But has it? To this day, if two Jews are speaking about a third, and one of them asks if the person being discussed is religious, the answer is invariably based on the person’s level of ritual, not ethical, observance. “He keeps kosher, he keeps Shabbat; yes, he is religious,” or “She doesn’t keep kosher, she doesn’t keep Shabbat; no, she’s not religious.” It is virtually inconceivable that you would overhear the following conversation:
“Is so-and-so religious?”
“Oh, definitely.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s very careful never to embarrass anyone, particularly in public. And he always judges other people fairly.”
Conversations such as this simply don’t happen. Religiosity today—and perhaps even during Hillel’s time—is assessed on the basis of ritual observance. If a Jew is known not to observe Shabbat or kashrut, that individual is regarded as nonreligious, even if his or her ethical behavior is exemplary and is based on what the ethics of the Torah and Talmud demand of him. In such a case, people might say, “Unfortunately, he is not religious, but he’s a wonderful person.” On the other hand, if a person keeps Shabbat and kashrut, but violates, for example, Jewish laws on business ethics or, in violation of the Torah, speaks unfairly and inappropriately of others, it wouldn’t occur to people to say that such a person is not religious. Rather, they might say, “He’s religious, but unfortunately he’s not ethical.”
It is inconceivable that Hillel would have described a person who consistently violates Judaism’s fundamental ethical laws (obviously, no one’s observance is perfect) as a “religious” Jew. Yet somehow, his teaching to the non-Jew has become a sort of nostrum; nice but largely empty words that have little to do with reality. The Talmud might have favored Hillel’s response, but in Jewish life one wonders if it has ever been taken seriously. I believe this reality is to the great detriment of the Jewish people. The time has come not just to quote Hillel’s words to the non-Jew, but to actually take them seriously.
It is worth recalling that the story of Hillel’s summary statement of Judaism occurs in the context of three encounters between Hillel and non-Jews interested in converting to Judaism. The non-Jews all set up unusual conditions for becoming Jewish. One will convert on condition that Hillel teaches him the essence of Judaism in the briefest of summaries. A second will convert on condition that he be bound solely by the laws of the Written Torah, and not the Oral Law, which represents the rabbinical understanding of Torah law. The third will convert on condition that he be appointed High Priest, a request both arrogant and in direct violation of Torah law.*
All three Gentiles first approach Shammai; two of them are chased away with a stick, and the third with an insult. Hillel’s response? Acceptance. In addition to converting the man who requests the short summary of Judaism, he also converts the two men with the even more peculiar demands, and then sets about showing them the unreasonableness of their requests. He leads one to understand why an Oral Law is necessary, and leads the second to understand why he can’t be a priest of any sort, let alone a High Priest. Hillel’s confidence in Judaism is such that he sincerely believes that once they convert, they will continue to grow in their Jewishness. In the meantime, whatever they are observing will be more beneficial than if they do not convert and observe nothing at all.
The Talmud clearly regards Hillel’s approach to the converts as superior to that of Shammai. It records an encounter in which the three men get together and conclude: “Shammai’s great impatience sought to drive us from the world, but Hillel’s gentleness brought us under the wings of the Divine Presence” (Shabbat 31a).
Based on this behavior of the Talmud’s preeminent sage, would it not be fair to reach the following conclusions:
Hillel is open and encouraging to non-Jews who wish to become Jews;
Hillel favors converting people quickly rather than slowly and focusing on their Jewish education subsequent to the conversion (in addition, as a condition of conversion, many contemporary rabbis insist that converts commit to providing their children with an intensive Jewish education);
Hillel does not insist on a commitment by a convert, prior to conversion, to fully observe Jewish law, a commitment that we have learned—from the American-Jewish experience—few converts are prepared to make in advance.
Based on these three anecdotes about Hillel, all of the conclusions make logical sense, but they have nothing to do with how Jewish law and life has developed. In the traditional Jewish community, the long-standing policy has been to discourage converts, insist on a long, sometimes years-long, period of study, and demand, in advance of conversion, a commitment to full observance of all Jewish laws. I cited earlier the rabbinic scholar at a leading Orthodox seminary who told rabbinical students never to convert a non-Jew unless they were willing to bet $100,000 of their own money that the convert would observe all Jewish laws.
In other words, Hillel’s policy concerning converts is spoken of very approvingly in the Talmud, while Shammai’s policy of distancing himself from would-be converts comes closer to how Jewish life has so often been lived.*
Here, too, the time has come to take Hillel as he meant himself to be taken: seriously. If non-Jews come knocking at a Jewish door, they should be made to feel welcome. Their questions should be answered. It is unlikely Jews would, under any circumstances, drive them off with a stick, but unsympathetic words might be almost as discouraging and painful. And certainly if they express interest in becoming Jewish, they should be treated with interest and encouragement. Hillel understood this.
In the realm of education, Hillel opposed the employment of hot-tempered teachers, arguing that “the highly impatient person cannot teach” (Ethics of the Fathers 2:5). Yet the history of Jewish education is filled with hot-tempered teachers.
Here as well, Hillel must be our guide. As important as it is that a teacher know the material he is teaching, it is even more important that he love the material and love the students whom he is teaching. A Talmudic passage teaches, “A person learns Torah only from a place that his heart wants” (Avodah Zarah 19a). And, as Hillel used to say, “To the place that I love, there my feet lead me” (Sukkah 53a).
Only people filled with a sense of ethical obligation and imbued with the rabbinic teaching, “Let the honor of your students be as dear to you as your own” (Ethics of the Fathers 4:12), are fit to teach a religion whose essence is ethical obligation and the Golden Rule. The Shammaite model—not admitting those of undistinguished background, those who are poor and those who do not possess wisdom—does not work, certainly not for the masses of people today who know nothing of Judaism, and whom a Shammaite philosophy has written off. That is why the Talmud cites the conclusion of the three converts, that the impatience of Shammai would have driven them away from God, but Hillel’s gentleness brought them near. We ignore Hillel’s advice about ill-tempered people, and those who drive off others instead of drawing them near, at our peril.*
Hillel also displayed enormous legislative courage and legal creativity. When the compassionate Torah law canceling debts in a recurrent seven-year cycle caused lenders to stop extending loans to the poor, Hillel enacted a new category of legislation, the prozbol, based on a new concept of legislation called tikkun olam (“bettering the world”), which enabled him to modify a number of Torah laws that were in effect undermining Torah ethics (see this page). This, too, is an aspect of Hillel that has too often been ignored. To cite just one example: Jewish laws mandating kosher slaughter were obviously intended to minimize the pain caused to animals; they form part of a whole set of biblical laws concerned with the kindly treatment of animals.1
Why is it, then, that despite all the publicity given to the cruel treatment of newborn calves* (read the footnote below if you have the stomach for it), we still find such meat (veal) widely available for sale at kosher butchers?* It is permitted to be eaten because technically the veal calves are slaughtered according to the laws of kosher slau
ghter, which are intended, certainly in part, to minimize an animal’s pain. But can veal eaters, once they become aware of how calves are treated, be confident that God will say to them, “Enjoy your meat. I really don’t care how veal calves are treated during their lifetime, as long as they are slaughtered in the proper manner when killed.” The case against veal is so self-evident that one would love to see a simple ruling along the lines of Hillel: “Mipnei tikkun olam (for the betterment of the world), the sale and consumption of veal is forbidden because continuing to allow such food to be eaten causes immense suffering to animals.”
These four brief examples—
insisting that ethics is the essence of Jewish religiosity
maintaining an openness and receptivity to non-Jews who wish to convert
advancing the exclusion of mean-tempered, volatile, and verbally abusive people from the teaching profession
utilizing the notion of tikkun olam to root out any unfairness or unintended cruelty in Jewish law
document just how much Hillel still has to teach us, even two thousand years after his death.
There are few Jews for whom Hillel’s teachings are not instructive. He is a vital force for those secular Jews who should know that some of the values most dear and fundamental to many of them flow from religious tradition. For those Jews who are suspicious of tikkun olam as an operating philosophy of Judaism, Hillel offers an affirmation that ethics is not a modern-day politically correct dilution, but an abiding, central principle in Judaism. To those Jews who define themselves by the notion of tikkun olan, Hillel also insists upon Torah study and attention to both ritual and law. And for those who do study and who scrupulously observe Jewish law, Hillel can inspire a radical revision of religion by defining the essence of religiosity as “What is hateful unto you, do not do unto your neighbor.” By accepting this definition, we can put an end to the centuries-old caricature of Judaism that defines religiosity by ritual observance alone. In doing so, and we have done so for far too long, Judaism has ceded to Christianity those elements—love and inclusiveness—that are central teachings of Judaism. Hillel reminds us that it isn’t a “they have this, but we have that” situation. The principles and behavior the world associates with Jesus—the supreme significance of loving behavior, the confidence to coin concise epigrams and to extract an essence, the openness to others—predate Jesus in the person of the Talmud’s greatest rabbinic figure, Hillel.
And, finally, for those non-Jews who see Judaism as a closed book, and the Jewish people as “a nation that dwells alone” and that wishes to dwell alone, Hillel offers an invitation to open, to enter, and to study.
Hillel has long been the Talmud’s most famous rabbi. The time has now come to let him become its most influential.
For Those Who Oppose Converting People Without a Prior Commitment to Full Observance of Jewish Law
This does not mean that we should not forge a commitment by the convert to some level of observance, we just need I believe a more liberal standard than some contemporary rabbis insist upon. In the ritual realm, for example, it is obviously important that would-be converts be taught the laws of Shabbat, kashrut, and the holidays, and the significance and benefit of practicing these laws. The approach I am advocating is consistent, I believe, not only with Hillel’s teachings but also with that of the late Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel, Ben-Zion Uziel (1880–1953), who argued for a policy of greater openness to potential converts. In Piskei Uziel, one of his volumes of responsa (see number 65), he considers a question posed to him by a rabbi outside of Israel. The questioner notes the large increase in the number of Jewish men marrying non-Jewish women, and writes that some of the men desire their family members to become Jews. They have approached local rabbis with the request that their wives and children be converted. He asks whether such conversions should be performed, because these men do not properly observe the Sabbath and Jewish holidays, and disregard the kashrut regulations. As another rabbi, facing the same situation, expressed it: “May we convert the non-Jewish wife and children of a Jewish man when we know that he is not observant and does not intend to have his family observe the commandments?”
While immersion in a mikvah and circumcision for males are absolute prerequisites for conversion, Rabbi Uziel insists that the same cannot be said regarding a commitment to observing all the commandments. He cites the sixteenth-century code of Jewish law, the Shulchan Arukh, which rules that a rabbinical court should acquaint a non-Jew who comes to convert with the principles of the faith (for example, the oneness of God) “in great detail,” whereas, regarding the commandments, the would-be convert should “be told about some of the less weighty and some of the more weighty commandments.…* This, however, should not be carried to excess nor to too great detail” (Yoreh De’ah 268:2). Based on his understanding of this passage, Rabbi Uziel concludes: “From here it can be explicitly derived that we do not demand that the would-be convert observe the commandments, nor is the bet din (the Jewish court) required to be certain that he will observe them.” Furthermore, if a Jewish court converts someone without teaching him the commandments, traditional Jewish law deems the conversion valid (which would not be the case, for example, if a Jewish court performed a conversion without the convert’s immersing in a mikvah). Therefore, we may conclude that a commitment to “observing the commandments is not a necessary condition for conversion” and that these women and children can and should be converted.
Rabbi Uziel goes on to express the hope that these converts will eventually come to observe the commandments (mitzvot). Until then, as I understand it, we may regard observance of the commandments the converts likely will keep (for example, observing Yom Kippur and giving charity) as so significant that it is well worth granting them this opportunity. What distinguishes such an approach is the focus on the merit of those commandments that the convert will observe rather than the ritual violations the convert will commit.
One final point: regarding those who oppose converting people who are not likely to be fully observant, Rabbi Uziel declares, “In this generation, shutting the door in the face of converts is a weighty and grievous matter. For it opens the gates wide and pushes Israelite men and women toward converting [to another religion] and exiting from the community of Israel [k’lal Yisrael] or toward assimilating among gentiles.” While many Orthodox rabbis regard with distaste those who wish to convert without becoming fully observant, contemporary rabbi Marc Angel regards their mind-set far more sympathetically: “They do not want to reject the Torah but want to be included in the Jewish community.”*
* Priesthood is hereditary and transmitted through the paternal line. Therefore, a person whose father is not a priest cannot be a priest either.
* Though without being as insulting as Shammai was.
* An infrequently quoted Talmudic passage teaches that Timna, a female character in the book of Genesis, came from a royal non-Israelite household. At an early age, she became interested in the Israelite faith and sought to convert. But when she approached the patriarchs—at one time or another, all three of them—they did not accept her as a convert (the Talmud does not explain why). After this rebuff, Timna became the concubine of Eliphaz, the son of Esau, and gave birth to Amalek (Gen. 36:12). The nation that descended from Amalek (also known as Amalek) subsequently became the most hated enemy of the ancient Israelites (Exod. 17:8–16). But all this did not have to happen. As the rabbis conclude: “[The Patriarchs] should not have rejected Timna” (Sanhedrin 99b).
* A description of a visit to a dairy farm in 2000 conveys the following portrait of the treatment of newborn calves. The calves are generally raised in a bare wooden crate that is too narrow for them to turn around in. They are put on diets that are very low in iron, so that the calves’ flesh “instead of becoming the normal healthy red color of a 16-week-old calf on pasture, will retain the pale pink color and soft texture of ‘prime veal.’ ” They are also denied hay or straw for bedding because the calf will eat i
t out of its desire for roughage, and the iron the straw contains will change the color of the calf’s flesh. The stall in which the calf is confined is wooden for the same reason. If it would have an iron fitting, the calf would lick it. For the same reason, the crate is too small to allow the calf to turn around. If it could, then the calf, out of its craving for iron, would lick its own urine (Peter Singer and Jim Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat (New York: Holtzbrinck, 2006, pp. 58–59). In some farms, the calves are kept in darkness for up to twenty-three hours a day. More often than not, the individual cages in which the animals are held “prevent … the animals from having any contact with other calves, even preventing them from seeing another calf, causing unreasonable social isolation.” (Most of the material in this note is drawn from Rabbi Pamela Barmash, unpublished 2007 responsa on “Veal Calves” for the Rabbinical Assembly Committee on Jewish Law and Standards.)
* Obviously, I am upset that veal is available at nonkosher butchers as well, but I expect Jewish law’s ethical teachings to have their first and primary impact on Jews.
* And informal, for example, that violation of the Sabbath is a serious offense.
* “Another Halakhic Approach to Conversion,” in Emanuel Feldman and Joel B. Wolowelsky, eds., The Conversion Crisis, p. 55.
APPENDIX 1
“He Who Does Not Increase, Will Decrease”:
Additional Teachings of Hillel
Do not separate yourself from the community.
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin Page 14