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Jewish World Review Jan. 18, 1999 / 29 Teves, 5759
JUDAISM IS NOT SHORT ON ANOMALIES. One of the most curious revolves around what is arguably Judaism's central characteristic, the mitzvah (commandment). The requirement to keep 613 mitzvas -- 248 do’s, 365 don’t’s -- has often led to the assumption that
Judaism is more concerned with what people do than with how they develop as human beings.
Yet this has never been so. Even for those Jewish writers and thinkers who were preoccupied with expounding the rationales and ramifications of the commandments, the need for character refinement was always a paramount ideal.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, writing about the appointment of religious judges, tell us that, "conscientiousness and general excellence of character" necessarily preceded "authorisation being conferred by the highest national representative".
So alongside a copious literature dealing the mitzvas and how they are to be carried out is another Jewish literary genre, no less important, whose concern is not religious observance but the character of the Jew who observes - not doing but being. This started with the Torah itself.
Some of the Torah's passages are clearly moral exhortations --- Moses' farewell speeches are a prime example. Some commentaries see the whole of Bereshis (Book of Genesis) as moralistic. We are to read the stories of our patriarchs and matriarchs as examples of upright living, as well as learn to recognize wrongdoing from the narratives of Esau and Laban, as a
prelude to G-d's commandments, which we do not encounter till Shemos (Book of Exodus).
The earliest of these was Mishlei, the biblical Book of Proverbs, where guidance for upright living is offered in pithy, easily remembered maxims. Mishlei became the model for a number of similar (and largely forgotten works) in the centuries preceding the Common Era.
Perhaps the best known of this type of Jewish writing is Pirkei Avos, the Ethics of the Fathers. In about the year 200 Rabbi Judah the Prince compiled the Mishnah, a major work on Jewish law. He included Pirkei Avos, the Mishnah's sole ethical treatise, in a section dealing with damages and civil litigation. One who took character development seriously could not
knowingly damage anyone or anything.
For centuries, Jews read Pirkei Avos chapter by chapter each Shabbes afternoon between Pesach and Rosh Hashanah. It was, and still is, a custom with a message, albeit often overshadowed by a need to study the commandments and to know how they should be applied in any given situation.
So it was that, in the late 12th century, Bahya ibn Paquda composed his Duties of the Heart. The title referred to those obligations that involve a person's moral sensitivities as opposed to what he termed 'duties of the limbs' --- the practical observance of the commandments. In his introduction he writes -- perhaps somewhat ruefully -- that others had been preoccupied with expounding religious observance and had largely ignored the ethical side of Judaism. Duties of the Heart inspired a number of other ethical works in the centuries that followed.
It was the rise of the Chassidic movement and its Lithuanian counterpart, Mussar, that gave Jewish character development a renewed impetus. Hasidism began with the teachings of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (1698-1760). Its fundamental ethical principle is that if a person is aware of G-d's presence, they cannot do other than good. Based on this notion, Hassidic ethical texts draw heavily on kabbalah, pointing out how the goodness and wisdom of the Creator can be seen in every facet of everyday experience.
Musar is generally associated with Rabbi Israel Lipkin of Salant (1810-1883). As the Haskalah, the Eighteenth Century movement that sought to secularize Jewish life, advanced eastwards into Lithuania, many Jews became attracted to it. In the yeshivas, students would read political and scientific tracts, even hiding them in their copies of the Talmud.
Many rabbis saw this as a threat to religious commitment --- an indication that some students saw Torah study as bearing little relation to real life so that they had to seek reality elsewhere. Rabbi Lipkin realized that the need was not so much to intensify Torah study but to revive Torah values. That meant demonstrating that the Torah is relevant and that it can make a difference to the kind of person one becomes.
Today, Mussar and Chassidus are taught in Jewish schools and, together with classical texts such as Duties of the Heart, are part of the everyday curriculum in yeshivas and women’s seminaries.
And Jews still read Pirkei Avos every Shabbes afternoon. For if mitzvah observance is the basic building material of Jewish life, character refinement is both its foundation and the air that fills it. The
ultimate aim is not only to observe the teachings in the sefer Torah but, as Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov put it, "to make a sefer Torah of
Making a sefer Torah
of oneself
Despite the claims by some, Judaism is about a lot more than just pots and pans
By Rabbi Arye Forta
The Talmud goes further and asserts "the mitzvas were given to refine people" --- fulfilment of the commandments cannot be separated from its affect on the person who observes them. Nevertheless, over the centuries some of the greatest Jewish minds have made character development the focus of their attention and bequeathed their writings to posterity.
New JWR contributor Rabbi Arye Forta is a London-based Jewish educator.
