There is no evidence that Hillel, even after he became the religious leader of his age, owned a horse or that he had servants working in his household. The one story we know about Hillel’s wife suggests that she had no help in the kitchen (see this page). Yet Hillel had the moral imagination to understand that while he might not need a horse, this man from so different a background might, and might even require the luxury of a servant.6 Would Hillel expect the community to provide the poor man with this expensive lifestyle forever? Perhaps not. Perhaps he understood that the man just needed time to gradually adjust to his new economic status. And Hillel wanted to give him that time.7
Hillel understood that “love your neighbor as yourself” does not always mean that we should want precisely the same thing for our neighbor as we want for ourselves. Sometimes it means that for our neighbor we should want, and provide, more.
Optimism
Leave it to the people. If they are not themselves prophets, they are the children of prophets.
—Pesachim 66a
There was a lightness of spirit in Hillel’s approach to people, and a calmness in his responses to situations that might, in others, prompt anxiety. This may of course have been merely a matter of the mystery of temperament, but it seems symbolic of an idea about Judaism itself, an idea that would grow more difficult to sustain in the centuries following the destruction of the Temple, when the Jews were scattered throughout the world and other monotheistic religions born of Judaism gained global dominance.
Earlier, I cited the case in which a question was raised regarding a person who forgot to bring a knife with him to the Temple before the Sabbath, which that year corresponded with the beginning of Passover. Carrying a knife on the Sabbath is forbidden, but it would be a great hardship to be without the knife because it would then be impossible to perform the Passover sacrifice. Hillel responded with equanimity: “I have heard what this law is, but I have forgotten it. However, leave it to the people. If they are not themselves prophets, they are the children of prophets” (Pesachim 66a). I don’t know if there are many other rabbis who would have calmly entrusted such a major decision to the masses. The following day, the people justified Hillel’s confidence in them and provided a solution that enabled them to bring the needed knives to the Temple without violating Jewish law (see this page).
As an optimist, Hillel, it seems, had a greater capacity than Shammai to take pleasure in the moment. Thus, the Talmud describes Shammai’s devotion to properly honoring the Sabbath: “They said about Shammai the Elder that every day he would eat in honor of the Sabbath. How so? If he came across a superior animal that could be eaten, he would say, ‘This should be set aside for the Sabbath meal.’ Then, if he later came across an ever better animal, he would set aside that one for the Sabbath, and eat the first during the week.” Thus, the Talmud credits Shammai with honoring the Sabbath even during the week, since he would eat inferior meals on weekdays so that he could save superior food for the Sabbath. But Hillel the Elder, the Talmud continues, had an altogether different mind-set: on any given day, he would simply eat whatever food was available. Unlike Shammai, Hillel appeared confident that he would find appropriate food for Shabbat when the time came. The rabbis applied to him the verse, “Blessed be God day by day” (Pss. 68:20), which Hillel understood to mean that he not be unduly concerned with what might or might not be available in a few days’ time (see Beitzah 16a).
One particular difference of opinion between the schools of Hillel and Shammai reveals their differing perspectives on human nature, and also reflects an optimistic versus a more pessimistic mind-set. The School of Shammai restricted attendance at its academy to people who were already wise and humble (one wonders if people asked themselves before applying to Shammai’s school, “Am I sufficiently humble to be worthy of admission?”) and who came from a distinguished background. In contrast, the School of Hillel was willing to admit all applicants into the Beit Midrash (House of Study)—just as Hillel was more willing than Shammai to admit people into the Jewish community (for more on this dispute and its implications for contemporary Jewish behavior, see chapter 13).
Optimism concerning others’ potential generally coincides with a loving attitude toward them. And so it is not a surprise that Hillel’s biblical hero is Aaron, Moses’s brother and Israel’s first High Priest. In Jewish tradition, Aaron is enshrined as someone permeated with love for his fellow man. The rabbis tell the following story concerning him:
When two men had quarreled, Aaron would go and sit with one of them and say, “My son, see what your friend is doing! He beats his breast and tears his clothes and moans, ‘Woe is me! How can I lift my eyes and look my companion in the face? I am ashamed before him, since it is I who treated him foully.’ ”
Aaron would sit with him until he had removed all anger [literally, jealousy] from his heart.
Then Aaron would go and sit with the other man and say likewise, “My son, see what your friend is doing! He beats his breast and tears his clothes and moans, ‘Woe is me! How can I lift my eyes and look my companion in the face? I am ashamed before him since it was I who offended him.’ ”
Aaron would sit with him also until he had removed all anger from his heart.
Later, when the two met, they would embrace and kiss each other. (The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan 12:3)
Aaron is the sole biblical character to whom Hillel refers in the many aphorisms attributed to him in Ethics of the Fathers: “Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving people and drawing them near to the Torah” (Ethics of the Fathers 1:12).
In contrast to Hillel, Shammai and his followers do not appear to have been interested in winning over to Jewish commitment people who were not already committed. But if they were already wise, humble, and from distinguished families, Shammai stood ready to teach them. Not so with Hillel; to him, Jews, non-Jews, righteous people, sinners—all could be won over to a life of Jewish learning, commitment, and goodness.
Nonjudgmental Nature
Do not judge your fellow until you are in his place.
—HILLEL, Ethics of the Fathers 2:4
Perhaps the most ignored of the Torah’s 613 commandments is “In justice you shall judge your fellow man” (Lev. 19:15). In addition to instructing judges to be scrupulously fair—for example, not to favor the rich over the poor or the poor over the rich (Lev. 19:15)—this verse is understood in Jewish law as applying to every person and to non-judicial settings as well. We are all called upon to judge one another fairly.
Almost all of us make judgments about people every day, and often our judgments are critical and harsh. Our children do not immediately do something we request of them, and we condemn them, verbally, or in our minds, as selfish or never listening to us, even though many times in a day they do obey us, even when we ask them to do something they might not want to.8 A waiter at a restaurant serves us more slowly than we would like or makes an error in bringing our order, and we find ourselves reaching all sorts of unwarranted and condemnatory conclusions about the person.
If we tend to be unduly judgmental even in instances where someone has simply done something annoying, rather than truly wrong, we are even more apt to be judgmental when there is actual evidence of wrongdoing. It is concerning such cases that Hillel issues his somewhat surprising appeal: “Do not judge your fellow until you are in his place.” According to the Talmud, idolatry is regarded as one of the three worst sins (up there with murder and the most serious sexual offenses). But even in such a case, the rabbis were not entirely without understanding for those who engaged in such behavior. The Talmud relates that during a public lecture, Rabbi Ashi made a sarcastic reference to the idolatrous king Menashe, a long-dead monarch. That night, Menashe appeared to Ashi in a dream. The king posed a difficult question in Jewish law to the rabbi, and when Ashi couldn’t answer it, Menashe did. The startled rabbi not only assured the king that he would repeat the question and answer to his class the followi
ng day, but then asked him, “Since you are so learned, why did you worship idols?” Menashe answered, “Had you been there, you would have lifted up the bottom of your garment and run after me” (Sanhedrin 102b). Idolatry might be a horrid offense, and we are right to condemn it; nonetheless, we should still seek to understand why another—and perhaps we ourselves—might be seduced into engaging in it.*
One might say that Hillel’s great insight was that if any Jew might, under different circumstances, be an idol worshipper, perhaps any idol worshipper could eventually become a Jew. In order to reach this conclusion, imagination is certainly necessary. But so is a suspension of judgment, the easy condemnation of people based on appearances.
My friend Dr. Isaac Herschkopf shared with me a recollection about a time when he was too quick to judge another harshly:
I remember sitting in a wealthy friend’s home watching a video of his visit to Egypt. I was silently appalled at the sight of him walking through throngs of beggars, including blind children and child amputees, without offering them a penny.
Many years later, I found myself lecturing in Egypt. Sure enough, as I left my hotel the first morning, I was surrounded by seemingly the same throng. As is my custom at home, I was carrying dollar bills to give to the needy. As I began to dispense them, two things simultaneously occurred. First, the throng turned into a mob, a feeding frenzy with the amputees’ crutches being used as weapons (a dollar is worth infinitely more there than at home), and second, my driver admonished me and warned me that I would regret my actions for the rest of my trip.
He was absolutely correct. I had been targeted. The throngs of beggars would follow me wherever I went. They would wait outside my hotel patiently, for hours if necessary, until I exited and then aggressively beseech me for the same ill-advised generosity that I had shown on the first day.
My wealthy friend was not being stingy; he was being wise.
The expression “to jump to a conclusion” almost always has a negative connotation. Few of us jump to positive assessments about others, but we are likely to seize upon a comment someone has made, an action someone has or has not taken, and assume a deficit in the person’s character. When Hillel says, “Do not judge your fellow until you are in his place,” he is merely asking that we extend to others the standard of judgment we want extended to ourselves. This brief teaching, only seven words in Hebrew (al tadin et chaver’cha ad sheh’tagiya l’mkomo) has the capacity to turn us into less angry, fairer and more loving people. Indeed, if this is the only one of Hillel’s teachings recorded in this book that you incorporate into your life, you will still be profoundly transformed. Sometimes the greatest conversions take place inside the same religion.*
Intense Curiosity
He knew the speech of mountains, hills, and valleys.
—Sofrim 16:9
Hillel is most famous as a teacher, but the Talmud makes it clear that his ability to teach anyone was connected to his ability to learn from anyone. The knowledge attributed to him by the Talmud has a quasi-magical element, like the wisdom of Solomon, who, we are told, knew the language of the birds and the beasts. All creation was for Hillel a subject worthy of study and capable of imparting wisdom.
We already saw Hillel engaging in what, in Talmudic times, constituted a type of scientific and anthropological speculation—why Babylonians’ heads seemed to be rounder than those of other people and why Africans seemed to have wider feet. But Hillel’s study of other cultures and of the natural world was far broader than this: “He even learned the languages of all the peoples of the world; as well as the speech of mountains, hills, and valleys, the speech of trees and grasses, the speech of wild and domestic animals, the speech of demons” (Sofrim 16:9). The sense that others come from traditions that might in themselves contain useful knowledge or information was clearly a key to Hillel’s openness.
You Must Know Everything was the title of one of the last books by Isaac Babel, the renowned Soviet-Jewish writer. Such a designation might well apply to Hillel. Most people familiar with his name as a great rabbinic sage assume that his areas of expertise and of interest were confined to matters of Jewish concern.
How many languages did Hillel actually know? The Talmud cites only teachings of his in Hebrew and Aramaic (the language of his native Babylonia and probably the most widely spoken language in Israel at the time). For example, his summary of Judaism to the man standing on one foot was delivered in Aramaic. But this text from Sofrim indicates that he learned other languages as well. The word prozbol, the term that describes the famous legal formula by which Hillel avoided the wholesale cancellation of debts in the seventh year, is Greek (likely meaning “before the assembly of the councilors”; see this page), and so we can assume at least a basic mastery of Greek for Hillel to turn to that language for a word to explain his most far-reaching legal innovation. Indeed, while no other Talmudic sources refer to Hillel’s using the Greek language, a passage in Sotah (49b) notes that his grandson, Rabbi Gamliel, who also headed the Sanhedrin, made sure that he and his household not only knew Greek, but were also familiar with Greek wisdom, more specifically, Greek philosophy.* Rabbi Gamliel’s son, Rabbi Shimon, said that his father supported one thousand students, five hundred of whom devoted themselves to Torah studies, and five hundred to Greek wisdom. We do not know definitively of any other languages Hillel spoke, but it is likely that, as head of the Sanhedrin, he had some encounters with Roman officials and might therefore have acquired some knowledge of Latin (it is unlikely that Roman officials he met would have knowledge of Hebrew or Aramaic).
Behind the poetic manner in which the rabbis describe Hillel’s far-reaching knowledge—“[he knew] the speech of mountains, hills, and valleys, the speech of trees and grasses, the speech of wild and domestic animals”—there is the real suggestion that he did study geography, botany, and zoology.
What is the connection between the well-known image of Hillel as Judaism’s great ethical model and the largely overlooked sense of him as what might be called Judaism’s first “renaissance man”? Clearly one link is an openness to the outside world, which takes courage as well as curiosity. Everything, in this view, has been created by God and is therefore worthy of study, worthy of compassion. Which is why, in the Talmud, nothing botanical or zoological was alien to Hillel. But also why it would not be sufficient to say of Hillel that nothing Jewish was alien to him. Nothing human was alien to him, and this insight only served as a bulwark for his Jewish faith.
* In yet another Talmudic passage, this is precisely what rabbis do. Commenting on the biblical characters Chananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (commonly known by the names assigned them by the Babylonians, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego), who were willing to suffer martyrdom rather than engage in idolatry, the Talmudic rabbi Rav says, “Had they lashed Chananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, they would have worshipped the statue” (Ketubot 33b). In other words, even those who might be willing to be martyrs might not be able to stand up to torture.
The sort of wisdom articulated in the Talmud’s approach carries over into daily life and into unexpected professions. My friend Howard Fine, one of today’s leading acting teachers, advises his students not to judge the characters whom they are playing; he regards this as one of the most common mistakes actors make. When an actor is asked to portray a character who has done evil things, Howard tells the actor that if he wishes to give a credible performance, he should not look at the character’s behavior and say, “I would never do this.” Rather, “The operative question for actors [should be] … ‘What would make me do this? What would make me do what the character is doing?’ ” (see Howard Fine, Fine on Acting: A Vision of the Craft, pp. 89–95). In other words, instead of thinking, “Why would this character do such an awful thing?” the actor should ask himself, “What could I imagine happening to me that would cause me to do such a thing?”
* Judgmental people are apt to be highly conscious of the flaws of others, but not of their own (as a rule, we judge o
urselves by our intentions and others by their actions). Hillel therefore urged people to guard against excessive self-confidence: “Do not be too sure of yourself until the day of your death” (Ethics of the Fathers 2:4). As the late British-Jewish scholar Hyam Maccoby commented: “This means that one should never think that one has overcome one’s ‘evil inclination,’ for it is active in a human being as long as he has breath.” This is perhaps the reason that Jewish tradition focuses little on birthdays (unlike the Western world, in which we honor famous people by commemorating their date of birth), but a great deal on the yahrzeit, the day of a person’s death. Only when life is over can we fully assess whether it has been lived righteously and successfully.
* I am grateful to Yitzhak Buxbaum for this reference (see Yitzhak Buxbaum, The Life and Teachings of Hillel, p. 224).
PART II
Hillel versus Shammai:
The Talmud’s Most Famous Adversaries
7
Hillel the Interpreter, Shammai the Literalist
No discussion of Hillel is possible without an in-depth look at his great adversary, Shammai, whom we have already met chasing away an inquiring Gentile with a stick. Hillel and Shammai are not merely the Ali and Frazier of rabbinic Judaism; their interpretive styles—and disputations—lived on through their students and through the schools of thought they founded. At times, disputations between the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai grew so heated that the Talmud tells us of one tragic day when disciples of the School of Shammai attacked and, according to one text, killed disciples of the School of Hillel (Jerusalem Talmud, Shabbat 1:4).
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin Page 7
