Relevance in retrospect

Regular readers will know that I spend a good deal of time browsing second-hand bookshops, street sales and even piles of abandoned books in my search for hitherto unfamiliar commentaries on Pirkei Avot. My latest find is in autographed copy of Relevance: Pirkei Avos For The Twenty-First Century, by Rabbi Dan Roth, founder of the interactive multimedia educational platform Torah Live. This tome had been left in a pile of unwanted books that had been left to the elements. Fortunately I was able to save it from the first of Israel’s early seasonal rains. Being a full 15 years too late to write a review of Relevance, I thought I’d look at it in retrospect.

How does this commentary differ from all the rest? The jacket-flap declaration sets out the book’s objectives thus:

The teachings of Pirkei Avos are timeless and contain answers to the moral challenges of every generation. The particular application of those messages to the needs of each generation, however, changes according to the times. As such, every generation needs to delve anew into the words of Chazal to discover how to apply the eternal truths of the Torah to the challenges of the day.

Relevance fulfills this need by showing how each Mishnah pertains to the modern world, revealing Pirkei Avos to be as vibrant and contemporary as if it were written today.

The claim that the book shows how “each Mishnah pertains to the modern world” is not strictly true. Avot contains over 120 mishnayot and baraitot, of which this book discusses just 24, omitting any discussion of the baraitot in the sixth and final perek. Some added features are however worthy of note. One is a glossary of non-English terms found in the text; another is the impressive bibliography, and a third is a short but useful index of names and topics.

The author’s selection of mishnayot suggests to me that he may have started with a collection of contemporary issues and points which he was seeking to make, working back towards whichever mishnah was the appropriate peg on which to hang it. This approach would also explain why, to the relief of many modern readers, there are no flights into the realms of linguistics, semantics and philology. Nor are there lengthy anecdote-laden biographies of the sages or philosophical speculations. The overall effect is to provide a direct, accessible statement of the sort of day-to-day moral values that a Torah-conscious Jew should put into practice. 

This is a book for believers, not doubters. The tone of the text is direct, confident and assertive. I would imagine that the ideal reader is a recent ba’al teshuvah whose enthusiasm for living a Jewish life has resulted in the adoption of a lifestyle where the person’s commitment exceeds their knowledge. Its overall message is clear. It tells the reader: “you too can live a good Jewish life and don’t be embarrassed at the antiquity of its source materials since they are eternally relevant”.

 On a personal note, I enjoyed the author’s approach to Avot 5:23, in which Yehudah ben Teyma teaches us to be as bold as leopards, light as eagles, swift as deer and strong as lions in our service to God. Though his analysis is different from mine, he takes the same line as I do in my book, looking afresh at the natural qualities of these four creatures—but he got there a decade and a half ahead of me.

I’d like to conclude with a word of criticism, to be addressed to the publisher, not the author. Although the main content of the book spans 268 pages, readers will find themselves getting to the end of it rather sooner than they imagined they might. This is not only a consequence of the fact that the print is agreeably large. It also reflects the fact that, of those 268 pages, a remarkable 63—or around nearly 25%--are either completely blank or contain nothing except the title of the discussion that follows two pages later. This seems to be a regrettably large quantity of paper to sacrifice at the altar of aesthetic appeal.

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Pirkei Avos For The Twenty-First Century was published by Feldheim, Jerusalem in 2007. It is available on Amazon in Kindle and hardback formats.

The Bad Neighbour problem

One of the shortest teachings in Pirkei Avot is that of Nittai HaArbeli:

הַרְחֵק מִשָּׁכֵן רָע, וְאַל תִּתְחַבֵּר לָרָשָׁע, וְאַל תִּתְיָאֵשׁ מִן הַפּוּרְעָנוּת

In English: Distance yourself from a bad neighbour, and do not join up with someone who is wicked, and do not abandon belief in retribution (Avot 1:7).

On a literal interpretation, the first of these three propositions raises many issues. Nor does it easily lend itself to practical application in the modern world. In former times we might simply pull up our tent and pitch it further away from the person whose proximity we wish to avoid. Today, however, the option of physically relocating our homes is usually costly, time-consuming and inconvenient—and there is no guarantee that the place to which we move will not have neighbours who are at least as bad as those whom we seek to avoid.

If we take the instruction to distance ourselves from bad neighbours in a figurative sense, we run into a different problem: just keeping our distance from people whom we regard as bad influences would appear to be implicit in the second proposition in this mishnah, since one does not normally join up with someone who is wicked without having ceased to distance oneself first.

A further issue must be addressed whether we prefer a literal interpretation or a figurative one, which is that we must first decide whether a person is wicked. Nittai’s contemporary, Yehoshua ben Perachyah, has already taught (Avot 1:6) that we should judge others on a favourable basis, having regard to that person’s merit; this judgement should not be made before we have stood in that person’s shoes, as it were, and not on the basis of our own ideals, principles and circumstances (per Hillel, Avot 2:5).

Nittai’s teaching also assumes that the good person whose neighbour is bad will be affected by that person rather than the other way round. This is not an inevitable consequence of having bad neighbours but it is at least a risk that a person should weigh up carefully before deciding what to do.

In Western society, the role of the neighbour in our lives is often dramatically different from that with which Nittai was familiar. Family units have shrunk in size and it is now usual for women to work outside the home. With so many people living in apartment blocks which provide only limited opportunities for getting to know one’s neighbours, for many people there is no “bad neighbour problem” since they scarcely ever come into contact with those who live closest to them. The social media provide much scope for interpersonal contact and even relationship-building, but it is difficult to characterise fellow users of the social media as “neighbours”.

None of the above should be seen as an excuse for ignoring Nittai’s teaching. Rather, we should take it as a statement regarding the need to exercise caution and vigilance when coming into close and regular company of others. Without being judgemental or hostile, we should not let our guard drop and, with it, the standards we hold dear as responsible human beings.

Gratitude versus jealousy: keeping it in the family

At Avot 4:28 Rabbi Elazar HaKappar issues a stern warning: “Jealousy, desire and honour remove a person from the world”. Most traditional commentators on Avot add little to this warning since it largely speaks for itself, but the more recent trend is to frame it within the context of modern life. An example of this trend which I recently came upon is found in Rabbi Dan Roth’s Relevance: Pirkei Avos for the Twenty-First Century, a book on which I shall have more to say in a later post. Referring to this teaching, Rabbi Roth opens with the following passage:

A number of years ago, a woman in my shul was diagnosed with leukemia. She was pregnant at the time, and in order to increase her chances of survival, she was forced to undergo an abortion. Even after the abortion, she remained in critical condition.

After she had recovered, her husband went to share the good news with Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, who had been involved with the family throughout the illness. He mentioned to Reb Chaim that he and his wife intended to make a seudas hoda’a [a thanksgiving meal]. Reb Chaim advised them against it.

“Take the money you were going to use for the seuda”, said Reb Chaim, “and distribute it amongst the needy.  And then, instead of making a large seuda for many people, make one only for your children. People today find it hard to rejoice in other people’s good fortune, and by making a large commotion you will just be bringing an ayin hara [evil eye] upon yourselves”.

Reb Chaim’s comment is a sad reflection on our generation, underscoring our inability to share in other people’s joy and truly revel in their happiness. This inability is the root cause of jealousy. If it is difficult for people to wholeheartedly celebrate with a woman who has just recovered from a potentially fatal illness, how much more so are people hard-pressed to feel genuinely happy when they see neighbors building an addition onto their homes or driving a new car. Unfortunately, far too often we resent them and the good things in their lives.

I wonder if I am alone in finding this passage difficult.

The first thing that struck me was that anyone might be jealous of the husband in the first place. While he was plainly both grateful and relieved that his wife recovered from her leukaemia, the fact remains that they had both tragically lost their unborn child. Where a person is threatened with the loss of two precious assets but in the event loses only one of them, would this really generate jealousy in others? On the other hand, the real source of any jealousy may not be the wife’s recovery but the fact that the family might be viewed as having received a greater degree of divine attention than that enjoyed by others.

Secondly, while I should never wish to comment critically on the words of a great contemporary Torah sage without first seeking to understand the wider context in which those words were spoken, I find it hard to accept that Rabbi Kanievsky should make a broad generalisation to the effect that people today find it hard to rejoice in other people’s good fortune.  On a personal level, that has not been my experience of the normal reaction of my fellow Jews who have been invited to share the celebration of another’s good fortune. More to the point, Avot also teaches the importance of judging others in a favourable light (Avot 1:6). That teaching is phrased in the singular, suggesting that it is primarily addressed to the way we view fellow humans as individuals, but I do not believe that it precludes us from taking the same non-judgemental stance with regard to pluralities such as communities as a whole.

It may be that the proposed seudas hoda’a was likely to be on a scale of ostentation that would have been offensive or inappropriate. If this were so, the suggestion that it be restricted to close family members might be constructive and indeed desirable, but the rabbi would surely have been able to make it without casting the credentials of other potential invitees in a pejorative light.

I am therefore hesitant to take this story at face value and invite readers’ comments in the hope of enlightenment.

Quarterly report: Avot in the online media

July to September 2022

This is the third of our quarterly roundups of citations of teachings from Pirkei Avot in articles, news items and reviews posted on the internet. It covers the period 1 July to 30 September 2022 and features references to Avot that I have picked up through Google Alert, discounting any items that have been repeated or syndicated from an earlier source.

So far this year we have found 146 Avot citations. During the third quarter there were only 40 Avot citations, as against the first and second quarters (46 and 60 respectively). Of the 40, no fewer than eight—that’s 20 percent—were to Avot 1:5, where Yehoshua ben Perachyah teaches us to make for ourselves a teacher, acquire a friend and judge other people favourably. Second comes Ben Zoma’s four-fold Mishnah at Avot 4:1 (“who is wise/strong/rich/honoured?”), with five citations. No other mishnah or baraita gets more than two citations.

The year to date

Over the first nine months of 2022, the single most popular teaching in Avot remains Hillel’s at Avot 1:14 (“If I am not for me, who is for me? And if I am only for me, what am I? And if not now, when”), with a total of 14 citations, two up on Ben Zoma (above) who gets 12 and three ahead of Yeshoshua ben Perachyah (above) who receives 11.

The most heavily quoted Tanna is Hillel with 24 citations, spread across four separate mishnayot. Next come two single-entry Tannaim: Yehoshua ben Perachyah’s mishnah receives 19 citations and Ben Zoma’s stands at 16. Far behind in fourth place is Rabbi Tarfon, whose two mishnayot between them are quoted 10 times.

Several well-known rabbis are rarely mentioned online at all. These include Rabbi Akiva (whose four teachings receive between them only three references) and his talmidimRabbi Meir and Rabbi Yose (cited just once each). Those great stalwarts of the Mishnah, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya, Rabbi Yehudah bar Ila’I, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, Rabbi Yose ben Chalafta and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, have not been cited at all.

The distribution of citations between the six perakim remains uneven. Of the 146, 52 are from the first perek, which contains both Yehoshua ben Perechyah's popular mishnah and three of Hillel's teachings. A distant second is the fourth perek, with 35. Next is the second perek, with 28. The other three chapters muster only 31 citations between them.

We hope to bring you a full report on Avot citations for the full year 2022 some time early in January 2023.

Crowds: it'll take a miracle...

My first real experience of serious crowds came some years ago when I was running a course for lawyers in Lagos, Nigeria, on anti-counterfeiting law and practice. Planning to cross a road, I stood poised at the street’s edge, scouring the pavement on the opposite side of the road in search of a spare inch of space on which I might set foot. I could not see one.

Jerusalem is not supposed to suffer from the effects of overcrowding. There is a Mishnah (Avot 5:7) that lists 10 miracles that were said to have been performed in the Temple. The tenth and final miracle is that “no person ever said to his fellow ‘this place is too hard for me to stay overnight in Jerusalem”.

Over the past fortnight Jerusalem has been rocking. After two sad, quiet years of Covid, the festival of Sukkot has blazed forth in all its glory. Tourists from the Jewish diaspora as well as Israelophile non-Jews from all over the world have poured into town. There has been much gaiety and partying, in keeping with the ancient tradition of the Simchat Bet HaSho’evah, the water-drawing celebration of Temple time that is so vividly depicted in the Talmud.

Sadly, while every practising Jew prays for the restoration of the Temple and its services, we have yet to merit the return of the miracle mentioned in our Mishnah.

In my local butcher’s shop, the demand for meat for festive meals was immense. Although the store had twice as many people working there as it normally did, the line of impatient big-spending customers stretched out well into the street and moved at a snail’s pace. I only had to wait an hour and a quarter to be served, but those who queued up behind me were not so fortunate. On of the regular customers exploded with rage that the store had not made special provision for the locals, who supported it every week. How dare they make their loyal and faithful customers wait while serving mere holidaymakers? Across the road, a little later, I listened to the grumblings of a pair of visitors from abroad, irritated and indeed exasperated by the remoteness of their prospects of picking up a swift coffee and bagel when there were so many people in all the eateries.

While one can sympathise with anyone who has to wait a long time to be served, there is in general little to be gained—and much to be lost—by intemperate speech and the raising of angry voices. The inconvenience of overcrowding is not an objective that is keenly sought by local businesses: it is a consequence of something that we should all be prepared to tolerate and indeed welcome and, while making constructive suggestions for its alleviation, it is something we should be prepared to bear with patience and fortitude—at least till we are treated to a return of our miracle.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Anyone spending all or most of the day in synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, will have noticed how often the word emet (“truth”) and its derivatives crop up in the extensive liturgy that addresses the issues of confession, repentance and the quest for forgiveness. In short we are to acknowledge the truth of who we are and what we have done, to strip away the sheker(“falsity”) that can so easily insinuate its way into playing a major part in our lives, and to stand before God as our true selves with the sincere aspiration that we will seek to do better, to be better, in the year ahead.

Emet plays a key role in Pirkei Avot. It is one of the three qualities upon which the continuation of civilised life depends (1:18). Acknowledgement of the truth, however inconvenient it may be, is one of the seven signs of a wise person (5:9); setting oneself on the path of truth is listed as one of the 48 steps to acquiring Torah (6:6).

While the Yom Kippur liturgy contrasts emet and sheker, Pirkei Avot makes no mention of sheker at all. This is unsurprising if we remember that Avot is not a philosophical tract on the nature of abstract concepts but a set of practical guidelines for moral Jewish decision-making. Thus, while truth and peace are both shortlisted as values upon which the world’s survival depends, a mishnah in the first perek (1:12) advocates following the path of Aaron in loving peace and pursuing peace. Aaron famously accomplishes this path midrashically by falsely telling each of two adversaries that the other was sad to be in dispute and wanted to make peace.

If truth is accepted as a relative value rather than an absolute, we can accommodate the concept of the partial or incomplete truth, when words that are spoken are literally true but do not tell the whole story. But how far can not-quite-truth be acceptable? There is a countertrend towards promoting the absolute value of truth. This can be seen in the Sefer Chasidim, where Rabbi Yehudah HaChasid disapproves of the practice of improving even a true story by embellishing it—even if the story has didactic value which is enhanced by the embellishment. It can also be seen in the Chafetz Chaim’s important work on lashon hara (improperly telling tales of others, whether true or false). This work covers much of the same ground as Rabbeinu Yonah’s Sha’are Teshuvah, but effectively converting what were previously regarded as middot(discretionary canons of behaviour) into mitzvot (binding commandments).

A related area of truth and falsehood is that of midrashic teachings, many of which are fanciful and, in real-world terms, impossible. Are they emet because the message they convey is true, or sheker because they did not happen, could not happen or clash factually with other midrashim on the same subject? Here the range of opinions is wide, spanning those who accept as a matter of faith that all midrashim are true and those who discount their veracity—however plausible they may be—on the ground that they are midrashim. Many people adopt the position that many midrashim are literally false but metaphorically true, and that the metaphorical truth trumps the literal falsehood. However, this convenient solution is not, so far as I am aware, flagged by their authors except where the tales are described as mashalim (“parables”), such as Rabbi Akiva’s famous citation of a dialogue between a cunning fox and some remarkably self-aware fish (Berachot 61b).

This leaves us on Yom Kippur with a difficult decision: do we repent telling an untruth or half-truth because we have lied and thus introduced more sheker into the world? Or do we decide not to repent, even if by doing so we are effectively judging our own actions and pre-empting the decision of the heavenly court? Readers of this post now have a year to decide before Yom Kippur comes around again.

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we repent

Tonight the vast majority of Jews, practising or otherwise, mark Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. For some it is an intense and deeply moving day of prayer, fast, introspection and seeking forgiveness. For others it is one or more of those things. For all of us it is a chance to step out from our ordinary lives for a day and ask ourselves just what sort of people we are. Whether we take that opportunity or not is up to us.

Today is erev Yom Kippur—the eve of the Day of Atonement. It a very different day and often an extremely one. Since the fast commences in the late afternoon. Many of us rush home from work far earlier than usual to wash and eat the large festive meal that sets us up for rather more than 25 hours without food or drink. Numerous customs are associated with the day, including the giving of charity.

Not everyone knows that, just as it is a mitzvah to fast on Yom Kippur itself, it is also a mitzvah to eat well on erev Yom Kippur and someone who does so is regarded as though he has fasted twice. Some people take the opportunity to do just that, keeping a bag of nuts or raisins, a packet of sweets or some other tasty items to nibble at random across the day. Unlike Pesach, when it is a mitzvah to eat the unleavened matzah, the Torah does not specify any particular food ahead of the fast, so the choice is left to the consumer. Anyone who wants to suffer on Yom Kippur can opt for salty foods that leave them with a raging thirst. This may not however be the most efficacious way to approach the long, hot day that faces them.

Ultimately, while we should stand in awe of God on the Day of Atonement and repent our sins, the day is not a day of sadness and mourning. It is—or should be—a day of happiness because we have the chance to relegate our bodily needs to second place and let our spirits soar. It is a day for setting the record straight, for drawing a line under our recent past and for starting again along the paths our lives are to take.

Does Pirkei Avot have a special message for Yom Kippur? Nothing is said explicitly about the day, and implicit in the teaching of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (Avot 2:15) is the key to why this is so. If, as Rabbi Eliezer says, a person should repent one day before he dies, he will be in a state of regular if not constant repentance by the time the Day of Atonement comes round. This is the religious equivalent of training daily before running a marathon and getting into good shape. If you do this, the event itself will be less daunting.

Do not be despondent if you have not been strenuously training yourself right through the year for Yom Kippur. The chances are that you will at least be in training for eating well on erev Yom Kippur, so make the most of it!

Do it deliberately!

Ahead of Yom Kippur -- the Day of Atonement and the occasion on which we think of God's judgement of us as being irrevocably sealed -- here's a short thought on the exercise of one's judgement, taken from Rabbi Reuven Melamed's Melitz Yosher.

The first actual teaching in Pirkei Avot, one that emanates from the Men of the Great Assembly themselves, is הֱווּ מְתוּנִים בַּדִּין, be deliberate in judgement. These words have a judicial flavour to them and many commentators emphasise how important it is for judges to be cautious and meticulous when seeking to reach a decision in the cases before them. This is because a judge's long experience of similar cases can lead him to favour a decision that is similar to those reached in previous cases even though the facts before him may be slightly but significantly different; there is also a danger that long-time familiarity with the relevant laws will result in them being misremembered if their words are not carefully rechecked.

Rabbi Melamed observes that being deliberate in one's judgement is actually the foremost principle that a person should employ in every walk of life. When thinking about performing a mitzvah, avoiding the transgression of a prohibition or just making routine decisions in one's life, we should stop and think, weighing up the wisdom and the real meaning of what we do.

In his seminal work, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman explains that we cannot in practice cogitate upon every action we undertake. Much of the time we act on autopilot. If we have to stop and think each time we take a step, life becomes intolerable, normal existence impossible. This does not however affect Rabbi Melamed's view of the advice of the Men of the Great Assembly, which is clearly addressed only to the sort of decisions we should make consciously (but often do not).

One final thought: can we presume that the decisions we make as to which decisions are the ones that we have to think carefully about are themselves decisions that require us to think carefully?

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 2022: 

Friday 30 September 2022: Is a bur a boor, or something more? We look at the three-way relationship between learning Torah, having a day job and fearing sin.

Wednesday 28 September 2022: Don't just sit and learn! For God's sake get a job ... Pirkei Avot offers support to both sides of the learn-or-work debate -- and here's a fresh perspective on it.

Sunday 25 September 2022: Shanah Tovah! A happy new year to you all. For once, here's a post that is self-explanatory.

Friday 23 September 2022: Lions, foxes and a mysterious proof verse. Several classical commentators explain the mishnah about being a tail to lions rather than a head to foxes by reference to a verse from Proverbs that no longer appears in the Ethics of the Fathers.

Wednesday 21 September 2022: Portrait of a prophet: another reason for not judging by appearances; A midrashic "case study" of Moses shows the dangers of superficial assessment of others.

Monday 19 September 2022: Do good, feel bad? Fulfilment of a divine commandment should make us feel great about ourselves. Avot advocates the virtues of charitable giving, though that can have quite the opposite effect.

Sunday 18 September 2022: A vanishing hatred. We take a deeper look at Ben Azzai's warning that we should not regard any fellow human lightly.

Friday 16 September 2022: Goodwill to all men. How can we ascertain whether the idea of greeting everyone with a cheerful countenance really does mean "everyone" and not just other Jews?

Wednesday 14 September 2022: Avot, Elul and repentance: it's not too late. A few simple thoughts about the best way to make use of the month that leads up to the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Tuesday 13 September 2022: Does God accept bribes? A further comment. We look at the Meiri's contribution to this great debate.

Sunday 11 September 2022: Escape from captivity. Rabbi David Hazan's David BaMetzudah opens with a description of the unusual circumstances in which he came to write his commentary on Avot.

Friday 9 September 2022: Are you a man or a chameleon? Is a person's individuality compromised by the need to conform to norms and meet the needs of others, or is it determined by these things? 

Monday 5 September 2022: Left dangling: limits to free will revisited. Returning to one of Judaism's favourite topics, we suggest that there is a half-way stage between total free will and complete predestination.

Sunday 4 September 2022: Orphaned, Unloved: Another seemingly unwanted commentary on Pirkei Avot is unearthed. Information concerning it and its author is earnestly requested.

Friday 2 September 2022: Seniors and Juniors: One can learn a lot from those higher up in the hierarchy and those below, even though what one learns may be quite different in each case.

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Avot Today blogposts for August 2022
Avot Today blogposts for July 2022 
Avot Today blogposts for June 2022 
Avot Today blogposts for May 2022
Avot Today blogposts for April 2022
Avot Today blogposts for March 2022

Is a bur a boor, or something more?

This is the second of two posts with a common theme, based on the Tiferet Tzion commentary of Rabbi Yitzchak Ze'ev Yadler.

Hillel teaches (in the first part of Avot 2:6):

אֵין בּוּר יְרֵא חֵטְא

In English: “A boor cannot be a sin-fearing person”.

This apparently abrupt and dogmatic generalisation has invited much discussion over the years. This discussion can be conveniently divided into the consideration of three questions: (i) what actually is a “boor” in this context? (ii) what is meant by “a sin-fearing person” and (iii) why should the fact that a person is a boor deprive him of the ability to fear sin? These three questions are clearly related, inasmuch as the answer to question (iii) is contingent upon the way we understand that is meant by “boor” and how we view “sin-fearing”.

In Hillel’s mishnah the boor is one of five defective character-types, the other four being the am ha’aretz (variously understood as someone who, in Torah terms, is uneducated or uncultured), the bayashan (being timid, this person is afraid to ask questions and will not therefore learn well), the kapadan (irritable or irascible and therefore unsuited to teaching) and the marbeh vischorah (who is too greatly engaged in business and commerce to impart Torah to others). Since the boor and the am ha’aretz are adjacent and potentially overlapping concepts, discussion tends to focus on how the boor and the am ha’aretz differ and, if one reads all the commentaries on this issue, one could be forgiven for thinking that there is really very little difference between them at all.

Rabbi Yitzchak Ze’ev Yadler takes a different approach in his Tiferet Tzion. His starting point is an earlier mishnah in the same chapter (Avot 2:2) in which Rebbi’s son Rabban Gamliel teaches that it is a beautiful thing for a person to combine Torah study with a regular occupation since the exertion that is demanded of someone who combines Torah study with a day job will remove sin from that person’s consciousness.

The word בּוּר (bur) indicates something (or in this case, someone) that is empty. It is the capacity to pursue Torah and a worldly occupation that distinguishes humans from members of the animal kingdom. When engaged in both or possibly either of these activities there will be no room to contemplate sin. But if both are emptied out, a person becomes a bur and, like the animal, has no awareness of sin and therefore no capacity to fear it or its consequences.

It is possible that, while the mishnah refers specifically to learning Torah, it may be equally applicable to the learning of any system of morality that points to considerations of rewards for good behaviour and punishments for sins, thus embracing the moral basis of all three Abrahamic religions.

Don't just sit and learn! For God's sake get a job ...

In recent weeks I've made frequent use of a commentary on Pirkei Avot, Tiferet Tzion, by Rabbi Yitchak Ze'ev Yadler, which I picked up for 10 shekels in a street sale of unwanted and abandoned books. Before moving on to sample the approach to Avot another commentator, I'm posting two final pieces based on Rabbi Yadler's book which deal with different mishnayot but share a common theme. Here's the first:

The Talmud (Berachot 35b) brings a famous argument between Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and Rabbi Yishmael as to whether it is better to sit and learn Torah full time, as Rabbi Shimon contends, or to work when it is time to work and learn when it is time to learn, as Rabbi Yishmael maintains. The passage, in full, reads like this.

Our Rabbis taught: “And you shall gather in your corn” (Deut. 11:14). What is to be learnt from these words? Since it says: “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth” (Joshua 1:8), I might have thought that this instruction is to be taken literally, so it says: “And you shall gather in your corn”, which implies that you should combine the study of them [i.e. the words of the Torah] with a worldly occupation. This is the view of Rabbi Yishmael.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai says: “Is that possible? If a man ploughs in the ploughing season, sows in the sowing season, reaps in the reaping season, threshes in the threshing season, and winnows in the windy season, what will become of the Torah? No! But when Israel perform the will of the Omnipresent, their work is performed by others, as it says: ‘And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks…’ (Isaiah 61:5). and when Israel do not perform the will of the Omnipresent their work is carried out by themselves, as it says: ‘And you will gather in your corn’.  Not only that, but the work of others will also be done by them, as it says: ‘And you will serve your enemy…’ (Deut. 28:48). Said Abaye: “Many have followed the advice of Ishmael, and it has worked well; others have followed Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai and it has not been successful”.

As I mention in my book, this argument continues even today and both sides can cite the authoritative support of great sages on whom they rely.

Anyone taking the teachings in Pirkei Avot as a whole will find that this great chasm between the “nothing but Torah” and “Torah in its right time” camps is reflected there too. Much of the sixth perek is in effect an extended paean of praise for Torah and an affirmation of its rightful place at the summit of Jewish endeavour. Against that, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel asserts that it is not learning but action that is the objective of Torah study (Avot 1:17) and Rabban Gamliel, son of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, praises the combination of Torah learning with a worldly occupation (Avot 2:2) on the ground that it is this that causes all sin to be forgotten; he adds that, in the absence of some sort of worldly occupation, one’s Torah learning is batelah (“of no effect”).

Commenting on what appears to be Rabban Gamliel’s harsh assessment of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s position, Rabbi Yitchak Tzevi Yadler draws our attention to another mishnah (Avot 3:6) in which Rabbi Nechunya ben Hakanah  promises that anyone who opts for Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s stern regime and takes upon himself the yoke of Torah will find that two other yokes—those of government and of having to make a living—will be removed from him.

According to Rabbi Yadler, when Rabban Gamliel advises taking up a worldly occupation as well as learning Torah, he is not at odds with Rabbi Nechunya ben Hakanah. That is because Rabban Gamliel’s advice is addressed to the ordinary Jew in the street, as it were, and not the night-and-day Torah student. For the person whose head is totally immersed in his learning there is (or should at any rate be) no need to forget sin since such a person shouldn’t be thinking about it in the first place, never mind closing his Gemara and wandering off in order to commit it. But for the person who only studies Torah at the times fixed for doing so, the Torah content of his day is insufficient to blot out inappropriate thoughts and actions entirely and that is why it is good for him to engage in an worldly occupation as well as learn.

But what of those people who occupy themselves totally in Torah? They are the people for whom, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai asserts, everything will be done by others.

Going back to Rabban Gamliel’s mishnah, we can understand it in two ways. One is that “Torah plus worldly occupation” means that a person learns and works. The other is that, while one person learns, it is not he but another person who works, in order to meet the needs of the one who is in learning. If we have a situation in which one person is ostensibly learning but no other person is working to meet his needs, we have “Torah without a worldly occupation” and it is this that appears to testify against Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s promise. As Rabbi Yadler puts it, there is, Heaven forfend, a chillul Hashem (a desecration of God’s name) because people will look at a person who dedicates his entire life and energy to learning Torah, receiving no support from others, and say “Is this the Torah and is this its reward?”

Shanah Tovah! A Happy New Year to You All

Tonight brings with it Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Despite its special significance this event receives no special mention in Pirkei Avot, a tractate that shows no favouritism towards calendar dates.  That does not mean, however, that Avot has nothing to teach us.

Tasked with answering the question “Which is the good path for a person to follow?”, Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel (Avot 2:13) advises us that it is the path of looking to the future in order to look for likely outcomes. This is valuable counsel for anyone who wants to make something positive of the year ahead.

For better or worse, God has placed us in His world and has given us the choice of whether to believe in Him and how close or distant to Him we want to be. This means that, to make the most of our lives, we have to work out what sort of relationship with God we want. But there’s more to life than accommodating God. We also have to accommodate other people, each of whom is also endowed with freedom of choice and with whom we can cooperate or compete. Finally we have to live with ourselves, to be comfortable inside our own skin and to be able to look ourselves in the mirror without feeling that we are looking at someone who has routinely failed us and who will probably continue to do so.

There is no simple formula for life that can enable us to strike a perfect balance between these three sets of relationships. If however we follow Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel’s advice and try to look ahead and predict the likely consequences of what we say, what we do and what we let ourselves think and feel, we may be able to improve our chances of navigating the New Year in a state of relative equilibrium.

I wish all Avot Today blog readers a happy and prosperous year 5783.

כתיבה וחתימה טובה

Lions, foxes and a mysterious proof verse

Open any contemporary siddur or volume of mishnayot today and look for the teaching of Rabbi Matya ben Charash (Avot 4:20). There you will find the following text:

הֱוֵי מַקְדִּים בִּשְׁלוֹם כָּל אָדָם, וֶהֱוֵי זָנָב לָאֲרָיוֹת, וְאַל תְּהִי רֹאשׁ לַשֻּׁעָלִים

In English: “Be the first to greet all people—and be a tail for lions, not a head for foxes”.

This does not appear to be the text that the Catalan scholar Rabbi Menachem Meiri (1249-1315) contemplated when he authored his commentary on Avot. The Mishnah in his text continues with a proof verse from Proverbs:

הלוך (הוֹלֵךְ) אֶת-חֲכָמִים וחכם (יֶחְכָּם); וְרֹעֶה כְסִילִים יֵרוֹעַ

In English: “He who walks with wise men shall be wise, but the companion of fools will suffer for it” (Mishlei 13:20).

Rabbi Samuel ben Isaac de Uçeda states explicitly that this was the text before Meiri in his compendious Midrash Shmuel (1579).

The link between this mishnah and the proof verse was clearly understood to exist in earlier times, even among scholars who probably did not have it in their copies of Avot. Rabbi Simchah ben Shmuel (died 1105) quotes the first half of the verse in the commentary on Avot found in the Machzor Vitry; rather later, Midrash Shmuel cites references to it by Rabbenu Yonah (1200-1263) and Rabbi Matityahu Hayitzhari. It continues to be cited even today.

This post addresses the extent to which the proof verse supports the mishnah.

It seems to me that the plain meaning of the verse from Proverbs is directed to the company one keeps. This proposition is supported by commentators on Tanach Essentially, the company of the wise enhances one’s wisdom, while the company of fools has the opposite effect. If we learn the verse in this manner, we can make the following observations:

• The proposition that one can learn wisdom from the wise is already implicit in the axiom in Avot 4:1 that the person who is wise is one who learns from others. It is unclear why we should need a repetition of this proposition;
• Our Mishnah here appears to emphasise the significance of a person being a “tail” or a “head”, that is to say a leader or a follower. The proof verse makes no express reference this issue;
• The lion in mishnayot and midrash is associated with many positive characteristics (see e.g. commentaries on Avot 5:23, “be as strong as a lion”), but wisdom is not one of them;
• Likewise, the fox in mishnayot and midrash is associated with cunning, guile and natural craftiness (see e.g. Rashi, Sanhedrin 39a)—but not with foolishness.[1]

Rabbenu Yonah sought to read the Hebrew as indicating that, while a person trails along behind the wise and is therefore metaphorically their tail, he finds that the fools follow him and he is therefore their head. While this explanation has been accepted and amplified by the Vilna Gaon and Rabbi Ovadyah Yosef, it does not read convincingly and Ralbag implicitly rejects it in his commentary on Proverbs: there he writes of the subject of the verse pursuing either the wise or the foolish—and thus being the “tail” in each case. Malbim however expressly follows the tails-and-heads approach.

We are left to contemplate the utility of verses that do not actually prove or clearly illustrate the point of a mishnah or baraita but which remains associated with them. There are many examples of such verses and the Judeophile Christian scholar R. Travers Herford points to several in his Ethics of the Talmud. While it would be quite wrong and thoroughly inappropriate to discard these verses, we are entitled to ask why they were chosen and what function they truly serve. It is improbable that their inclusion was solely for mnemonic reasons. Perhaps they are traces of earlier, deeper or more complex teachings that have been lost to us in the process of transmission through the generations. It would be good to know.

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[1] Even in Rabbi Akiva’s famous parable of the fox and the fish (Berachot 61b), where the fish call the fox “foolish”, they preface this jibe with a recitation that the fox is called pike’ach shebachayot (“the cleverest of creatures”).

Portrait of a prophet: another reason for not judging by appearances

Rabbi Yisrael Lifschitz’s Tiferet Yisrael commentary on tractate Kiddushin (at 4:14) tells a story that deserves our attention at a time when Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Judgment, is fast approaching. This story, as told by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski in Visions of the Fathers, runs as follows:

A desert king heard of the greatness of Moses, and sent his finest artists to bring back a portrait of him. He then submitted the portrait to his physiognomists to study it and describe Moses’ character. They reported that the portrait revealed a man who was vain, arrogant, lustful, greedy, and degenerate. Inasmuch as this was in sharp contrast to what he had heard of Moses, the king went to the Israelite encampment to see for himself.

Upon meeting Moses, the king saw that his artists had indeed captured every minute detail, and he could not understand how his physiognomists could be so far off course. Moses explained to him, “Your physiognomists can interpret only the innate characteristics with which a person was born. All they said of me was true insofar as those were the traits that I was born with. However, I struggled to overcome them and to transform my character”.

In terms of Pirkei Avot, the story illustrates the following:

• The association of power with self-discipline and control of one’s yetzer hara (evil inclination) rather than physical prowess (4:1);
  
  
• The danger of judging by appearances (4:27);
  
  
• The importance of admitting the truth rather than denying it (5:9).

The story additionally reflects the notion that self-control goes further than making sure one does the right thing and forbears from doing the wrong thing. True self-control goes further because its proper exercise can help a person to change even his or her inclinations and inherent middot, personal qualities.

We generally assess people by reference to the way they behave. This can be misleading since humans tend to do their good deeds in public and commit their bad ones when they are out of the public eye (sadly the media have reported a string of examples in recent years of public benefactors who were also private predators). We never however see a person’s private desires and inclinations. These are the province of God alone, and it is He alone who judges us as the sort of individuals we aspire to be.