Acts of kindness: how the Torah records an upgrade

I am currently perusing the first volume of Avot Lebanim: Shiurim beMasechet Avot, compiled from the teachings of the late and much-loved Rabbi Chaim Druckman. This volume, published by Or Etzion in 2019, is a pleasure to behold: the print is clear and spaced out well on the page; the Hebrew is accessible to the non-scholar and the content is of a warm, conciliatory nature rather than in-your-face confrontational mussar.

Like many Avot commentaries, this one opens by asking why this tractate is named Avot (“Fathers”) in the first place. Out of the many answers given over the centuries Rabbi Druckman highlights six, one of which is that the chapters deal with Avot leshmirat haTorah (loosely translatable as “main headings for keeping the Torah”). By way of an example he picks a teaching of Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah (Avot 3:21), “Im en Torah en derech eretz, ve’im derech eretz en Torah” (meaning here “If there is no Torah, there is no basic standard of good behaviour there is no Torah, but if there is no basic level of good behaviour, there is no Torah”—though this can be translated and understood in several other ways).  

According to Rabbi Druckman, the significance of this maxim can be illustrated by reference to three of the greatest and most righteous personalities in the Bible: Noah, Abraham and Moses.

Noah, described in the Torah as being “righteous in his generations” and therefore as being worthy to be saved when almost all other forms of life were to be wiped out, carried out God’s instructions to the letter. He did exactly what God told him; not more and not less. This is itself an extraordinary achievement and should not be denigrated. But Noah could have done more. He saved his wife, his three sons and their wives but made no attempt to dissuade God from His destructive intent or to save anyone else.

Abraham, the first person in the Torah to establish an ongoing relationship with God and to partner with Him in bringing awareness of the deity to an idol-worshipping world, was also confronted with God’s destructive intentions when he was informed of God’s plan to wipe out Sodom, Gomorrah and the other cities nearby where the level of interpersonal evil and immorality had reached an intolerable level. There, daring to argue with God, Abraham seeks to avert this dire decree if 50, 45, 40, 30, 20 or even 10 good folk can be found in the destruction zone. But Abraham could have done more. He could have pressed God to spare all the inhabitants of the condemned plain, but he only argued that God should not kill the righteous together with the wicked.

Moses, who led the Children of Israel through good times and bad for some four decades, was also faced with an angry God who stated His intent to wipe out the backsliding nation of newly-emancipated slaves and start the Jewish people afresh with Moses himself. Moses did not hesitate to press God to spare the entire nation despite the episode of the golden calf, thus seeking to save both the righteous and those who manifestly were not.

Noah, Abraham, Moses—all three were remarkable men, whose standards greatly exceeded the behavioural norms of their day and whose influence we still feel even millennia after their deaths. Abraham, in particular, we respect for the level of chesed, kindness towards his fellow humans, which became his trademark. But it was Moses who set the highest standard for kindness towards others when he called for forgiveness of a people who were scarcely in a position to seek it for themselves and who were hardly deserving of it. And, of these three outstanding personalities, it was Moses alone who had the benefit of learning Torah. It was this that lifted his level of chesed to such a lofty level.

To return to our mishnah in Avot, derech eretz—the way we behave towards and with regard to others—may have considerable value even when it is without Torah. But it is the addition of the values of the Torah that enables its practitioners to maximise their performance of chesed and achieve the highest attainable level of kindness towards their fellow humans.

Good names, bad names

The concept of a shem tov (literally “good name”) features twice in Pirkei Avot. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai praises the value of a good reputation at Avot 4:17 where he teaches:

“There are three crowns—the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood and the crown of sovereignty—but the crown of a good name surpasses them all”.

Hillel agrees that a good reputation is a valuable asset, but points at Avot 2:8 to its limitations:

“One who acquires a good name acquires it for himself; but one who acquires words of Torah acquires life in the World to Come”.

So is a good name, a good reputation, a sort of formal recognition of one’s personal qualities and achievements, or is it merely a non-transferable label that ultimately adds up to nothing of substance?  Avot does not resolve this issue. There are however two further teachings on which we should reflect before drawing any conclusions.

The first is another teaching in the name of Hillel, at Avot 1:13: negid shema, avad shemei. There is some disagreement as to the precise meaning of this neat Aramaic soundbite, but it is generally rendered along the lines of “a name made great is a name destroyed”, suggesting that the cultivation of fame and a good reputation will be in vain if it is not done for the sake of Heaven. The second is a baraita at Avot 6:9, taught in the name of Rabbi Yose ben Kisma:

Once I was walking along the road and a man came across me. He greeted me and I returned his greeting. He said to me: "Rabbi, what place do you come from?” I said to him: "I’m from a great city of sages and scholars”. He said to me: "Rabbi, would you like to live with us in our place? I will give you a million dinars of gold, precious stones and pearls". I said to him: "If you were to give me all the silver, gold, precious stones and pearls in the world, I wouldn’t live anywhere but in a place of Torah”….

The baraita continues by affirming the point made by Hillel above, that it is through the acquisition of Torah that one acquires one’s World to Come. The curious thing about this baraita is that the stranger who encounters Rabbi Yose ben Kisma asks where he comes from but does not ask his name. This would suggest that the Rabbi’s worth has been assessed by reference to (possibly) his appearance, (more likely) his behaviour and demeanour but not by reference to his name and reputation.

There is another sense in which a name is taken to be “good” or “bad”, where it is not so much the reputation as the name itself that is at stake. This theme is developed by Rabbi Yaakov Hillel in volume 1 of his Eternal Ethics from Sinai, where at Avot 1:3 he introduces a teaching by Antigonos Ish Socho with a discussion of the name Antigonos and of the propriety or otherwise of giving a child a non-Jewish name. He writes:

“If Antigonos of Socho, the saintly Tanna who received the Oral Tradition from Shimon HaTzaddik, were alive today, he would no doubt be encouraged to have his name changed, a practice that has gained considerable popularity in our times. Antigonos is no more a Biblical name that Hurkenos, Sumchus or Tarfon. These names, all from non-Jewish sources, were given long ago to children who developed into some of our people’s greatest Torah sages. When parents select a name for a child, the best choice is clearly a Jewish name, because the name of a righteous, pious, and scholarly Jew will have a positive influence on the child. But let us say that, for whatever reasons, a parent chooses to name a daughter Zlata or Altun rather than Rivka or Rahel. That has become this particular child’s name and it should not be tampered with”.

Following further discussion of the correct spelling of names, divine inspiration in choosing them and the mechanism for changing a name, Rabbi Hillel continues:

“…[C]urrent trends in name-changing have it that Rahel is a ‘very bad name’, and absolutely no one should be named Rahel. … Our forefather Yaakov, a very great Mekubal, was surely privy to whatever inside information today’s practitioners would like to claim. If Rahel is a ‘bad name’, why did he not feel impelled to change the name of his beloved wife? The same could be said of Rabbi Akiva and countless other great Torah scholars throughout our history whose wives bore the name of the Matriarch Rahel”.

I had no idea that Rahel/Rachel was a ‘very bad name’ and wonder if any of my more kabbalistically inclined readers might enlighten me. Be that as it may, my personal feeling, for what it is worth, is that if the reputation that attaches to a person’s name is indeed personal—as Hillel suggests at Avot 2:8—we should not assume that the attributes associated with that person’s name are in any sense transferable. Each person should be known by their name but valued in accordance with their individual attributes. It also seems to me that giving a child an auspicious name from Tanach or traditional Jewish sources may also be a laudable practice. But it offers no guarantee that children will absorb or display the qualities of the person after whom they are named, as the roll-call of Jewish prisoners in Israel and the diaspora sadly indicates.

Humility, Heep and a pile of baggage

The words “humble” and “humility” carry so much baggage in English that it can be uncomfortable to see them repeatedly appearing in translations of Pirkei Avot. The false, unctuous humility of Uriah Heep in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield makes him one of the most vividly and instantly unlikeable characters to emerge from English literature, while association with the words “humiliate” and “eat humble pie” suggests that humility is not an inherent human quality but rather something that is inflicted painfully on others.

Some words in Hebrew can be reasonably stretched to bear more than one English meaning. Thus kavod (“honour”) and yirah (“fear”) can both be rendered as shades of “respect”, but shefal ru’ach and anav—the two Hebrew terms usually rendered as “humble”—offer little in the way of variation. Shefal ru’ach literally means “low-spirited”, but that conveys to the English ear a state of gloomy depression rather than humility.   

Our sages have in the past emphasised the link between humility and the need for each of us to believe—to convince ourselves—that we as humans are of no worth whatsoever and that it is only through the grace of God that we have any apparent merits at all. This position is rooted in midrashic and aggadic tradition. But the same tradition also points in other directions. Thus the sages also teach that we are to regard the world as if it was created specifically for ourselves and that we are the children of princes—and even the humblest of Torah scholars is entitled to “an eighth of an eighth” of pride. Pirkei Avot advocates a maximised form of humility (see e.g. Avot 4:4, 4:12) but also that we concede the truth (Avot 5:9), and the false modesty of scholars who repeatedly boast that they know nothing does nothing to promote the cause of humility among those who need to acquire it for themselves.

One way forward with humility is to explain it in terms that make it sound more accessible to ordinary people. Chanoch Levi’s English translation of Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner’s Ru’ach Chaim does that rather well in the course of the long, discursive essay in which Reb Chaim reviews the deeper significance of Avot 4:1. There he writes:

“It is important to realize that humility involves more than simply absorbing taunts and insults without exacting retribution. Humility is a state of mind, the recognition that one’s worth is no greater than that of any other man” (italics added).

This definition of humility is not only something that lies within the grasp of everyone; it is also compatible with the popular contemporary notion that all humans are equal. The statement that “I am no better than anyone else” is far easier to internalise than “I am of no worth when compared to anyone else”. However, “equal” is not the same as “identical”. We are all different and Reb Chaim acknowledges that too:

“For although a person may achieve great success, he may also suspect that perhaps he has failed to realize his true potential. Others might accomplish less, but may have maximized their potential; they are considered to be on a higher level”.

If we are honest with ourselves, we all recognise episodes in our lives in which we know that we could have done better, even if others do not see it. From my own years as a law teacher I can recall classes I gave which the students really enjoyed and thought were particularly good, though the high degree of enjoyment they derived and their consequently high rating of the class were as much attributable to the facts that they had insufficiently prepared for the class and that I, knowing that this would be the case, took less care in my own preparation for it than I could have done. In instances such as this, one has to resist the temptation to feel pride in a job less well done.

 

 

Now is the time!

The summer is here, Pesach is past and the traditional season for learning Pirkei Avot has arrived.

Regular readers of Avot Today will know that, just under a year ago, Targum published my book, Pirkei Avot: A Users’ Manual. I exercise great self-restraint in not continually plugging it on the Avot Today blog and Facebook group, since I believe that it would be counterproductive to do so and would alienate rather than influence potential purchasers. Having said that, I do believe that the book is worth a read. It is addressed to contemporary readers, it asks lots of questions—some quite provocative—and is even occasionally fun.  Pirkei Avot: A Users’ Manual does not browbeat readers with heavy it seeks to get the reader to love Pirkei Avot and to adopt it as a moral compass.

If you would like to buy the book, it’s available on Amazon and, if you are in Jerusalem, you can pick up a copy from Pomeranz Booksellers. Given its size (it spans three volumes) and weight, it makes a most imposing barmitzvah or batmitzvah present. If you don’t want to buy the book, no problem—you are welcome to keep reading Avot Today for as long as you feel you are getting something out of it.

Making a fence: do we really need 5,000 commandments?

For those readers who like to ponder a point and reflect on the perhapses and possibilities of life, Eternal Ethics from Sinai by Rabbi Yaakov Hillel can make quite scary reading. Rabbi Hillel’s detailed and forthright account of Pirkei Avot is not for spineless speculators or doubting Thomases. He writes for those who want confident, no-nonsense and reliably authentic orthodox pronouncements on the meanings of the mishnayot of Avot, for those who are troubled by questions but comforted by answers.

An example of what I mean can be seen in Rabbi Hillel’s approach to Avot 1:1, in which the Men of the Great Assembly advise us to “build a fence round the Torah”. Citing the Shelah HaKadosh he writes:

“Moshe Rabbenu gave our people the basic 613 commandments as he received them at Sinai, among them 365 negative commandments. He added a few precautionary decrees as necessary. In succeeding generations the Prophets, and later the Tannaim, instituted additional enactments and decrees in keeping with the needs of their times, a process that has continued throughout the centuries. An increasing number of humrot have become part of our accepted practice.

Why is this so? Surely we are not more pious than our saintly ancestors.

The imposition of additional strictures was essential precisely because of the ongoing deterioration in our nation’s spiritual level. A variety of decrees and restrictions were introduced not because we of the later generations are more meticulous in our religious observance, but because we face challenges more difficult than our ancestors ever knew. As we said, the closer we come to the era of Mashiach, the more virulent the attack of the Forces of Impurity.

At the time of the Giving of the Torah, 613 commandments were enough to keep the evil inclination at bay. Today we would need at least 5,000. Our only defense against the onslaught is humrot: the numerous stringent pious practices, customs, and observances that safeguard our fulfiillment of Hashem’s commandments. These stringent practices all attain the status of Torah-ordained commandments”.

On one level this trenchant summary of our position and of the utility of additional stringencies is unassailable. Almost every word of Rabbi Hillel can be sourced and supported by sound and respected rabbinical authority (I don’t know where the figure of 5,000 commandments comes from. Can anyone let me know?) But this should not preclude us from encouraging debate.

For one thing, the Torah itself cautions against adding anything to it. This does not mean that the rabbis have not been given a fair measure of discretion but, rather, that the rabbis themselves should be careful to do so only where and when a positive outcome can be predicted. We know that this has not always been the case: the Talmud itself records rabbinical decrees that were not accepted by the very people they were supposed to benefit.

For another thing, it is not only the rank and file corpus of the Jewish people that has declined. The same has happened to the rabbis. We no longer have a Knesset Gedolah (Great Assembly) or an authoritative religious court in the form of a Sanhedrin. In its place we have many individual rabbis who, though some are extraordinarily learned and exemplary in their piety, would never themselves claim to be a par with the Tannaim, Amoraim, Rishonim or even the Acharonim of earlier generations. Even the best and greatest of our rabbis, given their humility and their increasing distance from the sort of world in which most non-rabbis face their greatest challenges, lack the authority to make decrees that bind the entire body of the Jewish people. Where such attempts have been made, their acceptance has been patchy at best and may be said to have fostered division and dissent rather than a greater degree of piety or probity. If examples are needed, just look at the different customs and practices adopted even within the most committed communities towards smartphones, the internet and the pursuit of professional qualifications in secular institutions.

There is a final point to ponder. While an increase in humrot and restrictions may indeed achieve the desired result of keeping Jews within the flock, as it were, it also means that those who leave the flock are infringing an increasing number of rules of conduct that have achieved the status of Jewish law. Apart from the obvious impact that this will have on such judgement as they may face when their lives reach their end, there is also the worrying possibility that the increased quantity of laws and stringencies may serve as a bar to repentance and return to Jewish practice.

Rabbi Hillel is right. Fences round the Torah have an important part to play in preserving Jewish observance, culture and identity. But they must be the right fences, and they must not serve as a barrier to re-entry for those who have strayed “off the derech”.

AVOT TODAY miscellany

Is Pirkei Avot becoming more popular? My survey of online citations of mishnayot and baraitot from Avot over the first quarter of 2023 shows a big leap when compared with figures for 2022. Citations are up a whopping 32.6 per cent, from 46 to 61, with the same two favourites leading the pack: Hillel’s teaching at Avot 1:16 (“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?”) and Rabbi Tarfon’s caution at Avot 2:21 (“It’s not for you to finish the task, but nor are you free to desist from it”). Hillel and Rabbi Tarfon scored 5 cites apiece, with the next two most popular mishnayot earning 3 cites each: these are Yehoshua ben Perachyah (Avot 1:6: “Make a teacher for yourself, acquire a friend and judge people meritoriously”) and Ben Zoma (Avot 4:1: “Who is wise/strong/rich/respected?...”). With the summer Avot season just starting up, expect much more from the Ethics of the Fathers in your online reading material. We will report again in July on citations over the first half of the year.

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The Dee Pirkei Avot Project. In the wake of the tragic, horrific murder of Lucy, Maia and Rina Dee, the Dee Pirkei Avot Project has been set up, to enable families all over the world to learn Avot le'ilui nishmot the three Dee ladies. If you would like to join the Project and receive each week three mishnayot from Avot together with discussion points, follow this link.

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 Last month’s most popular post: In “Don’t Rush to Answer”, which we posted on 13 March, we revisited Avot 5:9, which lists seven ways in which you can tell whether someone is a chacham, a wise person, or a golem, an uncultivated clod. Why should the way one answers questions be one of the crucial indicators? This Facebook post received 158 views, which made it last month’s readers’ favourite. You can check it out here.  

Curiously, this topic was not so popular with readers of the Avot Today blog, which publishes exactly the same posts at virtually the same time. Blog readers were more inclined to read “Is the Devil Really in the Detail?”, which considered how Pirkei Avot views generalities and specifics. If that is more to your liking, you can find it here.

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Coming soon to a screen near you… If you have the good fortune to live in Jerusalem, this Sunday evening, 16 April 2023, you can watch the world premiere of “Abarbanel: A Man of Many Worlds”. This is the latest release by Rabbi Berel Wein and the Destiny Foundation. The performance commences at 8.00pm at the Pelech Girls’ School, Baka, and if you can’t get there you can watch it on Zoom. I’m embarrassed to say that, when I first saw the promotional material, I read it as “A Man of Many Words”, since the Abarbanel’s commentary on the Torah is extremely long. So is his Nachalot Avot, an excellent if lengthy commentary on Avot which has recently been condensed into a shorter and more easily readable form (see details here). Further details of the movie launch can be found on the illustration that accompanies this post, since at the time of writing there was no information on the Destiny Foundation website.

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Progressing from Pesach: it's the Torah that counts

For many of us, the lead-up to Pesach is one of the busiest and most intense periods of our year. Culminating in the retold narrative of the exodus from Egypt, the rich symbolism of the seder and often bringing family and friends together, it can make great demands on our physical, spiritual and emotional resources. Once we get through the first night, it is tempting to heave a sigh of relief and think to ourselves “Phew! We got there in the end!”

In truth we must resist this temptation. There is still a mountain to climb. Exactly seven weeks after we reach Pesach, we celebrate Shavuot, the festival that marks the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Linking Pesach to Shavuot is the mitzvah of sefirat ha’omer, when we nightly count the 49 days from our redemption to our acceptance of the Torah.

The Torah tells us the story of our emancipation from the slavery and our ascent to a level at which God deemed us fit to be His chosen people and keep His laws. But there is also a baraita in Pirkei Avot that tells us about receiving the Torah. Avot 6:6 lists no fewer than 48 things that enable us to acquire Torah. The Jewish Bible explains how we received the Torah as a nation. Pirkei Avot explains how we can receive it personally, as individuals.

There is almost a one-to-one correspondence between the 49 days of sefirat ha’omer and the 48 means of acquiring Torah. This means that we can focus each day between Pesach and Shavuot on another way to learn, internalize or deepen our understanding of Torah. But what can we do when we reach erev Shavuot, when we still have one day to count but there is no corresponding device for enhancing our Torah knowledge? 

Happily, there is an answer. There is something else we need to do if we are to acquire Torah thoroughly—but it’s not on the list of 48. This “missing” element is chazarah, revision. Whatever we learn in Torah, once is not enough. We should go over our learning again to make sure we truly understand it. So, when Shavuot is almost upon us, we know what we must do!

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Heard from Rabbi Eli Brunner, who heard it from Rabbi Elya Lopian.

 

 

 

Trump, Netanyahu and political credibility: a message for Pesach

Whatever one may think of Donald Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu, they both possess a valuable asset: they enjoy a personal following of supporters who both believe them and believe in them. They are by no means the first politicians to have this gift, which may be found on both sides of the political spectrum and is no respecter of race or gender (think Nelson Mandela, John F. Kennedy, Huey P. Long, Martin Luther King Jr., Eva Peron, Mahatma Gandhi).  

Should we either believe them or believe in them? It can be difficult not to. Donald Trump’s air of assured confidence, Bibi Netanyahu’s mellifluous voice, John F. Kennedy’s energetic insistence—all have demanded our attention.

But Pirkei Avot counsels us to be cautious.

Rabban Gamliel, the son of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, warns us to be careful: politicians who seek our support do so for their sakes, not ours, and do not stand up for us when it is we who need help (Avot 2:3). This is problematic in a democratic society, where this maxim presumably applies to all politicians and political appointees to administrative functions and we therefore have to be equally wary of everyone. We are also urged to pray for the welfare of the state, no matter which politicians are in charge (per Rabbi Chanina segan HaKohanim at Avot 3:2). In this instance, while the prayed-for objective remains the same in each case, our thoughts and wishes will inevitably vary depending on whether the government is one which we solidly support or one which we fervently wish to be rid of.

Avot is not however the place to which we turn for guidance. In the Book of Psalms (Tehillim 146:3) we recite every morning the words אַל-תִּבְטְחוּ בִנְדִיבִים בְּבֶן-אָדָם, שֶׁאֵין לוֹ תְשׁוּעָה (“Put not your trust in princes, nor in any human being since they have no means of saving”). This is quite explicit. Much as we may legitimately listen to and accept the logic of our leaders if it convinces us, we should go no further. We should not place our trust in them (the Malbim goes further: we must not do so). If we find ourselves doing so, we should be asking ourselves some sharp questions about why this is so. One wonders how Rabbi Akiva, whose extraordinary wisdom and Torah learning was legendary, grappled with this question before identifying messianic qualities in the military leader Bar Kochba.

The most extraordinary thing about “Put not your trust in princes” is that these words were penned by a King, David, who would have known better than any sage what it feels like to be trusted and how difficult it is to live with the unfulfilled expectations of one’s subjects (see eg Berachot 3b). In this, David was displaying a remarkable degree of honesty and humility—two qualities that Avot fully advocates. But, while King David recognised the pressures of being believed and trusted, an earlier leader of Israel was concerned with the exact opposite.

The narrative of the Exodus of the Children of Israel, their redemption from slavery in Egypt and their entry into the Promised Land begins when Moses, attracted by the Burning Bush, encounters God. Moses, whom the Torah records as the epitome of humility, asks three questions: Why me? What do I have to say? What if no-one believes me? All three reflect the same thing: Moses’ awareness of his lack of charisma and the absence of anything that could be construed as a personal following. In any comparable setting, one may struggle to imagine God having the same conversation with Donald Trump or Benyamin Netanyahu.

So, this Pesach, when we sit down to the seder service and imagine that it is not our forebears but ourselves who are coming out of Egypt, let us consider for a moment that, while Moses was being tested with the trials of leadership, the rest of us may have felt equally tested by the requirement to buy into his leadership and believe in him. The magnitude of this test cannot be underestimated. It is not until after the Children of Israel have crossed the Reed Sea and seen the dead Egyptian charioteers with their own eyes that the Torah records our belief in Moses (Shemot 14:31). Midrash records that four-fifths of our number never made it out of Egypt at all. Was this a consequence of their failure to accept Moses and his message?

Happy Pesach, everyone, have a chag kasher vesame’ach!

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

In case you missed them, here's a list of items posted to the Avot Today Facebook Group in MARCH 2023: 

Wednesday 29 March 2023: Patience! Pirkei Avot is full of encouragement to practise various virtues, but not all are immediately apparent. Where, for example, does it teach about patience?

Monday 27 March 2023: But learning isn't quite everything. The significance and correlative benefits of Torah study are well known. But Avot 6:1 offers the prospect of a wide interpretation of what engagement in Torah actually entails.

Wednesday 22 March 2023: A "fitting" application of a prudent mishnah. Taking a view of what's coming ahead isn't just the prerogative of the scholar. Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel's advice applies to shelf-fillers too.

Friday 17 March 2023: Is the devil really in the detail? How does Pirkei Avot strike a balance between viewing the big picture and narrowing one's perspective?

Wednesday 15 March 2023: Body, soul and a torn-up prayer? How "fixed" does a prayer need to be? Pirkei Avot shines a light on a well-known Talmud passage concerning the last two congregants left in a place of prayer at night.

Monday 13 March 2023: Don't rush to answer! We learn from Avot of the importance of taking one's time before answering a question. There's more than one reason why this is a good reason.

Friday 10 March 2023: For heaven's sake! Forget fun, let's just talk of doing things well. Rabbi Yose HaKohen (Avot 2:17) teaches that whatever we do should be for the sake of heaven. Here Rabbi Berel Wein offers an original explanation of what this means.

Tuesday 7 March 2023: Purim! Handle with care. Many people get quite drunk when celebrating the festival of Purim. This practice comes with responsibilities too.

Monday 6 March 2023: Judging the Chafetz Chaim favourably. In his great book on guarding one's speech, the Chafetz Chaim looks as though he has missed a trick and forgotten to quote a mishnah from Avot. But this need not be the case.

Friday 3 March 2023: What the Dickens! Let's treat our children with respect. Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua (Avot 4:15) sets the bar high for the way we should behave towards our schoolkids. 

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Avot Today blogposts for February 2023
Avot Today blogposts for January 2023
Avot Today blogposts for December 2022
Avot Today blogposts for November 2022
Avot Today blogposts for October 2022
Avot Today blogposts for September 2022

Patience!

A problem familiar to anyone involved in learning Pirkei Avot today is that of coming up with a translation that both does justice to the original text and makes it relevant to contemporary readers.  This problem is particularly troublesome with abstract nouns that describe human qualities.

“Patience” is a good example. There is no doubt that the sages of the Mishnah valued patience in their time just as highly, if not more so, than we do today. However, there is no word in the vocabulary of the Tanach, the Mishnah or Midrash that appears to correspond precisely with that value as we understand it today. The use of word סבלנות (savlanut) in Ivrit today when referring to patience is a modern usage; its etymology carries overtones of putting up with a load rather than with biding one’s time while one seeks or awaits a hoped-for outcome.   

Does patience feature in Pirkei Avot among the qualities a Jew should seek to acquire and practise? Writing in Eternal Ethics from Sinai, Rabbi Yaakov Hillel discusses the requirement that judges be “deliberate in judgment” (Avot 1:1) and adds:

“There is another element to being deliberate in judgment. Our Sages tell us that patience is one of the forty-eight means through which Torah is acquired [Avot 6:6]. Patience in Torah study means allowing every topic the time and unrushed, in-depth learning required for full comprehension”.

This suggests that patience is part of being “deliberate in judgment”. But where in Avot 6:6 does patience appear? A survey of popular English translations of Avot 6:6 suggests that, in two of the most popular of them (ArtScroll and Chabad.org), patience is not listed among the 48 elements of Torah acquisition at all.

Among those translations in which patience is listed, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Paltiel Birnbaum both use “patience” as a translation of אֶֽרֶךְ אַפַּֽיִם (erech apayim), although this term is more commonly translated as “slow to anger”. These translators are consistent within Avot in so far as they use the same translation in Avot 5:2 and 5:3 to describe God’s attitude towards two sequences of sinful generations, but both translate the same term as “slow to anger” when used elsewhere in their prayerbooks (at Shemot 34:6-7).

Two non-Jewish scholars (Herbert Danby and R. Travis Herford) translate erech apayim as “long suffering”. This actually supports the “erech apayim is patience” theory because the word “suffering” has itself changed meaning. In the 19^th and early 20^th century it was common for “suffer” to bear the meaning of “allow” or “tolerate”. It is this nuance that may have led Irving M. Bunim (Ethics from Sinai, vol 3) to render the term “long-suffering patience”.

So far we have seen that the virtue of patience may be a subset of being deliberate in judgment or as an alternative rendering of “slow to anger”. But might Avot have more to say on the subject?

There is a Baraita at 6:1 which lists 29 elements that pertain to a sincere and committed Torah scholar. One of these is that the scholar should be erech ru’ach (literally “long-spirited”). How do we render “long-spirited” into English today? While there is no actual consensus, one gets the impression that “patient” is the most popular option: Rabbi Sacks, Paltiel Birnbaum, Chabad.org and some ArtScroll publications offer “patient” (others prefer “long suffering”). This was not however the way earlier commentators understood the term: both Rabbenu Yonah and the commentary attributed to Rashi take erech ru’ach to be a synonym for erech apayim and warn of the danger of losing one’s temper, while the text of Avot on which the Maharal based his Derech Chaim seems to have read erech apayim and not erech ru’ach. The Abarbanel (Nachalat Avot) treats the term as being part of the overall concept of modesty and humility.

It seems to me that Avot, like much of the Mishnah, often speaks in terms of actual instances rather than general principles. Thus at Avot 5:9 we learn of the seven attributes of the chacham, the wise person, whom we contrast with the golem, someone whose behaviour remains unpolished.  Two of the seven attributes offer practical examples of (im)patience: a person should not interrupt others while they are speaking and should not answer questions off the cuff but should think before answering. From this wise counsel we can begin to construct a principle that one should be patient. Indeed, Rabbi Menachem Mordechai Frankel-Teumim appears to be edging towards something like this in his Be’er Ha’Avot when, commenting on erech ru’ach in Avot 6:1, the two examples he brings are those of Avot 5:9: not interrupting someone while they are asking you a question and not rushing to give an answer.

So, to summarise, “patience” definitely seems to be lurking within the body of Avot. But to work out exactly where is a task that takes a fair bit of … patience.

But learning isn't quite everything

The first Baraita in the final chapter 6 of Avot offers a great deal for those whose commitment to Torah is sincere and serious. This teaching by Rabbi Meir opens promisingly:

כָּל הָעוֹסֵק בַּתּוֹרָה לִשְׁמָהּ זוֹכֶה לִדְבָרִים הַרְבֵּה, וְלֹא עוֹד, אֶלָּא שֶׁכָּל הָעוֹלָם כֻּלּוֹ כְּדַאי הוּא לוֹ

What does this mean? Who is the person who is עוֹסֵק בַּתּוֹרָה (osek baTorah, literally “engaged in the Torah”)? There is a wide consensus that these words apply to the many advantages and privileges to which a person is entitled when studying Torah. Thus, for example:

“Whoever studies Torah for Torah's sake alone, merits many things; not only that, but [the creation of] the entire world is worthwhile for him alone” (Chabad.org)

“Whoever engages in Torah study for its own sake merits many things. Furthermore, the entire world is worthwhile for his sake” (ArtScroll; the Koren Pirkei Avot reads virtually the same).

The Baraita then goes on to list nearly 30 things to which one who is osek baTorah is entitled. Such a person is

“…called friend, beloved, lover of God, lover of humanity; he makes God happy and makes people happy. He is clothed in humility and awe. [Torah] makes him fit to be righteous, pious, upright and faithful; it distances him from sin and brings him close to merit. From him, people enjoy counsel and wisdom, understanding and power… The Torah grants him sovereignty, dominion, and legal perspicacity. The Torah's secrets are revealed to him, and he becomes as an increasingly productive wellspring and as an unceasing river. He becomes modest, patient and forgiving of insults. The Torah uplifts him and makes him greater than all creations”.

Classical commentaries have long affirmed that this Baraita is pointing to the the advantages of Torah study, some at great length. These include the Maharal (Derech Chaim), Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner’s Ruach Chaim, the Anaf Yosef (Rabbi Chanoch Zundel ben Yosef), Rabbi Menachem Mordechai Frankel-Teumim, citing the Turei Zahav) and Rabbi Yitzchak Magriso (Me’Am Lo’ez). The siddur commentary of Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch and Irving M. Bunim’s Ethics from Sinai take the same view.

But maybe this Baraita is teaching more than that.

In his Tiferet Tzion, Rabbi Yitzchak Ze’ev Yadler draws our attention to what the Baraita does not say, as well as what it does. He briefly observes that the text before us talks of someone who is osek baTorah—not someone who is lomed Torah (“studying Torah”). Osek baTorah is a wider term. Everyone who learns Torah is osek baTorah, but one can be osek baTorah without learning Torah at all. The classic example, which the Tiferet Tzion cites, is that of the Yissaschar-Zevulun relationship, where one brother goes to work in order to support his brother in learning. Both receive the same reward.

Looking beyond this brief comment, we might speculate that not just brothers with business acumen but many others who are involved in Torah processes are covered by this Baraita. For example, is not a person who is put to great inconvenience in order to perform a Torah mitzvah also osek baTorah? And what of the parents who expend time and effort in ferrying children to and from Torah classes, or the youngsters who visit hospitals on Rosh Hashanah with a shofar to blow for patients who cannot attend their synagogue?

To conclude, there are many degrees of being osek baTorah and it is possible to read our Baraita as encouraging them all.

 

A "fitting" application of a prudent mishnah

Earlier this month, concerned about the consequences of merrymakers overdoing things in their Purim celebrations, I wrote:

At Avot 2:13 Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel describes the "good path" as that taken by the person who foresees the consequences of his or her actions.

This observation is not aimed solely at people who are more fun to deal with when they are sober. It is of general application, including those that have nothing to do with the niceties of religious practice.

A couple of days ago I visited one of our local general stores. Once upon a time it was quite shabby and poorly lit, but shortly before Covid it received a welcome and somewhat overdue internal overhaul. Old wooden shelving was replaced by smart new display units on which the goods on sale were piled floor-to-ceiling. Like many stores of its kind, this one had narrow aisles that particularly favoured customers who were slender and unencumbered by buggies.

When I got to the store, I spotted that it had taken delivery of a number of smart heavy duty flat-pack display units for some of its better-selling products. Staff members had taken a few of them inside the store and immediately began to assemble them. Once they had done so, the horrible truth emerged: they were of no use since there was nowhere to put any of them without blocking the aisles to the point of impassability. Since they were large and bulky, manoeuvring them down the aisles towards the exit was tricky, especially on account of their large size.

Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel would have been happy to offer his advice here, I’m sure. A moment’s thought would have revealed how prudent it would have been to work out first where the display units might go and then to measure them up to see if they would fit. Time and effort would have been spared and several tempers would have remained considerably cooler.  

Is the devil really in the detail?

“The devil’s in the detail” has become a popular and oft-quoted way of indicating that (per Wikipedia) "something may seem simple, but in fact the details are complicated and likely to cause problems". 

For Jews who attend synagogue this Shabbat, the Torah reading appears to be little other than a double dose of detail.  From Exodus 35:4 to 40:33 we read of the manufacture of the components of the Tabernacle and its accoutrements, of the materials used for those purposes and of their weight and dimensions. The message is clear: every detail is of crucial importance and all materials must be accounted for. This is the message that we are to internalise and carry with us in all our dealings with God.

What does Pirkei Avot have to say about this? On one level, Rabbi Akiva
teaches (3:19) הַכֹּל לְפִי רוֹב הַמַּעֲשֶׂה (“…everything is an accordance with the generality of action”) that our assessment of events, and of our own conduct, is ultimately not focused on minutiae but on a wider perspective. On the other hand, the importance of what we may regard as small details is recognised too. Thus even the smallest of mitzvot are regarded as being of great value (4:2) and the loss of just one item of Torah learning is described as being akin to spiritual suicide (3:10). We are also taught that we should not think lightly of any material item, since there is nothing in the world that does not have its place, that is to say, its use or function (4:3).

We can see from this that, in our daily lives, we must bifurcate our view. We should recognise the potential significance of even the smallest and most apparently trivial detail while retaining a sense of proportion and not letting go of the bigger picture.

Keeping the details and the big issues simultaneously in our sights is a challenge, but this is part of the challenge of Avot itself. How we respond to others is a matter of middot, of measuring our response. As parents, employers or colleagues, there are times when we sense that it is important to overlook even something that is of major importance but that, on other occasions, we should take a firm line when even a small issue erupts. We may not always get the balance right, but Avot at least gives us some guidance as to how we might just do so.

 Postscript: If the devil is in the detail, what happened to God?

It is only since the 1960s that “the devil’s in the detail” has become the prevalent version of this saying. Earlier versions refer not to the devil but to God. A French version, "Le bon Dieu est dans le détail" ("the good God is in the detail") is generally attributed to the nineteenth century novelist Gustave Flaubert, while a German version, “Der liebe Gott steckt im Detail”, has been in circulation since the 1920s.

How, or why, did the devil displace God? I doubt that this shift was caused by post-War anti-God sentiment or, to opposite effect, by a reluctance to make any allusion to the Deity that was not motivated by awe or deep respect. More likely, I feel, is the widely-shared sentiment that details are a nuisance and that their presence in great quantity obscures the bigger picture. As such, they should be attributed to the mischievous machinations of a malign figure, this being designated “the devil”.

Body, soul and a torn-up prayer

In Gemara Berachot (5b) we learn a principle from Abba Binyamin that had obvious practical relevance in times when places of prayer were located outside areas of Jewish residence and there were neither street lights nor police patrols:

When two people enter [a synagogue] to pray, and one of them finishes his prayer first and does not wait for the other but leaves, his prayer is torn up in his face.

Since I am usually one of the last to finish my communal prayers, this teaching means a lot to me. I can imagine a person struggling to keep his mind on his prayer while resisting the constant urge to speed up and make sure he has someone else to walk home with, mindful of the possible dangers of walking home alone.

The Kerem Chemed of Rabbi Yehudah Rabinovitz brings an entirely different explanation of this Gemara, which he heard from Rabbi Yitzchak Yaakov Weiss ztz”l.

Abba Binyamin’s teaching is by way of allegory. The two “people” who go off to pray together are really a person’s body and soul (effectively the mind). Ideally, body and mind should be united in the act of prayer. However, sometimes one’s mind goes home first, as it were, leaving the body to carry on praying without thought or proper attention. Prayer such as this is of no great value to the person praying and may as well be torn up. There is a popular rhyming jingle that reflects this explanation: tefillah belo kavanah keguf beli neshamah (“prayer without meaning is like a body without a soul”).

So how does one avoid this danger? Once again we cite Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel’s teaching at Avot 2:18: “don’t make your prayer fixed [i.e. routine or without feeling], but rather [think about] mercy and supplication”.

Incidentally, situations in which the mind leaves one’s prayer while the body is still engaged in it crop up surprisingly often. One is at weddings, when the maariv prayer has been called for after dinner, but the band strikes up with a thumpingly loud dance number right in the middle of one’s silent meditations. Another is when an impromptu minyan gets together to pray during the half-time interval of a particularly exciting football match. One is often faced with a choice between not praying at all, waiting to pray at a later and more propitious time (if there is one), or praying with a quorum but recognizing that one faces an uphill struggle to do much more than articulate the words.

 

Don't rush to answer!

One of the seven tests of someone who is wise, in contrast with the person who simply does not know how to behave, is that of how they answer a question (Avot 5:9). The wise approach is not to answer in haste, but to pause for thought before responding.

It is not difficult to think why this might be so. A hasty answer stands a better chance of being wrong, or at least incomplete. In addition, a person who spills out an answer without stopping to think might be creating the false impression that he or she has truly mastered the subject, while the speed is actually the product of a dearth of understanding rather than a superfluity of it. Explanations of this mishnah are generally along these lines, and many commentators regard the matter as so obvious that they offer no discussion of this proposition at all.

An exception is the Tiferet Tzion of Rabbi Yitzchak Ze’ev Yadler, which considers the swift and snappy answer from the perspective of the questioner: if you ask a question and the answer comes hurtling straight back at you without a moment’s thought, might you not feel embarrassed that the answer was obvious and/or that your question was stupid or insubstantial? The need to protect the feelings of students who have to ask questions is already noted earlier in Avot (at 2:6) by Hillel, who tells us that an irritable, impatient person cannot teach.

My many years teaching undergraduate, postgraduate and professionally qualified students taught me a lot about answering questions. Below are a few personal observations. Readers may wish to add their own.

Being asked a question to which one instantly knows the answer, especially if the questioner is a good student, is immensely pleasurable. The temptation to “grandstand” and give a magnificent impromptu answer can be hard to resist, as I found for myself, particularly in my earliest years as a law teacher, when I was less confident of my own skills and sometimes needed a boost. Being able to dash off a virtuoso answer off the top of my head provided this buzz, though some of these answers did require “qualification” or “further explanation” in order to give them cogency.

A swift response can be an over-response. When I have been asked variations of the same question by students over a period of years, I have sometimes had an answer that was “ready to roll” but which, becoming gradually wider and fuller in its substance, required thought from me if it was not also to answer points that the student in front of me was not actually asking.

An answer must fit the requirements of the questioner. In my own student days, my questions were sometimes answered by a format such as “I can tell you the right answer, but I can’t tell you precisely why”, usually followed by the suggestion that I go to the library and read up the reasons for myself. I used to find this really annoying. A student cannot quote an unreferenced and unsupported opinion of his professor in an examination and expect to get away with it. If the teacher concerned couldn’t tell me the reason, I didn’t care what his answer was and whether it was right or not.

The question that is asked may not be the question for which the questioner wants the answer. It is not uncommon for students of any subject to be quite inexpert in phrasing their questions. An attentive teacher, listening carefully to the question, may be able to discern this and check with the questioner before setting out to answer it.