So do we praise poverty or not?

As a long-time admirer of the flowing prose and majestic articulation of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks’ writings, I find it easy to nod in agreement as I peruse his carefully crafted paragraphs. “How I wish I’d thought of that”, I find myself thinking, or “I couldn’t have put it better myself”.  I have to be careful, though: I recognise that my tendency to enjoy his writings as aesthetic gems can lead to me reading uncritically. That is why, from time to time, I heave a sigh of relief when I read something with which I can disagree, or which at least leads me to challenge it.

I came across such a passage yesterday in The Dignity of Difference, in which Rabbi Lord Sacks writes:

Throughout its history, Judaism resisted any attempt to romanticize, rationalize or anaesthetize the pain of hunger, starvation, or need (p 97).

This stopped me in my tracks. Is this really so?

Starting with Pirkei Avot, a baraita (6:4) vaunts the ascetic approach to acquiring Torah through suffering and self-denial:

Such is the way of Torah: you should eat bread in salt, drink just a little water and sleep on the ground. Live a life of deprivation and toil in Torah. If you do this, "you will be happy and it will be good for you" (Tehillim 128:2)—happy in this world, and it will be good for you in the World to Come.

Less dramatic but pointing in a similar direction is Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota’s teaching (3:8):

Give Him what is His, for you, and whatever is yours, are His. As David says: "For everything comes from You, and from Your own hand we give to You" (I Chronicles 29:14).

This seemingly innocent teaching comes with a context: Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota’s commitment to the ascetic life involved the disposal of all his possessions for charitable purposes, leaving nothing for himself and his family (Ta’anit 24a). Placing everyone one has at the disposal of others is rated as a highly meritorious act in a later mishnah in Avot  (5:13), where the person who says “what’s mine is yours and what’s yours is yours” is a chasid—a person who has perfected the cardinal middah of chesed, “lovingkindness”. And the baraita at 6:6 lists limitation of wealth-generating activities as one of the 48 things that aid one’s acquisition of Torah.

I once assumed that the canonisation of hardship and poverty was the normative position of Judaism since it fitted so completely with the tales I read and the stories that inspired me in my early days as a ba’al teshuvah. Judaism: Hillel nearly freezing to death in the snow in his attempt to eavesdrop a Torah shiur (Shabbat 31a), rabbis subsisting from one week to the next on nothing more than a solitary carob (Ta’anit 24a), and the remarkable episode of Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, whose wife ordered him to pray for the removal of the golden table leg that offered the prospect of material survival in a life of unremitting poverty (Ta’anit 24b). Then, turning to the children’s pages of the orthodox Jewish newspapers, there were all the Eastern European fables that featured hidden tzaddikim—largely woodcutters, water-carriers and beggars—who turned out to be giants of Torah learning, possessed of superhuman or near-prophetic powers.

My feeling now, for what it is worth, is that Judaism has not resisted “any attempt to romanticize, rationalize or anaesthetize the pain of hunger, starvation, or need”. But nor does it insist that this harsh, punishing route towards a greater understanding of God is the only direction that a person can take. In this, as in many areas of practical application, Jewish tradition provides support and encouragement for the individual, whichever path to God is selected.

As ever, I look forward to receiving opinions from other group members. Please do share your thoughts!

A hard life and a hidden patriarch

An anonymous baraita in the sixth chapter of Avot (Avot 6:4) praises a tough, ascetic lifestyle as the path to happiness through Torah study. It reads:

This is the way of Torah: eat bread with salt; drink water in moderation; sleep on the ground; live a life of hardship and toil in Torah. If you do so, "you will be happy and it will be good for you” —happy in this world, good to you in the World to Come.

Much has been written on this prescription for happiness the hard way and many questions have been asked on it: for example, is it addressed to the rich as a message that they should change their ways or to the poor as a message of consolation? Is it the exclusive way of the Torah or are there others? Does it apply for all time or was it specific to the era of the Tanna who authored it? Should it be taken literally or is it steeped in metaphor and symbolism?

This post considers a novel question: is there a subtext waiting to be discovered?

Let us conjecture that this baraita has someone in particular in mind, a role model (as it were) whose life fits the parameters of happiness laid down here. After all, the demands it makes suggest that, if it refers to anyone, that person must be possessed of extraordinary human qualities.

I venture to suggest there is some textual evidence in favour of this teaching pointing us to the patriarch Jacob. How is this so?

The Torah describes Jacob as “a quiet man, dwelling in tents,” which the commentators have traditionally taken to mean that he was a man who conscientiously studied at the yeshivah of Shem and Ever. We also know are that he slept on the ground, that he could manage without sleep and that he lived a life of great hardship. Was he happy? His final sentiments were those of a man who died content in the knowledge that he was not only reunited with his beloved son Joseph but saw his grandsons too —a formula for peace of mind.

The only element of this baraita to which the Torah makes no specific allusion is that of drinking water in moderation, but water in moderation is part of his heritage: the blessing that Isaac gives Jacob, assuming him to be Esau, is that God should give him “the dew of Heaven.” Though dew is also a blessing, it is a moderate one since its impact is more limited than that of rain.

A further hint that Jacob is the archetypical Torah scholar of our baraita is provided by the source of the proof verse: the 128th chapter of the Book of Psalms. Virtually every part of this short psalm (it has just six verses) points straight to him. Let us look at it in its entirety. The text of the psalm is bold:

1. A song of ascents [It is Jacob who dreams of the ladder with its ascending and descending angels]. Blessed are all who fear God [Jacob fears God ], who walk in his ways [Jacob literally goes wherever God tells him ].

2. You will eat the fruit of your labour [Jacob toiled hard as a shepherd ]; you will be happy and it will be good for you [his flocks and sheep-breeding programme made him a remarkably wealthy man].

3. Your wife [Jacob’s wife Leah, from whom the psalmist King David was descended] will be like a fruitful vine [“fruitful vine” is part of Jacob’s blessing to Joseph; the term “fruitful vine” is also symbolic of one’s children being without blemish, like those of Jacob ] within your house [Leah being one of the four “women in the tent” in Horayot 10b]; your sons [12 in total] will be like olive shoots around your table.

4. Thus is the man blessed who fears God [see first verse].

5. May God bless you from Zion [God blesses Jacob on Mount Moriah] all the days of your life [God says: “I’m with you, I will not leave you”]; may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem,

6. And may you live to see your children's children [Jacob lives to see a total of 54 grandchildren and great-grandchildren ]. Peace be upon Israel [God changes Jacob’s name to “Israel”].

It is the second verse of this psalm that is the proof verse for this baraita.

It is acknowledged that there is no tradition that connects this psalm to Jacob. However, anyone seeking a take-away message from this baraita could do worse than seek to emulate at least some of this man’s outstanding character and qualities.

Artwork: Jacob tending Laban's flock, after Castiglione: landscape with sheep, goats, and cows standing at a watering place, on the left Jacob brandishing a rod, and a young woman riding a donkey by his side. c.1743/63. Original with the British Museum.