller, so too with R’ Sacks, the question arises: is there any connection between the listed items and Pirkei Avot?

R’ Sacks’ list runs like this [but with Avot allusions added in bold text]:

1. Give thanks. Once a day take quiet time to feel gratitude for what you have, not impatience for what you don’t have [gratitude for what one has is covered by Avot 4:1 and 6:6]. This alone will bring you halfway to happiness. We already have most of the ingredients of a happy life. It’s just that we tend to take these for granted and focus on unmet wants, unfulfilled desires. Giving thanks is better than shopping – and cheaper too [on the potentially detrimental metaphorical effect of shopping see Rabbi Akiva at Avot 3:20].

2. Praise. Catch someone doing something right and say so. Most people, most of the time, are unappreciated. Being recognised, thanked and congratulated by someone else is one of the most empowering things that can happen to us [Recognising the good in other people and giving them credit for it feature in Avot 6:6]. So don’t wait for someone to do it for you: do it for someone else. You will make their day, and that will help to make yours.

3. Spend time with your family. Make sure that there is at least one time a week when you sit down to have a meal together with no distractions – no television, no phone, no email, just being together and celebrating one another’s company. Happy marriages and healthy families need dedicated time [this course of action is arguably the easiest way to achieve the objectives of ‘being loved’ and ‘loving other people’ as articulated in Avot 6:1 and 6:6].

4. Discover meaning. Take time out, once in a while, to ask: “Why am I here? What do I hope to achieve? How best can I use my gifts? What would I wish to be said about me when I am no longer here?” [Introspection of this nature resonates with Hillel’s teaching at 1:14]. Finding meaning is essential to a fulfilled life – and how can you find it if you never look? If you don’t know where you want to be, you will never get there, however fast you run.

5. Live your values. Most of us believe in high ideals, but we act on them only sporadically. The best thing to do is to establish habits that get us to enact those ideals daily. This is called ritual, and it is what religions remember but ethicists often forget [Living one’s values requires a person to exercise constant judgement in making sure that his deeds are not merely good but that they are consistent with what he is as a person, hence Avot 1:1: be deliberate in (self)-judgement].

6. Forgive. This is the emotional equivalent of losing excess weight. Life is too short to bear a grudge or seek revenge. Forgiving someone is good for them but even better for you. The bad has happened. It won’t be made better by your dwelling on it. Let it go. Move on [Forgiveness as such doesn’t get a mention in Avot, but giving others the benefit of the doubt is often a prelude to the act of forgiveness. Avot 1:6].

7. Keep learning. I learnt this from Florence in Newcastle, whom I last met the day she celebrated her 105th birthday. She was still full of energy and fun. “What’s the secret?” I asked her. “Never be afraid to learn something new,” she said. Then I realised that if you are willing to learn, you can be 105 and still young. If you are not, you can be 25 and already old [by citing what he learned from Florence, R’ Sacks provides a great example of Ben Zoma’s teaching at Avot 4:1: “Who is wise? The person who learns from everyone”].

8. Learn to listen. Often in conversation we spend half our time thinking of what we want to say next instead of paying attention to what the other person is saying [attentive listening comes in Avot 6:6]. Listening is one of the greatest gifts we can give to someone else. It means that we are open to them, that we take them seriously and that we accept graciously their gift of words.

9. Create moments of silence in the soul. Liberate yourself, if only five minutes daily, from the tyranny of technology, the mobile phone, the laptop and all the other electronic intruders, and just inhale the heady air of existence, the joy of being [as Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says at Avot 1:17: “I have found nothing better for oneself than silence”].

10. Transform suffering. When bad things happen, use them to sensitise you to the pain of others. The greatest people I know – people who survived tragedy and became stronger as a result – did not ask “Who did this to me?” Instead, they asked “What does this allow me to do that I could not have done before?” They refused to become victims of circumstance. They became, instead, agents of hope [kabbalat yisurim—a positive acceptance of suffering—is mentioned at Avot 6:6].

Thoughts, anyone?

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Happy new year, you beast!

Right now we are pretty well half way through the year, being more or less equidistant from the previous Rosh Hashanah and the next one. Our thoughts are therefore likely to be quite distant from issues of teshuvah (repentance) and divine judgement—so what better time can there be to post a short note on the Jewish New Year as viewed through the refracting lens of Pirkei Avot?

As is well known, Rosh Hashanah marks the start of a holiday season that lasts some three weeks—but it’s only the new year for humans. Trees have their own New Year. And so do animals (Rosh Hashanah 1.1).

Strictly speaking, the new year for animals is the date that marks the end of each year’s tithing process. When calculating how many animals are to be tithed and given to the Kohanim, any animal born on or after the first day of the month of Elul is added to the total for the year that follows it.  

The Kozhnitzer Maggid makes an acute comment about this in his commentary to Avot 5:10, a mishnah that deals with failure to tithe one’s produce. The new year for humans falls on the first day of Tishrei, a month after the new year for animals. We are taught to prepare for Rosh Hashanah from 1 Elul by examining our deeds, repenting our misdeeds and generally seeking out God where He may be found.  As explained by R’ Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Elul is the month where God is analogized to the King who leaves his palace and goes out into the field, where he makes himself accessible to his subjects and seeks to meet them.

Says the Kozhnitzer Maggid, even if we have lived the rest of our year as animals, when we reach 1 Elul—the new year for animals—we should make the effort to raise our game, repent and spend the month in fear of God before we get to the human new year, which is also known as Yom HaDin, the Day of Judgment.

One need hardly add that the message of God coming out into the fields is particularly apt if during the year we have been no better than animals, for it is in the fields that they might be expected to be found.

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Upon my oath! Making a personal commitment

This week’s Torah reading of parashat Matot opens with the topic of solemn vows and oaths, their binding nature and the extent to which they can be annulled. In modern society the making of such oaths plays only a tangential role, so we tend to give it little thought. That does not mean that we cannot learn something useful from our ancient laws. After all, keeping one’s word and doing what one promises are important parts of civilised life everywhere—and this is the issue that underpins the making and breaking of vows and oaths.

Not only the Mishnah but the Talmud give considerable space to oaths, dedicating no fewer than three tractates to them: Nedarim (defining a neder vow and its application to vows concerning food and daughters), Nazir (on the making of Nazirite vows and their consequences) and Shevuot (oaths made in the course of commerce and litigation). But that is not all. Pirkei Avot mentions oaths too, on three occasions:

·         “Oaths are a protective fence to abstinence” (Rabbi Akiva, Avot 3:17)

·         “Don’t question your fellow at the time he is making a vow” (Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar, Avot 4:23)

·         “Wild beasts come into the world on account of vain oaths and desecration of God’s name” (Anonymous, Avot 5:11).

From debate in the Talmud as to whether oaths are good, bad or both, we can see that much depends on the circumstances and the manner in which people make them. At one end of the spectrum we see how a person can strengthen his or her resolve to do the right thing by making an oath to do so; at the other extreme we learn of people taking God’s name in vain when making oaths that are without purpose or meaning. There’s not much point in making an oath that a muffin is a muffin, but at least that proposition is true. To utilise God’s name when swearing that a muffin is not a muffin is an insult to human intelligence, whether one is troubled by invoking God’s name in vain or not.

Of all Rabbi Akiva’s teachings in Avot, “Oaths are a protective fence to abstinence” is probably the one we encounter least frequently, since not only oaths but also abstinence are very much out of fashion. There is however more to Rabbi Akiva’s teaching here than meets the eye. Taking a positive view, his teaching suggests that binding oral commitments like oaths and vows are clearly of value if they help to strengthen the resolve of someone who is motivated to distance himself from the pleasures and sensual experiences of the world—whether permitted or otherwise—for the purpose of gaining greater proximity to his Maker.

In the world at large, many people practise the popular institution of the New Year Resolution—a pledge to undertake the making of (usually) one major change in their lifestyle in order to produce some sort of improving effect. These resolutions often cover abstinence from substances that are pleasurably harmful if consumed in quantity (e.g. chocolate, patisserie, alcoholic beverages). Or they may relate to acts and deeds (e.g. making a greater effort to visit elderly relatives, or regularly clearing their email in-trays). One thing they generally have in common is that much of their power to bind the person making them depends on that person telling others that he or she has done so. This means facing shame and embarrassment if, having publicised a resolution, a person then admits in public that he or she has broken it.

Like New Year Resolutions, the oaths and vows of Mishnaic times raised the expectation that the person making them would respect and stand by them. However, unlike secular resolutions, the oaths and vows that the Mishnah discusses were made by people who, by invoking God’s name, reminded themselves that both their binding commitment and any breach of it were made before their Creator, giving extra power to the notion that it is important to keep one’s word and honour one’s promises even if their subject, such as limiting their consumption of chocolate and booze, affects non-one but themselves.

A further note on abstinence and what it means should appear later this week.