OUR CHOICE TO REJOICE

At the the heart of a short mishnah by a small rabbi lies a big question, one that should have been resolved centuries before Pirkei Avot was compiled: Is it permissible to rejoice over the downfall of our enemies?

The mishnah (Avot 4:24), taught by Shmuel HaKatan (“Samuel the Small”), reads thus:

בִּנְפֹל אֹיִבְךָ אַל תִּשְׂמָח, וּבִכָּשְׁלוֹ אַל יָגֵל לִבֶּֽךָ, פֶּן יִרְאֶה יְיָ וְרַע בְּעֵינָיו, וְהֵשִׁיב מֵעָלָיו אַפּוֹ

When your enemy falls, do not rejoice; when he stumbles, don’t let your heart be gladdened—in case God sees and it will be displeasing in His eyes, and He will turn His wrath from him [to you]"

This teaching is centuries older than the era of the compiling of the Mishnah, since it is cut-and-pasted straight from the Book of Proverbs (Mishlei 24:17-18). One would have thought that everything that needed to be said about it would be found in the commentaries on the Tanach, but this is manifestly not so.

An ongoing issue presents itself for solution: when and how to rationalize the onset of a feeling of happiness, so as to know when to maximize it and when to keep it under control. We are hard-wired to be happy when things work out for us, regardless of whether our good fortune is at another’s expense, but our Sages—taking their lead from the author of the Book of Proverbs—challenge us to examine and evaluate its cause.

The easy way out is to remind ourselves that everything that happens to us, whether we perceive it as good or bad, is the product of God’s hashgachah peratit, His personal supervision of our lives on earth. When something happens to us that makes us happy, we should then give Him our grateful praise.

In general the situation is more nuanced when we were expecting something bad to happen to us through our own fault, and that bad outcome was to be delivered through the agency of an enemy. This expected outcome is however averted. We are happy, but our consciences may be telling us that this happiness is somehow undeserved. In this situation, our mishnah invites us to ask how deserving we really are.

Next, i if our happiness corresponds to the downfall of our foe, rather than merely to being saved, we should be careful: praise of God while suppressing our jubilation may be the only appropriate response, especially if that foe is down but not out and may therefore rise again. Ultimately, as our mishnah, indicates, we should pause to recollect the possibility that God, displeased at our unworthy rejoicing, may turn His wrath from our worsted enemies, restore their previous fortunes and direct His anger towards us instead.

Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber, in Sichot Tzvi—his commentary on Tefillah—cites the verse from Proverbs in the course of his explanation of the final two verses from one of the Tehillim that we recite in the Shabbat and Yom Tov pesukei dezimra:

תְּמוֹתֵת רָשָׁע רָעָה וְשֹׂנְאֵי צַדִּיק יֶאְשָׁמוּ

פֹּדֶה יְהוָה נֶפֶשׁ עֲבָדָיו וְלֹא יֶאְשְׁמוּ כָּל-הַחֹסִים בּוֹ

Evil shall kill the wicked; and they that hate the righteous shall be held guilty.

God redeems the soul of His servants; and none of them that take refuge in Him shall be desolate (Psalms 34:22-23).

The crucial point here is that evil kills the wicked, who are taken to be our enemies. Once they are dead, they are not in a position to have their fortunes restored at our expense as a consequence of our jubilation, so we can rejoice to our hearts’ content. And it is on the basis of this logic that the Children of Yisrael were entitled to celebrate the drowning of the Egyptians in the Reed Sea by singing Shira.

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Raisi is dead: glee or gratitude?

The death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in yesterday’s helicopter crash has generated a large quantity of celebratory material online. Memes, tweets, blogposts and the like are being happily shared among his enemies and opponents. This is not surprising since he was an implacable foe of the State of Israel, a Holocaust denier and no lover of the Jewish people.

But is it right to rejoice?. At Avot 4:24 Shmuel HaKatan says,

“Don’t be happy at the downfall of your enemy and don’t let your heart rejoice when he stumbles, in case God sees you [literally “him”] and it’s bad in His eyes, and He turns His anger away from him [i.e. your enemy].”

These words are a direct quote from Proverbs (Mishlei 24:17-18) and they make us stop in our tracks and ask ourselves if our gleeful celebrations are in order or not.

To feel joy is both normal and natural. When King David wrote, “I will exalt you, God, since you have raised me up and did not let my enemies rejoice over me” (Psalms 30:2) he must have understood what such joy felt like since he was able to project that feeling on to the feelings which he expected his enemies to have.

Purim is not a precedent for rejoicing over our enemies’ downfall, since it does not focus on the death of Haman. Rather, we are supposed to direct our joy to the issue of a royal decree that the Jewish inhabitants of Ahasuerus’ empire were empowered to take up arms and defend themselves against the wider population.

So what should we do? Here’s a clue. If we cannot channel our joy from the downfall of our enemies to some other source of happiness, it is still open to us to translate it into gratitude. Rather than celebrate the death of President Raisi, we can offer our thanks to God that He has removed one of the many threats that face the Jewish nation and its homeland. Sadly, many such threats remain—but each represents the potential for future thanks to our one and true Protector.

In the Book of Psalms (Tehillim 27) we find an example of how a person who is acutely aware of God’s presence and of His intervention in events responds to the downfall of his enemies. The psalm in question uses the same Hebrew words as this mishnah for ‘downfall’ and ‘stumbling, and it is hardly likely that King Solomon, compiling the Book of Proverbs, would not have been familiar with the text of a psalm penned by his own father.

Psalm 27 can be seen as a paradigm for an ideal response to the fall of one’s foes. In it, King David acknowledges the facts on the ground—his enemies have been beaten and their malevolent intent foiled—and then does the following things:

• He affirms his continued trust in God;

• He requests further protection and sanctuary from evil;

• He proposes to offer joy-sacrifices to God and to sing His praises;

• He calls on God to lead him along the path of integrity, since his foes are ever-watchful;

• He calls on others to strengthen themselves by placing their hope in God.

There is no triumphalism here, no personal judgement of the wicked by King David, no wagging of fingers or naming of names and no suggestion that God has only eliminated his enemies because he has asked him to do so. This response is dignified, restrained and responsible: there is a strong case for arguing that we should work hard on our own feelings in order to channel our own responses to triumph over our enemies in an equivalent manner.

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Rejoicing at Haman's downfall

For anyone with a Jewish soul, it is hard not to feel pleasure when the recitation of Megillat Esther reaches the point at which Haman is unmasked as the villain of the piece and gets his come-uppance. We have so many stories of Jew-hatred, pogroms, expulsions and massacres in our portfolio that it’s great to read each year of one bad man who did not get away or escape justice. But feeling pleasure is not the same as rejoicing. So we ask the question: are we allowed to rejoice at Haman’s downfall?

A mishnah in Avot (4:24) appears to suggest that such rejoicing is misplaced. There, Shmuel HaKatan ("Samuel the Small") teaches:

שְׁמוּאֵל הַקָּטָן אוֹמֵר: בִּנְפֹל אֹיִבְךָ אַל תִּשְׂמָח, וּבִכָּשְׁלוֹ אַל יָגֵל לִבֶּֽךָ, פֶּן יִרְאֶה יְיָ וְרַע בְּעֵינָיו, וְהֵשִׁיב מֵעָלָיו אַפּוֹ

"When your enemy falls, do not rejoice; when he stumbles, do not let your heart be gladdened in case God sees and it will be displeasing in His eyes, and He will turn His anger from [your enemy to you]"

It’s not clear why this teaching appears in Pirkei Avot at all since it consists of a couple of verses that have been cut-and-pasted from Mishlei (Proverbs) 24:17-18. Or, as one commentator, puts it, if this verse comes straight from King Solomon, why should we be concerned with how big or small this particular Shmuel happens to be?

Leaving that issue aside, let’s consider the case of Purim. It is no secret that a great deal of rejoicing does take place on that day. For some it is deeply spiritual in nature, while for others it is fuelled by alcohol and feasting—but it is all rejoicing, whatever its format.

Some form of celebration is clearly mandated by Megillat Esther itself. At Esther 8:16 we read that “The Jews had light and happiness and joy and honour".  But how exactly does this relate to the downfall of one’s foes? The context of this verse suggests that it refers not the downfall of Haman but to something else: the issue of a royal proclamation that the Jews were allowed to take up arms in order to defend themselves against those who, in accordance with an earlier and irrevocable proclamation (at 3:13), were ordered to exterminate them and plunder their property. It is clear, therefore, that the celebration of Purim does not contradict the substance of our Mishnah, so long as we are marking the turning point in the tide of Jewish fortunes; the proclamation was a sign that, since they had not deserted God, God had not deserted them.

As an aside, the Book of Tehillim (Psalm 27) offers an example of how a person who is acutely aware of God’s presence and of His intervention in events might choose to respond to the most welcome downfall of his enemies. The psalm in question uses the same Hebrew words as this Mishnah for downfall and stumbling: “When evil-doers came upon me to eat up my flesh – my adversaries and my foes – כשְָׁלוּ (koshelu) they stumbled and נפָלָו (nofolu) fell”. It is hardly likely that King Solomon, compiling the Book of Proverbs, would not have been familiar with the text of a psalm penned by his own father.

Psalm 27 can be seen as a paradigm for an ideal response to the fall of one’s foes. In it, King David acknowledges the facts on the ground – his enemies have been beaten and their malevolent intent foiled – and then does the following things:

• He affirms his continued trust in God;

• He requests further protection and sanctuary from evil;

• He proposes to offer joy-sacrifices to God and to sing His praises;

• He calls on God to lead him along the path of integrity, since his foes are ever-watchful;

• He calls on others to strengthen themselves by placing their hope in God.

There is no triumphalism here, no personal judgement of the wicked by King David, no wagging of fingers or naming of names and no suggestion that God has only eliminated his enemies because he has asked him to do so. This response is dignified, restrained and responsible. If we were all saints there would be a strong case for arguing that we should work hard on our own feelings in order to channel our own responses to triumph over our enemies in an equivalent manner. In the meantime, let’s pass the bottle and lift another glass …

Purim and Pirkei Avot 1: Rejoicing over the downfall of enemies

This is the first of three short posts that link Pirkei Avot to the festival of Purim (this coming Thursday for most of the world, Friday for Jerusalem and any city that was walled at the time of Joshua).

At Avot 4:24, Shmuel HaKatan ("Samuel the Small") is quoted as saying

"When your enemy falls, do not rejoice; when he stumbles, do not let your heart be gladdened in case God sees and it will be displeasing in His eyes, and He will turn His anger from [your enemy to you]"

This mishnah raises many questions, not least is that of why this teaching appears in Pirkei Avot at all since it consists of a couple of verses that have been cut-and-pasted from Proverbs 24:17-18. Or, as one commentator, puts it, if this verse comes straight from King Solomon, why should we be concerned with how big or small this particular Tanna happens to be?

Leaving that issue aside, there is a topical matter to consider. On the festival of Purim, Jews the world over engage in merrily celebrating the downfall of Haman -- the arch-villain whose rise and fall are described in the Book of Esther. How can we do this in the face of clear guidance about not rejoicing when our enemies stumble?

On Purim we celebrate in accordance with the mood of the moment, as expressed in the Book of Esther: (8:16):

“The Jews had light and happiness and joy and honour" (Esther 8:16).

Does this sentiment invite the celebration of the downfall of one’s foes? The context of this verse suggests that this is not actually so. The event to which this joyful verse refers is not the downfall of Haman at all, but to the issue of a royal proclamation that the Jews were allowed to take up arms in order to defend themselves against those who, in accordance with an earlier and irrevocable proclamation (at 3:13), were ordered to exterminate them and plunder their property. It is clear, therefore, that the celebration of Purim does not contradict the substance of our mishnah. Rather, it marks the turning point in the tide of Jewish fortunes; it was a sign that, since they had not deserted God, God had not deserted them. 

Praying for the health of an ailing opponent

Posted on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency site is a feature, "Should Jews pray for Trump’s health? Are they required to?" by Laura E. Adkins. Some rabbis were asked to respond. From Rabbi David Wolpe (Sinai Temple, Los Angeles) came the following: 

“Judaism teaches we should pray for the sick, not for the sick whom we like, and I am mindful of Pirkei Avot 4:19 [4:24 in many versions], not to rejoice in the downfall of one’s enemies. I appreciate the savagery of the political divide, but I hope no matter who is suffering with this dangerous disease, we can pray both that they will heal and also that they will learn from the experience, and grow more open-hearted and compassionate, as we hope for all of us in any trial or tragedy.”

I thought this a magnanimous and positive application of Avot.