Festive feasts and divine retribution

At this time of year, to mark the Jewish festival of Chanukah, a great deal of festive eating is done. Chanukah may be regarded by many as a "minor festival", but this eating is an activity in which the vast majority of Jews appear to indulge, regardless of their level of religious observance and commitment. The main object of consumption in contemporary is the sufganiyah-- a species of doughnut on steroids [linguistic note: the word sufganiyah is rarely heard since it is the singular form of the noun: the word is normally found in the plural, sufganiyot, since that is how they are generally purchased and consumed].

All this feasting on doughnuts reminds me of a mishnah in Pirkei Avot in which feasting makes a surprising appearance. According to Rabbi Akiva (Avot 3:20):

"Everything is given on collateral, and a net is spread over all the living. The store is open, the storekeeper extends credit. The account-book lies open and the hand writes -- and all who wish to borrow may come and borrow. [But] the bailiffs make their rounds every day and exact payment from a person, whether he knows it or not. Their case is well founded, the judgement is a judgement of truth, and everything is prepared for the feast"

What does this feast have to do with the collection of debts? And who gets to attend it? Let's look a little further into this mystery.

One view of the promised banquet (Bartenura; commentary ascribed to Rashi) is that it is for everyone – the righteous and the wicked alike – on the strength of a promise that every Jew is entitled to a share in the World to Come – though the wicked may find that they need to purge themselves of the error of their ways before they get to receive their share. According to this mishnah, that purging is effected through the punishment element of the payback which is indicated through the Hebrew verb nifra’in.

An alternative view is that only the righteous will enjoy this feast: the wicked, having consumed their credit in their lifetime, are unable to attend since they will be destroyed for all eternity (per Rabbi Ovadyah Sforno). There is also a position that lies between the two: everyone gets to attend the banquet but only the righteous get to eat: the wicked sit and watch, grinding their teeth (per Rabbi Ya'akov Emden).

None of these explanations answer a fundamental question: what is the intended function of this reference within the mishnah?

All the other statements in this mishnah share a common function: that of getting man to change his behaviour for the better. The vague statement that “everything is prepared for the feast” does not. If a person is reminded that God keeps a record of everything he does, that he cannot cheat God and that he will be judged on the basis of his performance, he may be moved by these sobering reflections to behave better, or at least to think more carefully before continuing to behave badly. However, imagine your response if someone were to say to you, “watch out how you behave because, after you die and God judges you for good or bad, there is a banquet to which you may or may not be invited and at which you may be allowed to eat immediately, after a delay or not at all.” How big an impact might these words have as an incentive to do good or as a caution against doing bad? And what is the attraction of this banquet in an afterlife in which there is no eating or drinking in the physical sense, but instead a reward that we cannot comprehend: that of being bathed in the light of the Shechinah (an experience of one's awareness of God's presence)?

A possible answer lies in how we view the concept of post-mortem dining arrangements in Avot. This mishnah refers to a se'udah (translated here as “feast” but generally referring to any meal that marks or honours a special occasion), and a later mishnah taught in the name of Rabbi Ya’akov (at 4:21) refers to a traklin (which I translate as “banqueting hall” but also means “dining couch”). These are the only two mishnayot in Avot to make explicit reference to banqueting arrangements, but that is not the only thing they have in common.

In each case the “banquet” is in the World to Come; the banquet is contemplated within a wider context as something that follows a course of repentance/payback and good deeds, and the word used in relation to it has the same Hebrew root: letaken, “to prepare.”

It is submitted that both mishnayot can be read as conveying the same message: it is not the meal that matters here, but the preparation for it. If you want God’s judgement to be in your favour in the next World, you have to prepare for it in this one. When Rabbi Akiva teaches that “everything is prepared for the feast” he means that, if you follow his guidance in the earlier parts of the mishnah, it is you who have, figuratively speaking, prepared the “banquet” that awaits you – and that whether there is a banquet ahead of you or not depends on your efforts and your preparation.

More on food as a metaphor

The idea of a person behaving well or badly, being judged and then being sentenced in a manner that is appropriate to his conduct is also frequently conveyed in English by a sequence of food-related metaphors. While Rabbis Akiva and Ya’akov talk of feasts, we speak of a person “getting his just desserts.” One cannot have unlimited credit and expect that he will never have to pay it back since “you can’t have your cake and eat it.” Where a person performs a deed in a clumsy or unnecessarily complex manner, he is said to have “made a meal of it” or, depending on his locality, to have “made a hash of it.” If he vigorously asserts that he has done no wrong but God’s judgement goes against him, he is obliged to “eat humble pie.” Some people’s World to Come is better than that of others: this is not because “that’s the way the cookie crumbles” but because Divine justice takes into account things that we cannot know or see. Since preparation for one’s World to Come can only be done during one’s lifetime, someone who “doesn’t care a fig” about God’s judgement while he lives won’t get a chance to remedy the situation after he dies since no-one gets “a second bite at the cherry.” When he sees the rewards of others, which are denied to him, his attitude may be one of “sour grapes” and he may be “stewing in his own juice.” In each of these cases, the use of the metaphor describes a person’s conduct or attitude: what is eaten, and whether it is eaten or not, are matters of no consequence.

Photograph: doughnuts from Modiin, the locality from which the Hasmonean uprising against the Greeks was launched.

Going, going ... gone!

Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel (Avot 2:13) advises that the right path for a person to follow is that which results from his looking ahead and being able to identify issues and events before they occur. I failed miserably in this regard earlier this week when I walked unsuspectingly into a 70th birthday party that my English family had organised for me a full five weeks before my actual birthdate.

While we talk of people having a "significant birthday", in real-world terms a birthday is only an arbitrary calendar event, and being five weeks short of 70 is, or should be, just as important to someone who achieves that age as is his or her 70th birthday. Be that as it may, this event got me thinking a bit about Avot and age.

To many younger people, old age is old age and there is little reason to divide the elderly into separate age-based categories. In truth, the elderly are not a problem because they are old but because of their capabilities. What matters is whether they are healthy or unwell, independent or in need of help from others. Apart from the exceptional physical and intellectual vigour that Moses retained till his final day, the Tanach offers few rosy prospects ahead of those who are poised to enter what is now euphemistically termed the Third Age.

In the Torah no specific right or duty devolves on to anyone who lives beyond fifty, though the regular mitzvot continue to apply. The Book of Psalms offers the prospect of a 70-year lifespan, rising to 80 for those who have gevurah (a word that connotes not just physical but also psychological strength). Yehudah ben Teima, in Avot 5:25, goes beyond the psalmist's terminal point, dividing the years of old age into five categories. The fourth and fifth—which might unkindly be termed the zone of dotage—are discussed later while the first three, which can be summarized as “know,” “show” and “slow,” are considered here:

• Sixty: this is the onset of old age. Around this time many people know and appreciate that they “may not be quite what they used to be” but nonetheless carry on with their lives, sometimes even turning their thoughts to what they might do to ensure their comfort and security as they advance in years and cease to work for a living;

• Seventy: the mishnah describes this as “white-haired old age,” the time when a person appears to be getting old in the eyes of others: ageing shows as hair turns grey or white, wrinkles multiply, it takes more effort to get up out of a comfortable chair or climb a flight of steps. Mental acuity may well be unimpaired, but memory may fail a bit. Putting a positive spin on this, an older person has far more memories to preserve than does than a younger one—and the task of counting one’s blessings is bound to take longer when one has more blessings to count.

• Eighty: this is the age of “inner strength.” As the body’s physical performance declines, a person noticeably slows down, often generating impatience and annoyance in others who expect swifter responses. Inner strength and self-discipline are demanded if this person is to control the urge to complain about his or her aches, pains and general health and about the behaviour and attitudes of younger people. Self-discipline is also essential in order to suppress the increasingly irresistible urge to loosen natural inhibitions, indulging in socially inappropriate actions and speech. An alternative view (Rabbi Menachem Mordechai Frankel-Teomim, Be’er HaAvot) is that at 80 a person can command substantial spiritual strength, being increasingly free from the distraction of physical desires.

Going, going …

Ninety is the age of being bent over. A person’s physical and mental resources may still be intact, but the amount of effort required in order to use them may be disproportionately high. Many Torah scholars have reached the nineties and beyond, possibly more through their love of God, a stubborn determination to continue learning and their passionate enjoyment of it than through any other cause. Having said that, for the majority of people who reach that age, life imposes stiff challenges as they often struggle to combat the effects of deteriorating eyesight and hearing, seriously failing memory, chronic and irreversible physical conditions and, perhaps most sadly, the loneliness that comes from the irreplaceable loss of friends and peers.

In the eyes of one commentator, such a person has simply run out of life and is ripe for the grave. Another view which, while positive, is not for everyone, is that this person is bent over in constant prayer.

An alternative version of this Mishnah reads as לָשֽׁוּחַ (lashu’ach, “to be stooped”) as לְָשְׂוּחַ (lasu’ach, “to meditate”). The idea of a nonagenarian stepping back from active life and slipping into a world of restful meditation may be quite appealing, but the same word lasu’ach is double-edged: it also suggests engaging in idle chatter, with the connotation that at 90, when a person no longer has the strength to sin with his body, the only way one can meaningfully sin is through forbidden or inappropriate speech and it against this that one must guard oneself.

… gone

Reaching the age of one hundred is still regarded as an achievement, though there has been a small but steady increase in the number of centenarians over recent decades. The United Nations estimated that in 2012 the worldwide population of people over the age of 100 stood at around 316,600.

For as long as a Jew is alive he is fully bound by the laws of the Torah and remains obligated to learn it. However, even if he is active at this advanced age, bearing in mind his fragility and feebleness it is advisable for him to step back from serving as a Dayan (per Rabbi Frankel-Teomim again). He should also make every effort to repent, not because he should expect to die any day but because, if he is no longer in full command of his faculties, his repentance has little meaning (per Rabbi Yitzchak Magriso, Me’am Lo’ez).

It would be great to hear the views of some of the older readers of this blog as to how they understand this mishnah in the light of their own experiences. Do let us know!

Growing up to be a man ... of sorts

As I write these words I find myself in the happy and (for me) unusual position of occupying a space between the barmitzvah of two grandsons whose coming-of-age celebrations take place on successive weeks.

Pirkei Avot notes without comment (at 5:25) that a male becomes formally subject to the laws of the Torah once he attains the age of 13. But is that all that can be said on the subject? I think not.

Earlier in Avot (2:6) Hillel teaches that "in a place where there is no man, one should strive to be a man". This is generally understood as an exhortation to rank-and-file Jewry to stand up and be counted when need be, to take a necessary initiative or to seize the reins of communal leadership when no-one else is man enough to do so. Strangely enough, some of the most obvious examples of this maxim being put into practice involve women (Zipporah, Deborah, Esther), not men -- but that's a topic for another day.

It occurred to me that Hillel's advice applies to barmitzvah boys too. Yes, once they reach the age of responsibility they are "men" -- but no, they are still not yet the finished article and from now on the task of completion lies with them too, and no longer solely with their parents.

For me this reality is symbolised by the appearance of almost every barmitzvah boy on the day he is first called to a reading of the Torah. In circles where suits are still worn, he will nearly always be wearing a suit that is a little bit too big for him (since buying a suit for a boy going through a growing spurt is an exercise in shooting at a moving target); his shirt collar too will hang a little loosely around his neck. This is a visible sign of our expectation that he still has some way to go -- and we know that this is true not only in physical terms but also in his emotional, intellectual and spiritual growth.

The barmitzvah boy truly is a man -- but only an "entry-level" man with much ahead of him in terms of growing into the fully-fledged mature adult we all wish him to be. So, to give a little tweak to Hillel's teaching, we can read it as an address to every barmitzvah boy: in the very place where you are standing -- that is the place from which you must strive to fulfil your potential and be the man that is still concealed within you. If you look into the mirror and don't see the man you want to be, now is the time to begin work on becoming that man.

A hard life and a hidden patriarch

An anonymous baraita in the sixth chapter of Avot (Avot 6:4) praises a tough, ascetic lifestyle as the path to happiness through Torah study. It reads:

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.

Much has been written on this prescription for happiness the hard way and many questions have been asked on it: for example, is it addressed to the rich as a message that they should change their ways or to the poor as a message of consolation? Is it the exclusive way of the Torah or are there others? Does it apply for all time or was it specific to the era of the Tanna who authored it? Should it be taken literally or is it steeped in metaphor and symbolism?

This post considers a novel question: is there a subtext waiting to be discovered?

Let us conjecture that this baraita has someone in particular in mind, a role model (as it were) whose life fits the parameters of happiness laid down here. After all, the demands it makes suggest that, if it refers to anyone, that person must be possessed of extraordinary human qualities.

I venture to suggest there is some textual evidence in favour of this teaching pointing us to the patriarch Jacob. How is this so?

The Torah describes Jacob as “a quiet man, dwelling in tents,” which the commentators have traditionally taken to mean that he was a man who conscientiously studied at the yeshivah of Shem and Ever. We also know are that he slept on the ground, that he could manage without sleep and that he lived a life of great hardship. Was he happy? His final sentiments were those of a man who died content in the knowledge that he was not only reunited with his beloved son Joseph but saw his grandsons too —a formula for peace of mind.

The only element of this baraita to which the Torah makes no specific allusion is that of drinking water in moderation, but water in moderation is part of his heritage: the blessing that Isaac gives Jacob, assuming him to be Esau, is that God should give him “the dew of Heaven.” Though dew is also a blessing, it is a moderate one since its impact is more limited than that of rain.

A further hint that Jacob is the archetypical Torah scholar of our baraita is provided by the source of the proof verse: the 128th chapter of the Book of Psalms. Virtually every part of this short psalm (it has just six verses) points straight to him. Let us look at it in its entirety. The text of the psalm is bold:

1. A song of ascents [It is Jacob who dreams of the ladder with its ascending and descending angels]. Blessed are all who fear God [Jacob fears God ], who walk in his ways [Jacob literally goes wherever God tells him ].

2. You will eat the fruit of your labour [Jacob toiled hard as a shepherd ]; you will be happy and it will be good for you [his flocks and sheep-breeding programme made him a remarkably wealthy man].

3. Your wife [Jacob’s wife Leah, from whom the psalmist King David was descended] will be like a fruitful vine [“fruitful vine” is part of Jacob’s blessing to Joseph; the term “fruitful vine” is also symbolic of one’s children being without blemish, like those of Jacob ] within your house [Leah being one of the four “women in the tent” in Horayot 10b]; your sons [12 in total] will be like olive shoots around your table.

4. Thus is the man blessed who fears God [see first verse].

5. May God bless you from Zion [God blesses Jacob on Mount Moriah] all the days of your life [God says: “I’m with you, I will not leave you”]; may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem,

6. And may you live to see your children's children [Jacob lives to see a total of 54 grandchildren and great-grandchildren ]. Peace be upon Israel [God changes Jacob’s name to “Israel”].

It is the second verse of this psalm that is the proof verse for this baraita.

It is acknowledged that there is no tradition that connects this psalm to Jacob. However, anyone seeking a take-away message from this baraita could do worse than seek to emulate at least some of this man’s outstanding character and qualities.

Artwork: Jacob tending Laban's flock, after Castiglione: landscape with sheep, goats, and cows standing at a watering place, on the left Jacob brandishing a rod, and a young woman riding a donkey by his side. c.1743/63. Original with the British Museum. 

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 October 2021:

Thursday 28 October 2021: Judging others-- again: are we really supposed to judge others favourably and give them the benefit of the doubt?

Wednesday 27 October 2021: When push comes to shove: how should one view the annoying and inconvenient behaviour of people who try to push past one in doorways?

Monday 25 October 2021: The ages of man -- and woman? In this guest post for Judaism Reclaimed, we ask again why Avot contains no female-friendly equivalent to Avot 5:25 on the ages of man.

Thursday 21 October 2021: The paradigm test: the binding of Isaac: If God knows that Abraham will pass the test of being told to sacrifice his son, why test him at all?

Tuesday 19 October 2021: Back to work -- but do you love it? Shemaya teaches us to love work. It is not however clear what he means.

Friday 15 October 2021: Thanks for the thank-you: Writing "thank-you" letters has more to do with Pirkei Avot than one might immediately imagine.

Wednesday 13 October 2021: Getting someone else's reward. Avot 5:3 mentions the reward scooped by Abraham for the few good deeds of the ten generations before him. How can this be so?

Monday 11 October 2021: A spade or an axe? Take your pick. Avot 4:7 warns that using the Torah for one's own self-glorification and financial advantage is wrong. All agree what the mishnah means, but there is no consensus as to how it should be translated into English.

Friday 8 October 2021: Free will and floods: a lesson from Noah: Does Avot 5:2 have more to tell us about the need of repentance than of God's patience?

Monday 4 October 2021: Greeting others with genuine kindness: what is expected of us? In Avot 3:16 Rabbi Yishmael calls for us to be happy when we greet other people. While he imposes no limitations on this requirement, others do. Are they right to do so?

Friday 1 October 2021: Creating worlds with words: Avot 5:1 describes how the world was created with ten utterances. What sort of world is the mishnah talking about?

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Avot Today blogposts for September 2021 here
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

Judging others -- again

One of the most frequently-cited teachings in Pirkei Avot comes early on in the tractate, when Yehoshua ben Perachyah says:

"...judge everyone favourably" (Avot 1:6).

This, the standard ArtScroll Publications translation, is found in the same or highly similar form in many other translations (see eg Rabbis S. R. Hirsch and E. Prins, Irving M. Bunim)-- but is this the actual meaning? The Hebrew is a little longer and more nuanced, alluding to set of scales on which a person's merit is to be weighed:

וֶהֱוֵי דָן אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם לְכַף זְכוּת

 Many English translations pick this up. Thus Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitz (Rabbi of the Western Wall) rendered it in the Jerusalem Post last week as

"Judge all men with the scale weighted in their favor".

while Chabad.org opts for the rather less idiomatic

"... judge every man to the side of merit"

Some scholars have produced not so much a translation as an explanation. Thus we find Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks offering

"...give everyone the benefit of the doubt".

There is a long and respectable tradition of taking this view of the mishnah -- and giving someone the benefit of the doubt is a noble sentiment. One wonders however if this is what the author of this mishnah really intended; he did after all speak of the "merit" of someone other than oneself, not "doubt", something we harbour in our own minds.

Commentators on this mishnah explain how important it is to see the good in others, how this is an essential part of learning how to see the good in oneself, how difficult it is to appreciate the motives that drive other people's actions, and so on. These explanations tend to be highly focused on Yehoshua ben Perachyah's teaching alone and sometimes fail to examine it within the context of other teachings in Avot.

The very next mishnah points to a problem in judging all others on a scale of merit. There (at 1:7), Nittai He'Arbeli urges people:

"Distance yourself from a bad neighbour and do not associate with a wicked person".

The very process of determining that someone is a bad neighbour or a wicked person involves not only having to judge them without first having been in their position (contrary to Avot 2:5) but also having to judge them unfavourably and in accordance with not their merits but their demerits. Additionally, the recognition and acceptance that a bad person is indeed bad is in line with the mishnah which teaches that one should concede that the truth is the truth (5:9).

Much of Pirkei Avot involves juggling conflicting ethical guidelines, and this is where the real challenge of humanity lies. There are times when it is right to judge favourably, to judge unfavourably -- and sometimes not to judge at all. There are also times when judging another person's state of mind is required in order to respond appropriately -- for example by being able to assess whether a person needs comfort and moral support, on the one hand, or solitude and personal space on the other (as in Avot 4:23). This is what makes the study of Avot so relevant today, as members of a society in which boundaries, attitudes and mores are constantly in motion.

When push comes to shove

I posted this piece initially on my Facebook page, but am posting it here too because it has obvious implications for Avot 1:6 -- the principle of judging other people favourably if one can.

Here are two incidents from last week.

In the first, I was waiting with many others for the arrival of Jerusalem's light rail train. When it pulled in, I immediately noticed how crowded it was. The automatic doors opened. Standing in the middle of the door nearest me, with obvious intent to stand, was a large woman with a wide double buggy.

As the doors opened, the crowd around me surged forward, quite forcing the woman back before she was eventually able to get off the train. The behaviour of the other passengers struck me as being not only unpleasant but also counterproductive: if they had only stepped back and let the woman with her buggy get off first, there would have been easier access for the oncoming passengers as well as more room for them once they were inside the carriage.

The second incident took place in a popular shopping mall, where I was sharing a lift with an elderly gentleman. As the door opened and before we could step out, a woman in a wheelchair propelled herself straight at us, causing an unnecessary and (for the elderly gentleman) painful collision. Again, it would have been more courteous and efficient for the woman to let us out of the lift before trying to enter it.

My first thought was that there are many people in this beautiful country who have no idea how to behave. On further reflection, I wondered whether there has been some sort of epigenetic effect at work. Many people who live in Israel are descendants of refugees from persecution and genocide in their countries of origin, people who may have owed their lives to being able to squeeze themselves on to the last train out of time or force themselves on to the last bus or boat. They may have transmitted an urge to board as a sort of survival gene that their subsequent generations find irresistible -- and this epigenetic effect may have mutated into a new social norm.

This idea may be quite wrong, but at least it gives me the chance to be less critical of my fellow humans when they practise a standard of behaviour that is so easy to criticise.

The Ages of Man -- and Woman?

The following post, which was commissioned for the Judaism Reclaimed Facebook Group, has been developed from two earlier posts (here and here) on this weblog.

The Torah reading for parashat Chayei Sarah commences with a recitation that the life of matriarch Sarah was “a hundred years and twenty years and seven years”. Regarding this unusual mode of expressing the number 127, Rashi famously cites a midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 58:1) to teach that Sarah was as sinless at 100 as she was when she was 20 [the age at which one becomes liable for heavenly punishment], and as beautiful at 20 as she was at 7. Alternatively, she was as beautiful at 100 as she was at 20, and as sinless at 20 as she was at 7 (according to Shadal, this is the original version of Rashi’s source). Either way, we can conclude that Sarah lived a long life, a life in which she remained constant in her virtue and in the quality of her personal appearance.

On the subject of age and advancing years, Pirkei Avot (5:25) has much to say. In particular, it features a lifestyle chronology that begins with learning the written Torah at five and concludes with a person being effectively “out of it” by the time he reaches 100. This Mishnah is plainly addressed to ordinary people and does not describe the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs, whose pre-Torah lives were governed by factors that applied to them but not to us. In Sarah’s case, of the three ages cited in the opening of this week’s parashah, only two of them—20 and 100—are found in the Avot list. While 100 is the age at which one ceases to count for anything, Jewish tradition makes it clear that Sarah continued to take an active part in life. Likewise 20 is the age at which one goes to work (opinions vary as to whether this means making a living or going out to learn Torah), but we do not find that Sarah had a day job at that or any other age. The only other age we learn of in Sarah’s biblical biography is 90, this being the mishnaic age at which physical weakness makes itself manifest—but it is also the point at which Sarah conceives Isaac (Bereshit 17:17).

The “ages of man” Mishnah raises delicate issues in contemporary Jewish thought, since it appears to be addressed only to men. There are at least several possible views one can take. These include the following:

• Women are excluded from the equation because this Mishnah is exclusively a men-for-men teaching;
• Women are not mentioned in this Mishnah because there is no need of a separate list. One only needs to make the necessary changes as one goes along (e.g. substituting 12 for 13 as the age of being bound by mitzvot and deleting 18 as the age for getting married, since this is a men’s mitzvah only);
• There is no need for a women’s list, or it is impossible to create one, since the biological, familial and social factors that govern the course of a woman’s life are more varied and uncertain than those of men;
• The mishnah does not actually address men in general, because it maps out an ideal course only for those who seek a life of Torah study in which everything else is purely incidental. Since it applies so narrowly and embraces only a minority of males, it is not gender-specific and there is no need to consider how, or to what extent, it applies to women

We live in a world in which women’s secular education and Torah study are facts on the ground and it is now nearly 90 years since the death of another Sarah—Sarah Schenirer—who lifted women’s education to a new and hitherto unprecedented level from which it has continued to rise. While classical and modern commentators generally avoid any mention of the absence of a “women’s list”, Judaism Reclaimed (chap. 41) explores the extent to which the biblical precedent of Devorah, and the halachic mechanism which some authorities understand it to have endorsed, can be utilised in the modern era of more widespread and substantial Jewish education for women. It would be good to hear from leading Torah scholars and thinkers as to whether there should be a parallel set of guidelines for women and, if so, as to what it might contain.

The paradigm test: the binding of Isaac

Avot 5:4 teaches that the patriarch Abraham faced ten tests and passed them all, to show how great was either his love for God or God's love for him (depending on which view one takes of the open weave of the text). This mishnah does not however say what the ten tests are. Browsing through the Torah, midrashim and commentators I have so far identified over 30 candidates for tests -- and there may be even more.

The paradigm test of Abraham is however God's command that he take Isaac to a place indicated by God and sacrifice him there. This is the only event in Abraham's life that the Torah actually describes as a test. It is therefore the test that is most frequently discussed and analyzed by Jewish scholars.

Being omniscient and beyond the limitations of time, God would have known the outcome of this test before it took place, which was why He made sure that the test was halted just before what would have been a tragic conclusion. The fact that Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son may not have been something Abraham needed to be told, since the Torah records his unswerving obedience to God’s commands. We could infer then that the function of this test was to show us, as Abraham’s physical or metaphorical descendants through Isaac, something of the quality, the steadfastness under stress and the deep love for God that the Patriarchs possessed. This demonstration of Abraham’s mettle would also act as a lesson for all subsequent generations as to how we should serve God, with love, fear and complete trust.

But there is more to this test than meets the eye. God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son and knows that Abraham will do so if God does not stop him first. However, God wants to establish why Abraham is prepared to carry out his instruction to the very end.

We have a tradition, enshrined in the Talmud, taught by Rabbi Chanina, that “everything is in the hands of Heaven—except for fear of Heaven" (Berachot 33b). This teaching appears to provide the key to Abraham’s test by giving it a clear and unambiguous purpose: to discover whether Abraham has fear of Heaven or not, this being something over which God has deliberately relinquished control. However, if Abraham was allowed to see the test through and kill Isaac because God told him to do so, this filial sacrifice would be viewed with horror by all right-thinking humans. They would not be wrong to ask: “why should we or anyone else want to know whether Abraham feared Heaven or not, if he commits such appalling and barbarous acts as this?”

The reason behind the reason

If the reason for testing Abraham with the sacrifice of his son was to establish that he was prepared to do so on account of his fear of Heaven rather than his love for God, we must ask a further question: what is the reason why we need to know why he was so motivated?

Each of the patriarchs is traditionally associated with a middah, a character trait, which became a byword for his conduct. Abraham is always associated with chesed (“kindness”) and his son Isaac with gevurah (“physical strength” but also “self-discipline”). Chesed is a by-product of love and relates to positive actions, while gevurah is a by-product of fear and relates to more negative ones. The issue to be resolved by this test was whether Abraham, whose very fabric was that of great kindness, would be able to overcome his own trait of extreme chesed and, drawing on his gevurah, steel himself to the task of killing someone as precious to him as the son whom God had promised him.

In the event, it is as a result of the test that we know that Abraham had sufficient gevurah to counterbalance his chesed and enable him to sacrifice Isaac. Since gevurah is an aspect of fear, we now have an explanation of God’s words at the very moment when He halts the test:

Don’t stretch out your hand against the lad and don’t do anything to him because now I know that you are God-fearing and did not withhold your son, your only son, from me (Genesis 22:12).

God left it to Abraham to feel the pull both of his chesed towards his son and his fear of God, and to demonstrate whether he had sufficient gevurah to carry out his task. This explanation has a take-away message for us too: we must take care to train our own characters so that we can draw on both chesed and gevurah when the need arises. It is not enough to say, “I’m a chesed man myself; I leave the gevurah to others who do it better.”

Back to work --- but do you love it?

The extended Jewish holiday period that characterises the month of Tishrei is now over. For some people -- those with jobs and who are not self-employed -- this is a bit of a relief. For the religiously observant, a succession of days off have to be sought, work arrangements must be amended, colleagues persuaded to provide cover, and so on. This leads me to ponder on an incidental work-related issue: are we supposed to love our work?

Pirkei Avot seems to suggest so. In Avot 1:10 Shemaya teaches:

"love work, hate mastery over others, and avoid intimacy with the government".

This is a broad statement, which invites us to ask questions. For example:

What sort of work should a person love?

In this mishnah the Hebrew word מלאכה (melachah) is used. It literally means “work”—and that is also the word used in the Torah to describe a large range of activities that are forbidden on the Sabbath, a holy day of rest. However, the word has overtones. While other words also mean “work,” melachah shares the same four-letter root as the word malach, an angel or emissary of God. The mishnah can therefore be suggesting that the sort of work a person should love is that through which he serves as an agent of God, in effect doing His work. This overtone is consciously deployed in a later mishnah (Avot 2:20, per Rabbi Tarfon).

Not all translators and commentators regard melachah as carrying such exalted implications. One takes the Tanna to be urging people to love “handicraft,” which conjures up slightly comical images of the Sages weaving baskets, sewing garments and crocheting kippot while they sit and learn in their houses of study. It is hard to conceive of any reason why Shemayah would wish to urge people to take up any handicraft, particularly in an era in which everything was made by hand and the skills relating to the production of clothes, shoes and household artefacts would have been far more widespread than they are today—unless he implanted into his advice some deeply encoded meaning which has since been lost.

Why should anyone love work?

A simple yet practical explanation is that work keeps a person occupied: it is a good idea to work even if you can afford not to, since work staves off boredom (per Bartenura, citing Ketubot 5:5). This explanation accepts that not everyone is cut out to spend their days learning Torah (or indeed anything else), since a person who can learn Torah and has the time in which to do so need never feel bored. However, this does not explain why a person should actually love work, rather than simply do it—and doing a job that one does not enjoy can be as effective a means of avoiding boredom as doing work that one really loves.

There is another aspect of involvement in one’s efforts to secure a living: the degree of self-respect that an individual is able to generate when he or she takes pride in their work, knowing that it has been done to the best of one's ability. This in turn can generate a kiddush Hashem (“sanctification of God’s name”) when clients or customers associate the conscientious execution of employment duties with the fact that the person performing them is a practising Jew. From the sheer brevity of Shemayah’s words we cannot deduce whether this aspect too was within his contemplation, though he certainly does not preclude this possibility.

Whose work should one love?

It is only a short distance from the Torah’s narrative of the Creation to the first mention of Man being placed in the Garden of Eden “to work it and to guard it.” From this we see that some form of useful human activity was written into God’s plan for the World. In the Torah this comes even before man’s obligation to toil on the soil (which was spelled out in consequence of the Fall of Man—as both a punishment and an absolute necessity for survival).

Shemaya does not specify whether the work which is to be loved is one's own, or whether it is that of others. Each of these positions can be justified—one’s own work, because it helps cause sin to be forgotten (Avot 2:2, per Rabban Gamliel ben Rebbi) and the work of others, because one recognizes with gratitude that one is ever dependent on the efforts of others.

As an aside, we should also recognize that loving one’s own work and doing it to the best of one’s ability has an impact on one’s ability to appreciate the quality of other people’s work—or at least to give recognition to the effort and dedication that has gone into it. An example of this effect in the Torah world is where only a person who regularly prepares teaching material is well equipped to see how much trouble a colleague has taken over the same activity; the same applies in the world of secular work where, for example, the preparation of food or the performance of music depend on experience, skill and practice that may be apparent only to the most discerning and knowledgeable diner or audience member.

Thanks for the thank-you

 Earlier this week my wife and I received a "thank-you" card from a newly-wed couple to whom we had sent a present. This set me thinking.

The card, which was printed, bore a hand-written inscription that was several lines long. It made reference both to the gift itself and to the couple's appreciation of it, and it was penned relatively soon after the wedding.

I was greatly surprised to receive this card. For one thing, it seems that in recent times many couples do not acknowledge gifts at all, so the arrival of this epistle was quite unexpected. For another, both newly-weds are very busily engaged in their work, their studies and their communal activities. It would have been quite understandable if they had printed out a standard one-size-fits-all thank-you card and posted it without further ado. We do not know the couple particularly well, though one of them is the child of a cousin.

Our gift was not a particularly generous or exotic one and I rather felt that the letter with its attendant message was somehow more valuable than our gift. It gave me great pleasure to receive and read it; I felt that the world was not quite as full of thoughtless and ungrateful souls as sometimes seems to be the case.

What does this have to do with Pirkei Avot? A great deal, I believe. We learn that we should treat even small mitzvot (commandments) with as much alacrity and conscientious application as we would direct towards the fulfilment of big ones (see Avot 2:1, 4:2). This is because we are not in a position to know which, if any, are more important to God than any others. We may think something is a trivial ritual requirement that can be easily passed over or done in a desultory fashion, but we have no idea how our performance of mitzvot is received at the other end.

I'm sure that the young couple who sent us their thank-you message do many things each day that they may regard (maybe rightly so) as being more important. However, they have sent out a message that, from their outset of their marriage, they are prepared to devote as much attention to getting the little things right as to addressing the big ones -- an attitude endorsed by Pirkei Avot.

From my standpoint, their little gesture of gratitude made a great impact. Apart from giving me huge pleasure, it has forced me to ask myself whether I am sufficiently conscientious in adequately acknowledging the kindness of others that I so enjoy (and sometimes expect) to receive.

Getting someone else's reward

Avot 5:3 is a sort of sequel to the mishnah preceding it (discussed on Avot Today here). Both describe God as being slow to anger, waiting for ten generations before responding to the continuing decline in human behaviour:

There were ten generations from Noah to Abraham, to let it be known how slow God is to anger—because all these generations increasingly angered Him until Abraham came and received the reward of them all.

This mishnah raises many questions, of which one of the most obvious is that of How could Abraham -- or anyone else, for that matter -- receive someone else’s reward?

If we accept that God is good and just and that He would not withhold a reward from anyone who has earned it, we should be able to assume that everyone who lived between the time of the Flood and the death of Abraham did indeed receive a reward or recompense from God for their good deeds, and that Abraham did not receive anything to which he was not personally entitled. Can we accept this is is so and still explain Abraham’s apparently undeserved good fortune in receiving "the reward of them all"? Here are some possible answers:

• Abraham did so many good deeds that he accomplished what it would have been appropriate for all ten generations to have done. It was on this basis that they were all saved in his merit, since he took upon himself the yoke of all the mitzvot in this World. That is why he received a commensurate reward in the World to Come (per Rabbi Ovadyah MiBartenura).
• Since Abraham taught members of his generation to serve God and to keep away from bad deeds, he is associated with their reward “as if he had received it,” and he also received the reward that was appropriate for his own deeds (per Rabbi Menachem Meiri). This explanation distinguishes Abraham from Noah, who was neither a teacher nor a role model: his good qualities did not spread beyond his wife Na’amah and his sons Shem and Japheth.
• The reward Abraham received was one which anyone in any of the earlier generations could have secured for themselves—the reward of being named as the leading Forefather, the Patriarch of what was to become God’s Chosen People. Shem/Malchitzedek nearly secured the same reward several generations before Abraham, but lost the opportunity after he gave a blessing to Abraham before blessing God (Nedarim 32b).
• The names “Noah” and “Abraham” do not refer to Noah and Abraham but are shorthand terms for the generations in which they lived. Thus when we learn that “Abraham” received the rewards of “them all,” we can take it that the generation of Abraham—in which several righteous people lived in addition to Abraham himself—received the aggregate of all the generational bonus rewards that had yet to be conferred (I have yet to find any authoritative source for this explanation).

I suspect that many readers have thought about this themselves and may have reached their own conclusions as to what this mishnah means. Anyone who wishes to share their thoughts on this issue is very welcome to do so.