Tuesday, 13 October 2020

Mazikim pt 2: Refusal to admit responsibility for what happens in one's life

In the fifth perek of Avot (at 5:8) we learn of 10 things that were created at dusk on the eve of Shabbat and of a further four things that some people would add to this list. One of those things is "mazikim", evil and destructive demons. Some people believe that mazikim exist; others that they do not. 

Should the existence or non-existence of mazikim concern us? I think not. If they exist, it is axiomatic that God created them and that, since only man has free will, whatever mazikim do is mandated by God.  Furthermore, since God is the only authentic source of power that a Jew must acknowledge, it is absolutely wrong to treat mazikim as if they held any power in their own right, and therefore wrong to seek to propitiate them. If however they do not exist, then it is we who have created them in our minds. If we have done so, it is our own minds that we must turn in order to address their functional (or dysfunctional) utility within the World we inhabit and which God created.

 I believe the real question we face is not that of whether mazikim exist.  The real question is what we can learn from the undeniable fact that the author of this mishnah teaches us that there are those who say that they were created on the eve of the World’s first Sabbath.

 An argument can be made out that the inclusion of mazikim on this list is because it has a positive aspect, in common with the other 13. The argument runs as follows.  The idea behind the mazikim of our mishnah is that something adverse happens to an individual. That person has, at that moment, a choice. One option is to link that adverse consequence to his own conduct. This can be done in many ways and on different levels. For example he can accept that he was negligent (e.g. the car rolled down the hill because he didn’t check if the brake was on) or inadvertent (e.g. he switched the kettle on, forgetting that he already emptied it). On another level he can view the adverse consequence as a sort of retribution (e.g. why did he drop the bottle of Scotch in the street? Because he should have spent the money instead on a charity donation he was asked to give) or caution (e.g. he walked into an old lady while checking his phone and knocked her over, this being a warning to be more careful next time he goes out).

 What does all of this have to do with mazikim? In short, the idea that underwrites the usefulness of the mazik is that a person’s misfortune is unrelated to his own behavior: it is always the fault of others.  Let us return back to the examples above.  Why did the car roll down the hill? Because a mazik released the handbrake. Why did the kettle boil dry? Just his luck that a mazik must have distracted him.  If however a person is prepared to take responsibility for his actions, he recognizes that he is the mazik. Why did that bottle of Scotch fall from my hands? Maybe it was a lesson—annoying and expensive but at least it was painless—that I should think again about putting my own selfish interests ahead of the needs of others. Why did I knock that poor little old lady over? Because I was so preoccupied with my own affairs that I forgot I was sharing the sidewalk with my fellow humans. So, to summarize, "mazikim" is a sort of shorthand term for the potential of mankind to accept or reject responsibility for its own damaging actions.

 The significance of mazikim in this mishnah is that this concept was created just before Shabbat of the World’s first week.  The Torah is not a history book, but it does tell us in some detail about one event: the Fall of Man.  Our thoughts concerning the story of Adam and Eve tend to dwell on the sadly lost opportunity to do the one thing God asked: not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. This mishnah however addresses another part of the story: the abrogation of responsibility on the part of both Adam and Eve. Adam’s position regarding their wrongful acts. Adam states that it was not his fault: it was Eve who gave him the fruit. Eve states that it was not her fault: the serpent told her to eat it. Here, with Shabbat coming in for the first time in Jewish history, we see the potential for accepting or denying responsibility for a person’s own damaging actions being actualized.


Sunday, 11 October 2020

Getting a grip on tongs made with tongs

One of the most memorable bits of Avot is the statement (Avot 5:8) that one of the things that was created at close of play on the Sixth Day of Creation was "tongs made with tongs". This has generated discussion over the centuries as to whether you can make metal tongs if you don't already have tongs. Here's a thought on this subject.

The thing that grabs people about this mishnah is the problem that metal tongs are made by heating strips of metal to the point at which they become malleable so that they can be shaped into its component parts—but, without a pair of tongs to hold the red-hot metal, tongs cannot be made. Traditional rabbinical commentators tend to be divided between (i) those who explain what tongs are but say nothing of their significance;  (ii) those who say that, if tongs can only be made if you already have tongs, the first tongs must have been made by God,  (iii) those who say that tongs can actually be made by pouring molten metal into moulds, and (iv) those for whom the real issue is the actual time when the tongs were created.

So we remain stuck with a question: what is our takeaway message from this mishnaic reference to tongs? In the 21st century most of us do not have much connection with metallurgy on a daily basis, or indeed at all. It is possible that not one in a thousand contemporary Torah students will have seen a blacksmith using tongs to hold a metal bar that would otherwise burn a man’s hand (they might have seen sugar tongs, but these genteel items did not exist in Tannaic times). So why should we even care?

If we look beyond the tongs, we see a bigger, wider message: that we should always recognize God’s contribution to our own inventiveness for it is He who created in us the potential to innovate. To put it another way, whatever we invent today is a consequence of God’s original creation of mankind’s ability to do so.  We might consider ourselves to be creators on a par with God, but all we have done is to graft our own effort on to the inventive potential that God Himself instilled in us, late on the first Sabbath eve, knowing that we would need to actualize it as soon as Shabbat ended, when Adam and Eve, expelled from the Garden of Eden, had to make their own way in the World.

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This sensible and practical explanation of the tongs issue can be found in Rabbi Menachem Mordechai Frankel-Teomim's Be'er Ha'Avot. This work appears to have been privately published and must have been purchased by someone since it ran to at least three editions (the third being published in Jerusalem in 1978). The bigger question is whether anyone has ever read it, since I have never before seen it discussed or referred to in any subsequent commentaries on Avot and a Google search does not reveal its existence.

Friday, 9 October 2020

Praying for the health of an ailing opponent

Posted on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency site is a feature, "Should Jews pray for Trump’s health? Are they required to?" by Laura E. Adkins. Some rabbis were asked to respond. From Rabbi David Wolpe (Sinai Temple, Los Angeles) came the following: 

“Judaism teaches we should pray for the sick, not for the sick whom we like, and I am mindful of Pirkei Avot 4:19 [4:24 in many versions], not to rejoice in the downfall of one’s enemies. I appreciate the savagery of the political divide, but I hope no matter who is suffering with this dangerous disease, we can pray both that they will heal and also that they will learn from the experience, and grow more open-hearted and compassionate, as we hope for all of us in any trial or tragedy.”

I thought this a magnanimous and positive application of Avot. 

Wednesday, 7 October 2020

Avot and leadership: practical applications for ancient advice

I am always pleased so see people taking the ancient sayings in Pirkei Avot and applying them to our current lives and lifestyles. That's why I was happy to read Randi Braun's post in the Jewish Journal, "What Does Leading With Heart Look Like in Modern Life?This piece looks at Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai's question to his five top talmidim (Avot 2:13): "what is the good path that a person should stick to?", together with their various answers. Rather than just discuss the "winning" answer, the author considers the virtues of all five within the context of leadership and making an impact on others. 

Monday, 5 October 2020

How much work, and what sort of work, is an aspiring Torah scholar supposed to reduce?

 

In Avot 6:6 we find a list of 48 means of "acquiring Torah".  One of these is miyut sechorah (reducing the amount of business one conducts); another arguably involves some disengagement from money-earning: this is miyut derech eretz (reducing one's work, on the assumption that derech eretz here means that and not one of its other meanings: worldly activities and sexual intercourse). 

Rabbi Yaakov Emden observes in his Lechem Shamayim that there is another word for income-generating work, melachah, and that there is no corresponding requirement to reduce that. 

It is not clear to me exactly what the difference is between derech eretz and melachah in this context. Does any reader have any idea? Has anyone written on this? Please get in touch if you know.


Sunday, 4 October 2020

Mitzvot and good deeds: don't forget your underwear

We learn in Avot (2:1) of the importance of treating mitzvot alike on the basis that we do not know which commandments are important to God and which are less so -- if indeed the relative importance of any mitzvah is a valid concept at all. 

An allusion to this principle appears in the Ma'amar HaKavod of Rabbi Eliezer Papo (better known for his classic mussar work, Pele Yo'etz). He compares mitzvot and good deeds to one's clothes. To paraphrase his message, when we get dressed we take particular care over our outer garments -- but we are not properly dressed if we should neglect to put on our underwear first. We should remember that there is more to us than our mere external appearance and that many things that may seem trite or trivial are actually just as important, whether we regard them as such or not.

Thursday, 1 October 2020

Lulav and lockdown: a positive perspective

Today's Jerusalem Post features an opinion piece by Dov Lipman with the cheery title "Time to rejoice on Sukkot, despite coronavirus". In it he writes: 

While it’s human nature to focus on what we don’t have and what we wished we had, that attention becomes a constant source of frustration and sadness. As our tradition teaches: “Who is wealthy? One who is happy with his portion.” (Ethics of the Fathers 4:1). The ritual waving of the four species reminds us to be thankful for whatever we do have, a lesson we must take to heart during this corona crisis. Learning to do so can bring great happiness into one’s life, no matter what one possesses or does not.

Being thankful for whatever we have is actually easier for those of us who will be spending the days of Sukkot waving our lulavs quietly at home instead of enjoying the hustle and bustle of a crowded synagogue. Why is this? Because it is only human nature to look at other people's lulavim and compare them with our own. Some folk have bigger ones, others have a better shape. Their etrogim have a better shape or colour, their arovot have not withered and turned brown, and so on.  This year, for many of us there will be no visual trigger for feelings of envy or inadequacy, so we have a better chance of being contented with our own.

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 2020:

Tuesday 29 September 2020: Crowns in Avot: Putting the Record Straight Putting the record straight regarding the mishnah about there being three crowns, surmounted by the crown of a good name.

Sunday 27 September 2020: Text and Tradition: their place in 'Acquisition of the Torah'. Why does the list of 48 ways of acquiring the Torah contain some things that seem too obvious to mention?

Tuesday 22 September 2020: Can we really be altruistic when we know there's a reward coming up?  A reflection on learning Torah for its own sake -- can it really be done?

Thursday 17 September 2020: Judging others: a practical exercise. Thoughts on encountering a respected rabbi in the street without his Covid mask.

Wednesday 16 September 2020: Nice things for the righteous -- a privilege or a responsibility? The baraita at 6:8 lists all sorts of lovely things in store for tzaddikim. These may however be less lovely than one first imagines.

Monday 14 September 2020: "According to the effort ..." -- a word about mitzvot and their rewards:  Avot 5:23 correlates the fulfilment of commandments with the input involved in keeping them. Is this always fair?

Sunday 13 September 2020: A special message for Rosh Hashanah -- there is no special message. The standards set by Pirkei Avot for one's personal behaviour do not depend on the time of year.

Thursday 10 September 2020: The folly of fools -- in search of Avot with an extra verse. Readers' assistance is sought in tracking down an edition of Avot that features an extra verse from Proverbs that is not usually cited.

Wednesday 9 September  2020: Beyond comprehension. Hillel teaches that one should not say something that can't be understood if it is meant to be comprehended. Where does this leave the ever-changing and puzzlingly complex regulations for dealing with Covid-19?

Thursday 3 September 2020: Things and people, honour and glory. Has a verse from Isaiah, cited in Avot 6:11, been routinely mistranslated?  

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Avot Today blogposts for August 2020 here
Avot Today blogposts for July 2020 here
Avot Today blogposts for June 2020 here
Avot Today 
blogposts for May 2020 here

Tuesday, 29 September 2020

Crowns in Avot: putting the record straight

There's a fascinating post on Aish.com by Dr Norman Goldwasser, "Lessons from My Father and Childhood in the Segregated South", which is well worth a read. It also contains a brief reference to Pirkei Avot that calls for a gentle tweak. The relevant paragraph reads:

One distinct memory of those encounters was with a man who I think was named Mr. Jones. As he was waiting patiently in our living room, he looked up at me, and for no apparent reason other than to make sure that I knew the obvious, he said to me, “You know your daddy’s a good man.” As is said in Ethics of the Fathers, “A good name is greater than a gold crown". My father indeed had a good name, that stood for kindness – and justice. He always seemed to know what was the right thing to do.

The sentiment expressed by the words "“A good name is greater than a gold crown" is certainly found in Avot, but in a rather different form:

Rabbi Shimon used to say: "There are three crowns: the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood and the crown of sovereignty—but the crown of good name surmounts them all" (Avot 4:17).


Sunday, 27 September 2020

Text and tradition: their place in "acquisition of the Torah"

The huge baraita in the sixth chapter of Pirkei Avot (6:6) lists no fewer than 48 elements that, in aggregate, are said to represent kinyan HaTorah ("acquisition of the Torah"). The list is an impressive one and, if we are honest, most of us are doing pretty well if we even manage half of them in today's world. Still, they represent an ideal -- and a challenge for us too, even if it is quite daunting.

Some of the items on the list are a little puzzling, since they seem obvious. Two that stand out in particular are Mikra (the text of the Torah and indeed the prophets and writings that comprise the rest of the Tanach) and Mishnah (the tractates that comprise the Six Orders of Mishnah and their accompanying Talmud). Why single these items out for special mention in this list? After all, they together add up to the content of our Torah learning -- and it is not possible to learn Torah without learning Torah (there is a small exception in Eruvin 100b, that one can learn Torah from animals such as cats, ants and cockerels, but the amount that can be learned from them is strictly limited). 

Perhaps the intention of the author of the baraita, when including Mikra and Mishnah, is to stress that it is only the text of Mikra and only the tradition of Mishnah that lead to acquisition of Torah learning.  They are listed in our baraita only to exclude writings that are not part of the canon of Tanach (works of apocrypha and pseudepigrapha and those which fell out of favour such as Ben Sira/Ecclesiasticus) as well as extraneous writings such as ancient Jewish fiction.

Exclusion of anything that falls outside the scope of the Tanach and the Six Orders of the Mishnah and their derivatives still leaves one question open: how does one categorise midrashic literature? While this falls outside the narrow interpretation of Mikra and Mishnah, in general it provides explanations and discussions based upon them. The author of the baraita, being a Tanna, would have been familiar with Midrash and may even have authored midrashim himself so I would like to assume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that the term Mishnah embraces Midrash too.

Tuesday, 22 September 2020

Can we really be altruistic when we know there's a reward coming up?

The first Baraita in the sixth chapter of Avot praises the person who learns Torah for its own sake and not for any personal advantage or ulterior motive. After saying in general terms that, for such a person, the world is his oyster, it lists some 29 praises, virtues and attributes with which this good soul is garlanded: these include wisdom, power, glory, integrity and (this is handy in today's difficult world) an ability to forgive insults. 

It may seem strange that all the wonderful virtues and praises listed in this Baraita come only to someone who does not learn the Torah in order to acquire them even though, as a student of the Torah, he knows that they will inevitably come to him. This conundrum is similar to the conceptual basis for one of the earliest mishnayot in Avot (1:3), which teaches that we should not serve God in order to obtain a reward — even though we know full well that a reward automatically follows our service. 

In our lives we all face this situation in one form or another when we have the opportunity to do things that benefit us but we nonetheless do them for the sake of another. A typical situation in which this may happen is where a parent seeks to calm a screaming baby at three o’clock in the morning: while the parent knows that he or she will not be able to return to bed until the baby is placated, parental feelings of love, concern and empathy for the baby’s unarticulated anguish may completely swamp any selfish feelings of self-interest. This is the altruistic basis upon which we should seek to serve God and — as this Baraita indicates — the way we should seek to learn Torah. 

Thursday, 17 September 2020

Judging others: a practical exercise

The mishnah in which Yehoshua ben Perachyah teaches us to judge others favorably (to be don lekaf zechut: Avot 1:6) is a popular one. It is short, memorable, easy to understand and has even launched entire books (Rabbi Hanoch Teller's Courtrooms of the Mind springs to mind, with its narration of examples drawn from real life).

A real-life situation confronted me this morning, when I was taking a pre-lockdown walk through the streets of Jerusalem. Coming towards me was a popular and respected rabbi of my acquaintance, together with his rebbetzin. We acknowledged each other as we crossed with seasonally appropriate words and then continued walking in our respective directions. 

Something troubled me about this apparently innocent encounter, but it took me a good few moments to work out what it was. The rabbi was not wearing a mask, despite all the stern injunctions and encouragements to do so, and in disregard of epidemiological and healthcare advice.

To my knowledge there was no reason why the rabbi should not be wearing a mask -- but there was every reason why he should. As a respected and influential member of the local community, he could certainly be described as a role model. But here he was demonstrating a literally barefaced defiance of the current norm. 

After recovering from the initial surprise, my thoughts turned to Avot 1:6 and being don lekaf zechut. The best I could manage was rather feeble: that perhaps the rabbi and his wife were so deeply engrossed in discussion on an important Torah matter that the rabbi quite forgot to put his mask on. This in turn caused me to wonder whether I should have chased back to see if I could find him and gently mention to him that he appeared to have forgotten something -- or maybe administer a tactful rebuke. But by then the opportunity had passed for everything except wondering what I should have done. 

Wednesday, 16 September 2020

Nice things for the righteous: a privilege or a responsibility

Towards the end of Avot (at 6:8) there is a Baraita that calls for a bit of attention. It starts off like this:


Rabbi Shimon ben Yehudah used to say in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, “Beauty, strength, wealth, honour, wisdom, old age, venerable old age and children are fitting for the righteous and fitting for the world”. 

It then breaks off into a string of proof verses that either do or don't prove the point of the Baraita, whatever that might be.  The usual reading of this teaching is that the eight things listed in it are, well, fitting for the righteous (a class of people who are sometimes assumed to be rabbis).


Looking againat this Baraita, I wondered whether it might actually convey quite the opposite meaning to the normal one.  This would be the case if the eight things listed are not rewards or privileges, but instead impositions for anyone who posssesses them. In other words, this is a list of burdens that place responsibility on whoever is burdened with them.  How does this work? Let us take each term in order:

·     Beauty: a person’s physical beauty is a snare and a delusion, an external asset that deteriorates over time. An earlier Mishnah (4:27) has already warned us of the danger of taking people at face value, and the Book of Proverbs (31:30) emphasizes that it is a false value (“Favor is false and beauty is vanity”). Only a person with a strong moral backbone can be sure to cope with the pressures and expectations placed upon them by the perception of others that they are beautiful.

·     Strength: As Ben Zoma explains above (4:1), strength is defined in terms of the ability to exercise self-discipline in controlling oneself.  Given the powerful pull of a person’s evil inclination, having the strength to overcome it would seem to be an essential and ever-present weapon in the tzaddik’s armory of middot. The sad lot of the tzaddik is that his evil inclination is stronger than that of others, so he has need of greater strength to combat it (Sukkah 52a).

·     Wealth: Hillel the Elder has already taught (2:8), “the more the wealth, the more the worry”. Again, strength of character and moral rectitude are required if a person is to pass the test of affluence.  While we can all be rich—since the one who is truly rich is the person who is content with his portion (4:1)—this is something that applies to everyone, whether they are tzaddikim or otherwise.

·     Honour: of the eight items listed in this Baraita, none is as potentially toxic as honour: it is the only one that has the potential to kill a man spiritually stone dead (4:28). An ordinary individual runs the risk of chasing honor when it is as yet unearned, and of letting it get to his head even if it has been fairly earned. A tzaddik will however be able to handle its toxicity and treat it in the way Avot prescribes, by giving it to others (4:1 again) and by according it to the Torah (4:8)

·      Wisdom: like honor, wisdom can be dangerous in the hands of someone who lacks the requisite moral framework within which to utilize it. Pharaoh invoked wisdom when deciding to deal with his “Jewish Problem” (Exodus 1:10: "Come, let us deal wisely with them..."): this misdirected wisdom could have resulted in the extinction of the Children of Israel but instead caused Pharaoh’s personal humiliation and the destruction of his own fighting force. Balaam’s attempts at prophecy could not harm Israel but his wise counsel did, when he advised Balak on how to break the desert nation’s commitment to God (Numbers 31:16).  Few men of their generation were as wise as King David’s counsellor Achitophel (Chagigah 15b; Bemidbar Rabbah 22) and King Saul’s chief herdsman Doeg (Chagigah 15b; Tehillim Rabbah 52:4), yet their intellectual prowess was ill matched with their scheming politics. The harsh reality is that wisdom is only safe in the hands of someone who can be trusted—and that is a massive responsibility, as Moses discovered when he was the only person who possessed the necessary wisdom to resolve his people’s disputes (Exodus18:13-26).

·     Early old age: 60 or thereabouts is the time when a person becomes conscious of the fact that, while he may feel no different on the inside, he is starting to look old. Without a firm moral basis that supports a tzaddik, the drive to “have a final fling” or to yield to what is euphemistically called a “midlife crisis” can be overwhelming.

·     Venerable old age: the Talmud (Shabbat 152a) reports the words of Barzillai the Gileadite (2 Samuel 19:35) to the effect that, on reaching the ripe old age of 80, there was no longer much pleasure to be derived from life in the King’s court.  The diminution of one’s senses of sight, taste and hearing can weigh heavily on someone whose pleasures depend on them, but a tzaddik will not complain to God about his sad and feeble state. Rather, he should be well equipped to be able to take the disappointments and the tribulations of advanced old age as a time to recall with gratitude his earlier days and the opportunities he once had to serve others. Now is the time to reflect on the opportunities that he can give others to do acts of kindness for him.

·     Children: one does not need a Torah source to support the proposition, evidenced by life itself, that bringing up children can take its toll on even a loving parent. The price one pays for parenting can be steep in terms of time, effort, frustration, sleep deprivation, temper control and general inconvenience. Nor is there any point at which one can predict that the responsibility for raising one’s children will end. For a true tzaddik none of this is a burden.


Monday, 14 September 2020

According to the effort ... a word about mitzvot and their rewards

Coming up to Rosh Hashanah, we are encouraged to think about the balance between the mitzvot we have performed over the past year and, in the event that there should be any, the averot that we should not have done -- but did. Ideally we should be in positive territory, with more mitzvot to our credit than averot, but we are not the best judges of our own performance. 

On the subject of mitzvot, here is a thought for those of us who sometimes struggle with them. It is based on Pirkei Avot 5:26, in which Ben He He says "According to the effort is the reward".

In general terms we have not the faintest idea of the nature and quality of rewards enjoyed in the World to Come for good deeds done in our lifetimes. We have however received some guidance from our tradition, and this enables us to make better decisions regarding performance of mitzvot and our commitment to Torah observance. One element of this guidance concerns how we should feel towards mitzvot that are hard or troublesome to perform.  How does this work? The problem below provides an illustration.

Two people perform an identical mitzvah — returning a wallet full of money to its rightful owner.  The first is happy to perform this mitzvah since he is wealthy and the wallet’s contents mean little to him. The second, unemployed and racked by poverty, could make great use of the cash and is sorely tempted to do so, but nonetheless returns the wallet. 

It seems only right that the poor man should receive a greater reward since his is the more meritorious act: he has had to overcome both his financial needs and his yetzer hara in order to perform it.   However the return of the wallet is objectively the same act, regardless of who has performed it — and if the rich man is to receive only a trifling reward for this act because he has not found it difficult, would he not be better served by leaving the wallet in the ground on the assumption that someone else was bound to find and return it, giving another person the chance to get a bigger reward for returning it reluctantly. He could then set off instead to perform some other mitzvah that he found more difficult.

A solution to this problem comes from the Maharal's suggestion that there are two rewards for each mitzvah. The first is on a standard tariff and is earned for ‘ticking the box’ by fulfilling a commandment, regardless of the manner in which it has been fulfilled.  The second relates solely to the effort and hardship incurred in the act of fulfilment.  On this basis, in the problem described above, the poor man and the rich would receive identical rewards for the basic act of returning the wallet, while the poor man would receive a greater, personalised reward related to the need to overcome his personal issues, issues that were not relevant to the performance of the same mitzvah by the rich man.

Sunday, 13 September 2020

A special message for Rosh Hashanah: there is no special message

I was asked the other day if Pirkei Avot, the mishnaic tractate that touches more than any other on the daily lives of human beings, has any special message for Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year and the momentous time for reflection, self-assessment, repentance and renewal that opens the autumn festive season.

Having given the request due consideration, I decided that the special message from Avot was that there is no special message.  Considerations such as how a person behaves towards his fellow humans, his community, his God and even himself do not depend on the calendar. No one date is more significant than any other. 

The most important day in the life of a Jew, we learn from Avot, is the day he happens to be living.  We learn that a person should not put off till tomorrow that which can be learned today (2:5); the same applies to repentance, since death may come tomorrow (2:15).  Today is the day you can’t stop work, as well as the day you will neither finish it or be paid (2:21).

While Jewish laws and customs vary with the seasons, the advice of Avot does not.  For example most editions of the Rosh Hashanah machzor (prayer book) print the text of special New Year greetings, but for Avot the important things about greeting others never change. Greet each person with a happy face (1:15) and good cheer (3:16). Be the first to greet others (4:20) and always return a greeting, even to a stranger (6:9).

On Rosh Hashanah we remind ourselves that God is the King; He is to judge us on the basis of our performance over the past year and our prospects for the next year. Before Him all things are recorded (2:1). Avot recommends that we remember this constantly if we want to keep out of trouble (3:1) since judgment is only a handful of inevitable events in the cycle of mortal life and death, an event from which there is nowhere to hide (4:29).

To conclude, while Rosh Hashanah and the New Year festivities herald an opportunity to improve and reinvent ourselves, the message of Avot is this: if you are a Pirkei Avot person, you are probably heading in the right direction so, if you can, just carry on like you would any other day with Avot as your moral compass. But do remember to check this compass for the coming year, to make sure it's in good working order.