It is even more horrifying to realize that the recipients of the sorts of punishments described in these passages must often have been children with learning disabilities or attention disorders like ADD or ADHD. Imagine a system in which deaf people were punished for not hearing and the blind for not seeing, then imagine a system in which a child with dyslexia was slapped or beaten for not reading properly.
It is rarely noted that harsh school discipline played a role in the mass defection from religious commitment of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century eastern European Jews. When I was growing up in the 1950s, I encountered many elderly Jewish immigrants; few had nostalgic memories of the cheders (Jewish elementary schools) they had attended in eastern Europe. Instead, they frequently commented upon the cruel discipline they had suffered.
I also wonder whether Hillel, in dismissing a kapdan as a teacher, was also getting in a sly “dig” at his rival Shammai. In rabbinic literature, the word kapdan is associated on more than one occasion with Shammai. A Talmudic text that lauds Hillel’s patience begins by saying, “A man should always be humble [and gentle] like Hillel, and not a kapdan like Shammai.” The rather lengthy passage about the three converts ends with the men mutually concluding that “kapdanuto [the angry impatience] of Shammai sought to drive us out of the world” (Shabbat 31a).
Yet again, we see that although Hillel was appreciated in the abstract, and his teaching repeatedly cited and widely known by heart, he was too often ignored. Today, happily, the beating of students in Jewish schools is a thing of the past. But Hillel’s dictum still applies, for there are many ways other than physical punishment in which ill-tempered people cause great damage to their students. Those who are sarcastic, those who humiliate with cruel, ridiculing words,2 those who create an environment in which students fear to ask questions or to admit that they don’t understand what has been taught, are not fit to teach Judaism in an age of inclusion. In truth they never were, and it is to Hillel’s credit that he recognized this two millennia ago—at a time when almost no one else did.
* The mitzvah referred to is the teaching of Torah.
15
“One Who Is Bashful Will Never Learn”:
Why It Is Essential to Question
Hillel clearly was not an aggressive person. His patience was legendary. In only two of the many encounters recorded between Hillel and others do we find him offering a sharp retort.1
The Talmudic tradition hails bashfulness as a lauded trait, and one that characterizes the ideal Jew: “This people [Israel] are distinguished by three characteristics: They are merciful, bashful, and perform acts of kindness” (Yevamot 79a). However, there is one area in which bashfulness is not a virtue: study.* There, it is a great disadvantage because it intimidates the learner and keeps him or her from asking questions, clarifying issues, and challenging the teacher (and, by implication, any authority figures). This teaching by Hillel is widely known and has exerted, I believe, an enormous impact on Jewish learning. For example, a Talmudic passage describes the relationship between the third century rabbi Yochanan and his leading student, Resh Lakish. The two men studied together for many years, but then had a terrible falling-out. During this period, Resh Lakish, likely overwhelmed with depression at the loss of the friendship, became sick and died. Then Rabbi Yochanan fell into a depression, and the rabbis sent him a brilliant young student, Rabbi Elazar ben Pedat, to divert him from his grief. The plan didn’t work, specifically because Rabbi Elazar, likely in awe of Rabbi Yochanan, didn’t challenge his teachings. Whenever Rabbi Yochanan uttered an opinion, Rabbi Elazar, whose knowledge was encyclopedic, would say, “I know another source that supports what you are saying.”
Rabbi Yochanan finally said to him, “Whenever I stated an opinion, Resh Lakish would raise twenty-four objections to what I was saying. … He forced me to justify every ruling I gave, so that in the end the subject was fully clarified. But all you do is tell me that you know another source that supports what I am saying. Don’t I know myself that what I have said is right?” (Bava Metzia 84a).
It is the questioning student who will grow, and who will also prompt growth in his teacher. The Talmud relates that Resh Lakish had grown up among the lowest sort of people. One text even suggests that he was raised in a gang that used to purchase men to participate in gladiator fights, and Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz argues that Resh Lakish, legendary for his great physical strength, was himself a gladiator.2 In any case, after years of studying with, questioning, and challenging Rabbi Yochanan, Resh Lakish grew into one of the great sages of his time.
The approach put forth here by Hillel, disparaging bashfulness as a bad trait in students (and, by implication, commending students for challenging teachers), has continued to be advocated by Judaism’s greatest teachers. Rabbi Norman Lamm, the longtime president of Yeshiva University, recalls that when he was a new student in Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s Talmud shiur, the most advanced Talmud class at Yeshiva University, Rabbi Soloveitchik asked him to summarize the approach of Tosafot (a medieval commentary) to a passage the class had been studying. The young Lamm, thinking to please his teacher, repeated the explanation of the passage Rabbi Soloveitchik had offered the previous day. But instead of being pleased, the rabbi said to Lamm, “I know what I am saying. I do not need you to tell me. What do you think? … The problem is that you check your evil inclination (yetzer hara) outside the classroom door and come in with your good inclination. Next time, bring your evil inclination with you, and leave your good inclination outside.”3
Rabbi Soloveitchik wanted students not to be intimidated by his reputation as a great Talmudist, but to challenge him. Without such challenges, the student becomes at best a receptacle for the teacher’s wisdom. And such an attitude denies the teacher an opportunity to deepen his own understanding. A Talmudic aphorism quotes the sage Rabbi Chanina, “I have learned much from my teachers, and from my colleagues more than from my teachers, and from my students more than from them all” (Ta’anit 7a). When students question and pose challenges to their teachers—as Resh Lakish did to Rabbi Yochanan—they grow and the teacher grows.
In line with Hillel’s teaching, the Shulchan Arukh, the landmark sixteenth-century code of Jewish law, ruled: “A student should not be embarrassed if a fellow student has understood something after the first and second time, but he himself has not grasped it even after several attempts. If he is embarrassed because of this, it will turn out that he will come and go from the house of study without learning anything at all.” Even worse, he might form an erroneous impression and pass his misinformation on to others.
Hillel’s insistence on pushing students to overcome their timidity in the classroom setting has characterized Jewish life, both religious and secular, ever since. Arthur Sackler, a friend of the late Isador Rabi’s, the noted Nobel laureate in physics, once asked him, “Why did you become a scientist, rather than a doctor or lawyer or businessman, like the other immigrant kids in your neighborhood?”
Rabi answered: “My mother made me a scientist without ever intending it. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, ‘So, did you learn anything today?’ But not my mother. She always asked me a different question. ‘Izzy,’ she would say, ‘did you ask a good question today?’ That difference, asking good questions, made me become a scientist.’ ”
The first words most Jewish children speak in a public setting are the Mah Nishtanah, the “Four Questions” recited at the Passover seder. Even a timid child is prodded to stand up and recite the questions.
All this, I believe, goes back in large part to Hillel’s brief aphorism and his understanding that the price paid for bashfulness and timidity—knowledge itself—is too high.
This belief is also what may have allowed Hillel to embrace not only the impatient convert but also the man’s challenge to impart the essence of Judaism in a simple encapsulated lesson. The famous seeker did not leave his “evil inclination” at the door, issuing instead t
he ultimate challenge to a religion of vast learning, endless disputation, and elaborate ritual. And yet out of that challenge grew a formulation of Judaism we are still trying to fulfill. Who is to say that Hillel did not learn as much from that “student” as he learned from his teachers and colleagues?
* Hillel, Ethics of the Fathers 2:5.
16
“Do Not Say, ‘When I Have [Free] Time, I Will Study,’ Lest You Never Have [Free] Time”:
The Eternal Challenge
Hillel was very concerned that a large percentage of the population be engaged in study, for he believed in the power of Torah to transform each student’s life. But he also understood that most of his fellow Jews were poor and needed to devote the large part of their waking hours to earning a living. Tell such people that they must make time for ongoing Torah study and, Hillel knew, the response would be something like, “Perhaps in a few years, when I no longer have to work so hard, I will have time to study.”
As we saw in his interactions with the three proselytes, Hillel was a master pedagogue, one who could anticipate people’s objections and arguments. In this case, he understood that the types of excuses offered for not studying would always apply. How many of us have found that our lives have become less busy over time, and how many of us have learned, to our chagrin, that our lives seem to be always getting busier? Delaying Torah study won’t lead to future learning, but to no learning at all.
A dear friend, Allen Estrin, realized one day that his long-standing plans to read through the Hebrew Bible in its entirety would never happen. And so, one morning, he read the first two chapters of the Torah’s first book, Genesis. And then the next morning, he read the next two chapters. And the following morning, another two. The exercise occupied about fifteen minutes a day. Even when he had extra time, he didn’t read additional chapters (in such instances, he would study the two chapters in greater depth), and even when he had little time he forced himself not to read less. He simply made a firm determination never to miss the reading of the two chapters. He continued on his program for approximately 460 days, until he completed the Hebrew Bible in its entirety, from Genesis through the second book of Chronicles.
Though Hillel devoted himself to extensive daily study, and during his early, poor days did so only after first spending many hours in physical labor, he did not impose such demands on everyone else. He just urged people not to cite their crowded schedules as an excuse not to study at all, and exhorted them not to delude themselves into thinking that what they don’t have time for now, they will have time for in the future. People who begin a course of study now will develop the self-discipline necessary to keep studying for the rest of their lives. People who delay will find, as Hillel predicted, that they “never have free time.”*
So what about us, twenty-first-century disciples of Hillel? When should we start with some daily study? Perhaps we are best guided by the famous question Hillel posed as a capstone to the two challenges about being for oneself and being for others: “If not now, when?”
The first two chapters of Genesis is not a bad place to start.
* Hillel, Ethics of the Fathers 2:4.
17
“If I Am Not for Myself, Who Will Be for Me? And If I Am [Only] for Myself, What Am I?”:
Passionate Moderation
In this statement, Hillel poses two questions, each intended to articulate a paradox.* The first challenges an attitude of absolute altruism pursued at the expense of one’s own interests. As Hillel suggests, if a person is not concerned with his own needs and well-being, why should he expect others to be? For example, if a sick person makes no effort to treat his illness, is it reasonable to expect others to devote themselves to doing so?
Such a level of self-sacrifice seems pointless. After all, the biblical verse that explicitly mandates, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” implicitly commands us to love ourselves as well. Hillel was fully capable of preaching and practicing a radical love of others—for example, acting as a servant to a formerly rich man who felt bereft by having no one to serve him (see this page)—without diminishing the sense of love for himself. In a world that generally assigned little value to hygiene, Hillel enjoyed bathing, an activity the rabbis regarded as somewhat luxurious, and therefore forbidden, for example, to mourners. Hillel, however, clearly regarded taking care of himself as both necessary and enjoyable.
On the other hand, “If I am only for myself, what am I?” This sentence should logically read, “who am I?” But, as Professor Louis Kaplan taught: “If you are only for yourself, you cease to be a real human being, and you become no longer a who, but a what.”
In the popular mind, Darwin’s notion of the “survival of the fittest” causes many people to see the world as a place in which people struggle not just with the elements, but also with one another. Which people will survive? Those who are best able to adapt to change, and those whose efforts at survival will not be hampered by extending undo attention and resources to their less capable brethren. The nineteenth-century Russian naturalist Pyotr Kropotkin was critical of Darwin’s assumption that life is a constant struggle over limited food and space, in which there always have to be winners and losers. The lesson Kropotkin extracted from nature was not that people had to compete against one another for limited rewards, but that people did better when they cooperated with one another in a struggle against a harsh environment. Rabbi Harold Kushner has commented, “Yes, only the fittest survive, but the fittest are the ones best able to cooperate with their neighbors, to engage in mutual protection and helpfulness, not the strong ones who can overpower the weak and leave themselves with few friends and allies to help them through the winter.”
I have found that, depending on the position they wish to argue, people often quote only a part of Hillel’s words, and thereby corrupt his teaching. Some years ago, when I was writing an ethics advice column, a reader sent me the following question: “There’s a famous teaching in the talmudic book, Ethics of the Fathers, ‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me?’ In line with this dictum, I give all my charity to Jewish causes; after all, if Jews don’t support Jewish charitable needs, who will? My wife thinks I’m wrong, that I owe it to the society in which I live to spread around my giving. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what I am doing. Is there?”
I noted in my response that my questioner was only
quoting the first part of the talmudic citation, which then continues, “But if I am only for myself, what am I?” Just as it’s wrong to ignore the Jewish community’s needs, so, too, is it wrong to ignore the broader community of which we are also a part. And, it’s not always easy to determine what is Jewish charitable giving and what isn’t. Is finding a cure for cancer, for example, a non-Jewish issue, and supporting a Jewish school a Jewish one? Or are they both issues of concern to the Jewish community and therefore both causes you should support? Perhaps you are not aware that the Talmud—the very religious source on which you base your decision to support only Jewish causes—mandates that “We provide financial support to the Gentile poor along with the Jewish poor” (Gittin 61a).
Because Jews comprise a little less than 2 percent of the American population, I think it is appropriate for them to give a disproportionate percentage of their charity to causes that serve their community, both because such causes matter so much to them and because their community depends on its members for support. It is fair to say, in line with Hillel, that if Jews don’t support Jewish causes, who will?
But, as I wrote that questioner, “Don’t give all your donations to your own community. It’s not good for your character. If you do that long enough, you’ll stop seeing everyone as being equally created in God’s image and therefore worthy of your help. We are, after all, all members of one race, the human race.”
This is exactly, I believe, what Hillel wished to convey. In your personal life, you should not veer off to an extreme, treating yourself as a nonentity and only others as important. Yo
u have the right to fight for and to push yourself forward. Be for yourself. Just don’t be only for yourself.
* Hillel, Ethics of the Fathers 1:14.
18
Final Thoughts:
Why We Need Hillel Now More Than Ever
Has Hillel been ignored? On first reading, the question seems ridiculous. Hillel is probably the Talmud’s best-known rabbi, and even people with meager levels of Jewish knowledge are apt to be familiar with the story of his teaching the essence of Judaism to a non-Jew who was standing on one foot.
But the fact that a story is well known does not mean that its message is remembered. What, after all, was it that Hillel told the non-Jew: “What is hateful unto you, do not do unto your neighbor. This is the whole Torah, all the rest is commentary. Now, go and study.”
The core teachings of Judaism, in Hillel’s explanation, are to act ethically and to keep learning. Implicit in this formulation is the idea that while faith and religion matter greatly—Hillel meticulously observed the Jewish rituals governing the laws between people and God—but that they need not be the starting point of a religious journey. The fact that Hillel subsumes God and ritual observance under “commentary” is not the same as a modern scholar calling them “footnotes.” Commentary matters a great deal. Still, there is no getting around the simplicity of Hillel’s teaching, which lays an ethical cornerstone for an entire religious edifice. One might have thought that if Judaism’s preeminent figure presented this summation of Judaism in so forceful a manner, it would permanently influence how Jews understand Jewish religiosity.
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin Page 13
