Pirkei Avot, Part 7 — Make Yourself a Teacher, Acquire Yourself a Friend

Yes. Very good. So, we pick up again at Mishnah 6. Yehoshua ben Perachia and Nittai of Arbel received the Oral Law from their predecessors — those we have already seen, Yosei ben Yoezer of Tzereda and [Yosei ben Yochanan] of Jerusalem — I no longer quite remember. The text says: “Make yourself a teacher, acquire yourself a friend, and judge the whole person” — the whole person, each individual — “favorably.” And Nittai of Arbel gives the reverse side of the coin. We said that the nasi, the president of the Sanhedrin, is the man of kindness, of love, whereas the head of the court is more bound to justice. He says: beware — keep away from a bad neighbor, do not attach yourself to a wicked man, and do not despair of retribution.

In other words: if you are not capable of judging every person generously, of binding yourself in friendship with someone and of submitting yourself to a teacher, then do not put your life at risk. There is no point going out to meet failure; stay on your guard — keep away from a bad neighbor, do not attach yourself to a wicked man, and do not despair of retribution. We shall indeed see what [this means]. Good; let us now turn to the analysis of these two mishnayot. Yehoshua ben Perachia — the Tanna who was the teacher of Yeshu — went into exile. At that time Yannai, who sided with the Sadducees, was hunting down the Pharisees, and so Yehoshua ben Perachia preferred to go into exile in Alexandria. [He returned] because Yannai had been somewhat mollified by his brother-in-law, Shimon ben Shetach, and had understood that it was in his interest not to wage war on the Pharisees and to take their side.

That is when he comes back. Then there is the story I told you: he stopped at an inn where he was very warmly received, and when he began to praise the qualities of his hosts, Yeshu said to him: “But did you see the way these women look?” He grew angry. Yehoshua ben Perachia said to him: “That is what you paid attention to? I forbid you to remain at my side.” Yeshu tried somewhat to win him over, to come back again and again. And when Yehoshua ben Perachia was finally willing, Yeshu came before him and found him in the middle of reciting the Shema, and Yehoshua ben Perachia signaled to him that he had to wait. So he understood that he was rebuffing him once again, and he went and worshipped idols — he gave himself over to idolatry.

After a certain time, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachia came to him and said: “Come back — return to your roots.” He answered: “No. I learned from you that whoever sins and leads the many into sin — kol ha-choteh u-machti et ha-rabbim — is not granted the opportunity to repent — ein maspikin be-yado la’asot teshuvah.” He is no longer allowed an act of repentance, since in the end he has lost many souls that he can no longer recover. Now, if one says that Yeshu lived in the time of Yehoshua ben Perachia, this means there is a real problem with the dating of Yeshu’s life: it would amount to a difference of a hundred years from what we usually accept.

[…] But such is the story. And Yehoshua ben Perachia, one would say, regretted what he had done, and said: “Make yourself a teacher, acquire yourself a friend, and judge the whole person favorably.” Judge every person generously. It is well known that if Trotsky had not been driven out of the cheder by the melamed (the schoolmaster), he would have been a bachur yeshivah, a yeshiva student; but because he was shamefully expelled from the cheder, well, he chose another path. Which goes to show how great our responsibility is in the relationship we maintain with our fellow — and above all for a teacher, a master. Because, in sum: Aseh lecha rav, u-kneh lecha chaver, ve-hevei dan et kol ha-adam le-chaf zechut. Aseh lecha rav — the one who is above you, the teacher: impose him on yourself.

That is the difference between aseh and kneh. You know the expression me’asin al ha-mitzvot: it means that one compels a person to perform a mitzvah — since the mitzvah is in his own interest, one may exercise compulsion. And so aseh lecha: impose on yourself a teacher. And kneh lecha chaver — a teacher cannot always be a chaver. One feels somewhat self-conscious before him, and one does not always want to feel under his thumb, so one seeks refuge with a friend, a confidant. But beware: this chaver is not the Facebook “friend”; it is not someone who is merely, you know, friends, acquaintances, and so on. We are speaking of the true chaver: the one who is capable of devoting himself entirely to the other, because, in sum, the chaver is nothing other than myself — he is the other who is I. But if you truly want to benefit from having the teacher at your side, and the friend, you must judge everyone with [generosity]. There are those who have drawn a link between aseh lecha rav, u-kneh lecha chaver [and what follows], saying that one is always inclined to judge one’s teacher and one’s friend harshly.

One forgives them nothing, and it can hardly be otherwise. One seeks to bring them down because they know everything about us; one has lived in a certain familiarity with them, and the tendency is to scratch away until one finds their faults and weighs them up. So he says: no. If you want your teacher to remain your teacher and your friend your friend, you must be able to close your eyes to certain things. “For there is no righteous man on earth who does good and never sins” — no one is perfect. There is no perfectly righteous man on earth. One falls short on this point, on that obligation. It is human; we are not angels. Thus this aseh lecha rav u-kneh lecha chaver calls us to judge every person — ha-adam, the person as a whole.

It does not say ve-hevei dan kol adam, “judge every person,” but et kol ha-adam le-chaf zechut. “Judge every person with generosity” — the whole adam. One must understand that kol ha-adam is the person in his totality, and in his totality it is impossible not to find in him a good side that ought to be brought to light. One must try to give back to him, to restore to him his dignity, and not to crush him. In this way one can save him. And here a problem arises, because there are two laws in the Torah where we are told, quite simply, to keep our distance. One of them, believe it or not, is the arayot themselves: in forbidden relations one must guard oneself and keep very far away. And the other: from falsehood you must keep far away.

So if I am inclined always to judge people along the path of generosity, how am I to observe at the same time the principle of mi-devar sheker tirchak, “keep far from a false matter”? Will I not, on the contrary, confirm the man who has sinned — who has committed a fault — in his error? There is much to say on this, but here comes the saying of our Sages: gadol ha-shalom, great is peace. When we truly seek to live in peace, we may set truth aside. We have a proof. G-d alters Sarah’s words. When she is told that she will have a child within a year, she says: “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure — and my husband is already very old?”

So G-d corrects Sarah’s words: Sarah said, “I am old” — that is what Sarah said: “I am old.” And likewise at the end of the book of Bereshit, where Yosef’s brothers ask his forgiveness. They say: “Your father commanded before his death, saying: Please forgive the transgression of your brothers.” But that was never said. They imagined it. Gadol ha-shalom, great is peace: truth is set aside in the face of peace, because we are in pursuit of peace. Consequently, ve-hevei dan et kol ha-adam le-chaf zechut also obliges us to diminish another’s shortcoming or deficiency when we turn our gaze upon it, when we examine it.

Why? Because this flaw that the person has may be hiding something graver still. It serves as a stopper over a fragility of being, and that is why, if you pull out this stopper, if you expose these shortcomings and truly put your finger on his deficiencies, you risk tipping this person into a far, far more dangerous failing. And that is why ve-hevei dan et kol ha-adam le-chaf zechut has been interpreted in this way. Then the question was asked: kol ha-adam, every person — does that also include the other nations? And the answer is yes. But how are we to judge the other nations favorably — is that possible?

I have told you that our Sages teach us that a stranger, a non-Jew, who devotes himself to his Torah — who devotes himself to his Torah: not the Torah, our Torah, but his own teaching, his own moral code — within the framework of his morality, may be considered a kohen gadol; he may be regarded as a high priest, if he is truly consistent with himself in the moral laws that he practices, that he is bound to practice. We are not speaking of idol worship; we are speaking of the observance of the seven Noahide laws. Well, there too — and this demands great humility on our part, because there is a principle: “Do not judge your fellow until you have reached his place” — and his place you can never reach. One shares time; one does not share a place: either it is I, or it is the other. And then li-mekomo, “his place,” means the circumstances in which this person grew up, what actually led him to turn away from the law, from his obligations, let us say. For here we must bear in mind that we are not speaking of the rules of law proper — of kashrut and the like — because the book of Pirkei Avot is a treatise of ethics, a treatise of principle. It is a treatise of derech eretz. Consequently, when it says aseh lecha rav, “make yourself a teacher,” it does not mean a teacher who will dictate the halachot to you or inform you about this chumra (stringency) or that kula (leniency), what is permitted and what is forbidden, what one should do. No: it means a spiritual guide to whom you refer, one who can advise you in everything you undertake because he shares no interest with you — provided, in parentheses, that he demands no compensation of any kind. For a chaver one can choose in such a way that he is someone I get along with well; but the rav, not always.

If I study with him, yes, I can choose a rav who meets my expectations, who answers my requests somewhat and can guide me properly. For when we study Torah, a person studies the Torah he loves, the part he prefers. […] One also studies with someone we esteem, whom we appreciate. A choice can be made — but not in the case of a rav, because, take note, it does not say here to acquire a rav. A rav is not acquired; he is not bought. A rav does not let himself be bought. If he lets himself be bought, and if he is there simply to sign off on everything you undertake, then he is not a rav.

As for the chaver, the Rambam says — take note — there are three kinds of chaver. There is the chaver to’elet, the friend of utility, who is like a business partner: each has a common interest in supporting the other, even materially. “Two are better than one,” for if one should fall, the other will hold him up. There is the friend of nachat, of tranquility, with whom one feels secure: I bring him a certain peace, I support him in what he undertakes, he supports me too, and we dwell together in that tranquility. […] As sometimes happens, unfortunately, because one has studied — this is found above all among people who have studied Torah, who have acquired learning — they become somewhat disdainful toward those who have not. That is why he says: beware. If you have made yourself a teacher, and if you have friends among whom you are cherished, do not forget that you must judge every person favorably, and that it is your charge to bring back the other who is at the bottom of the ladder; and for that you would have to come down from your — go on, the word escapes me. Perhaps you can help me.

— From the top of the ladder on which you stand. There is a touching story about the Rebbe. You know that the Rebbe, zecher tzaddik li-vrachah, used to hand out dollars to visitors who came to receive his blessing, accompanying his blessing with a dollar. Someone passes before him, receives his dollar, and says to him: “I am going to be married soon — but to a non-Jewish woman.” The Rebbe takes on a serious expression and says to him: “You are fortunate. I never had to face such a trial. You must truly have great merit to be placed at such a level and to wage this battle.” The other man heard this on his way out.

He said to himself: so this is a trial for me. He broke down […], and he decided to call it all off. This is to say how very easy it is to judge, to exclude, to diminish a person because we hold other cards. We do not know whether, had we been confronted with the same trials, we would have held firm to that degree. So, I return to kneh lecha chaver — I close the parenthesis — to kneh lecha chaver: there is the chaver ma’alah, the friend of elevation, who seeks to advance you, to rise at the same time as you and together with you. That one is the true friend, who is there to raise you up on a scale of values and who is truly capable of devoting himself to your cause.

He knows full well that his own ma’alah, his own elevation, also depends on yours. That is the friend one does not find on the street corner, and whom we must win over, whom we must “acquire,” whom we must court. […] And Yehoshua ben Perachia — we said he was the teacher of Yeshu — teaches everyone, even the others, never to function alone, without a point of reference. A halachah that has no beit av, no source of transmission, no reference, is not a halachah. Nor does it have the stature to go out toward others — as Shmuel did, but as, first of all, Avraham did. You know that Avraham used to bring people to faith, he and his wife — megayer et ha-anashim, as it is said, Avraham converted the men and Sarah the women.

He brought people to faith, but nothing remained of those conversions. Even Eliezer, who was his right-hand man and served as his intermediary between Avraham and others — you know how the verse is interpreted: dole u-mashkeh, he drew from his master’s wisdom and gave others to drink of it — nothing remained of him either. Why? Quite simply because Eliezer remained in the state of an eved, a servant; he never became free. And the other one [Lot], who acted of his own accord, on his own initiative — him too Avraham, […], was obliged to part from. Why? He did not have Avraham’s stature; he was only a mask, only a veil of Avraham. Avraham could intercede on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah.

For him it made no difference. Sodom and Gomorrah were known for their perversion, and yet he asks G-d nonetheless to spare them. The other one wanted to do this work from a distance — no: the other one wanted to do this work right at the gates of Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, they let themselves be drawn in — we know the rest of the story. They let themselves be drawn in by the inhabitants of the place. So aseh lecha rav — impose [a teacher on yourself] — and “keep away from a bad neighbor”: there are restrictions. These restrictions the Rambam too introduced, saying that the man who is righteous must not be tainted with a single failure in his duties, whereas the rasha, the wicked man who is manifestly recognized as such — one should not always seek to support him.

To whom, then, is ve-hevei dan et kol ha-adam le-chaf zechut addressed? Frankly, to ordinary people — and we are all among them. But this interpretation did not hold up for many commentators. The Rebbe once said on this subject — he related this story about the Rabbi of Berditchev: on Yom Kippur he came upon a Jew holding a cigarette in his hand. He approached him and said: “Do you know that today is Yom Kippur?” He said: “Yes.” He said: “But do you know that it is forbidden to smoke today?” He said: “Yes.” So he turned to G-d […] and said: “Look, Master of the world — even on Yom Kippur, this man stands before You and tells the truth; he does not lie; he admits it.” So what he drew from him was the fact that he told the truth.

That was already a good point which [the Rabbi] of Berditchev — forgive me — drew out of this man. Well, […] that is what we ought to take from it. A rav must be capable of this when he dispenses his teaching: to become a chaver attentive to the problems of his students. And in this connection the question has been asked: why does the Torah say ve-shinantam le-vanecha, “you shall teach them to your sons”? We have derived that teaching your children means teaching your students — talmidecha. But then why does the text not say ve-shinantam le-talmidecha? Why “your sons”? And the answer: when a teacher is not capable of loving his students as his children, he is not fit to teach. And that is why [you are fit] only if you regard the one to whom you bring your teaching with the same love you bear toward your own child. There is, moreover, an important element in the choice of a judge: sometimes a judge who had reached a certain age — in those days it was said that he was unfit to judge.

Why unfit to judge? One understands it: […] they still have learning and flawless experience, don’t they? But there is a small crack in their personality, namely that they no longer have children at home; […] they no longer know the effort it takes to educate a child, to raise him, to see to his training. Well, if they have somewhat lost that sensitivity — the love of a father for his child — they can no longer judge; they become unqualified. So it seems to me that the text before us, from Yehoshua ben Perachia, stands in continuity with what we studied last week.

Let me go back a little. The text said: let your house be wide open to hospitality. No — the text said: let your house be a meeting place for many sages. We said: beware — in a spirit of openness, one must not close oneself off within a single line of thought; one should indeed take an interest in all the currents of thought. But when it comes to a rav, you cannot play two rabbis against each other and take the chumrot of one and the kulot of the other; you must follow a single path. If you are to have a spiritual guide, you can have only one spiritual guide; you cannot keep changing your rav’s address. The second was yehi veitcha patuach li-revachah, “let your house be wide open” to hospitality. The intention: you can have only one friend, only one confidant. And the third element, we saw — forgive me, there were many people, there were people in the house — wait a minute, no, higher up. I’ll take my book; my memory has failed me. “And let your house” — yes, here it is.

“Ve-hevei mitabek ba-afar ragleihem — sit in the dust at their feet — ve-hevei shoteh ba-tzama et divreihem — and drink in their words with thirst.” And we saw last week that there was the other side of the coin: that is, al tarbeh sichah im ha-ishah, “do not engage in much conversation with the woman,” and kol ha-marbeh sichah im ha-ishah gorem ra’ah le-atzmo, “whoever engages in much conversation with the woman brings harm upon himself.” The third component of Yehoshua ben Perachia is ve-hevei dan et kol ha-adam le-chaf zechut. […] Judge him generously. And this holds as much for that counsel of Yosei ben Yochanan of Jerusalem as for the counsel above it — what did I say? forgive me — yes, a bit further up, there it is: ve-hevei shoteh ba-tzama et divreihem, “drink in their words with thirst.” Establishing this link means: put yourself in their place, in the state of the thirsty, in what they have done, in what they have undertaken; try a little to see it that way, and you will end up realizing that you too hide certain shortcomings, certain deficiencies that are not obvious, and that you would like to be judged on the side of merit. So first teach yourself to judge others on the side of merit, bringing to light their qualities rather than [their faults]. There — I would like to stop here, if you have any questions.

— Good evening, Rav Benizri. I would like to ask you a question about ordinary people. Do you think that tikkun chatzot is addressed to everyone — to ordinary people, let us say — or only to an elite? — That is a good question. It is as if you were asking me to whom […] is addressed. The tikkun chatzot that one performs: one must first have reached a certain level of responsibility toward one’s surroundings, and of wanting in some way to repair a situation, when one already feels one has fulfilled all one’s obligations, all one’s responsibilities — and then one performs tikkun chatzot to restore the world to working order. That is already ve-hevei dan et kol ha-adam le-chaf zechut on a scale of values that is a level above a level.

It is truly what the yechidei segulah, the elite, ought to do. But tikkun chatzot is not given to everyone. If I must ask myself the question — between tikkun chatzot and, for example, regularity in my daily prayers — I would say: I prefer that you put on tefillin every day rather than undertake tikkun chatzot right away. Put the emphasis on putting on tefillin, put the emphasis on the laws of Shabbat, put the emphasis on the rules of good conduct, of shalom bayit (peace in the home), and so on. Tikkun chatzot is something that will impose itself of its own accord. It is not something that you are going to impose on yourself. Because if you impose it on yourself, it means that you are ultimately regarding it as a remedy.

And to seek a remedy in the practices of the law borders on superstition. The remedies of our souls can only be spiritual, not immediate. There is, moreover, a beautiful idea on this in what Rav Kook says. One must know that the trials we go through are sometimes bitter remedies, but they are restorative, because once we have actually overcome them, we situate ourselves differently in our lives. But one must not go looking for these bitter remedies. One must not call down upon oneself trials one cannot withstand. To enter into tikkun chatzot, one would truly have to rise to this notion of authority, of a spiritual master — as King David did: chatzot laylah akum le-hodot lach, “at midnight I rise to give thanks to You” — who rose in the middle of the night to praise the kindnesses of the L-rd.

To rise in the middle of the night to praise the kindnesses of the L-rd — that has another dimension altogether. It has another dimension. He wakes of his own accord; […] it is no longer he who seeks to wake himself. He is awakened — awakened by an extraordinary force from above. There — I don’t know whether I have answered the question, but… — Yes, yes, you have answered it perfectly well. I just wanted to add a question that came to me during your answer. It is said in the Gemara that one who does not study during the night — it is as though he were burning his home. So how can this be interpreted? And, in fact, would simply doing a short study, for example for an hour after Arvit, fulfill this Talmudic saying?

— Well, I would not take this teaching literally. But in reality, “his home is his wife,” and “his wife is as his own body”: we are guf echad, one body. There is, moreover, a Hasidic saying: when we are two and truly bound by friendship, our desires do not exclude each other, do not clash — we are not two in our desires. For in general each would like to take the other’s enjoyment, and when these are neutralized, they no longer operate; but on the other hand our minds are united — we are two in mind. In mind, we have indeed succeeded in building ourselves, in building ourselves through study at night. And I am speaking of the night of the ages; I am speaking of the night in which the couple at home sometimes finds itself; I am speaking of the night, of a person’s distress — and there, where will he find his resource?

He will find himself again in study. Now, the one who — and I have already told you this — the one who says ein techiyat ha-metim min ha-Torah, “there is no resurrection of the dead from the Torah,” has no share in the World to Come: that is, the one who does not believe it is possible to come back to life through the practice of Torah has closed off for himself the horizons of the future life, of what is yet to come. Now the principle of night is to make possible a new dawn, and that is why, as I told you, we begin the morning with a blessing that gives the rooster the understanding to distinguish between day and night. Is that all right, Shmuel? — Thank you very much. May G-d bless your learning, Rav. […] — Another question? — I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for being our teacher.

There is your generosity, and our gratitude, for your teaching us to kindle the flame that is within us. Every week, you see, a great many people come every week to listen to you in each of our living rooms. And I think we can also thank the coronavirus, which gave us the opportunity to have your lectures at home — so not everything is negative. — Exactly, exactly. Well then, until next week. — Thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening. Good evening. Have a good week. Thank you. — One can say, Rav Benizri — in any case I have the feeling, I truly have the impression, that you have loved your students as your sons. — These words often give me goosebumps. That much I can say.

— Truly. Humbly, I can say it. Thank you. — But we can say it — not even humbly, but with real gratitude. And I meet you again with immense joy every Sunday. — For us too. It is truly shared. It is truly shared. A great pleasure. There. Until next week. — Until next week. Until next week. Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye. Bye. Thank you, Manu. Thank you. Thank you, Manu. — It is truly even more moving — moving, I find, after so many years, to see the faith with which he gives his teaching, and this sharing, this generosity in sharing; it is so moving. For some people teaching is truly a vocation, truly a vocation, and I think he is its very image.

Bye. Bye. Goodbye. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. Good evening. Goodbye. Goodbye.