The kindness you give, the kindness you crave

At Avot 2:1 Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi opens with a piece of advice that accurately reflects the impossibility of defining in real terms what it means to do the right thing:

אֵיזוֹ הִיא דֶֽרֶךְ יְשָׁרָה שֶׁיָּבוֹר לוֹ הָאָדָם, כָּל שֶׁהִיא תִּפְאֶֽרֶת לְעֹשֶֽׂיהָ וְתִפְאֶֽרֶת לוֹ מִן הָאָדָם

Which is the derech yasharah, the right path that one should choose for oneself? Any that is considered praiseworthy by the person who acts upon it and also gains him the praise of others.

For those who like to know where they stand, who enjoy the binary features of halachah (“Is it permitted or forbidden?”, “Is it pure or impure?”) and who appreciate the formal, predictable structure of prayer and Temple services, the pursuit of the right path in Avot epitomises the vague, amorphous nature of middot. Not everyone is comfortable with the thought that getting things right in one’s real life is so often a question of “it all depends”.

Here’s an example drawn from real life of the uncertainty of best behavioural practice, one that highlights the need to get things right.

Let me introduce you to two fine Jewish women. We shall call them Wendy and Mabel. Both care deeply for their fellow humans and are actively involved in providing help and support for those who are ill or recovering from illness. But their perspectives on this noble task are quite different.

Wendy is a firm advocate of ‘tough love’. She believes that, even if a person is unwell or in recovery, they should be expected to do as much as possible to help themselves, particularly in terms of feeding, washing and dressing themselves. In her view, this enables the people for whom she cares to retain their human dignity. She respects their autonomy and treats them as adults, only substituting her own effort for theirs when she sees that they are in difficulty. This approach, she feels, also speeds their recovery and makes it easier for them to regain their position in the world once they are fully functional.

Mabel takes the opposite view. For her, anyone who is ill or recovering needs to be removed as far as possible from having to look after themselves. They both need and deserve to be wrapped in cotton wool. The important thing is to get them better as quickly as possible by maximising the support they need when they are at their most needy. If this means pampering them and insulating them from responsibility for their own maintenance and well-being, so be it.

Which approach is the right one, the derech yasharah?  A serious student of best Jewish conduct might well ask this question. But anyone who does so will be demonstrating a failure to understand the difference between halachah and middot.

The truth is that both approaches are potentially correct, but the facts of each situation will determine which one should be adopted.  Some patients resent being nannied while others need and even crave it.  The same applies to non-patients too, in many social scenarios. For example, some women appreciate and enjoy a spot of old-fashioned courtesy when a man holds a door open for them, while others regard it as behaviour that is sexist, patronising and insulting.   

Whether one or other approach is the right one is decided by the recipient of the care. For some, Wendy will be harsh and inconvenient, while others will feel that Mabel is suffocating them with kindness. It can also be the case that a person is a Mabel-style maximalist when giving help and support to another, but a Wendy-type when it comes to receiving it.

Ultimately, before performing any putatively good act on or on behalf of another person, it pays to know one’s ‘victim’.

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Life as a journey: Pirkei Avot, Waze and means

Within the annual cycle of weekly Torah readings, Masei is not among the most popular; nor is it one of the most enthusiastically studied. Masei is not associated with any festivals or pleasures. Indeed it is always read in the Three Weeks, a period of increasing solemnity that culminates with the great outpouring of grief that is Tisha be’Av. The few mitzvot associated with Masei have a solemn flavour too, since they include several laws that deal with the consequences of homicide, whether intentional or accidental. The haftarah, one of the three that warn Israel of impending disaster, is studded with words of vituperative criticism as Jeremiah lambasts his people for deserting God in favour of the vacuous pleasures of idolatry.

The parashah however opens with a lengthy travelogue, listing the 42 places at which the Children of Israel encamped, however briefly, during their four-decade sojourn in the wilderness. While some of these places are unknown to us, many commentators on the Torah have commented on the significance of the journey which encompassed them. In short, the Jews are a people on the move. As has often been observed, the Hebrew term for Jewish law is halachah, from the root הלך, “go”. This is because life is a journey and the law consists of a collection of pointers that direct us along the route we are to travel in our lives as we head for our ultimate destination—a deeper understanding and appreciation of the God we serve through compliance with those halachot.

The Jew on a journey is a theme which is reflected in Avot, where the Tannaim discuss the path in life that a person is supposed to follow. Halachah is the journey we must undertake, but in order to do so we must find the derech, the actual path along which we travel and which best suits our abilities and our needs. Like the popular navigation app Waze, Pirkei Avot can help us find the right combination of paths to take us to our intended destination.

Effectively, halachah provides the framework within which we live, but it does not dictate how we live. A person can avoid transgressing every one of the Torah’s 365 prohibitions by locking himself away and doing nothing, and can tick the box for each mitzvah he or she performs, but without actually gaining any benefit in terms of personal development and certainly without bestowing any benefit upon the society in which that person lives.

Two great mishnayot in Avot discuss the need to select the right derech, but in very different ways.

Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi (Rebbi, at Avot 2:1) opens the discussion with a question: what is the right derech that a person should choose? He then supplies his own answer: it’s the path that best enables a person to gain credit with others while maintaining one’s own self-respect. We learn three things here: first, there is no one-size-fits-all derech and it is for everyone to weigh up their conduct for themselves. Secondly, we are free to choose this derech for ourselves, subject only to such constraints and boundaries as halachah lays down. Thirdly, from the fact that circumstances in life keep changing, we can infer that the process of weighing the prospects of pleasing both oneself and others is one that requires constant recalibration. Rebbi is not offering a philosophy for life but a compass whose arrow is in constant motion.

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai widens the discussion (at Avot 2:12-13) by throwing it open to five of his most highly-regarded talmidim. He asks not one question but two. First, what is the good derech, the path to which one should adhere? Secondly, what is the bad derech, the path from which one should distance oneself? From the answers given here and Rabban Yochanan’s response to them it is clear that this discussion is not about choosing the right derech and does not therefore overlap with Rebbi’s teaching. Rather, it is about the attitude a person should have, or avoid. when travelling his or her derech. Suggested answers relate to the qualities of generosity, friendship, neighbourliness, piety, foresight and fear of sin, but the most highly approved answer, that of Rabbi Elazar ben Arach, is lev tov (literally “a good heart”), this being a sort of magnanimity of spirit that a person should evince in the course of his or her journey through life.

So, synthesising the propositions stated above, in travelling the journey of life in accordance with halachah, a person must select for him- or herself the right derech, this being the path dictated by Rebbi’s formula. Having done so, when pursuing that derech one should display an attitude of magnanimity of spirit as mandated by Rabban Yochanan.

"Derech yasharah" -- the road that leads to Israel

 In the mishnah that opens the second chapter of Avot, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi asks:

Which is the derech yasharah (the "right path") for a person to choose? 

He answers his own question thus:

Whatever is a tiferet for the one who does it, and a tiferet for one's fellow humans.

The word "tiferet" cannot be easily translated into English. Suggestions in published translations include that which is glorious, harmonious, creditable and so forth. However, this is only a description of the path a person should choose, not an indication of what that path actually is.

Since today is Yom Ha'Atzma'ut, Israel's Independence Day, it seems appropriate to cite the opinion of Rabbi Ben-Tzion Meir Chai Uziel (Israel's first Sefardi Chief Rabbi) in the ninth and final essay on Avot in his work Derashot Uziel.  There he recommends that the derech yasharah is for people to make aliyah, to come to Israel -- the world's only independent Jewish state. By living there a life based on respect for God and kindness towards others, they will gain self-respect as well as the respect of others.