Avot 1:14 Self, Others, and the Fierce Urgency of Now

Avot 1:14—Hillel would say: If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  If I am only for myself, what am I?  And if not now, when?

This is undoubtedly the best-known passage in Avot, and one of the most cited quotes from the entire Jewish tradition.  Hillel’s ancient wisdom has been employed as the title of numerous books and movies, incorporated into several song lyrics, and even boldly emblazoned on the walls of a leading national chain of fitness centers.  And as catchy as it is in English, it’s even more memorable in Hebrew, where it rhymes.

The opening line reminds us of the importance of self-care and determination.  As individuals, and as part of the Jewish people, we can and should advocate for our own legitimate interests.  Self-abnegation and mortification serve no one, only rendering us impotent in a world that cries out for all hands on deck.

A key to understanding the second line is to note the shift in pronouns.  We begin with “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”  but continue “If I am only for myself, what am I?”  If our locus of concern ends with ourselves, Avot implies, we become less than fully human.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead offered a powerful illustration of this truth.  She asked her students, “What is the oldest evidence of human civilization?”  They responded with the expected answers: a clay pot, iron tools, the domestication of plants and animals.  

“No,” Mead replied, “those are all early indicators but here is what I believe to be the first and most important sign of civilization”—as she held up a human femur and pointed to a thickened area where the bone had been fractured and then solidly healed.  She continued: “In nature, crippling wounds are fatal, because those who suffer them are left for dead.  But this healed bone shows that a group must have cared for the injured person—hunted on their behalf, brought them food, provided shelter and active concern for their welfare—making significant personal sacrifices to save the lives of a friend or family member.  That is the beginning of true human society.”

If we are only for ourselves, what are we?

The final line--If not now, when?--speaks to what Dr. King eloquently called “the fierce urgency of now.”  In a world rife with cruelty, division and deep injustice, we are all called to do our part.  Let’s find strength and solace in the knowledge that we are in it together.

On that note, I leave you with a link to a new song by the wonderful singer-songwriter Iris DeMent called “Workin’ On a World.”  It’s powerful medicine for apathy, offering, in the words of music critic Ann Powers, “a hallelujah for the good done by those who lay the path toward good even if they may not walk its full length.”

Avot 1:13 Move or Die

Avot 1:13—Hillel would say. . . “One who does not increase, decreases.” 

There are a few species of sharks—great whites, whale sharks, makos—that cannot breathe while staying still.  These fish rely on a process known as obligate ram ventilation, which requires them to swim with their mouths open.  The faster they go, the more water is pushed through their gills.  If they stop swimming, they receive no oxygen.  If they don’t move, they die.

Hillel argues that when it comes to learning, we are, metaphorically-speaking, just like those sharks.  There is no neutral zone, no steady state—if we do not constantly increase our knowledge, we lose it. 

Life is dynamic.  To fail to move forward is, indeed, to fall behind.  To be fully human—which is to say, to be a mensch—is to continually learn and grow from our mistakes.

As Samuel Beckett wrote: “Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better.”

The story is told of a rabbi who posed a question to her student: “Two people are perched on ladders reaching from earth to heaven.  One is on the tenth rung, the other on just the second.  Which one is in a better place?”

“That’s easy,” replied the student, “the one on the tenth rung.”

“Not necessarily,” said the rabbi.  “It depends on whether, and which way, they’re moving.”

Avot 1:12 Living in Peace with One Another and All of the Creation

Avot 1:12—Hillel says: Be a disciple of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving the Creation and bringing them closer to the Torah. 

Hillel is one of the best-known rabbinic sages, and this is one of his most cited teachings.  Many commentators have noted that the doubling—love and pursue—emphasizes the imperative of peacemaking.  It is not enough to maintain harmony in our own circles; we are, instead, obligated to actively seek peace between all of our fellow human beings.  

Far less attention has been paid to the second half of this passage, which has often been mistranslated as “loving people.”  But the Hebrew—briyot—refers to the entirety of Creation: plants, animals, insects, rocks, rivers—everything.  True peace—or, in the deeper meaning of the word shalom, wholeness—means living in concord with the entirety of the natural world.  

Philosopher David Abram explicates this brilliantly in his book, The Spell of the Sensuous:

Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth—our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese.  To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence.  We are human only in contact and conviviality with what is not human.

We become who we are in relationship with both our fellow human beings and the natural world.  To love and pursue peace is to engage, acknowledge, and celebrate those relationships. This is Hillel’s—and Aaron’s—way. 

Avot 1:11--Words that Hurt

Avot 1:11: Avtalyon says: Sages, be careful with your words, lest you incur the penalty of exile and be banished to a place of toxic water.  The students who follow you there may drink and die, and the Name of Heaven will be desecrated.

For generations, American children have learned the mantra, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  The point is clear—while physical violence may injure us, verbal attacks need not do us any harm.

This idiom strikes me as nonsense, and decidedly not Jewish.  In our tradition, the power of words, to harm or to heal, is unparalleled.  The Talmud teaches: “Anyone who insults or humiliates another in public—it is as though they were spilling blood.”  Hate speech is murderous.  As one of our most well-known folk parables recognizes, cruel and callous words can never be fully retracted; once spoken, they scatter through the world like wind-driven feathers.  Today, with social media’s capacity to amplify the spread of words by unfathomable magnitudes, we are collectively drowning in the toxic tide of insult and insinuation.

Avtalyon directs his warning toward his peers, the rabbinic sages and scholars of his generation.  They bear the responsibility of leading by example, for as Avtalyon notes, students are strongly drawn to follow their teachers.  In our own age, when we are all effectively armed with a booming high-tech megaphone, we share the leader’s privilege and burden of modeling kind and compassionate speech.  The next generation is watching, listening, and learning from us.

Avot 1:10--Love Work, Shun Power

Avot 1:10—Sh’mayah says: Love work, despise positions of authority, and do not become overly comfortable with the authorities.

What is the relationship between Sh’mayah’s first statement—love work—and his subsequent warnings against cozying up to wealth and power?

Perhaps he was concerned about sycophancy as a cheap and misguided shortcut to what is conventionally seen as success.  It is all too easy to turn to money and influence as a substitute for meaningful work.  To follow that path is to lose one’s moral compass—as so many seeking to gain or maintain political leadership have sadly done in recent years.

Sh’mayah’s juxtaposition serves to clarify the true purpose of work—m’lachah—which is to repair a reasonable portion of the world’s brokenness. We obviously need to earn sufficiently to put bread on our tables, but integrity demands that in one way or another, our endeavors bring more healing than hurt.  If we find ourselves focused on the accumulation of capital and influence for selfish purposes, it is time to reconsider our path.  With some significant exceptions, the wealthy and powerful are heavily vested in maintaining the status quo, because that’s what helped enable their prosperity and prestige.  If we are committed to doing our part in changing the world for the better, it is generally advisable to not get too comfortable with the individuals and institutions that have the most to gain by keeping things as they currently are.  Holy labor is that which recognizes the world as it is, but never stops striving toward the vision of what it should be.

Avot 1:7--Avoiding Bad Influences and Virtue As Its Own Reward

Matai of Arbel says: “Distance yourself from a bad neighbor; do not associate with a wicked person; and do not despair of retribution.”

In last week’s mishnah, Yehoshua ben P’rachyah taught the importance of drawing close to people to forge friendships and learning relationships.  This week’s passage, by contrast, teaches that there are times when we are obligated to distance ourselves from others. 

Matai of Arbel recognizes the significance of negative peer pressure, which affects us all.  If we associate with unethical people, we are far more likely to act unethically ourselves.  While we can’t always separate ourselves from bad influences—sometimes they are our bosses, co-workers, and even family members—we can minimize the time we spend with them.

But what is the relationship between this warning and the last part of Matai’s teaching: “Do not despair of retribution?”  In his social justice commentary on Avot, Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz writes: Some fear that they will miss out if they don’t join the liars and cheaters who seem to be winning.  The mishnah reminds us that the honest and faithful will win, both in this world and in the world-to-come.

I’m skeptical of this, at least at face value.  I am completely agnostic about the existence of a world to come, and the premise that the honest and faithful will necessarily win in this world seems dubious at best.  I believe life is all too often unfair; as quite a few of the Rabbis recognize, sometimes the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper.  While a part of us wishes that everyone would ultimately get their just desserts—which is to say proper retribution—when it comes to material benefits, it just isn’t so.

Still, virtue can be its own reward.  By associating with good companions and shunning bad influences, we are far more likely to do the right thing in our lives—and the satisfaction of making the world a little better for our having been here often must suffice.  It may not make us rich or popular or powerful, but when we choose to associate with ethical people, we at least have the satisfaction of knowing we are doing our best to live up to God’s calling to be holy, honoring the Divine Image in which we are created.

Judge Others Favorably (E-Torah November 13; Avot 1:6)

For this year’s e-Torah, I will be featuring passages from the Talmudic tractate Avot, a compilation of the ethical, spiritual, and political teachings of second-century Rabbis.  I’ll be approaching this venerable text through the lens of Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz’s Pirkei Avot: A Social Justice Commentary.

Avot 1:6—Yehoshua ben P’rachyah says: Get yourself a teacher, acquire for yourself a friend, and judge everyone favorably (i.e. with the presumption of innocence).

Given the importance our tradition assigns to learning and community, the first two parts of this passage are not surprising.  In order to grow in wisdom, we need good teachers; solid friendships are the foundation of sustainable, caring community.  But what is the relationship between these teachings and the last one, enjoining that we assess others with the benefit of the doubt?

The Italian Renaissance commentator Ovadiah Sforno writes: “Judge everyone fairly—because without this trait friendship will not endure.  For the majority of statements, the listener can judge a speaker in a negative light.  And this attitude will unquestionably annul all friendship.”

In other words, friendship depends upon trust.  If we go through life assuming bad intentions on the part of others, we cannot maintain friendships.  To be a friend is to have someone’s back, and know that they have ours.  

It is much the same in the teacher-student relationship.  The learner must trust that the teacher is wise, honest, and has her or his best interests at heart.  And so it is in almost all significant relationships—if we approach the other with guarded suspicion, things will not end well.  

We need not agree with one another. Students can grow by challenging their teachers; friends can and should offer loving criticism when it is merited; and Torah defines the role of our partners as ezer k’negdo—those who help us through life by guiding us toward new ways of thinking.  

Disagreement is very Jewish—but only when it is accompanied by genuine trust.  To judge others favorably—and know that they are affording us that same privilege—is to pave the way toward the kind of vulnerability that undergirds all deep reciprocal relationships, between teachers and students, friends and lovers, and sustaining members of compassionate Jewish communities.