Repent through love -- or love to repent?

Teshuvah—repentance—is a core objective of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and of Pirkei Avot itself, where the concept is mentioned on several occasions. We are told, for example, to repent one day before we die, in other words daily (Avot 2:15); we see the value of repentance as a means of warding off divine retribution (Avot 4:13) and of spending our time on Earth before we pass on to another world (Avot 4:22). We even discover that the avenue of repentance may be barred to us if we have led others astray (Avot 5:21).

Curiously, while the mishnayot promote the importance of teshuvah, they do not discuss what sort of repentance they have in mind.

Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, one of the great Amoraim of the Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 86b), identifies two types of repentance: teshuvah me’yirah (repentance based on fear) and teshuvah me’ahavah (repentance based on love). The passage reads like this:

אָמַר רֵישׁ לָקִישׁ: גְּדוֹלָה תְּשׁוּבָה שֶׁזְּדוֹנוֹת נַעֲשׂוֹת לוֹ כִּשְׁגָגוֹת, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״שׁוּבָה יִשְׂרָאֵל עַד ה׳ אֱלֹקֶיךָ כִּי כָשַׁלְתָּ בַּעֲוֹנֶךָ״, הָא ״עָוֹן״ — מֵזִיד הוּא, וְקָא קָרֵי לֵיהּ מִכְשׁוֹל. אִינִי?! וְהָאָמַר רֵישׁ לָקִישׁ: גְּדוֹלָה תְּשׁוּבָה שֶׁזְּדוֹנוֹת נַעֲשׂוֹת לוֹ כִּזְכִיּוֹת, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״וּבְשׁוּב רָשָׁע מֵרִשְׁעָתוֹ וְעָשָׂה מִשְׁפָּט וּצְדָקָה עֲלֵיהֶם (חָיֹה) יִחְיֶה״! לָא קַשְׁיָא: כָּאן מֵאַהֲבָה, כָּאן מִיִּרְאָה.

Resh Lakish said: “Great is repentance since, on account of it, deliberate sins are accounted as inadvertent ones, as it is said: ‘Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled in your iniquity’”.  ‘Iniquity’ is deliberate, and yet the text calls it ‘stumbling’—but that is not so! For Resh Lakish said that repentance is so great that deliberate sins are accounted as though they were merits, as it is said: ‘And when the wicked person turns from his wickedness, and does that which is lawful and right, he shall live on account of it’. That is no contradiction: one verse refers to a case [of repentance] derived from love, the other to one due to fear.

The mishnayot in Pirkei Avot do not overtly distinguish between these two species of repentance. However, repentance the day before one dies sounds like a fear-response: if you don’t do it now, tomorrow may be too late and you will have to face the eternal and negative consequences of not having done so. Repentance in order to ward off retribution is likewise fear-related. But what of the other two teachings?

On the assumption that prefaces every public recitation of Avot, that every Jew has a share in the World to Come, repenting doesn’t appear to be a condition precedent for gaining admission to this promised world; rather, the teaching suggests that time spent in repentance and performing good deeds is time well spent in enhancing the quality of that keenly anticipated future state. Accordingly, both teshuvah through fear and teshuvah through fear would fit the bill.  The same would appear to apply to leading others astray being a bar to repentance.

Now for a word about repentance on Yom Kippur.

Any assessment of the prayers that comprise the main content of the day’s five services would likely point to Yom Kippur being a day for repentance through fear. In particular, repenting in order to avert the dread decree dominates the early part of the mussaf service—and the aggadic image of the books of life and death being open in front of God the great judge is vivid in the minds of many, if not most, of us. But does that mean there is no scope for teshuvah me’ahavah?

Many years ago I was privy to a conversation involving Dayan Gershon Lopian, who had stepped back from the role of Dayan of the Beit Din of London’s Federation of Synagogues in order to take responsibility for a relatively small orthodox but not especially religious community in North West London. Someone asked him about the ‘Al Chet’ section of the vidui, the lengthy confession that followed each of the day’s main prayers. What did he think of the fact that many of his congregants were cheerfully singing along to the ‘Al Chets’ with great gusto, even though they probably had little understanding of what it was that they were supposed to be confessing.

The Dayan responded that that the cheerful singing of these congregants was a perfect example of teshuvah me’ahavah: they were not repenting because they loved God, but because they loved the ritual and the routine of repentance—the tunes, the occasion, the intensity of the moment. And that, said the Dayan, was good enough for him.

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Now's the time to act -- forget the fig leaf!

One of my favourite reads for the month of Elul and the onset of the New Year and Yom Kippur is Rabbi Shalom Schwadron’s Kol Dodi Dofek. It has everything a good book on a tough subject (preparing oneself to repent and be judged by God) could ask for: small pages, large print, lots of short paragraphs and a text that is written in simple straightforward Hebrew.

In this book, under the heading ‘Don’t vacillate about repenting’, Rabbi Schwadron brings a short devar Torah in the name of Reb Elya Lopian, who said it in the name of the Chafetz Chaim who cites the mishnah from Avot 2:5 where Hillel teaches:

אַל תֹּאמַר לִכְשֶׁאֶפְנֶה אֶשְׁנֶה, שֶׁמָּא לֹא תִפָּנֶה

Don’t say: "When I have free time, I will study”, for perhaps you will never have any free time.

Says the Chafetz Chaim, Hillel is being kind to us when he inserts the word שֶׁמָּא (shema, “perhaps”) because the truth is that, when a person says “I’ll do it when I have the time”, he for sure isn’t going to get round to doing it. In this vein he invokes the support of Rambam (Mishneh Torah, hilchot Talmud Torah 3:7):

שֶׁמָּא תֹּאמַר עַד שֶׁאֲקַבֵּץ מָמוֹן אֶחֱזֹר וְאֶקְרָא. עַד שֶׁאֶקְנֶה מַה שֶּׁאֲנִי צָרִיךְ וְאֶפָּנֶה מֵעֲסָקַי וְאֶחֱזֹר וְאֶקְרָא. אִם תַּעֲלֶה מַחֲשָׁבָה זוֹ עַל לִבְּךָ אֵין אַתָּה זוֹכֶה לְכִתְרָהּ שֶׁל תּוֹרָה לְעוֹלָם. אֶלָּא עֲשֵׂה תּוֹרָתְךָ קֶבַע וּמְלַאכְתְּךָ עַרְאַי (משנה אבות ב ד) "וְלֹא תֹּאמַר לִכְשֶׁאֶפָּנֶה אֶשְׁנֶה שֶׁמָּא לֹא תִּפָּנֶה

Perhaps a person will say: "[I will interrupt my studies] until after I obtain funds, and then I will return and study, [I will interrupt my studies] until after I buy what I need and then, when I can divert my attention from my business, I will return and study." If you harbour such thoughts, you will never merit the crown of Torah. Rather, make your work secondary, and your Torah study a fixed matter. Do not say: "When I have free time, I will study," for perhaps you will never have free time.

The ”perhaps” in each case is not included because there is any uncertainty as to whether there will be time to study (or in our case, repent) or not. “Perhaps” is there as a fig leaf to cover the embarrassment of the person who knows he is not really to do the thing in question but who is ashamed to admit it—whether to others or to himself.

The moral of the story is that we should not make our good deeds and our fulfilment of important tasks contingent on some external factor. Nor should we delay them if we can do them now.  “If not now, when?” asks Hillel (Avot 1:14). Regarding teshuvah, repentance, Rabbi Eliezer gives him an answer: “Repent one day before the day of your death” (Avot 2:15).

So let’s not delay. Repent today! And let me not delay any further in wishing all the readers of Avot Today and its contributors a ketivah vechatimah tovah: Happy New Year! May our names be inscribed and sealed in the book of life, happiness and fulfilment for the year to come—now and not at some unspecified later time!

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Now I know the answer

Regular readers of Avot Today will recall that I have written many times on the teaching of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus at Avot 2:15:

שׁוּב יוֹם אֶחָד לִפְנֵי מִיתָתָךְ

Repent one day before your death.

For the benefit of newcomers to this Group, or to Pirkei Avot itself, the point is that, since we don’t know the date of our death, we should make a point of repenting on a daily basis since tomorrow we might die.

I write these words in my apartment in Jerusalem where, like so many other residents of Israel, I am keeping an ear out for the sound of the sirens that will herald an expected, indeed promised, attack from Iran. If I am fortunate, I will run for the relative safety of the bomb shelter that services our building, and will later emerge alive. If I am not so fortunate—and we fear that there will be many fatalities when the rockets fall—then this will be my final post.

Today is not the easiest of days for repentance.  In the Hebrew calendar it is Rosh Chodesh Av—the first day of the new month and a day on which we allow ourselves a modicum of rejoicing, reciting the happy psalms of praise that make up Hallel in place of the usual pleas for forgiveness we know as Tachanun. But repentance is still perfectly possible even on days when Tachanun is not recited, and every day offers a chance to be at peace, or to make peace, with not just God but with those around us.

I have sometimes asked other people what they would do if they knew they would die the next day, and their answers were not always uplifting (see “A sad reflection on human nature”, here). But at least today I know how I would choose to spend my last day: I’m spending it the same way as I spend every other weekday. A bit of prayer, a bit of Torah learning, a bit of socialising with family and friends, a bit of writing—and a very great deal of being grateful for the fact these things are available to me.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

For some positive suggestions on this topic, see “What to do the day before you die”, here.

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Our three best friends

At Avot 4:13 we learn that there’s more to being good than getting rewarded, and more to being bad than being punished. According to Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov our good and bad deeds effectively speak for us. Our actions, personalised in this way, can thus supply clues as to our motivation: they can expose our grace and generosity when we do good things—and the malice and madness with which we do the opposite. He explains:

הָעוֹשֶׂה מִצְוָה אַחַת, קֽוֹנֶה לּוֹ פְּרַקְלִיט אֶחָד, וְהָעוֹבֵר עֲבֵרָה אַחַת, קֽוֹנֶה לּוֹ קַטֵּגוֹר אֶחָד, תְּשׁוּבָה וּמַעֲשִׂים טוֹבִים כִּתְרִיס בִּפְנֵי הַפּוּרְעָנוּת

Someone who fulfils one mitzvah acquires for himself one advocate; but someone who commits one transgression gains himself one accuser. Repentance and good deeds are like a shield against retribution.

In other words it’s not enough to say simply that “actions speak louder than words”. In Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov’s view the actions speak both for themselves and for the person who commits them.  One’s actions are a matter of record. According to Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi (Avot 2:1) they are, so to speak, filmed, taped and recorded in writing. But the reasons for doing what we do are quite another matter. And that’s what our mishnah is about.

Gila Ross (Living Beautifully) describes the workings of this Mishnah in the following way:

A person gets a court summons. He has three friends to whom he reaches out for help.

His first friend says, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you”.

The second friend says, “You know what? I’ll come with you all the way to the courthouse, but from there you are on your own”.

His third friend says, “I will come, and I will be a character witness for you”.

Each of us has these three friends in our lives: Our first friend is the possessions that we have. They accompany us through life but, the moment life is over, they’ve gone. We can’t take any of our possessions with us. Then we have our family and our loved ones who are great friends throughout life. When a person passes on. They will accompany him until burial. Beyond that, they can’t really be with the person. There’s only one friend who stays with us all the way through to our accounting in the Next World. These are our actions and our good deeds; they are our character witnesses.

This idea of being accompanied into the Next World by nothing but one’s good deeds and Torah learning has a good Avot pedigree, being spelled out in a baraita at 6:9. But, however attractive this prospect appears, we are supposed—as Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov reminds us here—to remember the downside. It’s not just our friends who stick with us to the end and testify to our character. Our ‘enemies’ do so too—and there’s enough room in the metaphorical celestial courtroom for every one of them.

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What to do the day before you die

R’ Eliezer ben Hyrcanus’s teaching at Avot 2:15 has become so familiar to Torah students that it might be fair to say that some of us have come close to not thinking about it at all any more.  In the middle of this mishnah he says:

שׁוּב יוֹם אֶחָד לִפְנֵי מִיתָתָךְ

Repent one day before your death.

Who now is unfamiliar with the explanation that, since we do not know which is the day before our death, R’ Eliezer is telling us that we should repent every day? This is the well-worn path taken by the Talmud (Shabbat 153a), Avot deRabbi Natan (15.4), Rambam, Rabbenu Yonah, the Me’iri, the Bartenura, the commentary attributed to Rashi, and others.

R’ Yitchak Magriso (Me’am Lo’ez) agrees, adding an explanation of Rabbenu Bachye (Chovot Halevavot) and the Midrash Shmuel that there is a further meaning to this mishnah: even if a person lives a life entirely devoted to sin, it is never too late for one’s repentance to be accepted—even if it’s at the last minute.

R’ Yisroel Miller (The Wisdom of Avos), having concurred with its traditional understanding, takes a refreshingly different look at this teaching, one that is founded on a midrashic cadenza on a verse from Ecclesiastes. He writes:

Koheles [= Ecclesiastes] tells us: “At all times let your garments be white” in celebration. But Chazal [= our sages] say that the “white garments” mean shrouds, to always be prepared for the day of death, which is somewhat odd. A Midrash generally adds depth to the plain meaning of the pasuk, yet here it seems to teach the very opposite of the plain meaning!

Rav Isaac Sher explained that there is no contradiction. The pasuk says to celebrate each day, and the midrash shows us the way to feel how precious each day is—by saying to yourself: “I will live this day as if it were my last”.

If I had but one more day, I would make sure to tell my spouse and children how much I love them and what they mean to me. I would savor the sunlight, pour out my heart at my last davening, and feel my soul bond with one last hour of Torah learning….”

R’ Miller continues in this positive vein. Gila Ross (Living Beautifully) hits upon the same theme:

“How does a person know when he is going to die? He doesn’t. He’s telling us to treat each day as though it were our last….

Imagine if we all lived every single day as though it was our only opportunity in this world. We would be in a state of perpetual self-improvement, of living in the moment, of taking opportunities to do mitzvos. We would be the very best people we could be!”

These words may have strayed a little from the simple but austere message of R’ Eliezer, but they certainly address the contemporary Jew in a constructive and meaningful manner.

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Happy new year, you beast!

Right now we are pretty well half way through the year, being more or less equidistant from the previous Rosh Hashanah and the next one. Our thoughts are therefore likely to be quite distant from issues of teshuvah (repentance) and divine judgement—so what better time can there be to post a short note on the Jewish New Year as viewed through the refracting lens of Pirkei Avot?

As is well known, Rosh Hashanah marks the start of a holiday season that lasts some three weeks—but it’s only the new year for humans. Trees have their own New Year. And so do animals (Rosh Hashanah 1.1).

Strictly speaking, the new year for animals is the date that marks the end of each year’s tithing process. When calculating how many animals are to be tithed and given to the Kohanim, any animal born on or after the first day of the month of Elul is added to the total for the year that follows it.  

The Kozhnitzer Maggid makes an acute comment about this in his commentary to Avot 5:10, a mishnah that deals with failure to tithe one’s produce. The new year for humans falls on the first day of Tishrei, a month after the new year for animals. We are taught to prepare for Rosh Hashanah from 1 Elul by examining our deeds, repenting our misdeeds and generally seeking out God where He may be found.  As explained by R’ Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Elul is the month where God is analogized to the King who leaves his palace and goes out into the field, where he makes himself accessible to his subjects and seeks to meet them.

Says the Kozhnitzer Maggid, even if we have lived the rest of our year as animals, when we reach 1 Elul—the new year for animals—we should make the effort to raise our game, repent and spend the month in fear of God before we get to the human new year, which is also known as Yom HaDin, the Day of Judgment.

One need hardly add that the message of God coming out into the fields is particularly apt if during the year we have been no better than animals, for it is in the fields that they might be expected to be found.

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Repentance: never too early?

Here’s a thought for Shabbat Bereshit.

Some mishnayot in Avot are discussed only on account of what they say. Others offer an extra dimension for discussion on account of the way they say it. One such mishnah is this teaching by Rabbi Eliezer (Avot 2:15):

יְהִי כְבוֹד חֲבֵרָךְ חָבִיב עָלֶֽיךָ כְּשֶׁלָּךְ, וְאַל תְּהִי נֽוֹחַ לִכְעוֹס. וְשׁוּב יוֹם אֶחָד לִפְנֵי מִיתָתָךְ. וֶהֱוֵי מִתְחַמֵּם כְּנֶֽגֶד אוֹרָן שֶׁל חֲכָמִים, וֶהֱוֵי זָהִיר בְּגַחֲלָתָן שֶׁלֹּא תִכָּוֶה, שֶׁנְּשִׁיכָתָן נְשִׁיכַת שׁוּעָל, וַעֲקִיצָתָן עֲקִיצַת עַקְרָב, וּלְחִישָׁתָן לְחִישַׁת שָׂרָף, וְכָל דִּבְרֵיהֶם כְּגַחֲלֵי אֵשׁ

[Translation] Let the honour of your friend be as precious to you as your own, and don’t be easy to anger. Repent one day before your death. Warm yourself by the fire of the sages, but beware in case you get burned by its embers; for their bite is the bite of a fox, their sting is the sting of a scorpion, their hiss is the hiss a serpent, and all their words are like fiery coals.

This mishnah is introduced by a statement that Rabbi Eliezer and the four rabbis whose mishnayot come after his own each taught three things. However, if you count them, you will see that there appear to be not three things but four. Leaving aside the frivolous suggestion that the Tannaim couldn’t count and the unprovable hypothesis that an extra teaching was added to the other three after the original mishnah was composed, the statement that R’ Eliezer teaches just three things screams out for a plausible explanation.

Many rabbis have solved this problem by linking two of the four together as a single item of guidance. Perhaps the most popular combination is that which binds “Let the honour of your friend be as precious to you as your own” to “Don’t be easy to anger”. This is quite reasonable. The two axioms are next to each other and they fit in terms of content: if you are quick to get angry with someone, you are not exactly treating their kavod, their honour and sense of self-respect, as you would your own.

The Maggid of Kozhnitz, in his Avot Yisrael, offers another possibility. He yokes “Don’t be easy to anger” with “Repent one day before your death”. In doing so he invokes a teaching of R’ Levi of Berditchev that, if a person wants to lose his temper with someone else, he should do his repentance first because the day one loses one’s temper with another is like the day of one’s death. Comparison of an angry person with a dead one is made explicitly in the Zohar: as with death, so with anger, one’s soul departs as it were from one’s body.

In practical terms, the Avot Yisrael advises us to stop, think, do perform a vidui (“confession”) and then repent before whipping oneself up into a rage. The promise is that, if you seriously follow this procedure, you won’t get angry at all. Though Avot Yisrael does not add this, we note that he is advocating a practical regime for suppressing his inclination to get angry which is compliant with Ben Zoma’s apothegm at Avot 4:1 that we call a person “strong” not because he conquers cities but because he can curb his own yetzer, his inclination to do wrong.

What does this discussion connect with Parashat Bereshit, the biblical account of the Creation and of God’s subsequent evaluation of the creation of humankind?

We learn that teshuvah, repentance, is no mere afterthought.  According to Pirkei d ’R’ Eliezer, teshuvah was created even before the Seven Days of Creation. One can take this literally, of course, but it is more meaningful to take it as a warning to us all that we should stop for a moment before we act, and take stock of our intended actions. Are we about to do something that we might (or certainly will) regret and come to repent, or are we doing something that our consciences can comfortably live with?

When we read parashat Bereshit we see various aspects of teshuvah. Adam and Chava sin but do not repent. They are punished severely. Cain sins and, while he does not formally repent, when he says that his punishment is more than he can bear, there is arguably a sign of charatah, regret, in the implication that, had Cain known the severity of his punishment, he would not have killed his brother.  Later it is God who repents, as it were, for having created humankind: though on one level He in his omniscience would have known that we found fail to exercise properly the gift of bechirah (free will) He gave us, by expressing both His disappointment of us and His preparedness to tolerate us despite our faults, He teaches us that, along with teshuvah, the world we live in is sustained by forgiveness and forbearance. We would do well to emulate His example.

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Do not stand alone

The Aseret Yemei Teshuvah (the Ten Days of Penitence) conclude this year in a penitential flurry.  This Shabbat is Shabbat Shuvah—the Sabbath of Repentance, so called because we read from the book of Hosea a passage that opens with the words שׁוּבָה, יִשְׂרָאֵל, עַד, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ:  כִּי כָשַׁלְתָּ בַּעֲוֺנֶךָ (“Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God; for you have stumbled in your iniquity.”:14:2). Then, on Sunday night, we commence the marathon fast of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On this day we pray to God for His forgiveness, using many different verbal formulae in which we seek to express our sincere sorrow for our misdeeds and our commitment to a better life in future.

The theme of repentance is dealt with both by the prophets and the rabbis of the Mishnah. They however tackle it quite differently. The prophets address Israel as a whole, a nation straying from the path of God, while the rabbis in Avot speak to us as individuals. Yom Kippur is a day when the collective fate of Israel and all humankind is at stake; our prayers and our confessions are in the plural because we speak, as it were, for others as well as ourselves.

Does this mean that there is no place for Avot in the Yom Kippur atonement process? No.

In his Avot Yisrael, the Kozhnitz Maggid cites a mishnah from the second perek, where Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel teaches (at 2:18) אַל תְּהִי רָשָׁע בִּפְנֵי עַצְמֶֽךָ. This is often translated along the lines of “Do not judge yourself to be a wicked person”, but the meaning of the Hebrew phrase בִּפְנֵי עַצְמֶֽךָ (literally “before yourself”) is imprecise and calls for interpretation.

According to the Maggid, this teaching supports the proposition that, when assessing where we stand in terms of good and bad, we should not stand only “before ourselves” but should seek to tie ourselves to those who are righteous, so that our prayers may be united with theirs and be viewed more favourably.  

May our prayers and our repentance over the coming days be accepted, both as individuals and as part of Klal Yisrael.

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Recycling: a thought for Elul

When I was a child, we knew nothing of recycling. Almost everything we finished with and had no further use for would go straight into the bin. Plastics, cardboard, metal cans—we disposed of them without a thought. How different is life today. We have special containers for all these unwanted items, which the local council collects and sends for recycling. I think it’s a great idea, even though a little voice inside me reminds me that recycling also has its environmental cost and I do sometimes get a little frustrated when I can’t easily tell whether a particular carton is made of paper or plastic. I do love the notion that the things I recycle might be coming straight back to me in other forms, without me even realising it.

Today marks the start of the month of Elul, when we begin ramp up our thoughts about the forthcoming Days of Awe, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and turn our thoughts to teshuvah, repentance. Pirkei Avot has plenty to say about teshuvah: we should repent our wrongs daily rather than save them up for the Day of Atonement because we might be dead by then (Avot 2:15), by which time it’s too late (Avot 4:22); it also serves as a shield against Divine retribution (Avot 4:15).

It struck me this morning that, just as we jettison our unwanted trash, we also jettison our unbecoming behaviour, casting off our bad behaviour and throwing away the tendency to justify what we know to be wrong because we won’t admit it.

Sometimes we do actually manage to throw away our patterns of misconduct. But, it seems to me, we more often seem to recycle them. We think we have seen the last of them and we feel good when we pop them into the bin. But they come back to us again, we bring them back into our lives—and we don’t even recognise them.

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Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we repent

Tonight the vast majority of Jews, practising or otherwise, mark Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. For some it is an intense and deeply moving day of prayer, fast, introspection and seeking forgiveness. For others it is one or more of those things. For all of us it is a chance to step out from our ordinary lives for a day and ask ourselves just what sort of people we are. Whether we take that opportunity or not is up to us.

Today is erev Yom Kippur—the eve of the Day of Atonement. It a very different day and often an extremely one. Since the fast commences in the late afternoon. Many of us rush home from work far earlier than usual to wash and eat the large festive meal that sets us up for rather more than 25 hours without food or drink. Numerous customs are associated with the day, including the giving of charity.

Not everyone knows that, just as it is a mitzvah to fast on Yom Kippur itself, it is also a mitzvah to eat well on erev Yom Kippur and someone who does so is regarded as though he has fasted twice. Some people take the opportunity to do just that, keeping a bag of nuts or raisins, a packet of sweets or some other tasty items to nibble at random across the day. Unlike Pesach, when it is a mitzvah to eat the unleavened matzah, the Torah does not specify any particular food ahead of the fast, so the choice is left to the consumer. Anyone who wants to suffer on Yom Kippur can opt for salty foods that leave them with a raging thirst. This may not however be the most efficacious way to approach the long, hot day that faces them.

Ultimately, while we should stand in awe of God on the Day of Atonement and repent our sins, the day is not a day of sadness and mourning. It is—or should be—a day of happiness because we have the chance to relegate our bodily needs to second place and let our spirits soar. It is a day for setting the record straight, for drawing a line under our recent past and for starting again along the paths our lives are to take.

Does Pirkei Avot have a special message for Yom Kippur? Nothing is said explicitly about the day, and implicit in the teaching of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (Avot 2:15) is the key to why this is so. If, as Rabbi Eliezer says, a person should repent one day before he dies, he will be in a state of regular if not constant repentance by the time the Day of Atonement comes round. This is the religious equivalent of training daily before running a marathon and getting into good shape. If you do this, the event itself will be less daunting.

Do not be despondent if you have not been strenuously training yourself right through the year for Yom Kippur. The chances are that you will at least be in training for eating well on erev Yom Kippur, so make the most of it!

Avot, Elul and repentance: It's not too late

Many years ago I worked with a major law firm which prided itself on the enthusiasm with which it dedicated itself to its clients’ welfare. The lawyers worked long hours and rarely used their generous holiday allowance. Only on 1 January did they all desert their desks and return to their families to celebrate the new year. During my first year with the firm I told the partners that, for the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, I would be unavailable for work for two consecutive days. “Wow”, said one of my colleagues, “two days? You must have one enormous hangover after that!”

But the new Jewish year is not like that. It opens with Yom HaDin, the Day of Judgement. We face God, as it were, and give an account of ourselves. This is an awesome prospect, but we do not stand before Him unprepared. The month of Elul is our time for reflection on what we have (or have not) done and how we plan to address the challenges of the year ahead.

Two mishnayot in Avot deal with giving God an account of our actions, but in contrasting ways: one addresses our past, the other our future. Rabbi Elazar HaKappar (Avot 4:29) reminds us that there is no escape. In our ordinary lives we can dodge court appearances, fail to submit tax returns, and take evasive action when our fellow humans call us to account. But from God there is no escape. Just as a life is created, is born, lives and dies, so too will we have to answer to God for everything we have done, said, thought and been. That’s a tall order—and when we make all our excuses, God quite literally has all the time in the world to listen and judge accordingly.

Akavya ben Mahahalel (Avot 3:1) takes a different line. The time to think about what you are going to tell God is actually before you contemplate doing anything wrong. That way, you will avoid wrongdoing, your conscience will be clean and you won’t be punished. No-one needs to make excuses to explain away something they didn’t do wrong after all.

Looking at the Jewish calendar, we see that Elul is a festival-free space in which we can practise justifying our wrongs and if—as is most likely—this proves impossible, it’s a time to practise repentance too. Rabbi Eliezer (Avot 2:15) kindly tells us we only need to repent the day before we die; but, since that could be tomorrow, we effectively repent each day. Elul is also prime time for turning the exercise of stocktaking of good deeds and not-so-good ones into a golden chance to improve our performance for the year to come.

Roughly two-thirds of Elul has passed and, for many people, Rosh Hashanah still seems a long way away. Some of us have not long returned from our summer vacation or have been busily settling in children for the new school year. There are bills to be paid and so many terrestrial priorities to see to. But there’s still time to pause, to reflect and ponder, to ask what sort of person we are and what sort of person would we like to be, if we were only prepared to make the effort to do so. Let’s invest in Elul ahead of the Day of Judgment that lies ahead.

Free will and floods: a lesson from Noah

There is a mishnah at Avot 5:2 that is seemingly out of place in a collection of teachings that deal with matters of morality and the improvement of one's character. It reads like this:

"There were ten generations from Adam to Noah, to let it be known how slow God is to anger—because all these generations increasingly angered Him until He brought upon them the waters of the Flood".

The obvious moral of the mishnah is implicit: if God is slow to anger, shouldn't we too make an effort not to fly off the handle? Isn't it only right that that we should temper our anger with careful thought as to why we are angry and whether a display of anger is indeed the appropriate response to whatever is troubling us?

There is however much more that can be said about this mishnah.

The world as a fish tank

The ten generations from Adam to Noah had ample time to assuage God’s anger and build the kind of World He envisaged. They did not do so and were almost entirely destroyed. This harsh judgement on the first ten generations of mankind does not mean that no decent, upright souls had ever walked the planet before the Flood. The Torah itself twice records that Enoch “walked with God,” and numerous midrashim praise the qualities of Adam, Seth and Methuselah. However, there is an irreducible number of righteous people below which God’s collective punishment cannot be prevented. This is demonstrated by the famous dialogue in which Abraham persuades God not to destroy the patently evil communities of Sodom and Gemorrah if 50, then 45, 40, 30, 20 or even 10 righteous people live here. Once he has negotiated God down to 10, Abraham breaks off the negotiation, presumably on the unspoken understanding that he has gone as far as he can go.

From the time of Adam until the generation of Noah, God waited patiently for some genuine sign of recognition, some glimmer of gratitude or respect, indeed any sort of response or interaction from His human creations. Not only was none forthcoming, but “the wickedness of man on Earth was great, and every desire in the thoughts of man was nothing but evil the whole time.”

Only Noah, whom the Torah describes as a tzaddik —a righteous man—found grace in God’s eyes. There is substantial debate as to quite how righteous Noah was, and the Torah’s account of his life after the Flood does not mark him out as a role model for subsequent generations. However, we learn that he had two particular qualities that marked him out for continuing the human race: (i) at a time of idolatry he believed in God, listened to Him and obeyed Him, and (ii) in an era of rampant sexual immorality he was a family man.

There is no way that we can understand or experience God’s perspective, but the following analogy might help. Imagine that you have purchased an expensive fish-tank with a selection of beautiful tropical fish. You furnish the fish-tank with all the accessories needed for their health and comfort, provide them with food and keep their environment clean and fresh. The fish however pay you no attention whatsoever. They have no gratitude and show no recognition of your love, your care and your efforts on their behalf. That wouldn’t be so bad by itself, but the fish become aggressive and fight, preferring to eat one another rather than avail themselves of the food you have provided.

There is no satisfaction to be gained by watching these fish swimming around in their tank. The time has come to jettison these fish and try again. But wait! There is one fish that swims expectantly to the surface when feeding time comes, one fish that refrains from attacking its fellows. You reject the idea of starting over with a new set of fish. Instead, you conceive a plan to breed them from this one fish and its mate in the hope that its less aggressive and more positive attributes may be passed on to its offspring.

The lack of any sort of positive response or recognition is almost inevitable with fish, but not with humans—sentient social beings who, having partaken of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, have a far wider scope for behaving in accordance with God’s will.

Free will, determinism and fear of Heaven

It may be that the function of this mishnah is to demonstrate the importance of free will since, without it, the repentance of sinners would be pointless. Starting with Adam, God could have created humans who were programmed to act in precisely the manner He chose for them. Their choices and their decisions could all have been determined in advance of their creation, as could their thoughts, their words and their social interactions. He could have even programmed into them the illusion that they were acting autonomously and of their own free will. The Torah’s Creation narrative however makes it plain that God did not follow this plan. If He had done, the World would have been a tidier, better-run and far more peaceful place, for sure, but the exercise of creating and populating such a World would have been about as meaningless as for an intelligent adult human being to play games with a set of toy soldiers.

For whatever reason, God created a World in which He made mankind in His image, which meant giving humans a measure of free will. This free will could be used for establishing some sort of relationship with God and for doing acts of kindness to others—just as God does good to them. The first ten generations sadly failed to establish any sort of relationship with God: they showed Him neither gratitude nor respect and had no love or fear of Him. They also failed to develop any sort of stable society in which they could act for the good of each other. In short, they were not exercising their freedom of choice in the way that God had hoped they would.

God gave humanity plenty of time to improve but, the more it did not do so, the angrier God became. Only Noah appeared to be acting along the lines that God had hoped would be the norm for humanity, so it was Noah who was saved—along with as much of his nuclear family as was necessary for God to begin human life on Earth for a second time. Everything else was simply washed away.

Silence is golden -- but so is speech

This evening marks the onset of Yom Kippur -- the Day of Atonement the most solemn date in the Jewish calendar. It is a day of fasting; a day of prayer, of serious contemplation of what sort of people we are, and of teshuvah -- admitting that we have done wrong, repenting for those things we should not have done, and resolving to put them right.

Pirkei Avot has some well-known mishnayot on the subject of teshuvah, but it is not widely appreciated that this tractate contains plenty of teachings that are relevant to repentance even though they make no mention of it.

For example, in one such mishnah (Avot 1:17) Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel (a great-great grandson of Hillel, killed either by the Romans or by Jewish zealots) teaches three things:

(i) All my days I grew among the wise men, but I found nothing that was good for the body except silence;

(ii) it’s not the learning [of Torah] which is the main thing but the doing [of its precepts];

(iii) everyone who increases words brings sin.

In this mishnah Rabban Shimon makes no mention of repentance at all, but that does not stop later commentators making his words apply to the teshuvah process.

One practical application of this mishnah (found in a compilation of commentaries, Mishel HaAvot) runs as follows. Rabbi Elya Lopian recalls that, in former times, some people considered it fitting to flagellate themselves as part of their process of atoning for the wrongs they had committed. However, even on the assumption that this process has any efficacy, today’s generations lack the constitutional robustness of their forebears when it comes to painful self-affliction. What alternative procedure in aid of atonement might then be available to them?

The answer lies in the power of silence, If we assume that all forms of wrongful action emanate from man’s spiritual inadequacies, the obvious option is to chastise one’s nefesh ("spirit" or "soul") while preserving the good health of one’s body. One way to do this is through the ta’anit dibbur—fasting, by abstaining not from food and drink but from speech: the ta’anit dibbur is thus an effective chastisement for man that causes him no physical harm or distress at all (taken from Lev Eliyahu, on parashat Vayikra).

An alternative view of this mishnah is that it endorses silence in preference to idle conversation but nonetheless both validates and demands speech that is necessary. According to Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook (Bi’urei HaRai’h: Pirkei Avot, based on a passage in the Zohar), we humans all think —and our thoughts are important to us, to others and to God. Sometimes, however, a thought by itself is not enough, however beautiful it may be.

Many of us will be familiar with a scenario in which a person receives a gift and thinks to himself “How lovely! What a truly kind gesture. This is exactly what I wanted and I’ve been looking forward to it for ages.” This is an excellent thought because it recognizes the recipient’s appreciation of the gift itself and the donor’s kindness in giving it. However, unless these thoughts are accompanied by words, they will not be known to the donor. Such thoughts may just have well been left unthought. The same applies with the process of teshuvah. A person can sincerely regret what he has done, feel genuine remorse and resolve never to repeat what he has done—but until these noble sentiments are reified in speech, they count for nothing.

Taking this view, the mishnah should be read as saying:: “I have never found anything good for the body [i.e. for myself] that has emerged from silence,” in other words, that repentance that is not supported by confirmatory speech is not regarded as efficacious.

Eat, drink or repent -- for tomorrow we die!

In the lead-up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, repentance is in the air. Jews all around the world talk about it, write about it and sometimes even think about it -- but the object of the exercise is to do it.

Some people like to save up all their repentance for Yom Kippur and make it special. There's no need to do this, though. In Avot 2:15 Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus reminds us: "Repent one day before your death". His students are puzzled by this, for who knows when they will die? And that is precisely the point: every day is ripe for repentance, so why put it off till the Big Day? The standard Jewish Amidah prayer, ideally recited three times every weekday, has been drafted in order to facilitate exactly this objective.

Curiously, not knowing the day of one's forthcoming death is also the trigger for a spot of self-indulgence, hence the popular motto “Eat, drink, and be merry—for tomorrow we die!” The message of the motto is clear: you may as well enjoy yourself and live for the minute, since each minute might be your last and, once you die, the story of your life comes to an abrupt end: there’s nothing left but oblivion and the loss of any capacity for personal enjoyment.

This message is plainly at odds with the teaching of Rabbi Eliezer, a man who would certainly have shared with his fellow Sages a deep belief that there was a better life ahead in the World to Come, a life for which repentance provided an important element of preparation and was certainly more efficacious than a pre-mortem spree.

Some people assume that “Eat, drink, and be merry—for tomorrow we die!” is a Biblical verse. This is not the case, though it is unsurprising that the verse has a Biblical ring to it because it is a conflation of two genuine Biblical sayings. The first, from Ecclesiastes 8:15, is part of a soliloquy on the apparent futility of life when the righteous suffer and the evil are treated as being righteous:

Then I commended enjoyment, because a man has no better objective under the sun than to eat and to drink and to be merry ….

The second, from the prophecies of Isaiah, (at 22:13) puts words into the mouths of the inhabitants of Jerusalem who, when called upon to repent, failed to get the message, responding:

Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.

We don't know our future, but repentance is about relating our present to our past. Right now, while we are still alive and kicking, we can ask ourselves some pertinent questions about whether we are truly the sort of people we believe we should be, and how best we can step back from past failings, build on our experiences and make ourselves the best folk we can be, Meanwhile, bon appetit!

Repentance and good deeds: you can't have one without the other

Rabbi Eliezer ben Ya’akov says (Avot 4:13), “A person who performs a single mitzvah (positive commandment) acquires for himself a single advocate, and a person who transgresses a single averah (negative precept) acquires for himself a single accuser. Repentance and good deeds are like a shield against retribution.” 

Teshuvah (repentance) and ma’asim tovim (good deeds) are demanded together in this Mishnah on the basis that they are effective only in combination with one another. Repentance is all very well, but only God knows what truly lies in a person’s heart and mind. In the absence of some visible, physical activity, there is no evidence that any teshuvah has occurred. Likewise, good deeds are always welcome, but they may do not by themselves constitute a sign of penitence. 

What is meant by good deeds in the absence of repentance? Consider the possibly familiar scenario in which a child, having kicked a ball through a window-pane while his parents were out, seeks to do some helpful deed around the house like tidying his room or cleaning his shoes. The child does not repent of playing ball indoors, even if his parents strictly prohibited him from doing so, since the chances are that he will do so again (though a little more carefully). He is however in fear of what his parents might say or do when they return home and see the shards of shattered glass, so—unrepentant as he may be—he still seeks to ameliorate the nature of their response. 

Half-way between a person’s thoughts, known only to God, and his actions, visible to all, is a space that is occupied by speech. Words spoken by a person can offer a window on to his thoughts, but not a guarantee that what is said is an accurate reflection of what is felt. Thus the words “I’m sorry …” indicates a speaker’s regret, but not in a clear and unambiguous manner. They may mean “I’m sorry for what I did, irrespective of whether it hurt anyone or not,” “I’m sorry that what did I hurt you” or “I’m sorry I didn’t hurt you more.” A full apology or statement of regret, spoken as if it is sincerely meant, is always a good start, but no more than that. That is why good deeds are needed as well as repentance; they are evidence of sincerity.

A sad reflection on human nature

 As we enter the Hebrew month of Elul, with the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur in our sights, we find ourselves in the time-zone for serious reflection ahead of the Days of Awe. What sort of people are we? Are we the best we can be? How can we improve ourselves for the coming year -- and how can Pirkei Avot help? This, the first of a series of Elul posts on the subject of teshuvah (repentance) and self-improvement, is based on Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus' advice (Avot 2:15) to repent one day before one's death.

Over the years I have often asked friends and acquaintances what they would choose to do with their time if they knew for certain that they were embarking on the final day of their lives. The people I asked were drawn from different nationalities, cultures and backgrounds; some were at least nominally religious, while others were not. Their answers however were on the whole quite similar. Typical responses involved eating one or more favorite meal in the company of friends or loved ones, getting drunk to the point of oblivion, visiting a specific beauty spot or (in the case of males only) engaging in as much sexual activity as could be crammed into the closing hours of one’s life on Earth.

To my recollection, none of those asked made any mention of repentance, asking forgiveness of those whom they had upset or wronged, or doing any good deeds for the benefit of others. Why was this so? Probably because their preoccupation with their imminent departure from this World quite overshadowed their thoughts of what might be required in order to expedite their entry to the next one. Quite possibly, if it had been a Heavenly Voice that had asked the same question and not a relative stranger, the answers might be been otherwise. Notwithstanding this, one can see the wisdom of Rabbi Eliezer’s call to repent: while clearing one’s conscience and making peace with one’s Creator is of critical importance to anyone who possesses a religious soul, it’s not the first thing one thinks of when it comes to the crunch.

Never too early to repent!

A recent Jewish Journal post features a tweet that reads, in relevant part,

Teshuva, or the possibility of change, "precedes the world" says Pirkei Avot, the Sayings of the Fathers".

Not quite.  You won't find this proposition anywhere in Avot -- but you will find it in the Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer. This is the same Rabbi Eliezer who has something incisive to say about teshuvah in the second chapter of Avot, at 2:15. "Repent one day before your death!"  His pupils were puzzled at this and asked him how they could know which day was the day before their deaths. That, he explained, is the point. If you repent every day, you will certainly repent the day before you die.