How to Be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck)

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How to Be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck) Page 14

by Wex, Michael


  The evil inclination stuck out a kosher pig’s foot in the form of the orphans’ shoes, but Rabbi Aaron is too smart to go for it. When seykhl meets emotion, it can teach even the heart to think.

  III

  AS WE CAN see with Rabbi Aaron, a thinking heart is a wonderful thing, but it has to have something to think about. The favorite traditional subject is controlling the evil inclination in order to develop a capacity for mercy toward people and animals alike, those we don’t like just as much as those we do. Very broadly speaking, these are the two major characteristics that distinguish the mentsh from the shmuck; they’re also what makes it possible for shmucks to change their behavior and turn themselves into mentshn, or for mentshn to fall off the wagon, so to speak, and take the long plunge into shmuckery. The shmuck isn’t really evil; he’s just got a heart that acts before it thinks—mostly because it rarely thinks, and when it does, tends to do the wrong kind of thinking. It can’t really distinguish between what it should be doing and what it feels like doing.

  According to the Midrash, “Whoever is soft when he should be hard will finish by being hard when he should be soft” (Ecclesiastes Rabbo 7:24). The example it gives is King Saul, who first disobeyed God’s orders and spared Agag, the king of Israel’s bitterest enemy, Amalek, then balanced out this misguided kindness by having eighty-five Israelite priests put to death because of a mistaken suspicion that they were in league with David to overthrow him.

  Saul was mentally ill; the average shmuck is simply out for herself and thinks that acting like a conscienceless jerk might be the best way to do so. The problem is that amoral behavior tends to have long-term benefits only for those who really are amoral and whose consciences really won’t have anything to say. As the Baal Shem Tov once described it:

  A poor man asked his rich brother: “Why are you wealthy, and I am not?” The other answered: “Because I have no scruples against doing wrong.” The poor brother began to misconduct himself but he remained poor. He complained of this to his elder brother, who answered: “The reason your transgressions have not made you wealthy is that you did them not from conviction that it matters not whether we do good or evil, but solely because you desired riches.”

  If you really want to be a shmuck because you think that being a shmuck is the way to be, no one can stop you. If, however, you turn yourself into a shmuck in order to get something else—money, friends, esteem—you’ll simply end up as a failed shmuck, a wannabe whom nobody likes and who can’t figure out why the other shmucks are getting ahead while he gets treated like a shmuck even by the other shmucks.

  Once again, Hillel has the answer, in a couple of remarkable passages, both of which occur on the same page of the Talmud. Hillel was renowned for his mild disposition, remarkable patience, and willingness to go out of his way to make things easy for others, especially in his rulings on Jewish law. The first passage is a compelling demonstration of the futility of shmuckery, especially shmuckery as a cold-blooded tactic or strategy. It begins with an admonition, then gets straight to the story:

  Let a person always be mild like Hillel and not irascible like Shammai. It happened once that two men made a bet: “Whoever can provoke Hillel to lose his temper will get four hundred zuzim.” One of them said, “I’m going to do it.”

  It was a Friday and Hillel was washing his hair. The man passed by the door of Hillel’s house, saying, “Is there a Hillel here? Is there a Hillel here?” Hillel put something on and went out to greet him.

  “What is it that you want, son?” he said.

  “I have a question to ask you.”

  “Ask away, son, ask away.”

  “Why do Babylonians have heads shaped like eggs?”

  (SHABBOS 30B-31A)

  Zuzim is the plural of zuz, which was a unit of currency, and four hundred of them seems to have been a conventional number that meant “a lot of money.” The same sum is the subject of a dispute in a famous passage in Ovos de Rabi Nosn, a later elaboration of Ovos, in which Rabbi Akiva fines a man for humiliating a woman in public. The guy who is out to humiliate Hillel here takes care to turn up on Friday, the eve of the Sabbath. Hillel is preparing himself for the holy day and probably has a lot of other things to do, so the guy is hoping that he’ll be a little bit on edge, slightly impatient to get rid of him so that he, Hillel, can devote himself to his Sabbath preparations. Asking deliberately silly questions is just another stratagem to try to push Hillel over the edge.

  The bettor isn’t very bright, though. He starts off by asking, “Is there a Hillel here?” This is rather like banging on the door of the White House and yelling out, “Someone named Obama live here?” Hillel was the nassi, the head of the Sanhedrin, and occupied a position somewhere between president and chief justice of the Supreme Court. He was one of the most prominent people in the country.

  Hillel is also said to have come to the land of Israel from Babylon at the age of forty, so the question about the shape of Babylonians’ heads isn’t only silly, it is a deliberate provocation, again like asking Barack Obama, “Why do all Hawaiians have such big ears?” Hillel isn’t biting, though:

  Hillel said, “Son, you have asked a great question. It’s because they have no skillful midwives.”

  He went away, waited for an hour, came back, and said, “Is there a Hillel here? Is there a Hillel here?”

  Hillel put something on and went out to meet him. He said, “Son, what is it that you want?”

  “I have a question to ask you.”

  “Ask away, son, ask away.”

  “Why are people from Palmyra bleary-eyed?”

  Hillel said, “Son, you have asked a great question. It’s because they live in places with a lot of sand.”

  He went away, waited for an hour, came back, and said, “Is there a Hillel here? Is there a Hillel here?”

  Hillel put something on and went out to meet him. He said, “Son, what is it that you want?”

  “I have a question to ask you.”

  “Ask away, son, ask away.”

  “Why do Africans have wide feet?”

  (SHABBOS 31A)

  The third such question would reasonably send just about anyone around the bend. These are klutz questions on a par with “What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the ape in apricot?” but without Bert Lahr to deliver them. Hillel clearly knows that he’s being baited, yet seems indifferent to being bothered. He’s as cool as they come; having put his clothes off and on three times in as many hours, it’s possible that he was the inspiration for Isaac of Warka’s idea about changing your jacket before you’re allowed to get angry.

  The shmendrik keeps going, though. He wants his four hundred zuzim:

  Hillel said, “Son, you have asked a great question. It’s because they live in marshy regions.”

  He said, “I have many questions to ask, but I’m afraid to in case I anger you.”

  Hillel put something on and sat down before him and said, “Ask all the questions you’ve got.”

  “Are you the Hillel who is called the nassi of Israel, the head of the Sanhedrin?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you are, may there not be many like you in Israel!”

  “Why not, son?”

  “Because I lost four hundred zuzim on account of you.”

  The guy is starting to lose his temper himself.

  Hillel said, “Take it easy. Better for you to lose four hundred zuzim and a further four hundred zuzim, than that Hillel should lose his temper.”

  (SHABBOS 31A)

  Matzoh wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Hillel seems to have no trouble keeping his temper. The guy who has made the bet wants to embarrass Hillel in public—note that this all takes place out of doors, somewhere in front of Hillel’s house—by having Hillel lose his temper and embarrass him. He thought he’d make an easy four hundred zuzim by behaving like a shmuck. Had he paid more attention in Hebrew school instead of fooling around, trying to figure out ways to provoke his betters, he would have
realized that he wasn’t going to get too far with Ish Number One, the leading mentsh in the country.

  Note the subtlety of Hillel’s closing put-down. Anyone who could afford to bet four hundred zuzim on anything had plenty of money to spare. What Hillel is saying is, “You can lose as much money on me as you want, rich boy, there isn’t enough of it to make me betray my principles.” Of course, it’s unlikely that the guy who made the bet got much of this; he was too busy thinking about his four hundred zuzim. Hillel’s renowned lenience in halachic decision contrasts with his apparent inflexibility about losing his temper, and he is a perfect illustration of psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s maxim, “There are exceptions to rules…but no exceptions to principles.”

  The admonition at the beginning of this anecdote reminds us of why it is being told in the first place. We’re being counseled to be like Hillel rather than his great rival and antagonist, Shammai. Hillel is described as “mild.” The Hebrew could also be translated as “modest, humble,” or even “meek” and is the adjectival form of the noun that is used to characterize Zechariah ben Avkilos in the story of why Jerusalem was destroyed. Hillel’s mildness or humility is the real thing. Even though he’s head of the Sanhedrin, he doesn’t live in a palace, doesn’t seem to have any servants, and isn’t too grand to come outside in his robe to answer questions that he already knows are going to be stupid. When the same word is used about Zechariah, it’s a bitter circumlocution, a disaffected way of describing the haughty pomposity that he maintains in the direst emergency.

  Similarly, Shammai, who probably has the worst temper in the entire Talmud, is described as a kapdan, the same word that was used to characterize the person who was pronounced unfit to teach in the passage from Ovos discussed in chapter 4. And who said that the kapdan, the irascible, bad-tempered person, can’t teach? Hillel, who has just successfully managed to face down a challenge to his whole philosophy of interpersonal relations.

  The text then continues with a brief anecdote about a non-Jew who wants to convert to Judaism, but only on condition that he not have to learn the Oral Law, the traditions and methods of interpretation represented by the Talmud and the rabbis who are quoted in it. His going to the two most prominent teachers of the time with such a request must have been yet another provocation, rather like asking Jean-Paul Sartre for philosophy lessons while telling him to put a lid on the French. Shammai chases him away; Hillel demonstrates the absurdity of the heathen’s request and wins him over.

  A story about another proselyte follows:

  On another occasion a heathen came to Shammai and said, “Convert me, provided you can teach me the whole of the Torah in its entirety while I stand on one foot.”

  Shammai pushed him away with the measuring rod that he was holding.

  The heathen went to Hillel, who converted him and said, “Do not do what is hateful to you to your fellow. That is the whole of the Torah in its entirety. The rest is commentary. Go and learn.”

  (SHABBOS 31A)

  This is one of the best-known and most frequently cited passages in the Talmud. It is often adduced as proof of Hillel’s wisdom and good nature, especially as contrasted with Shammai’s grumpy rigidity. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen it described as “the Golden Rule, but phrased negatively” or something to that effect. None of these statements is wrong, but there’s a lot more going on here than simple anticipation of Jesus.

  IV

  TO LOOK AT Hillel’s statement as a mere forerunner or prelude to Jesus’s more upbeat formulation about half a century after Hillel’s death is to do an injustice to both Hillel and his idea. Although Jesus seems to quote this passage almost word for word in the Gospel of Matthew, we’ll see that there is quite a gap between “do unto others” and “don’t do unto others,” and that the difference is more than a matter of grammar or rhetoric.

  Negative expression comes naturally to people like Hillel and Shammai who spend much of their time codifying prohibitions and ruling on the extent of their application, but Hillel’s formulation has more to do with the rabbinic view of human nature, which lies at the root of many of the prohibitions, than with the fine points of legal terminology. The ubiquity of enemies and envy suggests that putting oneself into another’s place is not always as easy and almost never as automatic as we might wish; human beings are so various, so unpredictable, that it can be dangerous to assume that everyone would necessarily like you to treat them in the same way as you’d like them to treat you. Once we have taken care of the obvious physical needs common to all members of the species—food, shelter, clothing, and so on—we often lack the insight into others that will allow us to treat them in the way that they’d like to be treated. This is especially true with respect to the way they’d like to be treated while going about their business when there is nothing particularly wrong.

  Look at the commandment about the donkey in Exodus. You would help anybody in such a situation, even an enemy, if only out of concern for the donkey. If it were you who was standing beside a collapsed donkey, you’d be willing to accept help from anyone, including your bitterest enemy. What happens, then, if your enemy hates you so much that he refuses your help and tells you to go away? He’d rather watch the donkey die than feel indebted to you for anything. And now that you’ve offered to help, he hates you even more; now that he’s turned down your offer, you hate him even more and want to get back at him for making a fool of you in public. And that’s about as far as “do unto others” can take you. It’s still a fairly long way, but it cannot get you inside of someone who doesn’t share your values.

  Hillel doesn’t demand any insight into others. He already understands that our knowledge of anybody else is a hit-and-miss proposition at best, especially when it comes to those matters of the heart that are always concealed from everybody but the subject. Treating others as if they shared all of our innermost tastes and feelings and longings—as if they were us, that is—can easily turn into an exercise in egotism that is ultimately not very different from giving them orders about how to think, feel, and live—because we, of course, know better. Knowing how we’d want our desires to be fulfilled doesn’t tell us how others would like to look after theirs. Proceeding as if we already knew what they want could be perceived as patronizing, or even offensively paternalistic.

  The story of the convert is there to show why a person should always be as unassuming as Hillel; the one about the bet to make him lose his temper shows just how mild he was. The guy who made the bet is deliberately violating the “do not do unto others” rule in order to win a substantial sum of money. It’s unlikely that he would want Hillel hanging around his house, yelling out his name, and asking him stupid questions, especially not when he was trying to do something that needed to be finished fairly quickly.

  Hillel, who might not have guessed that the guy was acting on a bet, refuses to take the bait. Instead of yelling at the guy or dismissing his questions or even telling him to come back at another time when he wouldn’t be quite so busy, he submits to the summonses and questions with grace and forbearance, answering them to the best of his ability and ignoring any personal insults. Remember, he started out as a woodcutter, near the bottom of the social scale, so poor that another Talmudic passage claims that dead people who plead poverty as an excuse for not studying are asked by the heavenly court, “And were you poorer than Hillel?” (Yoma 35b). During his time as a penniless shlepper, which is supposed to have lasted well into middle age, he must have been spoken to in just the same way as the bettor talks to him: “Is there a Hillel here?”

  Hillel doesn’t let it get to him, though. He won’t speak that way to another person. He takes the questions at face value, answers them as well as he can, and is quite willing to sit and answer any remaining questions that the guy might have. And it’s that—refusing to treat the bettor like the shmuck that he is because Hillel doesn’t like to be treated like a shmuck—that finally drives the guy over the edge. He knows that he
’s acting like an asshole—hell, he’s doing it on purpose, and it’s driving him crazy that Hillel seems to be immune to it. If he can’t get Hillel to behave like a shmuck, he’ll have to give up all that money. Finally, though, he loses it and finishes by cursing Hillel: “May there not be many like you in Israel” is a fancy way of saying, “May you have no disciples or descendants, may you fail as a teacher and die without issue.”

  Anybody would have been forgiven for losing his temper over such a remark, but Hillel takes it in stride and asks the guy why he feels that way. Once he finds out, Hillel merely lets him know that he’ll lose his four hundred zuzim on every subsequent attempt, because he’ll never get Hillel to lose his temper.

  Hillel can see that the money is a side issue; it’s about control, management in contemporary terminology, specifically, the management of emotion and inclination. By telling the guy that he would only lose more money by continuing to try to anger him, Hillel is saying that now that he understands what’s happening here, don’t expect him to do the “benevolent” thing and lose his temper in order to help the other guy get his four hundred zuzim. Indeed, such faux benevolence would only encourage further shmuckery on the bettor’s part.

  V

  HILLEL KNOWS WHAT he doesn’t want, and will thus never deliberately do anything to cause another person to lose his temper: the pique that has no chance to happen is the one that leads to harmony. While we are often at a loss to describe our desires in any but the most general terms, there isn’t anyone who’s not a maven on what bothers them; it’s why so many stand-up comics can open routines by saying things like, “You know what I hate?” Everybody knows what they hate and can describe it in as much detail as their linguistic capacities will allow. Hillel takes that knob of displeasure and makes it the basis of his ethics. “Do not do what is hateful to you” takes us immediately to a nexus of kvetch, a nodal point where your aversion comes together with your fellow’s, and on which the whole idea pivots. Hillel is telling us to put that kvetch to work for us, to proceed from certainty rather than supposition, and begin by refraining from what hurts us or what we dislike or what causes us pain: if you don’t like to have your own toe stepped on, don’t step on anybody else’s; should they want you to do so, they’ll probably be quick to tell you. Hillel is putting forward an approach that might be called preventative ethics, an ethics designed to minimize strife and misunderstanding by reducing the size and number of potential problem areas.

 

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