Seeking Paths of Pleasantness

(Author: Berel Wein, Vol. 69, No. 1, Pesach 2014)

Editor’s Note: 2013 saw the appearance of The Legacy: Teachings for Life from the Great Lithuanian Rabbis, co-authored by South African Chief Rabbi Dr Warren Goldstein and the world-renowned historian and lecturer Rabbi Berel Wein. Both authors are students of rebbeim from the Lithuanian tradition. The primary focus of their book is to relay the mussar lessons – that area of Jewish law relating to moral conduct and ethics governing everyday behavior – taught by the Torah giants of Lithuania. In addition, it includes two chapters, both written by Rabbi Wein, relating the history of the Mussar and the Yeshiva movements in pre-war Lithuania and the disproportionate influence these had, and continue to have, throughout the Jewish world.

The following article comprises Chapter One of The Legacy, which is hereby reprinted in its entirety with the kind permission of the authors. The book can be obtained at all Jewish bookshops in South Africa, via Amazon.com. or at www.korenpub.com/EN.

The Torah’s goal, emphasized by many of the leading Lithuanian rabbis, is to create a deeply sensitive, caring, modest, introspective and pleasant person. Pleasantness is not a surface characteristic, for it is cultivated within the inner recesses of each person.

It is generally accepted that concern for others is the key to being a good person. To the Jew, however, true concern is not expressed in random and sporadic acts of good – no matter how individually noble those acts may be – but in cultivating the governing characteristic and attitude of pleasantness. Good habits and good actions can become habitual, but the platform upon which all of this goodness is built is the individual’s inner pleasantness and serenity of soul.

Is pleasantness inborn or the product of environmental or societal training? To answer that question, we must differentiate between politeness and pleasantness. There are many societies in our world that are very polite, but at the same time quite unpleasant. Politeness is only a social norm, not necessarily a true character trait. Pleasantness, on the other hand, involves a deep caring and tolerance to others. Of course, politeness is stressed throughout Jewish and Talmudic works as a necessary and worthy attribute.1 But to engender a climate of pleasantness, both the society and the individual have to develop a culture that fosters a pleasant outlook on life.

This value was not unique to Lithuanian Jews, of course, for it is deeply rooted in Torah sources. A verse in Proverbs states that the Torah’s paths are paths of pleasantness and all of its ways lead to peace.2 This is not to be understood merely as a pious platitude or an optimistic hope: it is a fundamental value of Judaism. In fact, Judaism can be described as a set of values that govern human behaviour in personal, social, monetary SEEKING PATHS OF PLEASANTNESS*Berel Weinand ritual matters. Each of these values – in the abstract and isolated – is holy and true and governing. Yet, sometimes they can conflict with one another when applied in the real world of human and social life.

The primary example of this type of conflict is the one of peace versus truth. The Talmud in Kesubos3 raises the question of praise for a bride on her wedding day. The opinion of the House of Shammai was that the truth will be out: words of praise must be accurate and specific to that particular bride. The House of Hillel was of the opinion that the praise should be lavish and standard for all brides, for the idea of peace and harmony should overcome that of absolute truth in such a circumstance. As in most instances, we rule according to the House of Hillel, and discretion wins over what could be hurtful truths.

A resolution of the conflict between these two values can be found in the Torah itself. When an angel told Sarah that she would give birth to a child, she laughed to herself saying, “Now that I am old and withered, will I again become fresh and young? And my master is very old!”4 But when communicating Sarah’s wonder to Avraham, the Lord omits the comment that Sarah made about Avraham being old. The value of absolute truth and accuracy is compromised in favour of domestic harmony and household peace. It is a powerful teaching – an example of the Torah helping us understand its basic values and guiding us in determining which values are paramount when they conflict with each other.

Far from being a vague mandate for cordiality, the “paths of pleasantness” represent an absolute value in Jewish law and thought. We find its presence in halachic issues. When discussing the Four Species specified by the Torah to be taken on Sukkos, the Talmud determines that certain types of plants of those species may not be used because they are dangerous due to their thorns, or because they are poisonous – and therefore inconsistent with the value of pleasantness.5 One does not use threatening or offensive utensils when performing a Mitzvah.

Moreover, the Torah does not ordain acts that are inconsistent with pleasantness. The concept of levirate marriage is tempered by dedication to this value.6 In his seminal work Meshech Chochmah the great Lithuanian sage, Rabbi Meir Simchah of Dvinsk, states that the reason women are not included in the commandment to be fruitful and multiply is the danger and pain involved in childbirth.7 Though maternal instinct urges them to want to have children, the Torah does not command them to do so – for such a mandate would be a violation of the supreme value of pleasantness that underpins all Torah understanding and law.

Though the English term “pleasantness” has a benign tone, the concept is robust in Jewish life, and paramount in Torah law and behaviour. In its broadest sense, it is the basis for many of the particular mitzvos and laws of the Torah. The Torah prohibits actions – stealing, murdering, slandering others, for example – that violate the essential principle of pleasantness, while positive commandments – such as hospitality, charity, caring for the sick, and comforting the bereaved – exemplify pleasantness in human affairs. The seven Noahide laws,8 which Judaism holds to be universal for all humankind, are basically laws of pleasantness that lead to a dignified and just society.

Because of this emphasis, a concept arose in Judaism that took on societal importance, though it was not codified in absolute law: one is prohibited from doing things that are not nice. Public opinion of the probity of person’s behaviour was always to be taken into account.9A good Jew was usually defined in Jewish life in terms of pleasantness and goodness toward others and not exclusively in terms of observance and piety. The common response of Lithuanian Jews regarding the frumkeit of a person was “frum iz a galach,”10 i.e., that superficial religiosity – exclusively concentrating on personal spirituality and punctilious observances of the law – is not the measure of a good Jew; it belongs to monks. A good Jew lives by the overall values of the Torah, including consideration and pleasantness in human affairs.

In the introduction to his monumental commentary to Torah, Haamek Davar, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (known by the acronym, Netziv) describes our ancestors in Genesis as yesharim: pleasant, straight, unbiased, righteous people. In a veiled criticism of attitudes that were already apparent in his time in Eastern European Jewish life, he points out that in Second Temple times, even though there was widespread observance of Torah laws, and there were many great talmidei chachamim (Torah scholars) within Jewish society, the Temple was destroyed because if unwarranted hatred, intolerance and false condemnations of one another by different groupings within Jewish society.11 Anyone who had different ideas or who deviated from what one group thought to be Jewishly correct, politically or socially, was immediately branded as an apikores (a non-believer and heretic). In that context, the Netziv points out that God is, so to speak, Yashar and therefore cannot abide “righteous” people who are not pleasant, straight and tolerant in their dealings with other humans.12 He concludes that the requirement of pleasantness, as set forth in the Torah, covers one’s relationship with others, even those with whom one may disagree on the methods of serving God. Our father Avraham even attempted to convince God to save Sodom!

Rabbi Berlin’s attitude was typical of the rabbinic leadership of Lithuania, where the sharp divisions within nineteenth- and twentieth century Eastern European Jewish life were clearly present, but without the venom and violence that often marked these disputes in other places. It was not that the leaders of Lithuanian Orthodoxy were more compromising in their opposition to secularism, Marxism, nationalism and the other panaceas that swept through the streets of Eastern European Jewry. On the contrary, they were the leading opponents, both intellectually and practically, of these false gods. But even in the midst of their struggle to stem the tide of assimilation, they never lost sight of the value of respect and pleasantness in dealing with other people. Observing how they reacted to this challenge, we see continual striving for pleasantness in their personal and communal lives.

Pleasantness is one of the central values of the Mussar Movement,13 founded in Lithuania by Rabbi Yisrael Lipkin of Salant. (The unique and far-reaching Mussar phenomenon will be discussed in Chapter Four.) Rabbi Salant once described an encounter he experienced on his way to the synagogue on Yom Kippur eve: A well-known, God-fearing man passed near him on the street. The man was weeping and trembling in anticipation of the holy Day of Judgment. Rabbi Yisrael stopped and asked him for some information that he needed. The man completely ignored Rabbi Yisrael and made no response to his request: he simply walked away. Although Rabbi Yisrael forgave the man his rudeness, he nevertheless remarked to his disciple, Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer, “When he hurried away I thought to myself: Why should I be victimized by that person’s fervour to prepare himself for Yom Kippur?

What does his concern regarding the Day of Judgment have to do with me? He is obligated to answer me courteously, for that is the way of pleasantness and grace.”14Another example of this rule of pleasantness as developed by the great Lithuanian masters of Mussar is found in a letter written by Rabbi Simchah Zissel Ziev, the ‘Alter’ of Kelm. He writes, “How great is the requirement that a person care about the feelings of others, that they should not be pained by him! We see that the prophet Jeremiah, while in great personal mental agony over the prophecy of the impending destruction of the Temple, nevertheless did not forget to greet and bless others whom he chanced to meet on the way.”15 In short, the Alter states, “Concern about the welfare of others is in reality the ultimate concern regarding one’s own self and one’s own goal.”16

The Alter was differentiating between courtesy – manners that are learned and superficial (and often a manifestation of innate smugness and self-aggrandizement) – and sincere concern for others, which is rooted in true pleasantness of character. That trait, in essence, is a characteristic of one’s soul, revealing itself in every venue and interplay with others. It rests upon a feeling about one’s self, about others, about the world generally; and it stems from the recognition that everything God created in our universe is very good. Character traits of appreciation and thankfulness are developed, as well as a sense of satisfaction with one’s lot in life. In that sense, concern for others is a product of one’s own relationship with God, a pleasantness that is nourished by deep spiritual roots.

The renowned spiritual counsellor Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz, Mashgiach of the Yeshiva of Mir in the 1920s and early 1930s, pointed out that pleasantness is the key to justice. The attitude of two people who enter a case in a rabbinic court should not be “What can I gain from the other person?” but rather “How can I rid myself of the doubt that I may have in my possession wealth or objects that are ‘stolen’ in that they are not really mine?”17 The key to pleasantness, and hence to justice and fairness in life, is judging one’s own behaviour in the light of how it affects others. Justice is found only in the ability to glimpse the other person’s plight, needs and opinions.

Inner serenity derives from consistent pleasantness in demeanour, behaviour, and character. The prophet Yishayahu stated that “evildoers rage like [the waves of] the sea.”18Beset by jealousy of others, unsatiated desires, and overwhelming frustrations, the evildoer is not a pleasant person and therefore will never achieve inner serenity.

Rabbi Levovitz stresses that that this serenity is a spiritual accomplishment, approaching Godliness itself, which is the ultimate goal. “Serenity of the spirit is the crown and sum of all positive traits and accomplishments. The opposite of this, the lack of inner serenity, contains all of the character defects of a person. From a lack of serenity, negative traits such as anger and irascibility emerge. It also causes failure in achieving proper intent during prayer and lack of devotion to Torah study.”

The mind-set that the Torah is not a burden on Jews – but rather a privilege and a badge of honour – permeated Lithuanian Jewry and is found in every vibrant Torah personality and community. Our leaders generally strived to make living a halachic life in the midst of an often hostile non-Jewish society a pleasant and attainable goal. For example, Lithuanian rabbis were in the forefront of finding ways to free women who were agunos (women who were trapped in a limbo of distress because their husbands had disappeared and they had no knowledge of their whereabouts, nor a divorce). The learned responsa of the Lithuanian rabbis on this matter always show their compassion and ways of pleasantness as a guiding lodestar in these efforts.19

These rabbis did not search out defects in others; and in their rational view of the world, they tolerated different views and approaches to Jewish life. As mentioned previously, traditional Jewry fought and opposed Jewish secularism and the Marxist ideas of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet even in regard to these critical issues, the battle was fought with less personal acrimony and lasting bitterness in Lithuania.20

There were historical exceptions to the idea of conducting a “pleasant” struggle between vastly conflicting and opposing streams in Jewish Lithuania society. Many of the bitter struggles regarding eighteenth-century Jewish life in Lithuania were marked by bans, excommunications, betrayal to the Czarist authorities, and even physical violence. Yet after the initial decades of strife, the “way of pleasantness” in Lithuanian Jewry reasserted itself. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the dispute between Chasidim and Misnagdim – though always simmering beneath the surface – was removed from the public life of Lithuanian Jews. In the mid-nineteenth century, Rabbi Yitzchak of Volozhin, the titular head of non-Chasidic Lithuanian Jewry, cooperated openly and sincerely with the Lubavitcher Rebbe of his time on matters of mutual interest and public benefit.

There were strong, though small, pockets of Chasidim scattered throughout Lithuania in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chasidic life there closely mirrored this way of pleasantness that was the overall direction of both the rabbinic and Chasidic leadership. In general, there was great deal of cooperation and mutual respect between the different Jewish religious groupings in Lita (Lithuania).

The attitude of rabbinic Lithuanian leadership on the whole was moderate and thoughtful, not given to extremism and fanaticism. In the world of ideas and political action in general at that time, there were many competing groups – yeshivas, secularists, Marxists, “enlightened ones,” Zionists and anti-Zionists, followers of Mussar and anti-Mussar scholars – but their ideological struggles were conducted in the public arena in a much more muted, scholarly, and intellectual fashion than in other countries.

With the rise of Communism in the twentieth century, this began to change slowly. The ruthlessness and violence practiced by the extreme Left victimized the Jewish community in new and shocking ways. Despite their penchant for moderation, rabbinic Lithuanian leaders were forced to take a more militant attitude to counter dire threats.

An age of brutality was ushered in. By the atrocities of Hitler and Stalin, Lithuanian Jewry was destroyed. But its spirit, legacy and values remain vital in Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora until today.

The great Rav of Ponivezh, Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, told me in 1964, “The Jews of South Africa are in the main Litvaks. Many have forgotten observances and Torah learning. But still they have retained the good character traits and ways of pleasantness which were so characteristic of Lithuanian Jewry. Because of this, the Lord will help them find their way back to Torah observance and study as well.” The Rabbis taught us that “a wise man [in his foresight] is even greater than a pure prophet.”21 In large measure, the Rav’s prediction has come to fruition in South African Jewry. One should never underestimate the spiritual and historical power of the ways of pleasantness in Jewish society.

NOTES

1. See, for example, Berachos 43b; Niddah 14b; Yerushalmi Kesubos 11:3; and many other such statements scattered throughout Talmudic and rabbinic writings.
2. Proverbs 3:17.
3. Kesubos 16b– 17a.
4. Genesis 18:12
5. Sukkah 32a
6. Yevamos 87b. Also see Tosafos Yevamos 14b, the top Tosafos on the page.
7. Genesis 9:7
8. As enumerated in Sanhedrin 56a, they are: prohibitions against paganism, blasphemy, stealing, murdering, sexual immorality, the mandate to establish a lawful and just society and the prohibition against eating from an animal while it is still alive.
9. See Avos 2:1, 2:13–14 and numerous other places in the Talmud.
10. My Lithuanian-born teachers in the yeshiva of my youth drummed this phrase into my mind.
11. Introduction to Genesis, Haamek Davar, Jerusalem, 1959, p.xiii.
12. Ibid.
13. For a thorough review of the Mussar Movement, its philosophies and personalities, see Tnuas Hamussar by Rabbi Dov Katz. The primary source on the movement and on its founder, Rabbi Yisrael Lipkin of Salant, is the book Ohr Yisrael by Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer (Peterburger) published in Vilna in 1900.
14. Ohr Yisrael, p118.
15. Chochmah U’Mussar, Brooklyn, 1957, p13.
16. Ibid., p12.
17. Da’as Chochmah U’Mussar, vol. 1, Brooklyn, 1966, p254, et al.
18. Isaiah 57:20.
19. See, for example, the response of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, Chut Hameshulash, section eight; the responsa of Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, Be’er Yitzhak; Rabbi Isaac Halevy Hertzog in his response on Even Haezer; and the works of many other Lithuanian sages over the centuries.
20. It is important to note that the Lithuanian rabbinic leadership was almost totally wiped out in the Holocaust. Because of this, those who embodied this idea of pleasantness and its value system – and had been in the forefront of its dissemination in the wider Jewish world – virtually disappeared from the Jewish scene. Certainly, their presence and influence are still sorely missed.
21. Bava Basra 12a.