SELF-BELIEF AND DISBELIEF

We are supposed to believe in God. It is a fundamental axiom of Judaism, incorporated within the very fabric of the Thirteen Principles of Faith. Man is made in God’s image. Does this mean that we have to believe in man too?

No, says Hillel at Avot 2:4. Not only are we not supposed to believe in others; we are not even to believe in ourselves:

אַל תַּאֲמִין בְּעַצְמָךְ עַד יוֹם מוֹתָךְ

Do not believe in yourself till the day you die.

Since we don’t know the day we expect to die—a theme on which Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus elaborates at Avot 2:15—we should not believe in ourselves at all.  Many commentators, led by the Bartenura and Rashi, illustrate this point by citing the case of Yochanan Kohen Gadol, who served faithfully in this capacity for many decades before defecting to the Sadducees.  The Meiri endorses this citation but goes further, warning that one should not put oneself at risk of temptation and assume that one would be able to resist it, citing the tragic case of King Solomon who was led astray by his many wives.

Yochanan Kohen Gadol and Shlomo HaMelech provide extreme examples, but it seems to me that none of us can get through a single day without believing in ourselves one way or another. We believe in our capacity to live in accordance with our daily routines and in our ability to discharge the many simple, mundane functions that make up most of our day. They may be little episodes in the great scheme of things, but they are important to us: relying on ourselves to lock the front door, charge our cell phones, return borrowed objects, get to work on time, and so on. Perhaps we take ourselves for granted, but we do berate ourselves when we forget or fail to do them.

There is another way in which we have to believe in ourselves. In his sefer Shomanu Avoteinu, Rabbi Shimon Abo offers a plausible ground for distinguishing between what we have done in the past and what we still have to do. We cannot rely on our past performance as proof that we will continue to perform well, and we cannot even be confident that we will be credited for our past good deeds since we are not the judge of them. But we must believe in ourselves when we face tasks we have yet to perform for, if we did not, we might never attempt to undertake them.

R’ Abo offers no proof for this proposition, but it seems to me that Yehudah ben Teyma supports it at Avot 5:23 where he teaches:

הֱוֵי עַז כַּנָּמֵר, וְקַל כַּנֶּֽשֶׁר, רָץ כַּצְּבִי, וְגִבּוֹר כָּאֲרִי, לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹן אָבִֽיךָ שֶׁבַּשָּׁמָֽיִם

Be bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer and strong as a lion to do the will of your Father in Heaven.

It makes no sense to tell a person not to have any confidence in their ability to achieve an objective or perform a task and then expect them to wield the qualities listed in that mishnah.

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