A mishnah for victory, a mishnah for defeat

Big thank-yous to the ever-vigilant Claude Tusk, hotly pursued by Avi Metcalfe, for drawing our attention to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s latest citation of Pirkei Avot. Yesterday, following his failure to secure the slot of Kamala Harris’s running-mate for the US Presidency, he is reported as saying:

“Since I first ran for State Representative 20 years ago, I’ve been called to serve because I want to leave our community, our Commonwealth, and our country better off for our children—and because my faith teaches me that no one is required to complete the task, but neither are we free to refrain from it”.

This a reference to Rabbi Tarfon’s famous quote, “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it” (Avot 2:21). Ben Sales, writing for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, explains that this apothegm is

“…generally taken as a reassurance to those facing monumental or seemingly unreachable goals. It has become a mainstay of Jewish activist circles across the political spectrum”.

Indeed, as Avot Today has previously noted, it seems to be quoted more frequently by politicians and public figures than by rabbis.

A week,observed one-time British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, is a long time in politics. Readers with long memories may recall, however, that Josh Shapiro cited the same mishnah from Avot nearly two years ago, on the occasion of his gubernatorial victory over Doug Mastriano (see Avot Today, here).

Avot Today is of course delighted at Governor Shapiro’s enthusiasm for this fascinating tractate—and we look forward to more of the same—but somehow we doubt that we shall hear him quoting two other great teachers from Avot. One is Shemaya (“Don’t make yourself known to the government”: Avot 1:10). The other is Rabban Gamliel ben Rebbi (“Beware of rulers, for they befriend a person only for their benefit; they act friendly when it befits them, but they do not stand by someone in their time of need”: Avot 2:3).

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Pirkei Avot, politics and a job not yet done

Readers of the Jewish Insider for 9 November will have come across a piece by Gabby Deutsch titled “Shapiro, citing Pirkei Avot, sails to victory in PA”. You can access this article here or on the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle for 10 November here.

The operative part of this piece reads as follows:

As anxious Democrats around the country waited for election results to come in on Tuesday night, a jubilant crowd of more than a thousand was in a celebratory mood from the moment they walked into Josh Shapiro’s election night party at a convention center on the far edges of the Philadelphia exurbs.

While vulnerable Democrats elsewhere in the state struggled in close races that remain undecided, Shapiro was declared the victor by the Associated Press shortly after midnight, leading Doug Mastriano by more than 500,000 votes.

“I spoke a lot about my faith in this campaign. My family and my faith call me to service and they drive me home,” Shapiro told a cheering crowd in a triumphant victory address. “You’ve heard me read Scripture before, that no one is required to complete the task, but neither are we free to refrain from it, meaning each of us has a responsibility to get off the sidelines, to get in the game and to do our part. And so I say to you tonight, that while we won this race — and by the way, won it pretty convincingly … the job is not done. The task is not complete”.

While I am always glad to see evidence that Pirkei Avot courses through the veins of any Jew, this report leaves me somewhat uncomfortable. I wonder if I am not alone in my discomfort.

The sentiment of not being required to finish the task but also not being free to refrain from it is a laudable one where the task in question is a meritorious though onerous one. But what is the nature of the duty in the quote before us? Rabbi Tarfon, who teaches this at Avot 2:21, was a Torah sage who sought both to live by the Torah’s precepts and to encourage others to do likewise. As that mishnah’s context shows, it has always been understood within the Jewish tradition of scholarship that Rabbi Tarfon was speaking about the task of learning the Torah and observing its many mitzvot. Once this teaching is detached from that objective, the task is whatever the speaker defines it to be and it is thereby reduced to the level of a simple platitude. If this is so, the words spoken here by the victor equally well be spoken by the vanquished, with reference to the task of persisting with his hitherto less popular policies and making a greater effort to persuade the electorate of their benefit.

The English language is rich in platitudes and cliches about not quitting and carrying on to the bitter end, as well as about it being more important to do the right thing than to secure the desired end. I think I would have greatly preferred it if one of them was used here.

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Another point arising from this speech is whether the speaker should have quoted this teaching in Rabbi Tarfon’s name (as mandated in Avot 6:6). While it is customary in Jewish learning circles to do just that, the citation of the name of so eminent a Torah scholar in the case before us might have created the false impression that the victorious candidate’s candidacy or policies were somehow in line with Rabbi Tarfon’s philosophy of life. On balance, therefore, it may be justifiable to omit any mention of Rabbi Tarfon’s name.