Pirkei Avot, Part 6: Let Your House Be Open

…the very constitution of the Torah, since we say that man is made up of taryag, 613 limbs, corresponding to the 365 prohibitions, and ramach, 248, corresponding to the mitzvot aseh, the positive commandments that bind us to act. This Torah, then, is one body with man in his own constitution. If a person only stops to reflect a little on his own constitution and realizes how its workings were designed, so precisely, so wondrously — take the vessels, the arteries, the capillaries that nourish every part of the human body — well then, there is reason to see in the head, lifted as it were above all weight, the heaven of the being, and in the rest of the body all the other limbs. Of course, the sefirotic tree, which has the shape of a man, gives us some indications.

But we are told that it was through his kelayot, his kidneys, that Avraham discovered the Torah. The function of the kidneys is to filter. Well, this filter that we introduce into our physical life is of the same nature as that of our spiritual being. There is no difference. It is only that sometimes one eclipses the other. When it is said that they — the Patriarchs — fulfilled the Torah, it means that they discovered it through a searching study of their own creation, since man is the synthesis of all creation. So let us return now to our mishnah. We are still developing the first mishnah of Shimon HaTzaddik, namely that the world rests on three pillars. Torah — which, as we said, is the being’s commitment to himself, the study of oneself. Avodah (divine service) is man’s relationship with the Holy One, blessed be He.

That does not cost much, you know; it does not demand very much. One can please the Holy One, blessed be He, with next to nothing. He asked of us kashrut, the lulav and all the rest, in the end, to secure for us a minimum of landmarks along our path of mitzvot, our spiritual path. But what is most important, what costs a person dearly, is having to share what he has with another. And we saw that Antigonos of Sokho says that, where the relationship between man and G-d is concerned — that is, avodah — the essential thing is to expect nothing, to be able to serve G-d with complete gratuitousness; which we are not always capable of doing toward others, for from the other we expect some acknowledgment. And that is the first thing, since our sages said: more than the householder does for the poor man, the poor man does for the householder. The rich man is indebted to the poor. Without the poor man he would not even be recognized; his possessions themselves would have no meaning, no value. In short, the idea of serving G-d with complete gratuitousness is the best way to weigh a person’s true commitment. Because the moment we are disappointed by G-d’s conduct toward us, we will abandon Him, and everything collapses.

Now we know very well that even benevolence, if it is dictated solely, conditioned, by give-and-take — “mine for yours, yours for mine” — is chatat, sin: it carries within it the seed of sin. We developed this saying of Antigonos last week; we will not go back over it. And now we come to the first zug, the first pair. You know, there are five pairs who will bridge the transition through the Hellenistic period and that of the Hasmoneans, up to the rabbis of the Mishnah, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, who will indeed begin the work of compiling the Oral Law. So: “Yossi ben Yoezer of Tzeredah and Yossi ben Yochanan of Jerusalem received from them.” They received from two. From which two? This plural refers to Antigonos of Sokho and to Shimon HaTzaddik.

And Yossi ben Yoezer — what does he say? Yehi veitcha beit va’ad la-chachamim: let your house be a meeting place for the sages; ve-hevei mitabek ba-afar ragleihem ve-hevei shoteh ba-tzama et divreihem: attach yourself to the dust of their feet, and drink in their words with thirst. This is a teaching that bears on the Torah itself: how, in the end, does one enter into the Torah, or rather become integrated into it? Not by gleaning it here and there, but by establishing, in your own home, a dwelling for the sages. For the sages — but note: we said that when Yossi ben Yoezer died, “the eshkolot ceased” — the “clusters,” men who held everything within them.

He has it all: he is a man of vast learning. He is not a man who set himself the goal, let us say, of studying one particular thinker or one particular book of Torah; he is a man who, out of curiosity, absorbed many sciences, many kinds of knowledge. We have already cited the saying that if you are told there is wisdom, there is science, among the nations, it is to be believed, and consequently one must seek to learn it — not only because it can indeed open other windows, other points of view; not only because the friction between cultures generates a new dimension of thought; but also because one must know what to answer an Epicurean — what to answer someone who would take things literally and who would want to enjoy life to the fullest in all it offers him, in an earthly way.

And that too — knowing how to answer other people’s questions — obliges us to go and gather information in other cultures. You know that Elisha ben Avuyah, who was the teacher of Rabbi Meir and who later abandoned his faith, was reproached, and people wondered: how is it that so illustrious a master could have turned his back on all the Torah he possessed? And the answer was that once, when he bent down to pick something up, books of Greek philosophy slipped out — people used to carry books like this, in the inner pocket — they slipped out of his inner pocket; and it was his cherishing books of Greek philosophy to that degree that cost him dearly. One should not go so far in the homage one may pay to that culture. One must see how to integrate it, because Torah ba-goyim — if you speak of Torah among the nations — this spiritual dimension of knowledge, which commits us even before we understand everything — only the Jews were capable of saying it, at the foot of Mount Sinai: na’aseh ve-nishma, “we will do and we will hear,” commitment preceding understanding.

How can commitment precede understanding? So there is indeed a distance to be kept. And it is at this point that he came and was chosen. Now this man had in his family a nephew who waged war on him, because he had been won over to the ideas of the Hellenizers. On that account he had been given a good position, and he made his uncle’s life bitter, going so far as to have him condemned to death. And at the last crossroads, he crosses his path on a horse and says: “You see the honors that are due to me, the horse I ride — and you, what horse has your Master given you?” And he had only to answer: “If this is how it was decreed for those who serve Him, what will become of those who do not serve Him?”

He said to him: “But you are going to die?” He said to him: “If the Holy One, blessed be He, has decreed this for those who cleave to His teaching, then all the more so — what fate is reserved for the rest of you?” It is told that his nephew was so stricken by this that he took his own life; and Yossi ben Yoezer, waking, said: “He has already gone before me; he knew how to recognize the truth and bow before it.” Well, you know, this is a critical period in the history of the Jewish people, because it is at this moment that the divisions within the people indeed begin, little by little, to take shape.

Last time we spoke of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes. But here, at the level of halachah, for example, there is a law: the laying of hands on the sacrifice. Apart from three sacrifices — the Paschal lamb, the animal tithe and the firstborn — on which one does not lay the hands, for every sacrifice a person must tell himself that the animal he brings is in a sense the bearer of all the tendencies that stir him and pull him downward, which he would like to convert by carrying this animal onto the altar, by carrying this animality onto the altar. So he had to lay his hands upon it. And the question was whether, on a festival day, this laying of hands should be done or not.

So there is a dispute among the five zugot, the five pairs — the two-headed leadership that emerges within the people. This two-headed leadership, mind you: one is nasi and the other is av beit din, head of the court. Here, for example, Yossi ben Yoezer of Tzeredah is nasi. According to the Maharal of Prague, he is appointed to lead the people […] with an impulse of generosity, whereas his companion, Yossi ben Yochanan of Jerusalem, is the av beit din: he would have strict justice present everywhere, and would not have the people grow used to generous gifts, nor to compromises in the way it conducts itself. So there was a two-headed leadership of this kind for about 250 years. Afterwards we will find a single leadership at the head of the people.

So this Yossi ben Yoezer, as I was telling you a moment ago, was an ish eshkolot. He was the man of knowledge. There is a word in French that escapes me today — perhaps you will help me — a living encyclopedia, in every field; he has everything within him. So he says: let your house be a meeting place for the sages. Today, of course, we have replaced them with libraries; there are many books in libraries, of every tendency, and we pick a bit here, a bit there, a bit there. That is a good thing, but it does not replace the spoken teaching one can have with a chavruta (study partner), the teaching of the beit midrash. But for that of the beit midrash, one still has to go all the way to the beit midrash to find one’s chavruta. This creates a distance between the home and the beit midrash. The home must be a beit midrash. Inside the home one should organize one’s classes, just as one receives guests for the festivals — that is the place, because it permeates not only the walls of the house but everyone present, the children, the wife. These chachamim (sages) bring with them an inspiration, a Shechinah, a divine presence, which makes the house itself breathe this Torah — but not a Torah like the salons of Germany, where philosophers of every stripe gathered to discuss one subject or another. Attach yourself to the dust of their feet.

The chachamim we have at home, whom we invite into our home, are sages who perhaps do not all possess great knowledge, but whose way of living carries many teachings. Now, the text says ve-hevei mitabek ba-afar ragleihem: one must follow them wherever they go. There is another interpretation, given by the Maharal, namely that mitabek comes from ma’avak, and ma’avak is combat. We are not yes-men; we are not, in the end, going to say amen to every teaching; we are going to try to get to the bottom of the subject. It is a struggle, and it is from this friction of two ideas, of three people, four people, that the Torah indeed comes to leave its mark on our personality. In the end, we ourselves become the house of the sages.

And one must avoid saturation. What is saturation? It is when you have an answer to a question and you content yourself with that answer. That’s it, you have everything. No. Just as we leave a margin on our writing paper to correct mistakes, one must leave a margin in one’s way of thinking. Error is always possible. And that is ve-hevei shoteh ba-tzama et divreihem: always keep this thirst — the thirst to understand their words and to go beyond what they say. So we set no limits to the Torah, to the way of grasping it, to the way of interpreting it; there is always a beyond to the interpretation that we seek today.

That is the teaching of Yossi ben Yoezer of Tzeredah; his companion on the road will complete his idea. What will he say? […] You may scroll the text. So: Yossi ben Yochanan of Jerusalem says, yehi veitcha patuach li-revachah, let your house be open wide — they translated it “open to hospitality,” yes. Let the poor be members of your household, and al tarbeh sichah im ha-ishah, do not converse too much with the woman. Here there is a trap: be-ishto amru, they said this of one’s own wife — all the more so of another man’s wife. From here the sages declared: whoever converses too much with the woman brings harm upon himself, neglects the study of Torah, and in the end inherits Gehinnom — here they translated it as “purgatory.”

In what way do the words of Yossi ben Yochanan complete those of Yossi ben Yoezer? First: do not be elitist, do not filter the people who enter your home, and do not open your house to the sages alone. Know how to open your house to all the poor […]. Myself, in principle, I would not translate “open to hospitality.” I would translate: let your house be open to well-being. The person must not feel that there is a door to be crossed; one simply pushes the door open. On my street, someone has put a sign on his door: “Here, no need to ring.” Well, that is risky, especially in times like these, but the idea is taken from Avraham, who had a tent open on all four sides, so as to spare people having to walk around the house — for the open house, we learned it from Avraham.

Opening one’s door to the other — a whole chapter is devoted to it, and it is asked: how did Avraham come to the conclusion that one must open one’s door on all four sides? And the answer is very simple: he adopted the path of integrity, of uprightness. And you know what the book of Bereshit is called? The book of Bereshit is called Sefer HaYashar, the book of uprightness, of the straight path. That is to say: if one wants to be consistent with oneself — just as I cannot live alone and am always dependent on the other, because the other holds a part of me hostage in his keeping and I would have to recover it at all costs in order to fulfill myself in my totality, or at least in my near-totality — just as this holds on the material plane, since I cannot do everything myself, it holds equally on the spiritual plane.

So one must learn to have an open house, and not only for the chachamim, not only for people of our own level: the aniyim, the poor, also have something to teach us, and we must quite simply give them the feeling that they are part of the household, that they enjoy a certain consideration. Look at how Avraham welcomes Arabs — or rather the angels, who looked like Arabs — and opens his doors to them. Indeed, when Iyov tells you, “I open my doors to everyone,” the midrash challenges him and says: but in the end, do you compare yourself to Avraham? Avraham served wine to those who were used to drinking wine, he served meat to those who were used to eating meat, and wheat bread to those who were used to eating wheat bread — but Avraham also served meat to those who were not used to eating meat, wine to those who were not used to drinking wine, and so on.

So, in short, one should be able to give the other what he truly lacks — and because of what he truly lacks: for ani, the poor man, comes from the verb anah, and anah means to answer. He is someone waiting; he is asking for something. One should be able to satisfy him, and that is why he insists, saying: let the poor be members of your household, and do not converse too much with the woman. Now of course we may ask ourselves here what this text is doing here: what is the link between “let your house be wide open to hospitality,” “let the poor be members of your household” — and this? The generally accepted answer is this. What do you expect? It adds a great deal of work: one has to prepare, set the table, serve, clear up, do everything; there is talk of extra expenses and all that; and the lady of the house is the one who bears it all. So he says: no, do not quarrel with your wife on this score — do not converse too much with the woman, with the woman, meaning his own wife.

No: the fact that the text says al tarbeh sichah im ha-ishah, and did not say al tarbeh sichah im ishah — do not multiply conversation with a woman, but with the woman — means that it is indeed your wife. So here one must try to give the home a different character, and that is why the first match in the Torah is put to the test through the virtue of kindness, of welcoming the guest, of welcoming the stranger. Rivkah is worthy of being Yitzchak’s wife because she offers to water not only Eliezer, whom she does not know, but his flock as well. What is meant by this? The text wished — quite simply, for the moment, since there is much to say about it — to signify that the first essential virtue of the feminine is this openness to the other, this welcome, this kindness that such people radiate.

But careful: if we look more closely at the text, it says al tarbeh sichah im ha-ishah. Al tarbeh does not mean “do not converse with your wife” — that is impossible. One is not going to talk only about oneself. There are everyday matters, there is the children’s education, there are a great many subjects that belong to the present life of the home. The precision lies in al tarbeh: do not converse too much, too much, with one’s own wife. This “too much” introduces a notion of familiarity bordering on vulgarity, which one should try to rein in within the home. Why? Because it diminishes one in relation to the other.

Either it diminishes the woman, because you ramble on, you tell her all sorts of things, you even make fun of her; or she may do the same. So there are limits of decency to be observed. That is sichah, if we take sichah as profane conversation. Al tarbeh sichah im ha-ishah: over problems that are not worth it, we end up tearing each other’s hair out to see who will impose his way of seeing things — it is not worth it. Try to keep the right measure. Now there is another meaning of sichah: sichah in the sense of prayer and the outpouring of the heart. Al tarbeh sichah im ha-ishah: do not confide too much in your wife. Do not confide too much in your wife — but why? Do not open your heart to her — why? On the contrary, she is my first confidante in life, so I must share with her at all costs. […] Why? Because suppose, let us say, at work, that you have suffered some wrong: you were exploited, you were humiliated — one does not always meet, let us say, respectable people, and in business neither.

So your wife, if you tell her all this, one of two things: either she will say to you, “Careful, you must not forgive, you have to settle accounts with him,” she will stoke your pride against that person; or else she will call you a fool — “you let yourself be pushed around,” and so on. And even while defending you — she defends you for the moment — at the first opportunity she will serve it back to you: “There, you let yourself be had by this person and that person” — that is just what she will say, and so on. So try to leave closed certain chapters that can give rise to disputes on one side or the other. For whoever converses too much, whoever grants himself the right to lay everything out, brings harm upon himself; and after that he neglects the Torah and is destined to inherit Gehinnom — in the end his life becomes a hell.

Now this is juxtaposed to what we said: let your house be wide open to hospitality, and let the poor be members of your household. There are forms of hospitality that foster this kind of conversation that leads nowhere. People exchange a few ideas, but instead of knowing how to hold them in check, each one defends his own side. Either the poor are part of your household, or you show contempt toward people who do not think as you do. You ignore them. It amounts to one and the same thing. The first to suffer from it, the first to bear its consequences, is you, and those in the intimacy of your home. That is the relation between gemilut chassadim (acts of loving-kindness) and the woman. I told you a moment ago that her first test is hospitality — but careful: a kind of hospitality that keeps its lines. With this we close, if you like, this study of Shimon HaTzaddik: Torah, avodah, and then gemilut chassadim.

There, I will stop my lecture here, if you have questions to ask. — Good evening, I have a small question to ask you. — Yes. — Thank you for this lecture, which I find quite exceptional; there is nothing to change, baruch Hashem. I wanted to ask you about the chiddush (novel insight) I have just gathered from your words. You said that Sefer Bereshit also bears the name Sefer HaYashar. — Yes. — I have three questions about this statement. What is the source of this statement, that it bears the name Sefer HaYashar? The second question is about the very term Bereshit: it contains the word yashar, but reversed, that is, with the letters in inverse order.

— Why is that? Sorry, I did not hear the second question. — In the word Bereshit you have the letters of the word yashar. — Yes. — But they are reversed. — Yes. — There, that was the second question. — But you spoke of three questions. — As for the third question, I will try to find it quickly so as not to keep you waiting. I had written it down, but I cannot find it. — Well, that Bereshit presents the word yashar reversed is entirely normal, since it is… — I have found the third question, Rav: why was Sefer Bereshit not rather called Sefer Yetzirah? — There are three dimensions in Sefer Bereshit — and not only in Sefer Bereshit, in the Torah.

When G-d creates man, it says “G-d created man in His image,” “in the image of the likeness of His form.” So the conception of man is a beriah, a creation. The realization of man is a yetzirah, a formation. And at that point there are two — two yetzarim (inclinations): in va-yitzer, “and He formed,” there are two yuds, to say that there is already a bipolarity in man, two tendencies — va-yitzer, the yetzirah. We are in the world of yetzirah; we are not in the world of […]. And that — according to the Maharal of Prague, Sefer Bereshit in reality forms a single body with Sefer Shemot. Sefer Shemot, up to the building of the Mishkan (Tabernacle), closes the book of Bereshit.

So what we consider to be two books is in fact only a single book, since Bereshit — without the creation of the Jewish people, without the giving of the Torah, without the Tabernacle, which mirrors creation — there is no Bereshit. Then Vayikra begins the world of assiyah (action): the sacrifice, korban, from the verb karov, is the drawing together of the two worlds. That is as far as the Torah is concerned. So as for Sefer HaYashar, there is a view that would even extend it up to the giving of the Torah, and there is Sefer HaYashar: the world functions according to the pure logic of things, that of man’s integrity, and so it would have to be set right side up.

It can indeed present itself in a disjointed way, because let us not forget that for the milah, circumcision, which is commanded by the Holy One, blessed be He, Avraham, in order to perform it, needs the help of his companions, Aner and Mamre. One asks why. Ah — because the milah was indeed going to create a break between him and the others, and on that he hesitated. He did not hesitate when the Holy One, blessed be He, told him to offer his son as a burnt offering; but cutting the cord with the others himself — that he did not accept […]. So here the yashar, the straight way, did not function […]. Nor did it function for the gid ha-nasheh, the sciatic nerve.

“Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the gid ha-nasheh” (Genesis 32:33). Now the gid ha-nasheh is the struggle between two brothers, Yaakov and Esav, for the birthright, and it is an exception to the rule of Sefer HaYashar. Indeed, when one reads the book of Bereshit, one does not ask oneself many questions; one is rather spellbound by the story of those first generations, and at times scandalized; but afterward, the fact that there is an epilogue, a happy ending — that we have integrated. What we have integrated less well is the slavery in Egypt. There is the answer to your question — in short. — Thank you very much, todah rabbah. — Another question. — Yes, Rav Benizri, I have a question about al tarbeh sichah im ha-ishah […].

Why is it stated “do not multiply conversation with the woman” — why not say “do not pour out your heart to anyone at all,” rather than to the woman, since the problem of self-image can be trampled on among friends too? — Yes, yes, yes. In a word, I would tell you: since the feminine is the jewel of the being, do not mistreat it; for if you give it the opportunity to mistreat you, it will destroy you. Handle it with care — that is al tarbeh sichah im ha-ishah — and do not reduce her to your charms. That is al tarbeh sichah im ha-ishah. And above all, when you talk with her, know that with her it is another chapter, another discourse. The discourse of the man and the discourse of the woman — people try to assimilate them and force them into one and the same mould.

That does not work. From the scientific point of view, yes; from the psychological point of view, no. The perception is totally different. And if our chachamim said that the woman is the crown of her husband, then one must know how to wear it on one’s head. You will tell me that not all women are like that, sir. We are speaking of the feminine, which is the ultimate creation of creation, because woman, if she was permitted to be created, is the sublime within creation. — You know, Rav Benizri, I wanted to add something: you know, there are mitzvot that are harder than others, and I assure you that even today I think that bringing the poor into one’s home is really not a very easy thing. I know there are people who manage this mitzvah easily, but for others it is truly extremely delicate for the wife. — I have told you already, I have told you already: today, in the Orthodox world, the mitzvot toward G-d, with G-d — that is wonderful; they are there, with their kashrut, their chumrot (stringencies) upon chumrot. And do they apply these stringencies in the relationship between a man and his brother? There […].

I said that the mitzvot bein adam la-Makom, between man and G-d, do not demand so much — take prayer. You know, it is told that one day there was a disciple singing his master’s praises. To his friend he said: “You know, my Rav is extraordinary, he is a genius, a genius.” “How so?” “Well, do you realize: he is speaking to you, but he is already solving another question at the same time as he speaks to you. Do you realize?” The other answered him: “So that is genius? In that case I am a genius too. Because when I begin my prayer, I am solving all the problems that were left pending.”

At the very moment I am reciting my prayer. For in the end, there he is serving G-d, but in reality he is thinking at the same time of his purse, he is thinking of his business, he is thinking of the little problems he left behind him; and it comes, it works away in his mind, so that one wonders whether, while praying, he is not rather busy solving his personal problem. That is something one cannot say when one opens one’s house to the poor. There — another question. — Rav, I have a question, please, about the book of Ruth, and about what you have been saying about the woman. Could you explain a little more this phrase that Naomi addressed to Ruth: “Go and lie down at Boaz’s feet on the threshing floor.” What does all this mean?

— Well. Of course I have not commented on every aspect of the book of Ruth. One Shavuot night I was asked to give a study on Ruth. We spent three hours on it and had barely covered seven verses of this scroll of Ruth, because the book of Ruth carries many elements for reflection, notably that of yibbum, levirate marriage. Levirate marriage — just think: Yehudah was not able to fulfill this mitzvah of yibbum. With Tamar he refused: he gave his second son to Tamar, but the third he does not want to give, because he says no; and even the other sons do not want it — they do not want the child to bear the name of the deceased. No, we do not want this; we do not want to take our brother’s place. Now the idea of yibbum in the family — as things stand today, yibbum no longer exists, you know; since […] we perform chalitzah. Why? So as to sever the bond between the brothers in the case where a brother dies without leaving children. Why? Because not everyone can conform to it. But there is in the idea of yibbum the will to give substance to this giving of oneself in the name of the family we wish to build.

Now do not forget that Ruth is a stranger. Ruth is not going to be accepted into society, because everyone says, “An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter the congregation of Hashem,” and things are taken literally: every stranger is refused. And many families have broken apart because of the introduction of a foreign element into the family that was not integrated or could not integrate. Well, we will not go into this problem of conversion; but Ruth, in a way, wants to enter the Jewish people in defiance of the law. What does it matter to her, the law that forbade an Ammonite or a Moabite from entering the congregation? “I defy it” […]. But for that, she must give proof that she is capable of paying with her own person. And she did it in that spirit. In that spirit.

And in sum, it is the yibbum that Yehudah refused which is taken up by Ruth — Ruth who becomes, in a way, the goddaughter of Tamar. Because the yibbum practiced here is not that of a brother; it is that of a close relative. He — Boaz — was old; he died on the very day of his wedding — his second wedding, since his wife had just died and he was already very old. There. Another question?