Watering down a warning

Politicians! Can you trust them? Should you trust them? Or are they just so many clowns? In many parts of the world we are in the throes of elections and therefore in need of the guidance of a piece of advice from Pirkei Avot that is as crisply relevant today as it was two millennia ago. It comes from Rabban Gamliel ben Rebbi in Avot 2:3:

הֱווּ זְהִירִין בָּרָשׁוּת, שֶׁאֵין מְקָרְבִין לוֹ לְאָדָם אֶלָּא לְצֹֽרֶךְ עַצְמָן, נִרְאִין כְּאוֹהֲבִין בְּשַֽׁעַת הַנָּאָתָן, וְאֵין עוֹמְדִין לוֹ לְאָדָם בְּשַֽׁעַת דָּחֳקוֹ

Be careful with the government, for they befriend a person only for their own needs. They appear to be friends when it is beneficial to them, but they do not stand by a person at the time of his distress.

The meaning of this message is clear and no-one who lives in any country that claims to be a representative democracy should need any explanation.

But there are commentaries on Avot that appear to deny the relevance of this mishnah to our generation. R’ Chaim Druckman (Avot leBanim) points out that there are some old editions of Rambam’s commentary that qualify this teaching with the words בימי קדם (“in earlier days”), and those of the Me’iri which add בדורותיהם (“in their generations”), in other words in the era of the mishnah—but no longer, and therefore without pointing an accusing finger at the governments under which Rambam and the Me’iri were writing.  According to R’ Druckman, it is reasonable to suppose that these extra words were inserted in order to pass the office of the censor, which would have been an arm of the government itself. If so, it is easy to see why, in our time when there is no equivalent degree of state censorship, these words should be omitted.

I have two comments to make.

First, if Pirkei Avot was also taught orally and without interruption from the time Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi redacted it (c.180-200 CE), those students who were familiar with this mishnah would had studied it before its effect was watered down in order to escape the censor’s attention; it would thus be an easy job to delete the added word as soon as censorship ceased to be an issue.

Secondly, the added words do reflect a significance between the days of the Tannaim and the contemporary political scene.  In times gone by, in the absence of any printed or electronic media, contact between ordinary citizens and those holding government positions (or seeking to do so) would have been mainly personal: it is more difficult to say “no” to a person who is standing before you and speaking with you face-to-face than it is to reject the blandishments of those seeking your support when they are delivered remotely. It is therefore far easier for us to dismiss their promises and aspirations as being vacuous or self-seeking than it would have been for our ancestors—which is why the advice of Rabban Gamliel was particularly appropriate in his era, even though it still holds true for ours.

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