Make yourself a Rav?

Not one but two mishnayot in Avot teach the same maxim in the same words. At Avot 1:6 Yehoshua ben Perachyah says עֲשֵׂה לְךָ רַב (aseh lecha rav, literally “Make for yourself a rav” (meaning “a master” or “a teacher”: see note on translation, below), and these words are repeated by Rabban Gamliel at Avot 1:16.

The traditional understanding of these words is that an individual should have a go-to person as a useful source of all or any of the following: advice, objective and balanced criticism, understanding, empathy and inspiration. This understanding was subject to occasional qualifications. For example, even a rabbi needs to make for himself a rav, and the need to do so remains even if the only person available to fulfil this role is his junior or is less knowledgeable. Some explain that rav is a singular noun: with just one teacher a person will not be confused by conflicting messages; for others, one rav is the minimum requirement: the more, the better. There is even an opinion that one can make for oneself a rav by buying appropriate books.

The words aseh lecha rav do not have a reflexive character to them. They instruct one to make someone or something into a rav for oneself, not to make oneself into a rav. Nonetheless, some commentators have seen these words as in invitation or an injunction to do exactly that.

The idea of turning oneself into a rav is popular in some Chasidic circles. R’ Yehudah Leib of Ger explains that one should treat oneself as one’s own rabbi, keeping a watchful eye on what one does so that one doesn’t wander from the derech yesharah (the “right path”). R’ Yisrael the Maggid of Kozhnitz adds that you should do this whenever your yetzer hara seeks to deny you a chance to perform a mitzvah by telling you that you are not worthy of it.

Our Chasidic brethren were not the first to come up with this suggestion. In Midrash Shmuel, the 16^th century scholar Rabbi Shmuel de Uçeda made it too—but with a different slant. For him, making oneself a rabbi comes with the corollary that one should get out and about, travelling from town to town and spreading words of Torah. Even if you don’t find anyone to teach, don’t worry—you can still make yourself a friend to others.

Could it ever have been intended that each of us should make ourselves into a rav? Most people are qualified neither by their learning nor by their temperament to be a rabbi in the sense in which we use the word today. However, it is easier to acquire an active conscience and an acute sense of the difference between right and wrong than it is to master the Talmud and its commentaries—and making oneself a rav in the latter sense can be equated with being able to subject oneself to self-discipline, the classical definition of a gibor, a strong person, according to Ben Zoma at Avot 4:1.

Overall, it’s surprising how many different explanations we find for the apparently clear and unambiguous words aseh lecha rav. But this is a reflection of the ingenuity of the Jewish people in turning the words of their teachers again and again, each time finding something new. Long may we and our sages continue to do so.

Translation note

Is rav better translated as ‘teacher’ or ‘master’, or should it be left untranslated and therefore leaving the mishnayot open to wider interpretation? Here’s what some of the English translators say:

Teacher: R’ Asher Weiss, ArtScroll translations, R’ Lord Jonathan Sacks, Irving M. Bunim, Chanoch Levi, R’ Yaakov Hillel, R’ Moshe Toperoff, Philip Birnbaum, Herbert Danby and the majority of translations.

Master: David N. Barocas (tr. Me’Am Lo’ez), R. Travers Herford (cf ‘maitre’ in David Haddad’s French translation)

Rav: R’ Tal Moshe Zwecker, R’ Yisroel Miller (Gila Ross opts for ‘Rabbi’).

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Getting a second opinion

While many people respect and even venerate their physicians, they do not always unquestioningly accept their word. When the prognosis is unfavourable or the treatment is unpleasant, they can seek a second opinion which, they hope, is more favourable or congenial to them. The second opinion may be better than the first, or it may not. It may even corroborate it. Until you receive it, you never know.

Jewish tradition has no objection to getting a second medical opinion. But it is different with questions we ask our rabbis. When a person is facing a religious or ethical problem that requires the input of a rabbi, “shopping around” for the desired answer is strongly frowned upon. You stick to your rabbi and take him as you find him: if you accept his lenient rulings, you accept his stringencies too. Pirkei Avot appears to buttress this position. Avot 1:6 (Yehoshua ben Perachyah) and 1:16 (Rabban Gamliel) both teach: “Take for yourself a rabbi”. One of the explanations of this teaching is that a person’s religious position should be consistent, and this degree of consistency is achieved by learning one’s Torah—and receiving personal advice—should be from the same source.

As the world has become increasingly complex, specialisation has become the norm. We never expect a single medical practitioner to be expert in every branch of medical science. Rabbis too frequently acquire halachic expertise in specialisms that were unrecognised in past generations. Advances in science and technology now demand a high level of detailed knowledge before a rabbi can give a ruling in many areas today. Food production, electronics, communications technologies, hydraulics and in vitro fertilisation are obvious examples. 

Just as a family doctor will refer complex issues up the line, sending it to a consultant who possesses the knowledge and experience to understand the true nature of a problem and ideally resolve it, so too do many communal rabbis increasingly refer questions to colleagues who have made a particular study of Jewish law in fields that are technologically advanced, obscure or recondite. But the situations of the family doctor and the communal rabbi are not entirely the same.

In most areas of medicine, what is treated is the condition itself and the applicability of the expert’s answer does not depend on the nature of the individual patient (though psychiatry is an obvious exception). When a rabbi sends a question up the line for an expert opinion, the expert may not have in front of him the person who seeks the answer—and this factor can be of critical importance where there is a spiritual or social dimension to the question itself. Is the person asking the advice someone who is moving towards religious observance or struggling with it? Does he or she have a strong or supportive family? Will a strict ruling strengthen that person’s Jewish commitment or drive them away from it? These are side issues when viewed in terms of pure halachah, but they are in practice vital.

Rabbi Yaakov Hillel (Eternal Ethics from Sinai) observes this problem from another angle, finding a novel interpretation of Hillel’s teaching at Avot 2:5: “אַל תָּדִין אֶת חֲבֵרָךְ עַד שֶׁתַּגִּֽיעַ לִמְקוֹמוֹ” (“Do not judge your fellow until you reach his place”). He writes:

If we always consult the same rabbi, we will eventually develop a personal connection, enabling him to better answer our questions. Because he knows us and is familiar with our circumstances, he knows if it is appropriate to rule leniently or strictly … We find allusion to this principle later in Avot: Do not judge your fellow man until you reach his place”. … I often explain these words differently: a man should not judge—or in other words, issue a halachic ruling—until he is aware of the questioner’s “place”—his spiritual standing. Only then can he know whether the questioner can handle a stricter ruling, or whether it is ultimately better to provide a more lenient, yet still halachically acceptable answer.

There are a couple of things we can extract from this. One is that a communal rabbi who passes a question on to a halachic expert should always take care to communicate not only the question itself but as much relevant information as may be relevant. The other is that, when we help ourselves to halachic rulings that we find online, we should remind ourselves that these rulings were not necessarily given with us in mind and we should exercise prudent caution before treating them as our “second opinions”.

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"How to handle a woman" -- or oneself?

Last Sunday Beit Knesset Hanassi hosted the second of its three “meet and greet” sessions at which one of the triumvirate of candidates for a rabbinical vacancy had the chance to field questions from the synagogue’s members. In the course of this informative and entertaining session one questioner asked the candidate for his opinion on the presence of women on synagogue management boards and committees.

The answer started off, as expected, with the candidate explaining that there were female representatives on the board of his synagogue and that he had never found any difficulty in working with them. He then added something quite unexpected: “But I never call or message women board members after 10 pm”. In his view the initiation of late-night conversations with women other than his own wife was inappropriate and that it was proper to draw an arbitrary time-line beyond which he would not contact them.

This rabbi’s best practice reflects an application of two maxims of Pirkei Avot working in tandem. First, there is the principle of al tirbeh sichah im ha’ishah… (“don’t chat excessively with a woman…”: Avot 1:5 per Yose ben Yochanan Ish Yerushalayim). At its best, this guidance governs a married man’s relationships with his wife (i.e. don’t insult her intelligence by confining conversation to mere trivia) and with other people’s wives (i.e. avoid suggestive chat-up lines and inappropriate expressions of interest).

The second principle comes at the very beginning of the tractate at Avot 1:1, where the Men of the Great Assembly teach that one should build a fence around the Torah. There is no rule in the written or oral Torah that prohibits calling or texting a woman who is not one’s wife after 10 pm.

By the very nature of their role, communal rabbis deal with women far more frequently than those rabbis who learn and teach Torah within the environment of the yeshivah or Kollel. These dealings can be quite intense, may go on for a long time and, in the case of counselling, they may involve matters of a personal and emotionally powerful nature.  Bearing this in mind, an arbitrary cut-off point for communication between male rabbis and female congregants has much to commend it.

Rabbis are neither more nor less human than the rest of us, but they are different in that we expect them to behave in accordance with halachah and propriety at all times. Fortunately they generally do. However, from my own time as a senior administrator of the Court of the Chief Rabbi in the early days of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks’ tenure, I recall with sadness a small number of cases in which there was no self-imposed barrier, where an initially sincere and well-meaning relationship between rabbi and congregant resulted both in the termination of a marriage and in damage to a career.

With great respect? How we view our rabbis

Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua says, “Let the honour of your student be as dear to you as your own; and the honour of your friend should be like fear of your teacher—and fear of your teacher should be like fear of Heaven” (Avot 4:15). We don't usually fear our teachers these days, but the Hebrew word mora, translated here as "fear", can also mean a deep and sincerely felt respect. On this basis the mishnah speaks of something that comes rather closer to our own experiences.

Here's a thought about how we respect some of our principal Jewish teachers, our communal rabbis.

It seems to me that, at least since the 1960s and the dawn of the teshuvah movement, one can divide Jewish communities into three broad categories.

The first consists of communities that are far from the epicentre of Jewish life, either in geographical or spiritual terms, and where the level of knowledge and commitment to learning within that community is relatively modest.

The second consists of communities where the average standard of attainment in terms of religious knowledge and practice is quite considerable, and where its members have the confidence and the capability to participate actively in synagogue services and learning programmes.

The third is made up of communities where the level of knowledge and commitment is extremely high, and where the majority of congregants may well be rabbis themselves -- or may have spent several years in full-time Torah learning before entering a profession, business or trade.

In the first category, respect for the rabbi is likely to be high since he possesses a suite of talents that may not be replicated to any great extent within his community. These might include the ability to read unpunctuated and vowel-less Hebrew and Aramaic text fluently, knowledge of how to officiate at weddings, funerals, a broad range of pastoral skills, and the like.

In the third group too, respect for the rabbi is likely to be high since the congregants, who likely share the rabbi’s linguistic and learning skills, are in a position to appreciate its quality and know how much time and effort he would have had to expend in order to acquire them. They will be able to savour the subtleties of his sermons and shiurim, and they may seek his advice with their most difficult and delicate personal and professional issues.

In the middle category, however, it seems to me that the rabbi is likely to receive less respect. This is because his congregants may have enough knowledge, learning and commitment to be able to challenge his rulings and test his learning, but may lack sufficient patience, willingness or understanding to enable them to accept his decisions and appreciate his answers. Here, superimposed upon the rabbi-congregation relationship, is something that is almost akin to sibling rivalry: he is a sort of older brother, entitled to respect and often genuinely loved, but generally vulnerable to challenge and sometimes ignored or taken for granted. It is within this middle ground, therefore, that the practical challenge of respecting the rabbi is put to the greatest test.

Comments, anyone?

Respect for rabbis and teachers: how does this apply today

Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua says, “Let the honour of your student be as dear to you as your own; and the honour of your friend should be like fear of your teacher—and fear of your teacher should be like fear of Heaven” (Avot 4:15).  We don't usually fear our teachers these days, but the Hebrew word translated here as "fear" can also mean a deep and sincerely felt respect.  On this basis the mishnah speaks of something that comes rather closer to our own experiences.

Classic Roman Vishniac
photo from pre-War Poland,
when rabbis really could
instill fear

Here's a thought about how we respect some of our principal Jewish teachers, our communal rabbis.

It seems to me that, at least since the 1960s and the dawn of the teshuvah movement, one can divide Jewish communities into three broad categories.  

The first consists of communities which are far from the epicentre of Jewish life, either in geographical or spiritual terms, and where the level of knowledge and commitment to learning within that community is relatively modest.  

The second consists of communities where the average standard of attainment in terms of religious knowledge and practice is quite considerable, and where its members have the confidence and the capability to participate actively in synagogue services and learning programmes.  

The third is made up of communities where the level of knowledge and commitment is extremely high, and where the majority of congregants may well be rabbis themselves or have spent several years in full-time Torah learning before entering a profession, business or trade.

In the first category, respect for the rabbi is likely to be high since he possesses a suite of talents that may not be replicated to any great extent within his community. These might include the ability to read unpunctuated and vowel-less Hebrew and Aramaic text fluently, knowledge of how to officiate at weddings, funerals, a broad range of pastoral skills, and the like.  

In the third group too, respect for the rabbi is likely to be high since the congregants, who likely share the rabbi’s linguistic and learning skills, are in a position to appreciate its quality and know how much time and effort he would have had to expend in order to acquire them.  

In the middle category, however, it seems to me that the rabbi is likely to receive less respect.  This is because his congregants may have enough knowledge, learning and commitment to be able to challenge his rulings and test his learning, but may lack sufficient patience, willingness or understanding to enable them to accept his decisions and appreciate his answers. Here, superimposed upon the rabbi-congregation relationship, is something that is almost akin to sibling rivalry: he is a sort of older brother, entitled to respect and often genuinely loved, but generally vulnerable to challenge and sometimes taken for granted. It is within this middle ground, therefore, that the practical challenge of respecting the rabbi is put to the greatest test.

Comments, anyone?