Getting a second opinion

While many people respect and even venerate their physicians, they do not always unquestioningly accept their word. When the prognosis is unfavourable or the treatment is unpleasant, they can seek a second opinion which, they hope, is more favourable or congenial to them. The second opinion may be better than the first, or it may not. It may even corroborate it. Until you receive it, you never know.

Jewish tradition has no objection to getting a second medical opinion. But it is different with questions we ask our rabbis. When a person is facing a religious or ethical problem that requires the input of a rabbi, “shopping around” for the desired answer is strongly frowned upon. You stick to your rabbi and take him as you find him: if you accept his lenient rulings, you accept his stringencies too. Pirkei Avot appears to buttress this position. Avot 1:6 (Yehoshua ben Perachyah) and 1:16 (Rabban Gamliel) both teach: “Take for yourself a rabbi”. One of the explanations of this teaching is that a person’s religious position should be consistent, and this degree of consistency is achieved by learning one’s Torah—and receiving personal advice—should be from the same source.

As the world has become increasingly complex, specialisation has become the norm. We never expect a single medical practitioner to be expert in every branch of medical science. Rabbis too frequently acquire halachic expertise in specialisms that were unrecognised in past generations. Advances in science and technology now demand a high level of detailed knowledge before a rabbi can give a ruling in many areas today. Food production, electronics, communications technologies, hydraulics and in vitro fertilisation are obvious examples. 

Just as a family doctor will refer complex issues up the line, sending it to a consultant who possesses the knowledge and experience to understand the true nature of a problem and ideally resolve it, so too do many communal rabbis increasingly refer questions to colleagues who have made a particular study of Jewish law in fields that are technologically advanced, obscure or recondite. But the situations of the family doctor and the communal rabbi are not entirely the same.

In most areas of medicine, what is treated is the condition itself and the applicability of the expert’s answer does not depend on the nature of the individual patient (though psychiatry is an obvious exception). When a rabbi sends a question up the line for an expert opinion, the expert may not have in front of him the person who seeks the answer—and this factor can be of critical importance where there is a spiritual or social dimension to the question itself. Is the person asking the advice someone who is moving towards religious observance or struggling with it? Does he or she have a strong or supportive family? Will a strict ruling strengthen that person’s Jewish commitment or drive them away from it? These are side issues when viewed in terms of pure halachah, but they are in practice vital.

Rabbi Yaakov Hillel (Eternal Ethics from Sinai) observes this problem from another angle, finding a novel interpretation of Hillel’s teaching at Avot 2:5: “אַל תָּדִין אֶת חֲבֵרָךְ עַד שֶׁתַּגִּֽיעַ לִמְקוֹמוֹ” (“Do not judge your fellow until you reach his place”). He writes:

If we always consult the same rabbi, we will eventually develop a personal connection, enabling him to better answer our questions. Because he knows us and is familiar with our circumstances, he knows if it is appropriate to rule leniently or strictly … We find allusion to this principle later in Avot: Do not judge your fellow man until you reach his place”. … I often explain these words differently: a man should not judge—or in other words, issue a halachic ruling—until he is aware of the questioner’s “place”—his spiritual standing. Only then can he know whether the questioner can handle a stricter ruling, or whether it is ultimately better to provide a more lenient, yet still halachically acceptable answer.

There are a couple of things we can extract from this. One is that a communal rabbi who passes a question on to a halachic expert should always take care to communicate not only the question itself but as much relevant information as may be relevant. The other is that, when we help ourselves to halachic rulings that we find online, we should remind ourselves that these rulings were not necessarily given with us in mind and we should exercise prudent caution before treating them as our “second opinions”.

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Rosh Hashanah, in just two minutes

For many people the traditional Rosh Hashanah prayers are a challenge that they accept with reluctance. The synagogue service is long and can easily last six or seven hours. In place of the usual prayers one finds many poetic and allusive texts that are sometimes hard to read or understand—even in translation. Some people attend services out of loyalty but still bring something to read for when the going gets too tough or when they simply can’t focus on what Rosh Hashanah is supposed to be about. Others again have no problems coping with the service but bring a little supplementary reading material with them into which they can dip whenever there is a pause in the proceedings or the chazan is shifting into operatic mode.

Even if you can’t make it to shul, or get there and wonder what to do next, don’t worry! You can capture much of the essence of Rosh Hashanah in just one mishnah from Avot. At 4:29 Rabbi Elazar HaKappar teaches this:

הַיִּלּוֹדִים לָמוּת, וְהַמֵּתִים לִחֳיוֹת, וְהַחַיִּים לִדּוֹן, לֵידַע וּלְהוֹדִֽיעַ וּלְהִוָּדַע שֶׁהוּא אֵל, הוּא הַיּוֹצֵר, הוּא הַבּוֹרֵא, הוּא הַמֵּבִין, הוּא הַדַּיָּן, הוּא הָעֵד, הוּא בַּֽעַל דִּין, הוּא עָתִיד לָדוֹן. בָּרוּךְ הוּא, שֶׁאֵין לְפָנָיו לֹא עַוְלָה, וְלֹא שִׁכְחָה, וְלֹא מַשּׂוֹא פָנִים, וְלֹא מַקַּח שֹֽׁחַד, וְדַע שֶׁהַכֹּל לְפִי הַחֶשְׁבּוֹן. וְאַל יַבְטִיחֲךָ יִצְרָךְ שֶׁהַשְּׁאוֹל בֵּית מָנוֹס לָךְ, שֶׁעַל כָּרְחָךְ אַתָּה נוֹצָר, וְעַל כָּרְחָךְ אַתָּה נוֹלָד, וְעַל כָּרְחָךְ אַתָּה חַי, וְעַל כָּרְחָךְ אַתָּה מֵת, וְעַל כָּרְחָךְ אַתָּה עָתִיד לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן לִפְנֵי מֶֽלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים, הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא

[Translation] Those who are born will die, and the dead are to live. The living will be judged—to learn, to teach and to understand that He is God, He is the maker, He is the creator, He is the One who understands, He is the judge, He is the witness, He is the prosecutor, and He will judge. He is blessed because before Him there is no unrighteousness, no forgetting, no favouritism, and no taking of bribes. Know that everything is strictly according to His reckoning. Don’t let your evil impulse convince you that the grave is your escape route for against your will you were created, against your will you were born, against your will you live, against your will you die, and against your will you will have to give an account and assessment of yourself before the King, the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

Rosh Hashanah marks our acknowledgement that God is the King of kings, that He has created us and that He is also the judge of all that, for better or worse, we do. Our mishnah echoes this sentiment.

Rosh Hashanah is also the Yom HaDin, the Day of Judgement, and this mishnah is all about facing the reality that lies behind the label. It is we who are being judged and it is God who is judging us. No-one escapes this process since we are all called to account for our actions, our words and even our unworthy thoughts.

Giving an account of ourselves demands that we can recall what we have done, why we have done it and whether our deeds, words and thoughts comply with the ancient covenant that God established with our ancestors. This requires memory, which is why Rosh Hashanah is Yom HaZikaron, the Day of Remembrance.

The judgement process takes place annually, when the old year ends and the new one begins. Rosh Hashanah being an annual calendar event, we understand that we are subjected to regular annual judgement. There is more to it than that, though. Each year we are examined during God’s interim assessment of our ongoing performance in life. Additionally, as our mishnah indicates, we face a final judgement, once our lives have run their course. Each year, as He chooses, He may grant us more life or decide that we have lived long enough. We cannot know why some people are allowed to continue their lives while others are not: God is our witness, He knows all the material facts; He calls us to answer for what we have done. Finally He makes His decision. This is in accordance with His plan, which He fully understands but we do not.

There is no way to beat the system and no way to cheat it. Escape justice by committing suicide? That doesn’t work. Why? Because it is only after death that the final judicial process takes place: far from evading trial, the act of taking one’s life in order to escape judgement simply brings forth the trial date. Bribing God won’t work either: there is nothing we can give Him that he needs except our love and fear of Him. Yet, if we love and fear God, we should not be feeling the need to escape His judgement since we will believe we have done our best. We should then be confident that, as a fair arbiter of our conduct who understands the failings and foibles of humankind, He will be kind in judgement, not harsh.

This teaching is not for Jewish eyes only. Everyone, Jew and gentile alike, must face the same routine of annual interim judgement followed by a final one. We are all created in God’s image and must do His bidding. Where we as Jews differ is that we are held to a higher standard than others. We are expected to behave properly and serve God to the best of our abilities in accordance with the extra rules which He has ordained for our service. Have we done so? We all have our own opinion of our performance, but it’s God’s opinion alone that counts.

So, if the long haul of Rosh Hashanah liturgy is not for you, do at least focus on this mishnah. It takes only a couple of minutes to read and think about—but a lifetime to appreciate.

AVOT TODAY WISHES ALL OUR READERS A KETIVAH VECHATIMAH TOVAH!

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Something to read when the going gets tough?

Many people struggle with the very long synagogue services that characterise our High Holy Days -- Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. One way to face this challenge is to bring in a book to read during parts of the service that are hard to understand, or when concentration slips and some appropriately Jewish distraction is sought.

If you are thinking of taking something to read, why not try a commentary on Pirkei Avot? The subject matter is serious enough, but accessible, and plenty of its teachings are directly relevant to seasonal topics such as God's judgement, reward and punishment. 

Here are some suggested commentaries you might want to try:

• The Koren Pirkei Avot, commentary by Rabbi Marc D. Angel, translation by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. Commentary and translation are modern, idiomatic and to the point. Some of the comments are quite thought-provoking, relating to contemporary social and political conditions.
  
  
• Avoth, in the Me'am Lo'ez series. Commentary by R' Yitzchak Magriso, translation by David N. Barocas. An easy read with a midrashic flavour and plenty of homilies.
  
  
• Eternal Ethics From Sinai, by R' Yaakov Hillel. Not for the faint-hearted, this commentary pulls no punches: either you are on the right path or you are emphatically not. Lots of painful mussar. Vol.1 has much material on God's judgement and the values of truth, justice and integrity.
  
  
• Visions of the Fathers, by R' Abraham J. Twerski. This much-loved and highly readable ArtScroll work highlights the psychological dimensions of Avot. 

There are of course many other English-language works on Avot and we are always open to suggestions and recommendations. Please feel free to share your thoughts with us!

Keeping the line open

My late mother-in-law was slow to adapt to the technology of mobile telephony. After much persuasion, she agreed to have a cellphone and would occasionally even use it to call us. But when we tried to call her on it, we usually unsuccessful. Why? Because she had not put her phone on. “We tried to call you”, we explained, “but you haven’t put your phone on”.  Her response? “I didn’t put it on because I didn’t know that you would be phoning me”.

At Avot 6:2 Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi teaches:

בְּכָל יוֹם וָיוֹם בַּת קוֹל יוֹצֵאת מֵהַר חוֹרֵב וּמַכְרֶֽזֶת וְאוֹמֶֽרֶת: אוֹי לָהֶם לַבְּרִיּוֹת מֵעֶלְבּוֹנָהּ שֶׁל תּוֹרָה

[Translation] Every day, a heavenly voice resounds from Mount Horeb (Sinai) proclaiming and saying: "Woe is to those creatures who insult the Torah”.

The question has often been asked: if a heavenly voice is emanating from Mount Sinai on a daily basis, why doesn’t everyone hear it? My mother-in-law provides the answer. If the line is open, if the potential recipient is prepared to receive a message, that message will get through. If not, however great the effort that goes into its the transmission, the message will vanish into the ether and no-one will ever know it existed.

We may think that we know all that we need to know in terms of Torah; we lead good Jewish lives and that’s quite enough for us, thank you. But this should not lead us to assume that we can turn off our receptors. The Torah may remain constant and unchanging through the generations, but each generation faces its own challenges. That’s why Torah teachers have to rise to the occasion and show how Torah remains relevant, indeed vital, in any period of change.

We must remain receptive if we are not to miss the messages that speak to the relevance of Torah. If we fail to keep our line open, we may miss the chance to appreciate how ancient wisdom and tradition can reasserts their values in the space we currently occupy. And that would be an insult.

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"Where do you come from, where do you go?"

“Where do you come from, where do you go?” How often nowadays does one hear this refrain being sung by youngsters as they dance happily to the thumping beat of “Cotton Eye Joe”, a song that has worked its way into current simchah playlists.

The same issues are tackled in rather more serious fashion by Akavya ben Mahalalel in Avot 3:1:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה. דַּע מֵאַֽיִן בָּֽאתָ, וּלְאָן אַתָּה הוֹלֵךְ, וְלִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עָתִיד לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן. מֵאַֽיִן בָּֽאתָ: מִטִּפָּה סְרוּחָה. וּלְאָן אַתָּה הוֹלֵךְ: לִמְקוֹם עָפָר רִמָּה וְתוֹלֵעָה. וְלִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עָתִיד .לִתֵּן דִּין וְחֶשְׁבּוֹן: לִפְנֵי מֶֽלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא

[Translation] Reflect upon three things and you will not come to the grip of sin. Know where you come from, where you are going, and before whom you shall give a full account of yourself. Where you come from—from a putrid drop; where you are going—to a place of dust, maggots and worms; and before whom you shall give a full account of yourself—before the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

Mishnayot like this are ideal material for serious commentary as we approach Rosh Hashanah, which is not just New Year’s Day but יום הדין (Yom HaDin, The Day of Judgement).

The core idea of the mishnah is clear enough. We start off as nothing greater than a drop of seminal fluid and our bodies end up under a couple of metres of earth—but our soul, our quintessential being—must still settle its account with our Maker, when our credits and debits are totted up and we are duly rewarded or punished, or both.

Our lives are bookended by conception, at one end, and death at the other, and the mishnah ultimately spells this out when it repeats its three questions. But why does it not supply its answers when it first asks them?

The Maharam Shik suggests that, in posing the questions, Akavya ben Mahalalel invites us to take a deeper perspective. Though our lives are bookended by conception and death, we are not conceived in a vacuum; nor do we live within one. We come from our parents and our families, and ultimately from our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When we die, we leave behind us our children, grandchildren and the future generations that lie beyond them. So, when we consider how to state our case before the Heavenly Court, we should be thinking not merely of our own performance in life but also how we measure against those whose ideals and aspirations are our inheritance and how greatly we have served as role models for transmitting our faith and our values to the generations yet to come.

It goes without saying that the best time to consider these things is while we are still alive and can do something about them.

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Having a good shout?

In my secondary schooldays I got shouted at a great deal. In this I was not alone. Most of my classmates got shouted at too. Our teachers—most of whom had served as officers in the British army during the Second World War—appeared to be enraged by even minor infractions of school rules, of which inevitably there were many. Only in later years did I come to appreciate that my teachers were not angry at all. In fact, they were quite jovial souls at heart. However, they had become accustomed to barking out orders to the soldiers under their command and assumed that this was the normal, indeed the best, way of achieving not just obedience but educational excellence in Latin, Greek, History and other subjects which, having read at University before the War, it was now their lot to teach.

Pirkei Avot cautions us with regard to anger. Being demonstrably slow to anger is an attribute of God himself (5:2, 5:3). Rabbi Eliezer (2:15) and an anonymous Tanna (5:14) both recognise that we do sometimes become angry but teach that we should not allow ourselves to anger easily, while being slow to anger is listed as one of the qualities a person needs in order to master Torah (6:6). Anger is regarded as a corrosive character trait and is even equated with idolatry (see eg Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot De’ot 2:3). But what of displaying anger, even when one is not particularly angry?

In his commentary in Tiferet Tzion on Avot 6:6 R’ Yitzchak Ze’ev Yadler reminds us that, even when it is necessary to display anger, one should first ensure that there are grounds upon which that display is justified. And even then, unlike my school teachers, one should first speak softly to see if that has the desired effect, rather than starting at maximum volume and blazing away as though one is still on the battlefield.

Next week Ashkenazi and Sefardi Jews alike will be reciting Selichot, penitential prayers, ahead of the High Holy Days.  A key feature of Selichot is that of reminding God that he is slow to anger. If we are to make an issue of this, we should at least make an effort to be as slow to be angry with others as we hope God will be with us.

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

Were you away last month? Just got home and missed the latest posts on Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers? Here's a list of what you missed.

Wednesday 30 August 2023: Temper, Temper!: When we judge others who lose their temper, are we influenced by our own susceptibility to getting angry?

Monday 28 August 2023: Handle with care! Learning from tales of the Sages: In theory, we are deemed wise if we learn from everyone -- but are there limits on what we can learn from exceptional individuals?

Friday 25 August 2023: Eat your dinner, for Heaven's sake! Can self-indulgence be justified if one also has a more lofty mindset?

Wednesday 23 August 2023: Truth Lite, or the real thing? While Pirkei Avot endorses the value of truth, this is a commodity that comes in different strengths. How do we handle this?

Monday 21 August 2023: Three big no-nos -- not so bad after all: Rabbi Elazar HaKapar cautions against jealousy, lust and the desire for honour, but there is a place for them in the lives of every one of us.

Friday 18 August 2023: Recycling sins: a thought for Elul. In the month leading up to the Jewish new year and the Day of Atonement, we should ask how effectively we dispose of our bad deeds and bad habits and check that they do not resurface under another guise. 

Wednesday 16 August 2023: Misleading words: what we ask for. Again on the subject of truth, we take a look at the vocabulary of deceit.

Monday 14 August 2023: Rabbi Eliezer's good eye. Rabbi Eliezer's advice as to the good path that we should follow needs a bit of explanation. What does he mean by "a good eye"?

Friday 11 August 2023: Manna from Heaven and the power of ko'ach: We look at a puzzling baraita in the sixth perek of Avot and offer an explanation.

Wednesday 9 August 2023: When love is not enough, try fear instead: One of the talmidim of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai is praised for the quality of his fear of sin. What's so special about this? Is it not something that everyone should have?

Sunday 6 August 2023: Was Shakespeare Jewish? And is there proof in Pirkei Avot? A provocative article on the Aish website raises the issue of the Bard's religious affiliation. We examine some of the evidence.

Wednesday 2 August 2023: Don't say "Mummy's in the toilet!" Is it safe to tell a little white lie? Sometimes it seems you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

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Avot Today blogposts for July 2023
Avot Today blogposts for June 2023
Avot Today blogposts for May 2023
Avot Today blogposts for April 2023
Avot Today blogposts for March 2023
Avot Today blogposts for February 2023

Absolute consciousness: are we aware of it?

 The final part of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi’s teaching at Avot 2:1 reads like this:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה, דַּע מַה לְּמַֽעְלָה מִמָּךְ, עַֽיִן רוֹאָה וְאֹֽזֶן שׁוֹמַֽעַת, וְכָל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ בְּסֵֽפֶר נִכְתָּבִים

In English: “Focus on three things, and you will not come into the grip of sin. Know what is above you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and that all your actions are inscribed in a book”.

Avot Today has often discussed different aspects of this guidance, which is open to many interpretations. The Dee Pirkei Avot Project recently used it as a springboard for the following question:

“How do you think our lives might change if we lived with absolute consciousness that our every thought, word, and action impacts the entirety of creation in a profound way?”

In other words, if the mishnah is inviting us to be continually aware of God’s supervision of our lives, because everything we do and say has an impact that God judges, what would happen if we were to do so?

I wonder whether such a thing as “absolute consciousness” even exists. God has created humankind with the ability to do more than one thing at a time. We call it multitasking, a grand label that can apply to something as trivial as chewing gum and listening to the radio while driving a car. We can perform serial tasks of this nature easily and usually succeed when we do so—but can we say that we are simultaneously absolutely conscious of all three, even if we exclude awareness of the profound impact that each of our thoughts, words and actions from the equation? And how often does the car reach its destination without us being able to recall quite how it got there?

For the sincere and practising Jew, the principle of שִׁוִּ֬יתִי יְהֹוָ֣ה לְנֶגְדִּ֣י תָמִ֑יד (“I have place God before me constantly”: Tehillim 16:8) is a sort of gold standard to which we ideally all aspire. In practice, it is impossible to maintain an absolute awareness of God’s presence at all times—and if one tries to add up the number of times a day in which one thinks of God at all on a busy day, the total can be embarrassingly small. I can scarcely imagine what it would be like to try to add to that awareness a further level of consciousness as to the impact of everything I say and do. And is the level of absolute consciousness as described in the quote above in any sense compatible with the daily task of living one's life?

Awareness of our impact on every facet of the world God created is however a useful tool both for our assessment of how we have performed over the past year and how we should strategise our plans for making the best of the year to come. Our awareness, like our knowledge, is at best imperfect and framed within the context of our own personal limitations. Even so, we must make the best what we have.

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Temper, Temper!

Here’s an interesting observation from R’ Yaakov Moshe Charlap (Mei Marom 2:52, cited by R’ Chaim Druckman, Avot leBanim) on the subject of how we judge other people. Avot Today has often cited the teaching of Yehoshua ben Perachyah at Avot 1:6, that we should judge people on a scale of favour, giving them the benefit of the doubt if it is possible to do so. R’ Charlap points out that our judgement of others can be as much a reflection of ourselves as of the person we are judging. Thus a person who is very rarely angry and only reaches that condition when sorely provoked, on seeing someone else displaying anger, is apt to conclude that this angry person must have been sorely provoked too and would not have lost his temper under normal circumstances. Presumably this works the other way too: someone who is quick-tempered, viewing someone else losing their temper, will empathise with them because his experience and perception is the same.

What does this mean in wider terms? Do we want to urge a man who is a wife-beater to judge someone else who abuses his spouse the same way because he appreciates how gratifying it may be? Surely not. Perhaps the point here is that, when looking at the conduct of another person and then excusing it or empathising with it, the onlooker should—without casting aspersions on the other person—use what he sees as a sort of behavioural barometer to measure the acceptability of this conduct. That way, before the onset of Rosh Hashanah and the great annual judgement to which we subject ourselves, we will have done a better and more honest job of assessing our own performance over the past year. That way too, we stand a better chance of putting our performance right for the year to come.

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Handle with care! Learning from tales of the Sages

The other day I found myself reading and re-reading the following passage:

How do we relate to opportunity? Let us learn from the Vilna Gaon, who appreciated the endless potential that comes with every moment of one’s stay on earth… The Gaon had a sister whom he had not seen for nearly 50 years. Travel was not easy in those days, but on one occasion she was able to make the trip to Vilna to visit her illustrious brother. He greeted her and, after a few minutes of conversation, excused himself to return to his Torah study. The Gaon’s sister was disappointed. “I don’t understand”, she told him. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other and I’ve travelled so far to come here. Can’t you give me another fifteen minutes of your time?”

He pointed out to her that his hair had already turned grey—a sign, he said, from the Heavenly Court that he was running out of time in this world. How could he spend the little time he had left on conversation unrelated to Torah? [R’ Yaakov Hillel, Eternal Ethics from Sinai, discussing Avot 1:14, “If not now, when?”, with citations].

On the principle of Ben Zoma at Avot 4:1 (that a person is wise who learns from everyone) we are obliged to learn something from this episode, and the Vilna Gaon is justly renowned at a phenomenal Torah scholar so we are bound to seek to learn not just from his writings but from his words and deeds. But what do we learn from the tale related here? Various possibilities present themselves and the are not all mutually exclusive. For example:

·         If one wishes to learn Torah properly, one should not allow oneself to be distracted from domestic and family considerations;

·         This episode illustrates the extent to which the Vilna Gaon’s greatness exceeds our own. Only a person of his stature should behave in this manner but those of us who are not so great should not trouble themselves to do so;

·         The learning of Torah is so great a mitzvah that it trumps the commandment of hachnasat orchim (entertaining visitors), even though hachnasat orchim is so great a mitzvah that one can turn one’s back on God, as it were, to look after them;  

·         The learning of Torah is so great a mitzvah that a person should not feel entitled to assert a claim on the time of someone who is learning Torah, even though they may be closely related;

·         One should ascertain that a person who is learning has not yet began to go grey before seeking to disturb him while he learns. 

With Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur looming fast towards us, time to set our thoughts in order is limited and diminishing fast. Regret and repentance have to compete for our attention with dinner plans, trips to the dry cleaners, shaking the dust off machzorim untouched for a year and remembering to send one’s regards to distant family and friends. Perhaps the best lesson we can take from the Gaon is this: whatever your objective, you should devote both your time and your full attention to it until it is fulfilled. Torah, being effectively infinite, can never be fully mastered, however much time is set aside for it—but if we can sweep aside distractions for the short time that remains between the moment you read these words till the New Year begins, we can at least hope to achieve something.

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Eat your dinner, for Heaven's sake!

One of the least discussed teachings in Avot today is that of Rabbi Yose HaKohen (Avot 2:17): “Let all your actions be for the sake of Heaven”.  The reason why it attracts little attention is easy to see. It is so general that it strikes us as being obvious and we take it for granted. If we believe in God and try to keep to all the do’s and don’t’s of Jewish religious observance, is not everything we do done for the sake of Heaven?

There is another way we can look at this teaching which makes it far more meaningful for us today: we can take it to mean that we should do things for the sake of Heaven even when we are doing them for other motives as well. In other words, we should add a touch of “for Heaven’s sake” to things that are not usually or necessarily thought to be so.

This idea sprung into my mind after I spotted this in R’ Chaim Friedlander’s Siftei Chaim: Middot veAvodat Hashem (1, at p 64). R’ Friedlander comments that it’s just as well that God in His kindness has implanted urges and desires in us because we can’t manage with Heavenly aspirations alone. As he graphically puts it, if we hadn’t been imbued with a real passion to eat and God had simply left us to act “for the sake of Heaven”, we would all be dead by now.

So next time you sink your teeth greedily into that burger or whatever else is your object of gastronomical desire, do make an effort to feel that you are doing it for God’s sake too. And when you get to Yom Kippur and the mega-fast that so many people fear and dread, bear in mind that you are doing that for Heaven’s sake alone.

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Truth lite, or the real thing?

The Dee Pirkei Avot Project (details here) has recently completed the first perek of Avot. For the uninitiated, the Project sends out each week a single side of A4 on which, in agreeably large print, you will find the text of a mishnah from Avot, a brief discussion or explanation of it and three questions that are more or less closely related to that mishnah. 

Sometimes the questions can be uncomfortable to answer publicly since they can force a person to make an appraisal of a facet of his or her personality that might preferably be concealed.

In Avot 1:18 Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: “The world stands on three things: on justice, on truth and on peace”, citing a verse from Zechariah in support of this proposition. Most people treat this teaching within the context of the administration of justice. After all, much of the first perek of Avot is devoted to that topic and the three things featured in this mishnah—justice, truth and peace—relate to either the functioning of the court system or the objective it seeks to achieve. One of the Dee Project questions goes beyond this, asking:

“When in your life do you sometimes choose to focus on some details because it’s easier than accepting the whole truth, the אֶמֶת?”

This question may not be demanded as a way of understanding Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel’s teaching since it personalises concepts which he lists in the abstract and focuses on how we react to them in the real world. However, it is demanded of us all as we approach the Days of Awe and ask ourselves whether we acknowledge two versions of truth: the genuine and absolute truth and ‘truth lite’, a convenience product that is easy to apply, wipes our conduct clean and leaves no nasty marks behind.

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Three big no-nos: not so bad after all

Here we are in the month of Elul, when all Jews who take their religion seriously prepare for the impending Days of Awe, for repentance, divine judgement and a chance to start the new year with a clean slate. Many of us undergo a sort of spiritual spring-clean, shaking the dust off our complacency, throwing out old bad habits and ideally exchanging them for brand new, good ones. This exercise comes with a caution: don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The Netivot Shalom, writing on last week’s Torah reading from Parashat Shofetim, reminds us that everything we have comes from God, and that includes our bad habits too. Since it is axiomatic that, God being good, everything that emanates from Him is good too, we must remember to check out the inherent virtue in even our character traits that are ostensibly bad.

By way of example he cites the Mishnah at Avot 4:48 at which Rabbi Elazar HaKappar says: “Jealousy, lust and glory remove a person from the world”. Yes, they do—but only if they are abused. Jealousy between scholars leads to more scholarship, and not only among Torah scholars. Lust is a precondition for the continued repopulation of the world. The Netivot Shalom gives no example of the benefits of glory, but the Hebrew word in the Mishnah, kavod, equally well translates as “honour” or “respect”, both of which are fine if you give them to others and only damaging when you seek to receive them.

So, when checking out even your worst tendencies and habits, don’t eliminate them from your behavioural make-up without first seeing which bits of them can be put to good use.

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Recycling: a thought for Elul

When I was a child, we knew nothing of recycling. Almost everything we finished with and had no further use for would go straight into the bin. Plastics, cardboard, metal cans—we disposed of them without a thought. How different is life today. We have special containers for all these unwanted items, which the local council collects and sends for recycling. I think it’s a great idea, even though a little voice inside me reminds me that recycling also has its environmental cost and I do sometimes get a little frustrated when I can’t easily tell whether a particular carton is made of paper or plastic. I do love the notion that the things I recycle might be coming straight back to me in other forms, without me even realising it.

Today marks the start of the month of Elul, when we begin ramp up our thoughts about the forthcoming Days of Awe, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and turn our thoughts to teshuvah, repentance. Pirkei Avot has plenty to say about teshuvah: we should repent our wrongs daily rather than save them up for the Day of Atonement because we might be dead by then (Avot 2:15), by which time it’s too late (Avot 4:22); it also serves as a shield against Divine retribution (Avot 4:15).

It struck me this morning that, just as we jettison our unwanted trash, we also jettison our unbecoming behaviour, casting off our bad behaviour and throwing away the tendency to justify what we know to be wrong because we won’t admit it.

Sometimes we do actually manage to throw away our patterns of misconduct. But, it seems to me, we more often seem to recycle them. We think we have seen the last of them and we feel good when we pop them into the bin. But they come back to us again, we bring them back into our lives—and we don’t even recognise them.

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Misleading words: what we ask for

This short post follows several earlier discussions (see list below) that touched on our problem with truth. In short, the Torah (Shemot 23:7) and Avot (1:18, 5:9, 6:6) tell us that we are supposed to commit ourselves to tell the truth and to acknowledge it when we see or hear it. But there are times when we may not, or must not, do so—for example to make peace, preserve modesty or save life. Every word of untruth is deemed sheker, a falsehood, which damages our spiritual environment and corrodes our souls, even if we are obliged to speak it and are rewarded for doing so.

In this context it struck me that, every time we finish our Amidah prayer, we say the following line:

אֱלֹהַ֞י נְצֹ֣ר ׀ לְשׁוֹנִ֣י מֵרָ֗ע וּשְׂפָתַי֩ מִדַּבֵּ֨ר מִרְמָ֜ה

[Translation] “My God, guard my tongue from ra (‘evil’) and my lips from speaking mirmah (‘deception’)”.

We ask God to make sure that we say nothing bad and nothing deceptive—but we don’t ask him to protect us from saying anything untrue. This seems to me to be a strong support for the argument that, however important absolute truth may be, both in our daily lives and in terms of our spiritual welfare, real-world pragmatism demands that, while we must always respect it, we must regretfully sacrifice it for the sake of a greater good.

There is biblical support for this proposition at Bereshit 27:18-19. When Yitzchak wants to be sure that the son standing before him is Yaakov or Eisav, he asks מִי אַתָּה בְּנִי (mi atah beni?, “Who are you, my son?”). Yaakov has a problem. He could say “Eisav”, which is a downright lie, or he could say “Yaakov”, which is totally true but would result in him losing the blessing his mother so desperately wants him to receive. So he answers אָנֹכִי עֵשָׂו בְּכֹרֶךָ (anochi Eisav bechorecha). This answer is equivocal. The Torah text contains no punctuation and can be read and therefore translated in two ways. If the answer is taken as a single phrase it means “I am Eisav your firstborn”. This would be sheker. Alternatively, splitting the anochi from Eisav bechorecha, it means “It’s me! Eisav is your firstborn” which is true but misleading, mirmah, and not a total lie. The ambiguity of Yaakov’s words thus serves two functions: it enables Yaakov both to mislead his father in order to achieve a greater good and to remind himself that what he said is not the best way of expressing truth, so that he should not get into the habit of telling lies.

So we still have a problem. If we accept that sheker is so dangerous and that mirmah is less so, why do we ask in our Amidah to be protected from mirmah and not sheker?

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Recent Avot Today posts on truth and lies

‘When love is not enough, try fear instead’ (on saying that Sarah was Abraham’s sister, not his wife) here

‘Don’t say “Mummy’s in the toilet”’ (on sparing people embarrassment) here

‘When two giants meet: a modern midrash?’ (is it permissible to fabricate a tale involving real people in order to teach an important point?) here

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Older posts (on the Avot Today weblog)

‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ (about repenting for half-truths on Yom Kippur) here

‘Learning from the lives of Torah sages’ (on potentially apocryphal tales of the great and good) here

‘Truth, justice and peace: which is the “odd man out”?’ (on sacrificing truth for peace and justice) here

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