A spade or an axe? Take your pick

A rabbi of my acquaintance recently commented on an extract from Pirkei Avot which, he said, was generally mistranslated. This extract from Avot 4:7, taught in the name of Rabbi Zadok, is bound to be the subject of disagreement because it exists in different forms, but the text to which he referred is that which is most commonly found in contemporary publications:

וְאַל תַּעֲשֶֽׂהָ עֲטָרָה לְהִתְגַּדֶּל בָּהּ, וְלֹא קַרְדּוּם לַחְפֹּר בָּהּ

What does this mean? These words are usually rendered as

“do not use it [i.e. the Torah] as a crown with which to glorify oneself, and not as a spade to dig with”. 

The idea behind these words is uncontroversial: no-one should cash in on their knowledge of the Torah as a means of boosting their personal prestige or as a way of obtaining material gain. It is also generally accepted that the verb לַחְפֹּר (lachpor) means “dig”. So what then is the problem?

The problem—if indeed it be a problem—is that the word קַרְדּוּם (kardum), rendered in this mishnah as “spade”, is also found in the Books of Samuel (1:13, 20 and 21), Judges (9:48) and Jeremiah (46:22) with the meaning of “axe”. The same meaning is found in the Babylonian Talmud (Betzah 31a-b). There also exists a parallel text of our mishnah in which the last four words are rendered וְלֹא קַרְדּוּם לַחְתָּךְ בָּהּ (“and not an axe to chop with”).

Is the translation of kardum as “spade” in our mishnah therefore an error? I do not think so.

If kardum can only mean “axe”, Rabbi Zadok is urging us not to use the Torah as “an axe to dig with”. This seems a little awkward, in that an axe is used for chopping or splitting something rather than for digging it. To say that he is teaching only that one should use the Torah an implement that is suitable for any given task (i.e. for chopping, as it were, but not for digging) seems narrow and may also sound a little contrived.

Even if it is wrong, among English translations the “spade to dig with” formula is the generally-accepted translation among commentators, translators and publishers. These include Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (Authorized Daily Prayer Book and the Koren Pirkei Avot), Rabbi Eliezer Prins (The Lehmann-Prins Pirkei Avoth), Rabbi Reuven Bulka (Chapters of the Sages),Rabbis Avie Gold and Nahum Spirn (Alshich on Avos), Irving M. Bunim (Ethics From Sinai), Hyman E. Goldin (Ethics of the Fathers), Philip Birnbaum (HaSiddur HaShelam) and Herbert Danby (The Mishnah), not to mention all the many editions of Avot published by ArtScroll. The version of this mishnah found on the chabad.org website accepts this translation even though the Hebrew version that accompanies it would be more accurately rendered “an axe to chop with”.

Apart from the "axe to dig with", there are other textual variants, but these are very much minority views. Basing himself on other manuscript sources, R. Travers Herferd (The Ethics of the Talmud) opts for "a 'dish' wherewith to eat", while the Hirschler/Haberman revision of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch and Samson Krupnik's Torah Dynamics both offer "an ax with which to strike". Rabbi Eliahu Touger's translation of Rambam's commentary goes for "an axe with which to cut".

Be that as it may, while it must be accepted that the majority is not always right, we cannot ignore the fact that it is the majority—and an influential one, at that. This gives me confidence to affirm that, even though kardum may mean “axe” in other contexts, we are entitled to treat the word as “spade” in the context of this mishnah and learn its message accordingly. 

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.

Greeting others with genuine happiness: what is expected of us?

Rabbi Yishmael, at Avot 3:16, teaches a three-fold message. There is no consensus as to what the first two parts mean, but the third part is both simple to comprehend and hard to put into practice: a person should receive everyone besimchah, literally "in happiness". What did Rabbi Yishmael mean by this?

On one view, a person should be genuinely happy to meet others. After all, every human is created, as it were, in God's image and there is no-one on the planet who does not have the capacity to improve the lot of family, friends or the wider community.

Another view is that, however miserable or angry another person has made you, it is still incumbent on us all to grit our teeth and put on a show of good cheer, to demonstrate that we can rise above the behaviour of others and not let them dictate how we respond to others.

Classical commentators have no doubt that Rabbi Yishmael meant his words to be taken literally and applied across the board. Rambam sees them as an upgrade on Shammai's teaching at Avot 1:15 that we should greet others with a cheerful face: now we should genuinely feel the happiness we show. The commentary in Rashi's name adds that we must speak pleasantly to all comers. Me'am Lo'ez takes the mishnah's words literally, as does Midrash Shmuel, who holds that even people who come to hurt you are in one way or another emissaries of God. Rabbenu Yonah does not even explain the teaching but merely repeats it, presumably because he regards its meaning as being self-evident.

Modern commentators, acknowledging the realities of contemporary society, are more nuanced in their advice to readers. Thus Rabbi Marc D. Angel (The Koren Pirkei Avot) prefers to apply this mishnah to 'the whole person' rather than 'every person'. He writes:

"...[Rabbi Yishmael] surely knew that it was unrealistic to expect people to cheerfully receive all human beings. Perhaps his statement should be understood as advising the maintenance of an optimistic overall view of humanity..." Receive the 'whole person' optimistically -- knowing that the good and evil will be judged by God".

Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch also qualifies the mishnah, but by reference to time, not the person being encountered:

"Do not reject anyone from the outset; instead, receive everyone gladly, and then consider whether or not he is suitable for you and your endeavours".

In the wake of the Holocaust and the many dreadful sufferings faced by Jews in both hospitable and inhospitable lands, one can appreciate the temptation to qualify Rabbi Yishmael's words. One contemporary rabbi has however held out against this temptation and his words are all the more poignant for his being a survivor of the Buchenwald death camp. Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau (Yachel Yisrael, ArtScroll translation) writes:

"We must gladly greet 'everyone': each human being... Although not everyone possesses this natural ability to empathize with others, it can be acquired, 'until gladness becomes part of one's nature' [citing Rabbeinu Yitzchak ben R' Shlomo]"".

In a world in which it is so much easier to hate than to love, and to distance oneself from one's fellow humans, but where we have come to accept that there are limitations on the extent to which we can live out the ideals of earlier generations, we should think carefully before imposing limits on any encouragement to do or to be good, so those limitations do not become norms in their own right.

Creating worlds with words

The fifth chapter of Avot opens with a mishnah that addresses the topic that begins the Torah: the Creation. It reads:

The World was created with ten utterances. What does this teach us? Isn’t it the case that it could have been created with a single utterance? Rather, this is to punish the wicked for destroying the World that was created with ten utterances, and to give a good reward to the righteous for sustaining the World that was created with ten utterances.

Taken at face value, the world to which this mishnah refers is the world that God created as a habitat for all living creatures. Some scholars have however preferred to take the view that we have here a metaphor for the “small world” that is each human being.

Can this interpretational device, deployed by the Maharal elsewhere in Avot (at 1:2), work here too? At first glance our answer must be "no". Many commentaries on Avot (e.g. example Rambam; Machzor Vitry; Commentary ascribed to Rashi; Rabbi Ovadyah Bartenura; Tiferet Yisrael) explain that, in the Torah’s account of the Creation, nine acts of divine creativity are preceded by the utterance “And the Lord said…” Added to this is the first word in the Torah, “Bereshit” (“In the beginning”) which also constitutes a utterance, making up the full complement of ten. However, in the account of the creation of man in Genesis, Adam appears to have been created with not ten utterances but just one (Genesis 1:26).

Does this mean that we must abandon the "world-as-each-individual" explanation? Not necessarily. There is a verse in Isaiah (51:16) that reads as follows:

And I have put My words into your mouth, and have covered you in the shadow of My hand, so that I may plant the Heavens, and lay the foundations of the Earth, and say unto Zion: “You are My people.”

The Hebrew word for “My words” in this verse is דברי (divarai). If you insert a space between the letter י (the yud) of דברי and the rest of the word, you change the meaning. This is because the yud represents the numerical value 10. You now have דבר י (devar yud, “a matter of 10”). Revisiting our verse, we can now learn it as:

And I have put a “matter of 10” into your mouth, and have covered you in the shadow of My hand, so that I may plant the Heavens, and lay the foundations of the Earth, and say unto Zion: “You are My people.”

The number 10 is rich with Jewish symbolism, and one of the things it alludes to is the Ten Commandments, the quintessence of the Torah and the acceptance of which can be said to complete the creation of man. Linkage of the ten utterances of Creation with the Ten Commandments is not new: it is found in the Zohar and has influenced Torah commentators ever since (see e.g. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, quoted in Pirkei Avot im Sha’arei Avot).

Going back to our Mishnah, armed with this verse, we can now postulate that it does indeed refer to the creation of the “small world” which is man, but not just any man. Here we have an individual who is initially incomplete but is created in his final form through the “matter of 10,” the Ten Commandments that God uttered on Mount Sinai. With the ultimate perfection of man comes the conclusion of the Creation which began with the Heavens and the Earth—mentioned here in our verse from Isaiah and also in the very first verse of the Torah itself.

We can learn an important message from this. When a person destroys another human being, who has been “created” through acceptance of the Ten Commandments, his punishment is in proportion to his having broken the link between his victim and all ten of them. Conversely, someone who saves another is taken to have affirmed all ten and his reward is commensurate with this.

Avot in Retrospect: a summary of last month's blogposts

In case you missed them, here's a list of items posted on Avot Today in September 2021:

Sunday 26 September 2021: A time to be happy, in the long run. The festival of Simchat Torah is one big party, but Avot 6:4 suggests another route to happiness. How can two apparently conflicting policies be reconciled?

Wednesday 22 September 2021: A couple of books: can you help? A pair of commentaries fell into my hands and I'd like to know a bit more about them.

Wednesday 15 September 2021: Silence is golden -- but so is speech. While several mishnayot in Avot advocate saying as little as possible, they also recognise that it can be important to articulate one's thoughts and feelings.

Friday 10 September 2021: Mazikim pt 2: are we the real mazikim? Continuing the theme of the previous post (below), we suggest that there is a role for mazikim in forcing us to take responsibility for our own actions.

Wednesday 8 September 2021: Mazikim pt 1: what are they and how do we deal with them? In Avot 5:8, we learn that mazikim were created on the eve of the first Sabbath. What on earth is this teaching doing in Avot -- and what are mazikim anyway?

Wednesday 1 September 2021:  The message on the door. Is it true that a person can really learn from everyone? Here's a lesson on behaviour from a most unusual source.

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Avot Today blogposts for August 2021 here

Avot Today blogposts for July 2021 here

Avot Today blogposts for June 2021 here

Avot Today blogposts for May 2021 here

Avot Today blogposts for April 2021 here

Avot Today blogposts for March 2021 here

A time to be happy -- in the long run

The festival of Simchat Torah (literally "Happiness of the Torah") is fast approaching. No matter how it came into existence and never mind that it is piggy-backing on to a day that is already a festival -- Shemini Atzeret (the Eighth Day of Solemn Assembly) --Simchat Torah is a well-established fact on the ground. It is a day for rejoicing in the giving of the law on Sinai and for both reaching the end of Deuteronomy and immediately starting all over again at the beginning of Genesis.

This happy event is generally celebrated by singing and dancing with the Torah scrolls and by indulging (sometimes over-indulging) in the pleasures of the material world -- in particular food and drink.

Pirkei Avot offers a more ascetic route to happiness via the Torah. A baraita at 6:4 states:

This is the way of Torah: eat bread with salt; drink water in moderation; sleep on the ground; live a life of hardship and toil in Torah. If you do so, "you will be happy and it will be good for you” —happy in this world, good to you in the World to Come.

This raises the obvious question: if this is a recipe for happiness, should we not, at least on this one day of the year, reduce our alcoholic and gastronomic intake, sleep on the ground, actually open the Torah and learn a bit of it rather than cavort around with a rolled-up version of it, and generally focus on its content?

This question is strengthened when one considers that Simchat Torah falls at the end of a three-week festive season that culminates in Sukkot (a.k.a. the Feast of Tabernacles), a full week of celebratory eating, drinking and being merry. In Temple times Sukkot was also the time for a remarkable event, the Simchat Bet HaSho'evah, an all-night spectacular with burning torches, acrobatic rabbis and mass festivity. Would not a day of self-denial and serious study be an appropriate antidote to all this protracted partying?

There are of course many answers to this question (readers are invited to submit their favourites) and most of them are surely correct. One is that the happiness celebrated on Simchat Torah marks our own sense of achievement when we get to the end of our reading of the Torah each year. In Avot 2:21 Rabbi Tarfon says, of Torah learning, "It's not for you to finish the task -- but nor are you free from undertaking it". On Simchat Torah we do not in any sense finish learning the Torah, but we can at least take heart at the fact that, from start to finish, we have had one more opportunity to do so". A bit like an runner who is competing in a long-distance race, we are encouraged by each lap we complete -- even though we are effectively back where we were when we complete the previous lap. We feel that, if we have not actually proved Rabbi Tarfon wrong, we have tasted what it would be like to do so.

The happiness of Avot 6:4 is of a different order. This is analogous to the case of the runner who has tackled a cross-country marathon. He does not take heart at each lap he accomplishes because he is not going round in circles. As he continues to run, his scenery is ever-changing and often unfamiliar. His happiness, his comfort, comes from the fact that he knows in his heart that every step he takes will bring him to his final goal and that, in a way he cannot yet fully experience or understand, he will be a better person for it. But to reach his goal he must stay fit, keep focused, disdain the pleasures of the dinner table which would only slow him down.

In wishing all the members of this Group a happy and joyous Simchat Torah, I respectfully remind them not to let their simchah be at the expense of the Torah.

Chag same'ach!

A couple of books: can you help?

I have a large collection of commentaries on Pirkei Avot, most of which I have picked up from second-hand bookshops, shemot (old and unwanted books on Jewish topics which, featuring God's name in Hebrew, await a respectable burial), or from the piles of abandoned books that periodically spring up in odd corners of Jerusalem (for an explanation of this phenomenon see my recent Facebook post on "The Reading Tree" at https://www.facebook.com/GrandpaJeremy).

One abandoned book I picked up last week is Benei Yehudah, a handsome and apparently unopened commentary on Avot which draws on content from several members of the same family. The contributors in question have the surnames Litsch, Rosenbaum and Segal and appear to have originated in Pressburg (now Bratislava). Some introductory words are penned by a Rabbi Matityahu Weinberg. The book itself was privately published in Jerusalem in 2007 and has no International Standard Book Number (ISBN).

A second commentary on Avot, given to me by a friend this week, is written by a Rabbi Eliezer Levi. Published in Tel Aviv in 1956 under the unpretentious and descriptive title Pirkei Avot, it is a slim volume that also contains the popular mishnaic commentary by Rabbi Ovadyah MiBartenura. The author had previously written a book on prayer, Yesodot HaTefillah.

If any reader has any information about either of these commentaries or their authors, I'd be really grateful if they could share it with me. I find it very useful to know a bit about the background to commentaries on Avot since the author often had a specific reason -- religious, political or personal -- for sharing his thoughts on Avot or for using its content as a vehicle for transmitting his own ideas.

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.

Mazikim pt 2: Are we the real mazikim?

Continued from the previous post.

I believe that the real question we face is not that of whether mazikim exist. Rather, we should be asking what we can learn from the incontrovertible fact that the author of the mishnah at Avot 5:8 teaches us that there are those who say that mazikim were created on the eve of the World’s first Sabbath.

It seems to me that an argument can be made out that the inclusion of mazikim on the list of last-minute creations is because their presence has a positive aspect, in common with the other thirteen creations that are listed in this mishnah.

Let us start by asking another question: how do you “know” that you have received a visit from a mazik? The tell-tale sign of a mazik’s impact on a person’s life is that something adverse has happened to him. That person has, at the instant he realizes this, a choice of how to think. But what is this choice?

One option is for someone who has suffered a misfortune to link that adverse consequence to his own conduct. This can be done in many ways and on different levels. For example he can accept that the damage he suffered was because he was negligent (e.g. the car rolled down the hill because he didn’t check if the brake was on) or inadvertent (e.g. he switched the kettle on, forgetting that he had previously emptied it). He can also view the adverse consequence as a sort of retribution (e.g. why did he drop the bottle of Scotch in the street? Because he should have spent the money instead on a charity donation that he declined to give) or caution (e.g. he walked into an old lady while checking his phone and knocked her over, this being a warning to him to be more careful next time he goes out).

The other option is to blame it all on the mazikim. By blaming the mazik he satisfies himself that his misfortune is quite unrelated to his own behaviour. Let us return to the examples above. Why did the car roll down the hill? Because a mazik released the handbrake. Why did the kettle boil dry? Just his luck that a mazik must have distracted him! That Scotch bottle? Not my fault. And as for the old lady, a mazik must have pushed her into my path or she would have taken care to avoid me.

When a person is prepared to take responsibility for his actions, he recognizes that it is he who is the mazik. Why did that bottle of Scotch fall from my hands? Maybe it was a lesson – annoying and expensive but at least it was painless – that I should think again about putting my own selfish interests ahead of the needs of others. Why did I knock that poor little old lady over? Because I was so preoccupied with my own affairs that I forgot I was sharing the sidewalk with my fellow humans. So, to summarize, mazikim are listed as a sort of shorthand term for the potential of mankind to accept or reject responsibility for its own damaging actions.

The significance of mazikim in this mishnah is that this concept was created just before Shabbat of the World’s first week. The Torah is not a history book, but it does tell us in some detail about one event of crucial significance: the Fall of Man.

Our thoughts concerning the story of Adam and Eve tend to dwell on the sadly lost opportunity to do the one thing God asked of them: to refrain from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This mishnah however addresses another part of the story: the abrogation of responsibility on the part of both Adam and Eve for their wrongful acts. Adam states that it was not his fault: it was a mazik, Eve, who gave him the fruit. Eve states that it was not her fault: it was a mazik, the serpent, who told her to eat it.

Here then, with Shabbat coming in for the first time in history, we see the meaning of this mishnah and its teaching for contemporary readers: it tells of the potential for either accepting or denying responsibility for our own damaging actions.

Mazikim pt 1: What are they and how do we deal with them?

This is the first instalment of a two-part feature. Part 2 will follow in a couple of days.

"Mazikim" may or may not exist in any tangible sense, but they certainly feature in Pirkei Avot (at 5:8) where they are listed among the things that were created at the very end of the Six Days of Creation, just before the onset of the first Sabbath.

So what are mazikim? English translators are certainly not lost for words on this point and they usually point to some sort of force, usually a malevolent one.

Suggested meanings include “destructive spirits” (ArtScroll Publications), “vandals” (David N. Barocas, Me’am Lo’ez), “demons” (Irving M. Bunim, Ethics from Sinai; Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Philip Birnbaum in their respective prayerbooks), “destructive demons” (Rabbis Gold and Spirn, Alshich on Avos), “evil spirits” (Hyman E. Goldin, Ethics of the Fathers; R. Travers Herford, The Ethics of the Talmud).

Going beyond definitions, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Chapters of the Fathers: the Hirsch Pirkei Avos, explains mazikim as being “those influences that are detrimental or damaging to continued human welfare.”

Where might one find mazikim? They are not found anywhere in the Torah, Prophets or Writings that constitute the canon of the Tanach (the Jewish Written Tradition). In the singular, the word mazik appears frequently in the mishnah and Talmud as a technical legal term for a person who causes damage to another and who is subject to a claim for compensation on the part of the nizak, or plaintiff. The mazikim we find in our mishnah are clearly not of this kind; they are more akin to the creatures of midrashic and aggadic literature.

Outside Jewish tradition, many cultures have their own equivalent of mazikim. Some are of ancient pedigree, such as the leprechaun, the tokoloshe and the poltergeist. Others, ssuch as the gremlin, are more recent. The common factors that unites them all are that (i) they are not under direct human control and that (ii) some form of harm or mischief is said to derive from their actions.

The presence of mazikim on the list of late additions to the Creation makes many people unhappy -- and not solely on account of the debate over the real-world existence of mazikim, shedim and other malevolent entities that inhabit Jewish literature. If they do exist, why is there no space for a mention of them in Tanach? But if they do not exist, what are they doing in Jewish culture and, in particular, in this mishnah? Also, every other item listed in our mishnah as being created at the end of the Six Days of Creation has some constructive or positive quality to it, while it is widely assumed that mazikim, almost by definition, do not.

Should the existence or non-existence of mazikim concern us? I think not. If they exist, it is axiomatic that God created them and that, since only man has free will, whatever mazikim do is mandated by God. Furthermore, since God is the only authentic source of power that a Jew must acknowledge, it is absolutely wrong to treat mazikim as if they held any power in their own right, and therefore wrong to seek to propitiate them.

If however mazikim do not exist in real-world terms, then it is we who have created them in our minds. And if we have done so, it is to our own minds that we must turn in order to address their apparent functional (or dysfunctional) utility within the world we inhabit and which God created. Our challenge is to see if we can find an explanation for mazikim that carries with it a positive message, in keeping with the rest of Pirkei Avot, that we can take with us into our daily lives?

The message on the door

How should we deal with other people? Pirkei Avot is full of general guidance. Thus, for instance, we should love them and lead them into the ways of the Torah (1:12), which essentially means the ways of peace (Proverbs 3:17). We should greet them pleasantly (1:15, 3:16) and give them personal space when they need it (4:23). If they are bad neighbours or a bad influence we should keep our distance (1:7), but we should give them the benefit of the doubt if we can (1:6).

Avot also encourages us to learn from everyone (4:1). It is a bit of a cliche to talk about getting an education from the University of Life, but we should recognise our potential to learn from everything in the world and from every experience we have, regardless of whether we set out to do so or whether the lesson is painfully imprinted on us.

One of my favourite lessons comes from the door to the Pomeranz bookshop in Jerusalem. The outside of the front door carries a notice that reads "Pull gently"; on the inside, a corresponding notice reads "Push gently". In the nicest possible way I felt that this door was speaking to me. Its message: this is exactly how we should strive to deal with other people.

Every one of us has the capacity to make an impact on others. Sometimes we consciously or unconsciously influence those who are around us. On other occasions we feel their influence and may want to lessen it or even break free from it altogether. The message of the door is clear, though: whatever we do, and whichever way we go, we should be gentle where and when we can.

In practical terms this means that. whether we wish to pull others into the orbit of our lives or push back from their hopes and plans for us, we should treat them gently and with respect because they, like us, are created in the image of God (Avot 3:18, citing Genesis 9:6). No shouting, no pressurising, no psychological warfare -- only be gentle with others, just like you would prefer them to be towards you.

Avot in Retrospect: a summary of last month's blogposts

 In case you missed them, here's a list of items posted on Avot Today in August 2021:

Monday 30 August 2021: Would you know a golem if you saw one? An anonymous mishnah at Avot 5:9 contrasts the wise man with the uncultured clod -- is there also room for people whose characteristics lie between the two extremes?

Wednesday 25 August 2021: When books speak volumes: another perspective on rebuke: Not everyone appreciates being told off face-to-face. Some folk are more comfortable to mend their ways when confronted by nothing worse than a book.

Wednesday 25 August 2021: Eat, drink or repent -- for tomorrow we die! Rabbi Eliezer famously reminds us at Avot 2:15 to repent the day before we die, but what is the status of the exhortation to "eat, drink and be merry"?

Friday 20 August 2021: Taking positives from the am ha'aretz: The much-derided uncouth am ha'aretz may be a vital part of the great scheme of things despite the normally bad press he gets from students of Avot.

Tuesday 17 August  2021: A good telling-off! At Avot 6:6 we learn of the importance of being able to appreciate a well-aimed rebuke if we seek to acquire Torah wisdom and internalise its values.

Sunday 16 August 2021: The pursuit of peace -- a personal recollection. Hillel's instruction to be like Aaron, loving peace and pursuing it (Avot 1:12), is a great ideal but not an easy one to implement. But it can been done ...

Thursday 12 August  2021: Repentance and good deeds: you can't have one without the other.  Why not? This blogpost offers an answer to the question why Avot pairs these two items together.

Wednesday 11 August  2021: They're the same, more or less. We check out two translations of Avot by the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.

Monday 9 August 2021: The Best of Men. Ben Azzai (Avot 4:3) teaches the importance of every individual. This post reviews a movie that epitomises this teaching.

Friday 6 August 2021: A sad reflection on human nature. What would you do if you knew you'd definitely die tomorrow? Most people's to-do list does not include the Avot recommendation of repentance.

Wednesday 4 August 2021: Praying for the welfare of a bad government. Does Rabbi Chanina Segan HaKohanim's plea for people to pray for the welfare of the state (Avot 3:2) apply to only good governments, to all governments, or specifically to bad ones?

Monday 2 August 2021:  Eternal laws and academic appetizers. Rabbi Elazar Chisma (Avot 3:23) speaks of the relationship between even abstruse laws and secular studies. What does he have to tell us about the way we prioritise them?

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Avot Today blogposts for July 2021 here

Avot Today blogposts for June 2021 here

Avot Today blogposts for May 2021 here

Avot Today blogposts for April 2021 here

Avot Today blogposts for March 2021 here

Avot Today blogposts for February 2021 here