OUT OF SIGHT

“Seeing is believing” is a mantra that has been repeated so often that many people, myself included, often forget to think about what it means. But recently I was jolted out of my intellectual somnolence on this point by a small and (in the great course of things) trivial occurrence.

One of my grandkids, aged 6, was watching a sports program that featured highlights of soccer games from the FIFA World Cup. The program showed some of the goals—not just once but a second time as action replays. This juvenile spectator, seeking to make sense of what he viewed, believed that each of what we know to be action replays was in reality an additional goal, though identical to the goal that preceded it.

At first I thought this was an amusing mistake based on an inadequate perception of what the child had seen. On further reflection I concluded that this inference—though fallacious—was not in itself illogical. After all, if we watch traffic lights go several times through their sequence of changes, we recognize that the second and subsequent changes are not “action replays” but separate, if identical, events. From this it seems that the value we derive from what we see with our eyes depends not only on what we see but what we know or infer when we see it.

This led me to ask: what does Pirkei Avot have to say about how we should see things? I was surprised by what I found.

My first port of call was the all-embracing baraita at Avot 6:6, which lists the 48 things that facilitate the acquisition of Torah. This baraita has something to say about what one hears, says, feels, understands and even thinks—but is silent concerning what one sees. Working my way back into the five chapters of mishnah, I gradually realized that sight, despite its significance in our daily lives, was a subject from which Avot appears to consciously distance itself.

While sight is a regular human faculty for which most of us are grateful, we are warned how dangerous it can be for us to use it. Thus at Avot 3:9 Rabbi Yaakov cautions that someone who breaks off from his learning to admire a beautiful tree or field is regarded as having forfeited his soul. Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar adds (Avot 4:23) that we should not seek to look at a person at the time of his degradation. Indeed, even when we do look at something, we should not accept the evidence of our eyes at face value: Rabbi Meir says as much in Avot 4:27 when he teaches:

אַל תִּסְתַּכֵּל בְּקַנְקַן, אֶלָּא בְּמַה שֶּׁיֶּשׁ בּוֹ, יֵשׁ קַנְקַן חָדָשׁ מָלֵא יָשָׁן, וְיָשָׁן שֶׁאֲפִילוּ חָדָשׁ אֵין בּוֹ

Don’t look at the vessel, but at what it contains. There are new vessels that are filled with old wine, and old vessels that don’t even contain new wine.

These negative teachings with regard to human sight stand in sharp contrast to Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi’s mishnah at Avot 2:1, when he references a higher form of vision:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה, דַּע מַה לְּמַֽעְלָה מִמָּךְ, עַֽיִן רוֹאָה וְאֹֽזֶן שׁוֹמַֽעַת, וְכָל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ בְּסֵֽפֶר נִכְתָּבִים

Contemplate three things, and you will not come to the grip of transgression. Know what is above you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds being inscribed in a book.

The message here is unambiguous. We cannot see this “seeing eye”. It is a quality possessed by God alone. This is the ability to perceive that lies above us and which lies normally well beyond our reach. It is metaphorically speaking, the eye of God and it is only this eye that truly comprehends what it views. When someone has this gift, having been touched by Ru’ach haKodesh (a spirit of holiness), we have a special word for that person. He is a ro’eh—literally a “seer”.

There is an allusion to the seer in Avot itself. Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel, when asked at Avot 2:13 to identify the ideal path to which a person should cling, answers הָרוֹאֶה אֶת הַנּוֹלָד (haro’eh et hanolad, “one who sees the outcome of that which has yet to emerge”). In other words, he is one who sees, or foresees, that which is not yet visible—something that falls within the capabilities of the seer.

Is seeing then to be relegated to playing a relatively insignificant role in our lives as practising Jews and in our relationships with God and man? Yes, according to Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks who has repeatedly and consistently argued that Judaism is fundamentally a religion of sound over sight. While the Greeks and other ancient civilizations viewed seeing as a form of knowledge, Judaism takes the contrary view. God cannot be seen, only heard, which is why the Shema, a declaration of faith based on listening, not seeing, provides us with the supreme means of linking us to God and to our fellows.

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Out of sight

Learning a mishnah over my breakfast this morning, I was struck by a sudden thought.

In the mishnah in question, Avot 2:6, we learn from Hillel that (among other things) an irascible, impatient person cannot teach. The consensus view of commentators over the ages is that we learn by asking questions and that a student will be inhibited from doing so if he or she fears that any defect in the question will be met with an angry, intimidating or embarrassing response.

This mishnah is quite capable of bearing a wider meaning than that. As Rabbi Reuven Melamed notes in his Melitz Yashar, a student who fails to develop a close relationship with a teacher and indeed feels alienated by hostile or unsympathetic behaviour will find it harder to absorb and accept the teacher’s lessons, even when there is no need to ask questions.

There is still more. Most of what human beings learn does not originate in the classroom, yeshivah, seminar or shiur. It is the result of watching others and doing one of two things: we either emulate them or we reject their actions and do the opposite. This is how we learn to behave at home and in company, as well as how to avoid danger. You don’t pick up a hot potato that has been painfully dropped by the person next to you.

Curiously, Pirkei Avot—which is full of advice about teaching and learning—has very little to say about learning by watching. The 48 measures through which one acquires Torah (Avot 6:6) mention both attentive listening and careful speaking but make no special mention of perspicacious viewing.  Attending on the wise is listed. Since this includes every form of service to chachamim, it presumably embraces the notion of watching them and learning to follow their ways, but that is about all. There is also a mishnah (5:22) which identifies the three good qualities of talmidim of Abraham and contrasts them with the three bad qualities of the talmidim of Balaam. As the Netivot Shalom points out, one cannot distinguish the two camps merely by looking at them since these qualities relate to their attitudes, not to their appearance.

Earlier in Avot (at 2:1 and 3:1) we encounter two mishnayot that contain the injunction histakel (“see clearly” or “consider”), but they do not refer to the human sense of sight since, in each case, the object to be seen is abstract and therefore invisible. The use of this word is comparable to the English words “I see”, spoken as a shorthand for “I understand”. We also find several uses of the word ayin (“eye”) within the context of ayin tovah (“magnanimity”) and ayin ra’ah (“mean-spiritedness”); once again, there is no sense of the word “eye” being used in relation to vision.

The dangers of sight are however noted. For example, one should avoid making any effort to see a person who is experiencing humiliation or embarrassment (4:23), and one should not look at the bottle in preference to its contents (4:27).

Why then do sight and the ability to learn by looking receive so little attention in Pirkei Avot?  Suggestions, anyone?