THE YOKE OF GOVERNMENT AND POST-ELECTION OBSESSION DISORDER

The ideal life, as recommended by Rabbi Nechunya ben Hakanah, is one in which we forsake the material world for that of Torah. As he teaches (Avot 3:6):

כָּל הַמְקַבֵּל עָלָיו עוֹל תּוֹרָה, מַעֲבִירִין מִמֶּֽנּוּ עוֹל מַלְכוּת וְעוֹל דֶּֽרֶךְ אֶֽרֶץ, וְכָל הַפּוֹרֵק מִמֶּֽנוּ עוֹל תּוֹרָה, נוֹתְנִין עָלָיו עוֹל מַלְכוּת וְעוֹל דֶּֽרֶךְ אֶֽרֶץ

One who accepts upon himself the yoke of Torah is exempted from the yoke of government and the yoke of worldly responsibilities; but one who casts off the yoke of Torah is saddled with the yoke of government and the yoke of worldly responsibilities.

Viewed from the perspective of a Torah scholar or someone who aspires to be one, a life in which one’s only task is to learn Torah can scarcely be bettered. This is recognized not only by the privileged status we give to others so that they can learn interrupted in higher institutions of Torah scholarship but also by the pain and frustration felt by those who would love to do the same but are forced to work for a living, thereby bearing the yoke of worldly responsibility even though they have cast off the yoke of Torah with the greatest of reluctance.

I’d like to consider for a moment the yoke of government. What is it? On one level it is the responsibility borne by national and civic leaders, government ministers, officials and those who carry out their orders. This is a yoke that most people do not need to cast off since it is never round their necks in the first place. But there is another burden that falls within the scope of “yoke of government”. What might that be?

Rabbi Yisrael Miller (The Wisdom of Avos) explains:

“[W]e can also understand this in a natural way as referring to an emotional yoke. Too many people are obsessed with keeping up with the news and worrying about it, especially various kinds of political news (the yoke of government) …”

How very apt these words appear here in Israel, in the days following the General Election, and what a profound psychological perspective do they reflect. I have spoken to many friends and acquaintances who have greatly concerned themselves with the constituent features of the next ruling coalition, reading everything they can find and eagerly discussing it with others, even though their concern has—as they are obliged to concede—no practical value or impact on the subject of their concern. Yet they cannot escape and refrain from doing so. That is a burdensome yoke indeed.

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CHOOSE YOUR OWN STRESS

At Avot 3:6 Rabbi Nechunya ben Hakanah teaches:

כָּל הַמְקַבֵּל עָלָיו עוֹל תּוֹרָה, מַעֲבִירִין מִמֶּֽנּוּ עוֹל מַלְכוּת וְעוֹל דֶּֽרֶךְ אֶֽרֶץ, וְכָל הַפּוֹרֵק מִמֶּֽנוּ עוֹל תּוֹרָה, נוֹתְנִין עָלָיו עוֹל מַלְכוּת וְעוֹל דֶּֽרֶךְ אֶֽרֶץ

One who accepts upon himself the yoke of Torah is exempted from the yoke of government duties and the yoke of worldly cares; but one who casts off the yoke of Torah is saddled with the yoke of government duties and the yoke of worldly cares.

This is a stick-and-carrot mishnah. The carrot, the inducement to lead a life of learning the Torah and fulfilling its precepts, is contrasted with the stick—the harsh reality of having to pull one’s weight in terms of accepting civic responsibilities and earning one’s own keep. So we have a question: if it is axiomatic, indeed self-evident, that it is better to learn and practise Torah than to close one’s sefarim and take one’s chance with the vicissitudes of daily life outside the beit midrash, why do we need a mishnah to tell us this?

An unusual answer to this question comes from Gila Ross (Living Beautifully). Our Tanna is not teaching us the obvious: instead, he has a powerful message that applies to every one of us today: human life is conducted in a state of stress—but we get to choose our stress.

Learning and living Torah has its upside, for sure, particularly when one is supported by others. But it is stressful too. The struggle to understand and then master complex areas of the Oral Law, the battle to internalize and live the precepts that look so simple on the printed page, the constant questioning of one’s motives, the purity of one’s thoughts and the impossibility of knowing whether one has reached the requisite spiritual level—these are all stress-inducing factors. Are they more or less stressful than the problems one faces at work or beyond? The answer depends on every individual and on every set of facts, and we can never know.

The principle of choosing one’s own stress runs way beyond this mishnah in Avot. Thus in the second perek Hillel teaches מַרְבֶּה נְכָסִים מַרְבֶּה דְאָגָה (“the more the wealth, the more the worry”, Avot 2:8). Again, and this time without any reference to choosing between Torah and secular life, we see an indication that we choose our own stress levels: too little wealth and we experience the stress of poverty—but too much wealth and it is our affluence that stresses us. The choice is ours—and our task is to be honest with ourselves when we seek out our comfort level. This is Ben Zoma’s point at Avot 4:1 where he teaches: אֵיזֶהוּ עָשִׁיר, הַשָּׂמֵֽחַ בְּחֶלְקוֹ (“Who is the person who is happy? The one who is happy with his portion”).

 If we can identify the point at which we neither strive to gain more nor feel insecure if we have less, we should have a stress-free existence. In practice, this is probably not going to be a single point but a fluctuating zone of personal comfort in which one’s stress is minimized. But if we ever find ourselves in this zone, being human, we will probably find something else on to which we will transfer our stress surplus.

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