Praying for the welfare of whose government?

At Avot 3:2 Rabbi Chanina Segan HaKohanim teaches:

הֱוֵי מִתְפַּלֵּל בִּשְׁלוֹמָהּ שֶׁל מַלְכוּת, שֶׁאִלְמָלֵא מוֹרָאָהּ, אִישׁ אֶת רֵעֵֽהוּ חַיִּים בְּלָעוֹ

Pray for the integrity of the government for, were it not for the fear of its authority, a man would swallow his neighbour alive.

Writing earlier this summer, Times of Israel blogger Yisroel Juskovitz (“Three Important Points for This Election Season”) has this to say:

Point Number One: Get out and vote. In Pirkei Avot (Ethics of our Fathers) we are taught “Pray for the welfare of your government, for without it, Man would be swallowed up alive.” Taking an active role in the country we live in, I believe is not just an American value, but a Jewish value as well. Voting is not just a right; it is a privilege. Our Democracy is sacred, and it should always be cherished that we live in a country where we can choose our leaders. This a privilege that many other countries do not have. We have two candidates who have very different visions for our country and their policies and performance can have long term consequences for our great nation. …

I don’t know where to start.

First, there is a somewhat anachronistic flavour to the author’s claim that “Taking an active role in the country we live in, I believe is not just an American value, but a Jewish value as well”.  Wasn’t it a Jewish value first?

Secondly, “Voting is not just a right; it is a privilege”. Is this so? It’s questionable whether being able to choose one’s leaders is a Jewish value. Our history suggests rather the opposite. The leaders we have done best with—and particularly Moses and David—were not the products of an electoral system, and I wonder how many of our prophets and rabbinical giants of bygone eras would have won a popularity poll.

Thirdly, even as an Englishman by origin, sitting here in Jerusalem many thousands of miles away, I have been unable to ignore the sheer force of the vituperation flung at Joe Biden, and now at Kamala Harris, by Donald Trump’s cohort of admirers and supporters—and nor have I been able to forget the passionate accusations and personal criticisms fired at Donald Trump while he occupied the White House. It may of course be that both sides are right and that neither Presidential candidate is a fit and proper person to govern the United States. Be that as it may, I find it hard to imagine how anyone who hurls vicious abuse at his or her own government can sincerely pray for its well-being, which is what this mishnah is actually about.

Finally, Avot teaches us to pray for the welfare of the government. But, given the options facing the electorates in so many democracies, where surging popularity is polarising the electorate and where the extremities of right and left are gaining, to the detriment of those with moderate views, I wonder whether it is the welfare of the ordinary folk who are being governed that we should be praying for, rather than that of the government.

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Is it normal to begrudge help for others?

An Avot Mishnah for Shabbat (Nitzavim-Vayelech)

This week’s perakim are Perek 5 and Perek 6. The following piece is on a mishnah from Perek 5.

At Avot 5:13 we find an anonymously-authored Mishnah that reflects on human attitudes towards property—both theirs and that of others. It reads:

אַרְבַּע מִדּוֹת בָּאָדָם: הָאוֹמֵר שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלָּךְ וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלִּי, עַם הָאָֽרֶץ. שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלִּי וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלָּךְ, זוֹ מִדָּה בֵינוֹנִית, וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים זוֹ מִדַּת סְדוֹם. שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלָּךְ וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלָּךְ, חָסִיד. שֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלִּי וְשֶׁלִּי שֶׁלִּי, רָשָׁע

There are four types of people:

(i) The one who says "What is mine is mine, and what is yours is yours" — this is a middle of the road characteristic; others say that this is the character trait of Sodom.

(ii) The one who says "What is mine is yours, and what is yours is mine" is an am ha’aretz [an uncultivated person].

(iii) The one who says "What is mine is yours, and what is yours is yours" is a chasid [a generous soul].

(iv) The one who says "What is mine is mine, and what is yours is mine" is wicked.

The first of these categories has generated much discussion. How can a person be both a middle-of-the-road person and someone who has the character of someone from Sodom?

Rabbenu Yonah clarifies that we are not talking here about someone who does not give charity or help others at all. Everyone agrees that such a person is evil. What we are discussing is the attitude of the giver. Some give begrudgingly, because they are afraid of the consequences in this life or the next if they do not do so. What the rabbis of the mishnah cannot agree on is whether this person’s attitude is perfectly normal or whether it is a character flaw.

Personally I like the account of Gila Ross (Living Beautifully) as to the ambiguity, or bifurcated nature if you prefer, of the “mine’s mine and yours is yours” attitude. She describes the first position of the Mishnah, that such a person as average, and contrasts it with the selfish attitude of the inhabitants of Sodom, then adds this:

“…the Mishnah calls it average for an individual, because an individual can be forgiven for their lack of sensitivity and lack of desire to give to others. However, it’s problematic when this attitude of ‘what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours’ becomes the prevailing viewpoint in a society. Then it becomes cruelty. As long as it’s only an individual, there will be other individuals who will step up to help those in need. If it becomes a societal thing, it becomes cruel because the poor will be neglected”.

A similar explanation can be found in R' Shlomo Toperoff's Lev Avot.

On the whole, Avot is concerned with the conduct of the individual—whether dealing with other individual or with society at large—and not with collective conduct and attitudes. But this interpretation places this mishnah among the exceptions.

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A Question of Timing

Here's a sequel to our previous post ("Committing Spiritual Suicide -- Or Killing Time?", Sunday 22 September) which offers a different perspective to humankind's temporal existence.

At Avot 2:18 Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel teaches something unusual:

הֱוֵי זָהִיר בִּקְרִיאַת שְׁמַע וּבִתְפִלָּה

Be careful with the reading of the Shema and with prayer.

In Jewish tradition there are 613 Torah mitzvot plus a very large number of commandments instituted by the rabbis. We are taught that we should treat our religious duties equally and be as conscientious in performing a small mitzvah as a large one (per Rebbi, Avot 2:1). This is because, while God knows which mitzvot carry more weight in His eyes, we don’t—and we can’t even guess what rewards they individually carry (ibid).  

Why then does Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel pick out just two commandments from the whole pack and urge us to take great care in performing them? Surely if a mitzvah is an instruction from God, that is sufficient reason for complying with it carefully—and that will apply to every mitzvah, regardless of its content.

This thought has occurred to our commentators too, and they have not failed to address it. Foremost among them is R’ Ovadyah MiBartenura, who explains that “careful” in this context means “careful to perform them at the right time”. Recitation of both the Shema and the standard daily prayers [the two are treated as a single unit since every morning and evening the one always closely follows the other] is subject to many rules and refinements in terms of the earliest and latest points in the day at which this may be done, more so than many other mitzvot. Once the latest point is passed, time for performing the mitzvah has expired. Since that time has passed and will not return, the mitzvah is lost and can never be fully replaced.

But not everything is lost. An out-of-time recitation of the Shema is still meritorious, just as is the recitation of any other paragraphs of the Torah. Yet the incentive to get one’s timing right is great: according to the Talmud (Berachot 10b), recitation of the Shema at the correct time is rated more highly than even the choice mitzvah of learning Torah. So, explains R’ Chaim Druckman (Avot leBanim), when Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel urges us to take care to recite Shema at the right time, it is on account of his concern that we should obtain maximum merit for doing so, instead of the regular reward for learning Torah. R’ Druckman adds, citing Midrash Shmuel, that the time for saying Shema and praying is both in the morning, when we may not have fully woken up, and again at night when we may be struggling to stay awake, so these are mitzvot that regularly demand an extra level of care.

Strangely, given the importance of timing in our lives today, Avot offers little positive guidance. Most of what it does say relates to not being in a hurry to do things. Thus in Avot 1:1 we are urged not to rush to deliver judgement and in Avot 4:23 Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar gives advice as to when not to placate an angry person, comfort a mourner, question someone making a vow or visit someone who is experiencing acute embarrassment.

There is however some generalised advice that can be made to address the importance of doing something on time, if we combine the force of two mishnayot from the second perek.

At Avot 2:5 Hillel teaches:

אַל תֹּאמַר לִכְשֶׁאֶפְנֶה אֶשְׁנֶה, שֶׁמָּא לֹא תִפָּנֶה

Do not say "When I am free, I will study”, for perhaps you will never be free.

While this principle explicitly references the fundamental and ongoing mitzvah of talmud Torah, of learning Torah in ever-deeper ways, it manifestly applies to almost all positive mitzvot and tackles the excuse that can float into one’s mind so easily when we have the chance to perform less enjoyable mitzvot such as visiting the sick, comforting mourners or making a kitchen kasher for the festival Pesach.

And at Avot 2:20 Rabbi Tarfon says:

הַיּוֹם קָצֵר, וְהַמְּלָאכָה מְרֻבָּה, וְהַפּוֹעֲלִים עֲצֵלִים, וְהַשָּׂכָר הַרְבֵּה, וּבַֽעַל הַבַּֽיִת דּוֹחֵק

The day is short, the work is abundant, the workers are lazy, the reward is great and the Master is insistent.

“Day” here is a metaphor for life itself. The “work” is made up of the aggregate of tasks that God has set for us, and the temptation to lapse into self-justified laziness is great. Who has not said, or at least thought, such things as “I’ve done enough of this already; it’s time someone else did it” or “mitzvah X takes so much out of me that I won’t have the energy to do mitzvot Y and Z, so I’d better not do it”?

So, combining the mishnayot of Hillel and Rabbi Tarfon, we can see that there is a sentiment that a person should not delay but should act in a timeous manner and should not put things off. Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel has already shown how important this is with regard to the Shema and prayer, and we can argue that the principle that responsible timing operates for all mitzvot—a principle colourfully illustrated by R’ Chaim Volozhiner (Nefesh HaChaim) with regard to blowing the shofar on Chanukah: the blow might be perfect, with all the loftiest thoughts, but since the time is wrong there is no mitzvah.

So much for mitzvot—but how far does this apply to ordinary common-or-garden middot? This question has been troubling me for a little while and is actually the spark that kindled this post. Recently we entertained a young visitor for a few days. She was courteous and well-mannered in all respects, a genuinely welcome guest. She also offered to help clear the dishes off our dining table. The only problem was that this offer came when the table had already been so completely cleared that there was nothing left for her to do. Helping others is an excellent character trait but—as with mitzvot—timing may be critical. For those (such as the Sefer Charedim) who hold that the middot in Avot are actually mitzvot, what I have written above is arguably applicable. But most rabbis and commentators distinguish between mitzvot and middot. How might they bring the moral teachings to bear on our well-meaning visitor?

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Committing spiritual suicide -- or killing time?

Three mishnayot in the third perek of Avot contain a phrase that is difficult for us to comprehend: to be מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ, mitchayev benafsho. The first, at 3:5, is taught in the name of Rabbi Chanina ben Chachinai:

הַנֵּעוֹר בַּלַּֽיְלָה, וְהַמְהַלֵּךְ בַּדֶּֽרֶךְ יְחִידִי, וּמְפַנֶּה לִבּוֹ לְבַטָּלָה, הֲרֵי זֶה מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ

One who stays awake at night, travels alone on the road and/or turns his heart to idleness is mitchayev benafsho.

The second, at 3:9, is brought in the name of Rabbi Yaakov:

הַמְהַלֵּךְ בַּדֶּֽרֶךְ וְשׁוֹנֶה, וּמַפְסִיק מִמִּשְׁנָתוֹ וְאוֹמֵר: מַה נָּאֶה אִילָן זֶה, מַה נָּאֶה נִיר זֶה, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ

One who walks along a road and studies, and interrupts his study to say, "How beautiful is this tree!", "How beautiful is this ploughed field!”—the Torah considers it as if he is mitchayev benafsho.

The third, at 3:10, we learn from Rabbi Dosta’i bar Yannai in the name of Rabbi Meir

כָּל הַשּׁוֹכֵֽחַ דָּבָר אֶחָד מִמִּשְׁנָתוֹ, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ

Anyone who forgets even a single word of this learning, the Torah considers it as if he is mitchayev benafsho...

So what does is mitchayev benafsho mean? Literally it means “makes himself liable in [or ‘for’] his soul”. But this is not a phrase that is easily understood—if indeed we understand it at all.

If we consider this phrase in the context of the three mishnayot above, the first thing we see is that none of the triggers for mitchayev benafsho, the liability of one’s soul, is the breach of a Torah or rabbinical prohibition or of a failure to perform a positive precept. This could mean that the rabbis here are alluding to a special category of spiritual fault that leads to some sort of spiritual death or to the idea that a person who pursues chassidut, a higher level of piety, holiness and closeness to God than is demanded of humans in general, may incur a higher level of punishment for his failure to do so than might a person who does not seek to go the extra mile.

The second thing we notice is that, in each case, the person who puts his soul at risk is at odds with an active commitment to the life-giving force of Torah (on which see Avot 6:7). This person is off on his own and obviously up to some mischief at a time—night—which is created for learning Torah (Eruvin 65b). Or he stops right in the middle of his Torah studies to admire the physical world at the expense of the spiritual one. Again, instead of adding to his stock of Torah wisdom or at least keeping it safe, he lets it slip from his grasp. Now we can see that the spiritual fault we considered in the previous paragraph is that of demoting Torah in one’s scale of life values.

The third thing we spot is that only in the first mishnah is the term mitchayev benafsho used without any qualification. In the second and third instances we see the phrased prefaced by כְּאִלּוּ, “as if”, indicating that one’s soul, or life, is not actually at stake.

Having said that, we see is that the sages over the millennia have themselves failed to construct an edifice of consensus as to what the phrase means. Each different meaning of mitchayev benafsho produces a different level of meaning for this mishnah in which it is found. This need not be a problem. By grafting different shades of meaning into the phrase, our rabbis have made these mishnayot more nuanced and capable of bearing greater meaning—and thereby making a greater impact—than if the term had just one fixed meaning.

How then do the rabbis explain mitchayev benafsho? The commentary ascribed to Rashi passes over it the first and times it appears. But at Avot 3:9 it observes that the Satan has no permission to endanger a person for as long as that person is actively learning Torah. Stop for a minute to admire the scenery and that permission is presumably granted.  The Sefat Emet has a similar take: if one is mitchayev benafsho, it seemingly means that one loses the level of shemirah, of God guarding him, that was previously enjoyed. In each of these two cases, the person who is mitchayev is not necessarily harmed: all that has happened is that a level of immunity or protection has been stripped away.

According to the Bartenura, the act of learning Torah has prophylactic properties that protect a person against the mazikim (discussed at length in Avot Today here), regular bandits and the sort of bad happenings one experiences when alone. This explanation works for the facts of Avot 3:5, but it is unclear how far it explains the two later mishnayot. Rambam’s approach is broader, less fact-driven and more principled: mitchayev benafsho is effectively another way of saying “liable for punishment by the hand of God” (at 3:5) or “guilty of a mortal sin” (3:9 and 3:10).

Rabbis Nachman and Natan of Breslov take a practical view of mitchayev benafsho: it’s the natural consequence of not knowing, or forgetting, one’s Torah. If you don’t know your Torah, you won’t know what’s permitted and what’s permitted—and you will go through life picking up penalty points, so to speak. On this basis, no real definition or analysis of the phrase is required. Reb Chaim Volozhiner doesn’t feel any explanation is needed either, since he simply passes over it on all three occasions where it is mentioned.

Among modern rabbis and translators, mitchayev benafsho encompasses many shades of meaning. For example it is rendered as

“Endangers his soul” (Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks)

“Bears guilt for his soul” (Rabbi Dan Roth, Relevance; Gila Ross, Living Beautifully)

“Commits spiritual suicide” Dayan Gershon Lopian

“Sins against himself” Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz

“Sinned against his soul” Rabbi Yisroel Miller, The Wisdom of Avos, version 1

“Forfeited his life” Rabbi Yisroel Miller, The Wisdom of Avos, version 2

“Is worthy of death” ArtScroll Publications

“Is mortally guilty” Judah Goldin

“Is guilty against himself” R. Travers Herford, The Ethics of the Talmud

So, depending on your rabbinical preference, mitchayev benafsho can mean actual spiritual or physical death, liability for spiritual or physical death, a level of guilt that makes one deserving of such deaths, or a form of self-destruction. 

I shall leave this discussion by citing a partial commentary on Avot that doesn’t often get a mention here: Relevance: The Lost Art of Thinking, by Rabbi Dan Roth. Making reference to the first two mishnayot, he comments:

“…[O]ur Mishnah … restores a rare and almost forgotten ability—to use one’s time alone for serious reflection. You are up at night anyway. Do not squander the precious moments. Use them to get in touch with yourself. You are walking along the road. Do not kill the time. Use it wisely to give voice to your innermost thoughts. We should scout out such opportunities and, certainly, when they arise we should utilise them—for these opportunities have the potential of becoming the most worthwhile moments of our lives”.

So to be mitchayev benafsho is effectively to be held accountable for the time we waste and which we fail to make worthwhile.  It’s a lovely message, a highly positive one, even though I suspect that the authors of our mishnayot might struggle to see this message as something that leaps out from the words they chose.

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It's not easy to give -- or is it?

An Avot Mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Ki Tavo)

This week’s perakim are Perek 3 and Perek 4. The following piece discusses a mishnah from Perek 3.

The importance of tzedakah (charity) within the life of every Jew is fundamental. Embedded in Tanach and in midrash, it needs no proof texts here. But how far should one go in performing acts of charity? At Avot 3:8 Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota sets the scene by suggesting that there is no possession in our hands that we can ringfence or regard as sacrosanct, and exempt from the mitzvah of tzedakah, since whatever we have we hold as trustees of God:

תֶּן לוֹ מִשֶּׁלּוֹ, שֶׁאַתָּה וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלּוֹ. וְכֵן בְּדָוִד הוּא אוֹמֵר: כִּי מִמְּךָ הַכֹּל וּמִיָּדְךָ נָתַֽנּוּ לָךְ

Give Him what is His, for you, and whatever is yours, are His. As David says: "For everything comes from You, and from Your own hand we give to You" (I Divrei Hayomim 29:14).

Here Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota is only telling us not to be too fond of our worldly goods. Elsewhere in Avot, at 5:13, we learn that a person who says “what’s mine is yours; what’s yours is yours” is a chasid—someone whose kindness exceeds the usual norm. The two mishnayot operate in different spheres: one speaks to a person’s relationship with God, the other to that person’s relationship with other people. It is possible to agree with Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota that everything comes from God, yet focus one’s generosity on inanimate objectts such as the purchase of books or the procurement of a Sefer Torah, while contributing to neither public causes such as food kitchens for the poor, nor to the needs of individuals.

In life we can and do learn not just from what people say but from what they do. The Talmud supplies us with evidence that Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota—who was not a wealthy man—was committed to helping his fellow humans. At Ta’anit 24a we learn how he was so generous with his assets that even the charity collectors would hide when they saw him coming.

As a contemporary slant on this ancient teaching, R’ Yisroel Miller (The Wisdom of Avos) adds a practical note:

“We live in an age of generational decline and verbal inflation. Whereas the term “mesirus nefesh” used to mean literally sacrificing life itself for Hashem (e.g. choosing death rather than worship idols), today the term is commonly used to praise anyone who gives up much time and comfort for Torah and mitzvos. Praiseworthy as such sacrifices are, Rabbi Elazar is saying that is can be made easier if we develop the attitude that ‘sacrifice’ is not actually sacrificing anything at all.

Imagine someone who truly thinks of their own bank account as belonging totally to Hashem. The Divine Owner graciously allows him to take whatever he needs, but asks him to generously distribute a portion to other needy people as well. With that attitude, giving tzedakah is not a ‘sacrifice’ but a naturally pleasant activity.

Such attitudes are not easy to develop, but many people adopt the stratagem of putting a percentage of every paycheck into a separate tzedakah account. Once deposited, it is no longer seen as ‘mine’ and is much easier to give away wholeheartedly”.

The fact that so many people today run charity accounts is a positive endorsement of the wisdom of R’ Miller’s words—though a cynic might comment that these charity accounts are generally tax-efficient, which makes it even easier to give one’s money away wholeheartedly.

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Judgementalness and a call for fresh glasses

“Pirkei Avot: Judges vs. Lawyers” is the title of the second Times of Israel blogpost by Rabbi Elchanan Poupko to feature on Avot Today*. I flagged when it was first posted—all the way back on 22 July—and then lost sight of before I could write about it. Well, now I’ve found it again, so here goes [strange but true: at any given time I have somewhere between 60 and 100 ideas for Avot Today posts, mainly flagged with brightly coloured pieces of sticky paper, which get my attention anything between a day and a couple of years after I first spot them].

R' Poupko references the mishnah at Avot 1:8 in which Yehudah ben Tabbai says:

כְשֶׁיִּהְיוּ בַּעֲלֵי הַדִּין עוֹמְדִים לְפָנֶֽיךָ, יִהְיוּ בְעֵינֶֽיךָ כִּרְשָׁעִים, וּכְשֶׁנִּפְטָרִים מִלְּפָנֶֽיךָ יִהְיוּ בְעֵינֶֽיךָ כְּזַכָּאִין, כְּשֶׁקִּבְּלוּ עֲלֵיהֶם אֶת הַדִּין

When the litigants stand before you, consider them both as being guilty [literally, ‘wicked’]; and when they leave your courtroom, regard them as being righteous since they have accepted upon themselves the judgement.

On this R’ Poupko comments:

The Mishna … speak[s] about the need to see the parties as guilty until the judgment is over, at which point we must see them as righteous. Humans have an immense need to see people in black and white, good and evil, my side or my enemy’s side, and countless other binary names. The Mishna is teaching us that how we relate to people does not have to be set in stone, as much as it depends on the circumstances. You can be a fierce opponent of someone on the athletic playing field and their best friend once you get off that field. You can see someone in a certain way while you are a judge, but in a completely different way once you get off that judging seat. You can see a person a certain way once they have committed a crime and in a completely different way once they have gone through their process of atonement. We must all have that ability. Yesterday’s foe can be today’s friend. Last year’s enemy can be this year’s ally and friend. Always try and put on fresh glasses, and see people in a positive way.

I remember as a child starting one year with the teacher announcing they have not read any of the reports from previous years on any of the students and feeling this is an opportunity for me to improve and start a fresh bringing. The Mishna obliges the judges to suspect people who come in front of them for judgment, but to also make sure they drop that judgmentalness once the matter has been resolved.

This post raises a couple of questions, of which an obvious one relates to the relationship between this mishnah and Yehoshua ben Perachyah’s teaching at Avot 1:6 that one should judge other people favourably. There is no real contradiction between these two teachings. Yehudah ben Tabbai proposes a process that leads to a judge viewing both parties in a favourable light, even though he not only knows that only one of them is in the right but he is the decisor who determines which of the two it is. Regarding both as being guilty is not the conclusion reached by the judge but an artificial step in the judicial process, the starting point for establishing liability but not its destination. R’ Poupko’s classroom is not a courtroom; the new teacher is wise to start with a clean slate when assessing the children and to seek to rely on fresh evidence: the previous year’s reports are merely hearsay.

A further question relates to the way we view people with whom we compete. Is R’ Poupko justified in equating them with people we judge? It is improbable that this thought would have occurred to Yehudah ben Tabbai, who lived at a time when sports and competition between individuals was a characteristic of Greco-Roman rather than Jewish culture. To be honest, I’m not sure that the sports scenario comfortably fits the mishnah even now. However, if R’ Poupko’s message is that competitive spirit should not be taken personally and allowed to descend into judgmentalism, it is hard to object to it.

As usual, readers’ insights are hugely appreciated.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

* The first Times of Israel blogpost from R’ Poupko that we discussed, ‘Please don’t let me be misunderstood’, can be found on this blog here and on theAvot Today Facebook Group here.

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Four ways to tackle a mishnah

Gila Fine (The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic, Maggid, published earlier this year) describes four ways in which we can respond to a Talmudic text. It seems to me that what she writes is equally valid with regard to any Mishnaic text that relates to middot (guidance on best behavioural practice) and therefore especially to Pirkei Avot.

When faced with a mishnah that appears inimical to our views or hostile to our values, the application of Gila Fine’s analytical framework gives us a choice of four options:

Rejection: the distance between the mishnah’s teaching and the reader is so great that it ceases to be a source of religious authority for the reader, who simply walks away.

Accommodation: the reader is so determined to relate to the mishnah that he or she will accept its values in their totality, sacrificing one’s own personal opinions and identity in the process.

Subjection: the reader is enabled to relate to the mishnah as a result of interpreting or misinterpreting it in a way that is compatible with personal values and contemporary thought. In this way, “the text loses its integrity so that the readers may maintain theirs”.

Negotiation: the reader retains his or her opinions but does not discard those expressed in the mishnah. We must accept ourselves for what we are—but must also accept our ancient teachings for what they are too. Having done so, we must engage in dialogue with the text and negotiate a living and meaningful relationship.

Prima facie, this fourfold categorisation of approaches to the teachings of the Tannaim and Amoraim should be extremely helpful. It ideally enables us to understand more fully the positions of commentators on Pirkei Avot. When we read any of the commentaries, and particularly those written in English since the end of the Second World War, we should soon be able recognise the writer’s attitude towards not just mishnayot but on social, political and religious matters too. The only problems, it seems to me, lie in the fact that so many commentators hedge their bets, as it were, either by offering explanations from more than one viewpoint or by appearing to take a position that does not clearly belong to a single category. Of the four, rejection and accommodation are easy to identify, but subjection and negotiation may appear to blend into each other and subjection may arguably be the fruit of negotiation.

Here's a practical exercise that you can apply to yourselves.

I have listed three teachings from Avot below and invite you to monitor your own reaction to them. Ask yourselves in all honesty how you treat them. Do you (i) reject them entirely, (ii) buy into them unquestioningly, (iii) recast the text in a way that you feel comfortable with or (iv) accept your discomfort with the text but try to accommodate yourself to it?

As alternative, you can check these teachings out in your favourite commentary and categorise the author’s comments. Do they reflect the same approach throughout or is the author’s technique eclectic?

Example 1: Most regular Avot readers have such strong opinions about the third part of Yose ben Yochanan Ish Yerushalayim’s teaching at Avot 1:5 (the notorious bit about not speaking too much with married women) that I’ve decided to pass it over in favour of the less heavily debated first and second parts of it:

יְהִי בֵיתְךָ פָּתֽוּחַ לִרְוָחָה, וְיִהְיוּ עֲנִיִּים בְּנֵי בֵיתְךָ

Let your home be wide open, and let the poor be members of your household. 

How do you respond? Reject? Submit? Accommodate? Negotiate?

Example 2: At Avot 3:17 Rabbi Akiva opens his mishnah with the following:

שְׂחוֹק וְקַלּוּת רֹאשׁ, מַרְגִּילִין אֶת הָאָדָם לְעֶרְוָה

Jesting and frivolity accustom a person to sexual promiscuity.

This is expressed as a statement of fact rather than as an injunction, which gives much scope for all four of the approaches Gila Fine outlines.

Example 3: At Avot 4:11 Rabbi Yonatan says:

כָּל הַמְקַיֵּם אֶת הַתּוֹרָה מֵעֹֽנִי, סוֹפוֹ לְקַיְּמָהּ מֵעֹֽשֶׁר, וְכָל הַמְבַטֵּל אֶת הַתּוֹרָה מֵעֹֽשֶׁר, סוֹפוֹ לְבַטְּלָהּ מֵעֹֽנִי

Whoever fulfils the Torah in poverty will ultimately fulfil it in wealth; and whoever neglects the Torah in wealth will ultimately neglect it in poverty.

Like Example 2, this is also a statement. But is it a statement of fact or a statement of probability? Does it require compliance? What is it doing here?

I accept that Gila Fine’s fourfold categorisation was not designed for the purpose of this exercise, but I do hope that it can help us achieve a greater and deeper understanding—not of the mishnayot of Avot but of our own responses to these ancient teachings.

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What does it mean to take care?

An Avot Mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Ki Teitze)

This week’s pre-Shabbat post returns to Perek 2.

There is no piece of advice that is given—or ignored—more frequently than the injunction: “Take care!”   From our earliest days as children, we hear these words from our parents and elders. When we grow up, the refrain is taken up by our partners and peers, and when we grow old we receive them from our children. It doesn’t matter what we are doing: going out in the rain, playing in the park, climbing a ladder, lifting a suitcase or descending the stairs. We are always told: “Be careful! Take care!” The most annoying thing about this instruction is that it usually comes without the information we really need to know about what care needs to be taken and how we should take it.

Given the prevalence of this unwanted advice, it is almost a disappointment to read Avot 2:18, where Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel teaches three lessons. The first two of them are clearly connected, since both address prayer, and they are at first sight no more than the usual caution to take care:

הֱוֵי זָהִיר בִּקְרִיאַת שְׁמַע וּבִתְפִלָּה. וּכְשֶׁאַתָּה מִתְפַּלֵּל, אַל תַּֽעַשׂ תְּפִלָּתְךָ קְבַע, אֶלָּא רַחֲמִים וְתַחֲנוּנִים לִפְנֵי הַמָּקוֹם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: כִּי חַנּוּן וְרַחוּם הוּא, אֶֽרֶךְ אַפַּֽיִם וְרַב חֶֽסֶד, וְנִחָם עַל הָרָעָה

Be zahir (careful) in reciting the Shema and in tefillah (prayer). When you do pray, do not make your prayers routine, but [pleas for] mercy and supplication before the Almighty, as it says: “For He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in lovingkindness, and He has a gentle touch with the bad…”

Why does Rabbi Shimon take the trouble to tell us to be careful when we say Shema and when we pray? Is it not obvious that we should do so? And why should we take the trouble to study and internalise this message? If we are seriously committed to our religious practice, aren’t we doing it anyway? And, if we are not, this advice is hardly going to change us.

Rabbenu Yonah, the Bartenura and the commentary ascribed to Rashi explain that this mishnah addresses the need to say Shema at the right time. But since this is in any event a matter of halachah, Jewish law, we might wonder why it might be necessary to add a Mishnaic warning to take care. Perhaps sensing this, the Me’iri posits that the reason for taking care in reciting Shema and prayer is that it enhances one’s recognition of one’s Creator and one’s ability to become close to Him. The Chida (Ahavah beTa’anugim) sees it as being literally a wake-up call, since Shema and tefillah are the first two big events we have to deal with after we have dragged ourselves sluggishly out of bed. Another possibililty is that this mishnah is a corrective, since a person might be tempted to cut corners in saying Shema and tefillah in order to leave more time to learn Torah (R’ Chaim Pelagi, Einei Kol Chai; R’ Dovid Pardo, Shoshanim LeDavid).

The Shema and prayer aren’t by any means the only things our Sages tell us to take care over. For example, in the fourth perek Rabbi Yehudah tells us (Avot 4:16) to be zahir in our learning. There’s also another we find for being careful: in Avot 1:1 the Men of the Great Assembly warn us to be matunim badin (painstakingly careful in judgement). Again, I would have assumed that it was a no-brainer that judges should take care in deciding the cases before them, so why should there be any need for a warning?

I sometimes wonder if there isn’t some connection between these two mishnayot. Judges are told to be matunim, while people reciting Shema or praying are told to be zahir. Why aren’t judges told to be zehirim and why aren’t we supposed to be matunim?

With judges there is an extra element of taking care. This ideally involves hearing and discussing a case and then taking a break, sleeping on one’s reason for reaching a conclusion and then reassessing it afresh. That is the highest form of taking care since it not only demands a careful rethink but also allows a judge’s subconscious thoughts and perspectives to come to the forefront of his mind.  We want our judges to be matunim, to leave that space for mature reflection, rather than for them to be merely zehirim.

But when we recite Shema or pray, our care-taking is of a different order. Yes, we must be zehirim, we must say the words correctly, at the due time and with the necessary degree of thought and intention—but we may not be matunim and take a break in order to consider our performance of these commandments in greater depth.  We must complete the task of recitation or prayer in a single session,

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Truth, Science and Metaphor: where mishnah meets midrash

We live in an age in which truth has, for many people, ceased to be an absolute quality but the product of individual choice. You have your truth, I have mine. This choice between competing truths is often based on an earlier choice as to which of a number of competing narratives one accepts. The concept of the relative truth needs no further explanation here, but there is one truth-related issue that affects some of the mishnayot in Avot: the use of metaphor and parable in establishing the meaning of a teaching.

An obvious candidate for explanation via non-literal devices is Avot 5:23, where Yehudah ben Teyma says:

הֱוֵי עַז כַּנָּמֵר, וְקַל כַּנֶּֽשֶׁר, רָץ כַּצְּבִי, וְגִבּוֹר כָּאֲרִי, לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹן אָבִֽיךָ שֶׁבַּשָּׁמָֽיִם

Be bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer and mighty as a lion to do the will of your Father in Heaven.

The basic idea is that someone who wants to serve God should do so in the optimum manner, doing His will with speed, efficiency and good grace, even if it involves a good deal of effort. But, rabbis being what they are, many have mined aggadic material in order to bring out further meanings.

R’ Shlomo Toperoff does this in Lev Avot in a manner which, though traditional and well precedented by many commentators from earlier eras, may make uncomfortable reading for the modern reader who might mistake aggadic traditions for scientific truths. Here are a couple of examples:

“[A] characteristic of the eagle is that it flies with its young on its back, and this serves a dual purpose. The eagle teaches its young to fly at a tender age, but it also shows gentleness and concern for its young by protecting it from the arrows of missiles … The eagle carries its young above its wings so that no harm befall it…”

and

“The Rabbis add, ‘As the gazelle, when it sleeps, has one eye open and one eye closed, so when Israel fulfils the will of God He looks on them with two eyes, but when they do not fulfil the will of God He looks at them with one eye’…”.

As for eagles’ wings, we have a reference point in the Torah itself where, at Shemot 19:4 and Devarim 32:11 we read of being carried on eagles’ wings as being the epitome of safe, protected travel; we also understand the contrast between the eagle’s fierce and predatory attitude towards its prey and the care it expends on its young. But, unless there has been a dramatic change in nature or in the behaviour of birds, we can see that eagles do not actually carry their young on their backs as they fly through the air. If the egrets could even mount the parent bird’s back, they would fall off in the course of its flight. This would have been known to the Tannaim too, since eagles were far more common in earlier times when humans occupied less of the planet and the environment was more favourable to their lifestyle.

As for deer, the few mammals that sleep with an eye (or two) open include dolphins, whales, and fruit bats. Giraffes enter a state of semi-somnolence in which their eyes remain half open and their ears twitch. The deer family, however, do not. No matter, the midrash on Shir HaShirim (‘Song of Songs’) is not teaching us nature studies: it contains a different, more profound message. The notion of God’s oversight of our lives being proportionate to our attention to His will is important and it does not depend on the literal truth of the midrash.

We face a dilemma when dealing with metaphors that apparently contradict science. Do we teach them as they stand, as countless generations of our forebears have done, do we explain the moral they encapsulate but make excuses for their factual accuracy—or do we take them as literal truths?

I ask this question because I have had some troubling conversations on this topic. One was with a friend who became angry and disaffected with his Judaism when it was pressed upon him by a friendly and respected rabbi that the gestation period for snakes was seven years (Bechorot 8a; sadly, the object of this aggadah was not to teach anything about snakes but to illustrate the wisdom of our sages). The other was with a contemporary rabbi who insisted—and still insists—that birds can fly on a single wing, notwithstanding all practical and theoretical considerations to the contrary (see Tosafot to Shabbat 49a on the tale of Elisha ba’al kanofayim).

My feeling is that we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater and discard a colourful if sometimes literally inexact body of aggadic scholarship that has served us so well throughout our history. We should however be on our guard and make it plain, when teaching it, that what we are concerned about is the message, not the factual scenario through which the message is transmitted.

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Balancing priorities

Two mishnayot in Avot discuss the relative importance of the many commandments  that govern the life of the practising Jew. At 2:1 Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi says:

וֶהֱוֵי זָהִיר בְּמִצְוָה קַלָּה כְּבַחֲמוּרָה, שֶׁאֵין אַתָּה יוֹדֵֽעַ מַתַּן שְׂכָרָן שֶׁל מִצְוֹת, וֶהֱוֵי מְחַשֵּׁב הֶפְסֵד מִצְוָה כְּנֶֽגֶד שְׂכָרָהּ, וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה כְּנֶֽגֶד הֶפְסֵדָהּ

Be as careful with a minor mitzvah as with a major one, for you do not know the rewards of the mitzvot. Consider the cost of a mitzvah against its reward, and the reward of a transgression against its cost.

Then, at 4:2 Ben Azzai adds:

הֱוֵי רָץ לְמִצְוָה קַלָּה, וּבוֹרֵֽחַ מִן הָעֲבֵרָה, שֶׁמִּצְוָה גוֹרֶֽרֶת מִצְוָה, וַעֲבֵרָה גוֹרֶֽרֶת עֲבֵרָה, שֶׁשְּׂכַר מִצְוָה מִצְוָה, וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה עֲבֵרָה

Run to pursue a minor mitzvah but flee from a transgression, because a mitzvah brings another mitzvah, and a transgression brings another transgression since the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah, and the reward of transgression is transgression.

The commentators concede that terms such as “minor mitzvah” and “major mitzvah” demand explanation since God in His wisdom chose not to do so. A stock explanation for this omission is that, if we knew which mitzvot carried the big rewards and which the small rewards, we would naturally focus on the big ones only and neglect the rest.

On the subject of rewards, many commentators make reference to the Jerusalem Talmud (Pe’ah 1:1), which points out that the same reward—a long life—is received for performing two mitzvot that  are polar opposites, as it were: honouring one’s father and one’s mother (Shemot 20:12), which is reckoned to be one of the very hardest mitzvot to perform, and shooing away the mother bird before taking her eggs (Devarim 22:7), regarded as one of the very easiest. The conclusions we are invited to draw are that, as Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi says, we do not (and indeed cannot) know how God chooses to reward those who carry out His orders, and the reward cannot on the available evidence be related to the ease or hardship that attends their performance.

Honouring one’s parents and shooing away the mother bird are often stated to be the only two mitzvot in the Torah that offer a long life in return. But this is not so. There is a third and it is found in Devarim 25:13-15: the commandment to have weights and scales for measuring one’s merchandise.

Now, if honouring one’s parents is a major mitzvah and shooing away the mother bird is a minor one, where does that leave the mitzvah of having just weighing apparatus? I have yet to find a commentator on Avot who asks this question. It might be suggested that this mitzvah is sometimes hard and sometimes easy to perform and that, therefore, the reward depends on the level of effort or difficulty faced by the person keeping it. This answer has the attraction that it invokes another mishnah in Avot, at the very end of the fifth perek (5:26), where Ben He He teaches: לְפוּם צַעֲרָא אַגְרָא (“According to the effort is the reward” or “where there is no pain there is no gain”).   However, this mishnah can also be applied to honouring one’s parents and shooing away mother birds.

Maybe the solution lies in an explanation I heard Rabbi Yehoshua Hartman give many years ago in a talk on the Maharal. It runs like this. Every mitzvah attracts two rewards: there is a standard reward for the tick-the-box act of completing the mitzvah, and there is a second reward which is attached to a variable scale, depending on difficulty in completing it and on other external factors. This would mean that “long life” (in the next world, I believe) would be the standard rate for both honouring one’s parents and shooing away the mother bird, while a further reward awaits those who struggled to do so.

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Care in teaching: the need for quality control

 An Avot Mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Shofetim)

This week’s pre-Shabbat post returns to Perek 1.

At Avot 1:11 Avtalyon gives us the first of only three teachings in Avot that are couched in the form of a narrative:

חֲכָמִים, הִזָּהֲרוּ בְדִבְרֵיכֶם, שֶׁמָּא תָחֽוֹבוּ חוֹבַת גָּלוּת וְתִגְלוּ לִמְקוֹם מַֽיִם הָרָעִים, וְיִשְׁתּוּ הַתַּלְמִידִים הַבָּאִים אַחֲרֵיכֶם וְיָמֽוּתוּ, וְנִמְצָא שֵׁם שָׁמַֽיִם מִתְחַלֵּל

Scholars, be careful with your words. For perhaps you will be exiled to a place of bad water. The students who follow you might drink the bad water and die, and the Name of Heaven will be desecrated.

Once it is appreciated that ‘water’ is a metaphor for Torah and that ‘bad water’ is bad Torah teaching, the meaning of this parable is plain: if you, the chacham, are careless in the way you impart Torah to your students, they may misconstrue or misunderstand God’s message. They will then damage the Torah further when in turn they teach it erroneously to students of their own. Having done so, they are liable to be punished—and this will be a chillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name.

R' Ovadyah Hedayah (Seh LaBet Avot) points out the irony that is buried within this tale. Here we have talmidim of a rabbi who follow him and, who despite their learning from him in good faith, are guilty of a chillul Hashem. If one of those talmidim should through his inadvertence or negligence unwittingly bring about the death of another person, in Torah times he would have had been exiled to one of the orei miklat (“cities of refuge”) and—because his Torah education was understood to be a priority—his rabbi had to go into exile with him.

Our tradition of Pirkei Avot learning is never so narrow as to admit only one meaning per mishnah, and sometimes we find explanations that are quite surprising. According to the Chida (Chasdei Avot) the chillul Hashem is not the fault of the chacham but of his talmidim: it is they who cause death and destruction through their impaired capacity to absorb Torah. The moral of the mishnah would thus be that the chacham should be ultra-cautious in choosing his words and, it seems to me, in conducting regular quality control tests by examining his talmidim regularly to seek out signs of error or deviation from true Torah teaching. This process should ideally start at the moment that talmidim are selected, to weed out those who lack the ability to understand what is being taught and the maturity to handle it (per R’ Eliezer Papo, Ya’alzu Chasidim).

Like the words of the written Torah, the guidance of tractate Avot is intended to speak to us at all times and in every generation. We can thus take away from Avtalyon’s teaching a message that applies to parents, medical practitioners, accountants, lawyers and indeed anyone whose words will be given the weight of authority and which may cause havoc if distorted or taken out of context.

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From Gay to Garber: will Harvard be singing a new tune?

Few of us will have had time to forget the circumstances leading to the resignation of Claudine Gay as Harvard’s University President, or the immense shock and pain felt by the Jewish community over her official stance on statements concerning genocide of the Jews. Ms Gay has since been replaced by Alan Garber (“born … in a Jewish household”, per Wikipedia), who is seeking to reduce the level of tension and anxiety in what was, until recently, one of the world’s most revered and respected institutions.

The Harvard Gazette reported yesterday as follows:

University President Alan Garber urged the campus community to seek opportunities for unity in a time of divisiveness on Tuesday at the first Morning Prayers ceremony of the new academic year at Memorial Church’s Appleton Chapel.

Garber opened his address with words of advice from the Talmudic compendium Pirkei Avot, or “Ethics of the Fathers,” traditionally read on the Sabbath. “Find yourself a teacher,” he said. “Win yourself a friend, and be one who judges everyone by giving them the benefit of the doubt.”

Garber, who took the helm of the University at a time of unrest over the war in Gaza, echoed themes he touched on during Monday’s Convocation, urging members of the community to seek common ground, treat one another with empathy and respect, and learn from the rich diversity of views on campus.

He explained that finding a teacher means seeking out people “whose experiences, skills and perspectives are different from your own, and whose knowledge and wisdom often exceed yours,” and “winning yourself a friend” requires offering “companionship, empathy, concern, support, and trustworthiness.”

“We’re all too adept at recognizing the flaws of our antagonists and even of our friends,” Garber said. “It’s tempting to interpret the actions of others in the worst possible light. It is better for all of us to do the opposite.”

Garber shook his head at recent headlines saying the nation’s colleges and universities have no choice but to brace for continuing disruption and unrest. He called it a “dismal notion” at an institution like Harvard, which is “pushing the limits of understanding, pursuing genuine excellence in every domain, and making ourselves, our University, and the world better.” 

These impediments can be avoided. “This is not a time to brace ourselves,” he said. “This is a time to embrace once another. We can do so by always keeping that third precept in mind. Be one who judges everyone by giving them the benefit of the doubt. By reserving judgment, we make it possible for others to know that they are part of this community and that this community cares for them.”

Garber said the key was “to bring to day-to-day interactions the same commitment to inquiry and discovery that we bring to our intellectual pursuits. If and when tensions among us rise, I hope that we will approach each other not only as fellow human beings, but as potential teachers and friends”…

Professor Garber’s mention of Pirkei Avot—in this case the teaching of Yehoshua ben Perachyah at Avot 1:6—is the latest example of the citation of mishnayot in order to make a political point (see also the speeches of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro here and here).  

In this instance one can see why this mishnah is chosen: it reminds its audience that Harvard is about teaching; it sends out a positive message of friendship and it arguably also encourages people not to judge each other as individuals and not collectively.  The message has a Jewish origin but is of universal application.

I wonder whether any other message from Avot was considered and then rejected. At Avot 4:1 Ben Zoma teaches: “Who is honoured/respected? The person who honours/respects others”. But perhaps asking the Harvard faculty and student body to honour or respect one another is demanding too much.  At Avot 3:18 Rabbi Akiva reminds us that we are all created in God’s image—but this would scarcely impress those who do not believe in God. And Hillel at Avot 1:12 urges us to love peace and pursue it. Maybe, given the chasm that separates different definitions of “peace” in Israel, in Gaza and on the Harvard campus itself, this would not be a consensus teaching after all.

I’d be curious to discover what readers think of Professor Garber’s statement and the appropriateness of his choice of Avot citation.

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A spade to dig with

Like many confirmed bloggers and Facebook post-creators, I spend more time writing my own material than I do in reading what others have to say. I do however try to allocate some time each day to reading the posts and comments of my Facebook friends, most of whom I have never met in person.

I recently read a Facebook post (see link below) that greatly moved me. The author is Eliezer Diamond and it leads with the words “This is a tough one to write”.  The reason why this post was difficult to write is apparent from the opening paragraph, which reads:

I had an appointment with my prostate cancer oncologist this past Wednesday. My children have stressed to me the importance of one of them being present at my appointments going forward, and so one of my daughters, who is a medical professional, was part of the virtual meeting. The doctor in question was the one with whom I have had a difficult relationship, but in this appointment she was a model of clarity and patience – due, in part, to my having asked in a recent message that she address me as Rabbi Diamond. I hated making that request – our rabbis tell us not to use a rabbinic title as “a shovel with which to dig,” in other words as a means of receiving preferential treatment, but playing the rabbi card was the only means I could think of to get her to treat me respectfully. I thanked her at the end of the appointment for her having explained my situation so clearly.

According to the World Cancer Research Fund, prostate cancer is the fourth most commonly suffered form of the disease. The American Cancer Society adds that it affects one man in every 12. Rabbi Diamond writes about his condition in a way that is both matter-of-fact and sensitive. I wish him a refuah shelemah, as I’m sure other readers will do too.

I was particularly struck by Rabbi Diamond’s sensitivity to the rights and wrongs of asking to be addressed as “Rabbi”. Hillel touches on this issue at Avot 1:13 where he teaches that one who exploits the crown of the Torah will fade away, but the metaphor of using the Torah and, by implication, one’s status as a Torah scholar as a “spade to dig with” comes from Rabbi Tzadok at Avot 4:7 where he builds on Hillel’s apothegm and says:

אַל תַּעֲשֶֽׂהָ עֲטָרָה לְהִתְגַּדֶּל בָּהּ, וְלֹא קַרְדּוּם לַחְתָּךְ בָּהּ, וְכַךְ הָיָה הִלֵּל אוֹמֵר: וּדְאִשְׁתַּמֵּשׁ בְּתַגָּא חֲלָף, הָא לָמַֽדְתָּ, כָּל הַנֶּהֱנֶה מִדִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה, נוֹטֵל חַיָּיו מִן הָעוֹלָם

Do not make the Torah a crown to magnify yourself with, or a spade with which to dig. So Hillel used to say: one who make personal use of the crown of Torah will fade away. Accordingly anyone who benefits from the words of Torah removes his life from the world.

Should one make use of one’s Torah status for personal benefit? Our sages were clearly anxious not to do so. In one famous episode (Yerushalmi, Shevi’it 4:2, 35b) R’ Tarfon, caught by guards when eating what turned out to be his own figs, saved himself from a beating by crying out “Prepare shrouds for Tarfon”.  Even though he didn’t invoke his rabbinical status, the fact that his unusual name, linked with his massive repute as a Torah scholar, led to his being spared was something that troubled him for the rest of his life.

This respect that Rabbi Tarfon had for the principle of not using Torah as a spade to dig with is all the more remarkable when one considers that what is at stake here is only a middah, a character refinement, and not a mitzvah, a commandment. In the case of almost every commandment, when one’s life is in danger one is not merely permitted but required to transgress it. However, where all that was at stake here was a recognition that it is best practice not to take advantage of the Torah or one’s Torah status, there is somehow less leeway.

In our daily lives, living within society at large, taking advantage of one’s name and status is not seen as a harmful practice per se. Indeed, it is often regarded as one’s entitlement or as a necessity—even if there is arguably an element of deception at play. I can cite an example drawn from my own experience.

Back in 1977 my wife and I moved into a house on a new estate at the edge of Dublin. When we moved in, the public telephone network had not yet been extended to our area. Eventually, telephone services became available but it was difficult to get a phone line. After we had been on the waiting list for well over a year, it became apparent that a small number of our neighbours had been given phone lines. These fortunate souls, by some strange curious coincidence, were all connected by bonds of family or friendship to the Fianna Fáil party, which was then in office. At this point my wife decided to take the initiative. She called the telephone company and insisted that it was imperative for “Doctor Phillips” to be given a telephone at the earliest possible opportunity. The person at the other end of this call did not ask what sort of doctor I was, and therefore never knew that I was not a doctor of medicine but a doctor of philosophy. Even now, nearly 50 years after the event, my feelings are split between guilt at leaping up the queue for installation of our phone and delight at having secured a positive result in the absence of local protetzia.

To conclude, my admiration for Rabbi Diamond’s sensitivity to this issue and I’m sure that, had I been a rabbi, I would have done exactly the same thing.

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A grounding in Torah

An Avot Baraita for Shabbat (Parashat Re’eh)

This week’s pre-Shabbat post takes us back to Perek 6.

The Baraita at Avot 6:4 makes uncomfortable reading for those of us who appreciate a good night’s sleep tucked up in a warm and comfortable bed:

כַּךְ הִיא דַּרְכָּהּ שֶׁל תּוֹרָה: פַּת בְּמֶֽלַח תֹּאכֵל, וּמַֽיִם בִּמְשׂוּרָה תִּשְׁתֶּה, וְעַל הָאָֽרֶץ תִּישָׁן, וְחַיֵּי צַֽעַר תִּחְיֶה, וּבַתּוֹרָה אַתָּה עָמֵל, אִם אַתָּה עֽוֹשֶׂה כֵּן, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ וְטוֹב לָךְ, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה, וְטוֹב לָךְ לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא

This is the way of Torah: bread with salt you shall eat; water in small measure you shall drink, and on the ground you shall sleep. Live a life of hardship and in Torah shall you toil. If you do so, "you are fortunate, and it is good for you" (Tehillim 128:2): you are fortunate—in this world, and it is good for you—in the World to Come.

Why should sleeping on the ground make any difference whatsoever in terms of one’s pursuit of a Torah-based way of life? And do we humans not learn better when we have had a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed than if we spend the night writhing around on the ground in the forlorn hope of finding a position conducive to at least some sort of sleep?

Even among the Tannaim there were reservations about the wisdom of this advice. Indeed, Ben Azzai (Berachot 62b) advised that one should sleep anywhere but on the ground, though admittedly his prime concern was to avoid danger from snakes.

My preferred take on this teaching is that it focuses on a worst-case scenario. What it means is that EVEN if we live on a subsistence diet and EVEN if we have to sleep on the ground and struggle to make ends meet, so long as we can keep learning Torah and feel its buzz we will find it a rewarding and enjoyable experience. We might make a comparison with the sort of discomfort we are prepared to tolerate when undertaking a potentially lucrative business trip: fatigue, jet-lag, problems accessing kosher food—all of which we willingly accept as part and parcel of our acquisition of earthly material wealth. How much more so should we be prepared to put up with discomfort and inconvenience when passing through this temporary, ephemeral world on the way to our spiritual World to Come [based on R’ Simcha Bunim of Pesischa, in MiMa’ayanot HaNetzach].

If you enjoyed this post or found it useful, please feel welcome to share it with others. Thank you.

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Why is this sponge different from all other sponges?

Pirkei Avot is a pretty serious tractate, but every so often a little gentle humour filters through. One such example is Avot 5:18, which likens aspiring Torah scholars to various utensils that are more often found in the kitchen than in the study halls:

אַרְבַּע מִדּוֹת בְּיוֹשְׁבִים לִפְנֵי חֲכָמִים: סְפוֹג, וּמַשְׁפֵּךְ, מְשַׁמֶּֽרֶת, וְנָפָה. סְפוֹג, שֶׁהוּא סוֹפֵג אֶת הַכֹּל. וּמַשְׁפֵּךְ, שֶׁמַּכְנִיס בְּזוֹ וּמוֹצִיא בְזוֹ. מְשַׁמֶּֽרֶת, שֶׁמּוֹצִיאָה אֶת הַיַּֽיִן וְקוֹלֶֽטֶת אֶת הַשְּׁמָרִים. וְנָפָה, שֶׁמּוֹצִיאָה אֶת הַקֶּֽמַח וְקוֹלֶֽטֶת אֶת הַסּֽוֹלֶת

There are four types among those who sit before the sages: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer and the sieve. The sponge absorbs everything. The funnel takes in at one end and lets it out the other. The strainer lets the wine pass through and retains the sediment. The sieve lets the coarse flour pass through and retains the fine flour.

What do the sages themselves think of this? Most agree that, while it is a very fine thing to be a sieve, there is less praise for the sponge, the funnel and the strainer. The funnel retains nothing: it represents the talmid whose learning goes “in one ear and out the other”. The strainer is even worse, retaining just the dregs of each class—the witticisms, the asides, the rabbi’s diversions—while keeping nothing of its subject matter. As for the sponge, typical of scholarship ancient and modern is this appraisal by R’ Shlomo Toperoff in his Lev Avot:

“[The sponge] is porous and easily absorbs all kinds of liquid, clean and unclean. Similarly the first type of disciple absorbs all things indiscriminately, the good and the bad; he does not distinguish between the essential and inessential”.

There is however plenty of scope for reappraisal of our four household items. Maybe they are all good, at least in potential. This seems to be the view of Rabbi Shmuel de Uçeda, who in his Midrash Shmuel explains the apparently superfluous words in this mishnah as a call for all four utensils to be explained twice over, once as praise and once as criticism. We discussed his approach, which is followed by Rabbi Avraham Azulai in his Ahavah BeTa’anugim, back in 2022 (see blogpost here, Facebook post with discussion here).

Here's another account of the four kitchen items from Rabbi Chaim Palagi, in his Einei Kol Chai, which I can’t resist bringing even though we still have most of a year till we get to Pesach.

The Passover Haggadah contains a passage that resonates with every child who is old enough to stay up for the Pesach Seder service. It speaks of four children—the wise, the wicked, the simple and the child who doesn’t even know how to ask what is happening around him. Can it be that these children correspond to the four types of student in our mishnah? It is speculated that the sponge represents the simple child, in that it absorbs but does not analyse. The funnel lets everything pass through without even asking why. The strainer, which retains only that which is of no value, is the wicked son. This leaves the sieve as the chacham, the wise and discerning son. Neat, isn’t it?

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