Hillel says: Do not opt out of society; do not believe in yourself until your dying day; do not judge your fellow until you reach his place; do not say something which it is impossible to obey, because in the end it must be obeyed; and do not say, 'When I get some free time I will study' – you may not get any free time.
EXPLANATIONS (continued):
8:
What does Hillel mean when he urges us not to opt out of society? To which society is he referring? Does he mean that we should never forsake the community in which we live, never shun it? Or are there circumstances when we would be left with no choice but to "opt out"?
9:
I think that we can be reasonably sure that the society to which Hillel refers is the Jewish community, for it was the only one that he knew. Of course, there were non-Jews in Eretz-Israel in the time of Hillel, but they were not part of his society. They were not the people he habitually mixed with for social, religious, cultural or educational purposes. He might have to come into contact with them for economic, political or certain civic purposes, but they were not truly a part of his 'society'. Indeed, the Hebrew term that he uses which we have translated 'society' in modern times connotes 'community', 'congregation' – and even just 'the public' in general.
10:
Under normal circumstances, Hillel urges, we should always remain a part of our Jewish community. We should be a vital part of that community both in its moments of exultation and in its moments of despair. And even when our community is doing wrong we must never despair of being able to bring positive influence to bear either by teaching or by example. In his magnum opus, Mishneh Torah [Repentance, Chapter 3] Rambam teaches:
Each and every human being has virtues and vices. Someone whose virtues outweigh his vices is righteous and someone whose vices outweigh his virtues is wicked; and where they are evenly balanced he is an average person. The same applies to states: if the virtues of all its inhabitants outweigh their vices it is righteous and if their vices outweigh their virtues it is wicked. The same applies to the whole world… That is why each person should see himself as if he were half righteous and half wicked. And likewise the whole world [should be seen as being] half righteous and half wicked. If he does one more sin he might sway the balance for himself and for the whole world, and if he does one righteous act he can sway the balance for himself and for the whole world.
In other words: never opt out of society as long as there is hope that you can be a positive influence in that society.
To be continued.
DISCUSSION:
In Avot 095, in response to a series of questions posed by Yehuda Wiesen, I tried to explain how Conservative halakhists try to maintain the vitality of a tradition by seeking to comprehend it anew in the light of our present day experiences and understandings. I wrote: The deliberate trend in Conservative Judaism is to seek a new interpretation or a new understanding of this or that mitzvah so that we can continue to observe it in good conscience.
Yehuda has more questions, and I shall try to answer them here because I think that he is expressing the thoughts of many participants, not just his own. He writes:
The secular reason for seeking new interpretations/understandings of mitzvot is clear: so our religion agrees with the prevalent secular thinking concerning ethics and morality. But what is the Jewish underpinning for doing so?
I respond:
Traditional Judaism has always been a religion which is constantly updating its perception of the mitzvot. There is even a mechanism built into the Written Torah, as it were, that provides for this. The Torah [Deuteronomy 17:8-13] teaches:
If a case is too baffling for you to decide … you shall promptly repair to the place that God will have chosen, and appear before … the judge in charge at the time, and present your problem. When they have announced to you the state of the case, you shall carry out what is announced to you … observing scrupulously all their instructions to you. You shall act according to the Torah as they teach it to you and [according to] the law as they tell it to you; you must not deviate from what they tell you either to the right or to the left.
Indeed, the sages took this prerogative of interpreting the Torah, so seriously that in the Talmud of Eretz-Israel [Horayot 2b] they taught (in exaggeration, of course) that these new interpretations must be obeyed "even if he teaches you that right is left and left is right". This task of explaining, interpreting and updating God's eternal law is not just a concession: it is a duty. The sages of each generation must ensure that Judaism is always relevant and reasonable to the enlightened and informed knowledge known to their contemporaries.
One of the key teachings of Judaism is that the universe in which we live began at some time in the past. Rambam was an ardent admirer of the teachings of the Greek sage Aristotle; but Aristotle held that all matter was eternal (something like the now discredited modern theory of 'steady state'). Rambam was torn between the explicit teaching of the Torah and the reasoning of his guru. In Part 2 of his 'Guide for the Perplexed' Rambam freely admits that had Aristotle succeeded in proving his theory he, Rambam, would have had no hesitation in 'interpreting the Torah accordingly'.
When we studied Tractate Sanhedrin we saw how the sages found one of the explicit instructions of the Torah to be so repugnant to their susceptibilities that they explicated it out of existence. They taught that the law [Deuteronomy 21:18-21] that required parents to have their own child executed for disobedience to be non-applicable – and that such a case "never was and never will be". They did not abrogate the mitzvah: they just re-interpreted its details in the light of the understandings of their time. Thus, when the modern rabbi seeks to understand anew what is implied in the teachings of the Torah – even in matters concerning the status of women, gays, mamzerim [halakhic 'bastards'], divorcees and so forth – they are fulfilling a mitzvah of the Torah which we ignore at our religious peril.
Yehuda has more questions which I shall deal with in our next shiur.
