Prime Principles: Abot 1:2 - Pillars of the World

On Torah, Prayer, and Kindness....

Shimon HaTsadik was of the last members of the Great Assembly.

He used to say:

The world stands on three things:

Upon the Torah

Upon Divine Service

And Upon Acts of Kindness

Shimon HaTsadik (Simeon The Just) - A Man of Two Worlds

Shimon HaTsadik (c. 300 BCE) lived during a time of a great paradigm shift in Jewish history. As we mentioned in the last essay we were moving from a people centred on prophecy and Divine revelation to a people centred on human thought and wisdom. In time, the Sages themselves would proclaim that a scholar is greater than a prophet.

Amemor said: A Sage is greater than a prophet, as it is stated: “And a prophet has a heart of wisdom” (Psalms 90:12). When comparisons are drawn, who is compared to whom? You must say that the lesser is compared to the greater. (Baba Batra 12a)

Leading the nation through this great transition and standing with one foot in both prophetic and scholarly worlds, was Shimon the Tsadik. He was on the one hand, one of the remaining members of the Great Assembly which included prophets, and on the other hand he was a leader of the people during the end of the fourth century BCE which saw the reign of Greece and the ascent of Hellenistic culture and influence in the region.

The Greeks were not the usual old idol worshippers that we were used to. They were thinkers and philosophers.

In Greece men not only talked of philosophy, they lived it: The sage…was the pinnacle and ideal of Greek life. (Will Durant, The Life of Greece)

They rivalled our own thought and for the first time expressed ideas that mirrored Torah. It was a confusing and difficult time for Israel and after coming face to face with Greece, Jewish life would never be the same. Greek thought and vision became embedded within Israel’s everyday consciousness.

Ribbi Nahman said: In the Diaspora we only count [years] according to the Greek kings. (Aboda Zara, 10a)

[Aside from the Holy Tongue] A Torah scroll may be written in no language but Greek. (Megillah, 8b)

In the Land of Israel…[speak] either the Holy Tongue or Greek. (Sotah, 49b)

Shimon HaTsadik stood as a reminder to the nation of the Divine origins of Israel’s legacy and covenant. While the world was going through a great metamorphosis, the principles of Torah were still meaningful and fully relevant and it was Shimon HaTsadik who held the heart and history of the people in his capable hands.

A story that has been passed down from multiple sources for generations, tells of the meeting of both the Jewish and Greek worlds, with Shimon HaTsadik and Alexander the Great at their respective helms.

The Cutheans (Samaritans) requested permission from Alexander of Macedonia to destroy the House of our God, and he gave them permission, whereupon some people came and informed Shimon the Tsadik. What did the latter do? He donned his priestly garments, and some of the noblemen of Israel escorted him carrying fire torches in their hands. They walked all night…until dawn broke. When dawn broke, Alexander said to the Cutheans: ‘Who are these?’ They answered: ‘The Jews who rebelled against you’. Upon reaching Antipatris, the sun having risen, they met. When he saw Shimon the Tsadik, he descended from his carriage and bowed down to him. They said to him: ‘Should a great king like yourself prostrate himself before this Jew?’ He answered: ‘It is his image which leads me in victory in all my battles.’ He said to them: ‘Why have you come?’ They said: ‘Is it possible that star-worshippers should mislead you into destroying the House in which prayers are said for you and your kingdom?!’ He said to them: ‘Who are these people?’ They said to him: ‘The Cutheans who stand before you’. He said: ‘They are delivered in to your hands’…. (Yoma 69a)

Whether we recognise the story as being literal or not is less important than the point that it illustrates: This was a meeting between two leading philosophies of mankind.

No two other races have set such a mark upon the world. Each of them from angles so different have left us with the inheritance of its genius and wisdom. No two cities have counted more with mankind than Athens and Jerusalem. Their messages in religion, philosophy, and art have been the main guiding light in modern faith and culture. Personally, I have always been on the side of both….

(Winston Churchill, History of the Second World War)

And the recognition on the part of the Greeks that there was indeed something divine and unexplainable, yet worthy of honour within Israel.

Shimon was not a man who escaped from this world and the focus on humanity that Greece so greatly adored. He recognised it as imbued with divinity and expressive of God. Perhaps it is most poetically expressed in his encounter with a young and beautiful Nazarite.

Shimon HaTsadik said: ‘In my entire life only once did I eat the guilt-offering of a Nazarite. A young man from the south once came to me and I saw that he had beautiful eyes, a handsome face, and curly locks. I said to him: My son, why do you wish to destroy your glorious hair?’ He replied to me, ‘I used to be a shepherd in my village, and one day while I was drawing water from the river I beheld my reflection in the water and I was tempted to give way to sinful inclination and be lost. I said to myself, Wicked one! Will you take pride of that which does not belong to you, in that which is but dust, worms and corruption?!’ I therefore took upon myself to shave these locks for the glory of Heaven.’ I lowered his head and kissed him and said to him, ‘My son, may people like you, who do the will of the Almighty, multiply in Israel. Through you is fulfilled this verse, as it is said, A man or a woman, when he will express a vow to be a Nazarite, to abstain for the sake of the Lord. [Numbers 6:2] (Nedarim, 9b)

Shimon HaTsadik did not disregard the young man’s beauty — to the contrary, he praised it. But he praised more the virtue of the young man who was inspired by his divine soul and did not allow his physical traits to dictate his actions. He instead practiced self-control through self-examination and his body served his spiritual purposes rather than vice versa. For this, Shimon kissed and blessed him.

This idea of divinity and spirituality was absent in Greek thought and culture. As a contrast, the young beautiful male in Greece, was treated quite differently.

The ancient Greeks were guiltlessly superficial…the naked male form became utterly ingrained in gym culture — in fact, the very word gymnos means ‘naked’. Few cultures have been quite so shamelessly vain and superficial in their worship of physical perfection as the Greeks. Flabbiness and pale skin were subjects of derision, and vase paintings show fat boys being mocked by their peers.

(Tony Perrottet, The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games)

The loss of Shimon HaTsadik was a loss of an entire world and era. A door to holy origins and divine inspiration closed with his passing, leading us into an era that exploded with human thought and wisdom.

So long as Shimon HaTsadik was alive the Western Lamp remained permanently lit. When he died, they went and found it extinguished. From that time onward, sometimes they found it extinguished and sometimes lit….(Tosefta, Sota 13:7)

Upon the Torah

Why Torah?

One of the main points that Shimon HaTsadik wished to uphold in the face of growing Hellenism was that we are a people in covenant with God. We do not see our lives simply in physical or even spiritual terms in the sense of elation or psychological and emotional ecstasy. Rather, we see our spiritual lives as imbued with the presence and flow of the Holy One within us. Our spirituality is connected to and defined by our relationship with God.

In order to connect with God however, we must be careful not to make assumptions as to what might be an appropriate mode of connection. We are therefore, at a loss by default. God is a necessary, infinite, force. He is the very power of existence. We, on the other hand, are contingent, fragile, physical, mortal entities. We have no real way of discovering from our own perspective what we might do (if anything at all) to genuinely engage and connect with God. All we can ever think or know is from the human perspective.

We are therefore, careful not to make any assumptions from our own ideas and beliefs about how we might do so. Indeed, we would in essence do nothing at all if we did not hear from Him how we might in fact engage.

Maimonides points this out in his introduction to the laws of Aboda Zara (foreign worship). He highlights that we had to wait until Moshe received prophecy from God with instructions as to how we might serve Him. Without these instructions coming from God — outside of our human conception — we would, regardless of what we might do on our own, be stuck in our own minds and perceptions. We could not reach out and genuinely interact with God without direction from Him.

Because of God's love for us, and to uphold the oath He made to Abraham, our patriarch, He made Moshe, our master, the master of all prophets, and sent him. Once Moshe, our master, prophesied, and God chose Israel as His lot, He crowned them with commandments and informed them of the way to serve Him. (Rambam, Aboda Zara, 1:3)

It is for this reason that we include the concept of prophecy as one of our cardinal beliefs in Judaism. Without it we are hopelessly sealed in to a solipsistic pursuit of our own making. There can be no real covenant.

It is [one] of the foundations of [our] faith that God conveys prophecy to man.

(Rambam, Yesode haTorah, 7:1)

It is in the prophetic origins of Torah that gives it its primary value. This was something we needed to understand in order to differentiate between the value of our Torah and the wisdom of Greek philosophy. It is only through prophecy — communication from God — that a covenant could be made at all. Anything less would simply be the construct of the human mind. No matter how profound, far reaching, brilliant and effective that human wisdom might be, in the end it is nothing more than humans thinking about the world in human terms. It is us talking about us, and us alone.

Torah therefore is distinct from human wisdom. While it is indeed meant to synergise and come alive with human wisdom, its source does not originate with us. Human relationship with God must be mutual and dually involved.

Shimon HaTsadik asserts that the purpose of creation was not simply to bring about creations but to share and interact with those creations. In the known universe the human being is the only conscious, self-aware, examining being. There may be others out there, indeed, it would be odd if there weren’t, but we are the only ones we currently know. With human consciousness we become the eyes and mind of the universe. And it is only with a conscious mind that a universe can connect with its Maker. We are the aspect of the universe that reaches out to share with Him.

Torah, therefore, is a pillar of the world. It is what facilitates our connection and communion with God and in that, vindicates a prime goal of creation — sharing.

Thus said the Lord: If it were not for My covenant [that is kept] day and night—I would not have put in place the laws of heaven and earth.

(Jeremiah, 33:25)

It is highly odd that a book used as a guide for a small Hebrew tribe should end up so greatly influencing the thought and mind of the whole world.

Yet, that is precisely what has happened. A book that is the guide for covenant with God for the nation of Israel has also become a fundamental source of religious, ethical and moral thought for the Western world.

It is through Torah that we find our way to covenant with God.

And Upon the Divine Service

Acting on the Covenant

If Torah provides the framework and mechanism for covenant, service is covenant in action. When speaking of Aboda - the work or service for God, we generally refer to the offerings brought in the Bet HaMikdash. There is good reason to assume that Shimon HaTsadik’s primary reference in his statement was to the Temple service. However, speaking to a future nation who one day would lose their Holy Temple, it is likely that Shimon HaTsadik was including all manner of service — especially prayer.

It is a positive commandment to pray daily, as it is said, ‘And you shall serve God, your Lord’ (Exodus, 23:25). The service, here referred to, according to the Oral Law, is prayer, as it is said, ‘And to serve Him with all your heart’ (Deut. 11:13), on which the sages commented, ‘What may be described as Service of the Heart? Prayer’. (Rambam, Tefila, 1:1)

Prayer comes from our awareness of our own condition in the world, as we recognise the grace of God within it, we praise Him and thank Him, knowing that when we ascertain a need which we deem deficient, we can and should turn to Him for help. That in essence is our service of creation. As anyone would service an entity entrusted in their care, we service the world in joint endeavour with God as its custodians and caretakers.

No shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil. (Genesis, 2:5)

No man to till the soil - and there was, therefore, no one to recognise the utility of rain. When Adam came, however, and he realised that it was necessary for the world, he prayed for it and it fell, so that trees and greenery sprang forth. (Rashi, ibid.)

The world runs on this awareness and interaction in that it keeps an ongoing relationship between us and God. Through prayer we speak to the Creator of the needs of creation and in doing so we act as partners with Him in this endeavour. We co-create with Him.

Prayer is not simply a request from God for His help — but a manner of communication with Him regarding the nature of Creation and our understanding of its needs, both in terms of the individual points of our own lives and in terms of the greater world to which we all belong. To speak to God of these things is to show interest and care in a system that He created and that He cares to maintain. He asks us, as His partners, to speak to Him of our perceptions regarding its function.

This then is the fundamental and ultimate service. And it is through this understanding of the nature of prayer that our relationship with God is solidified and grows.

And Upon Deeds of Kindness

Cultivating Life

The creation of the universe is, at its heart, an act of Divine sharing. Life and existence is what God shares with the universe. In our covenant and partnership with Him we share life as well by doing kindness with others. By helping others live more wholly and robustly, we share whatever benefits we have in our lives so that others can better live theirs.

Such kindness is fundamental to life and must draw from the very source of all existence—God. Otherwise, kindness is hardly more than a self-serving mechanism to ensure our own survival. Kindness in its most primal sense, is a mode of survival which ensures we are taken care of as we take care of others. For this reason we find altruism even in the animal kingdom. But looks can be deceiving.

An apparently altruistic act is one that looks, superficially, as if it must tend to make the altruist more likely (however slightly) to die, and the recipient more likely to survive. It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise.

(Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene)

There is a potential issue with kindness in that it not only takes independence away from the receiver by providing for its needs, it is also often done with the ultimate goals being focused on the giver rather than the receiver. In other words, we tend to give in ways that somehow benefit us or make us feel good or happy rather than in ways that are most beneficial to the one receiving the ‘kindness’.

There is a difference between simply doing something kind and what we refer to as gemilut hasadim. It is a term that literally means ‘weaning kindness’, meaning that we seek to do kindness with others in a way that, rather than make them dependent on our help, allows them to become independent and weans them from needing further help at all.

True kindness, that sustains our lives both spiritually and biologically and has the characteristics of partnering with God in cultivating life is specifically gemilut Hesed — weaning-type kindness that ensures that the dignity, individuality and independence of the receiver is facilitated and protected.

Shimon HaTsadik found himself at a point in time that was a crossroad for the world’s development and with that, the development of the Jewish nation. The above mishna was the saying that he was known for. He always reminded the people of the three foundational aspects of their lives and of their precious covenant with God.