How to Be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck) by Wex, Michael (summer reading list txt) 📕

personal and business dealings with the descendants of the people who kvetched their way through the Exodus, and they thus had no difficulty in accepting the idea that there are probably a lot of people out there that you don’t like and who aren’t really wild about you, either. These rabbis had seen enough to know that no command, no legislation, no promise of eternal bliss or threat of endless punishment was going to change what, reluctantly or not, they had to admit to be human nature. If Eve could be afraid that Adam might start playing footsy with a rival who didn’t exist; if Cain could kill Abel over a piece of real estate that wasn’t going to be developed for another couple of millennia—if there were three different enemies when there were only four people in the world, for God’s sake, there doesn’t seem to be much hope of changing the basic character of humanity. All we can do is decide where to place the emphasis.

Enemies, then, are a given. We’re going to dislike and be disliked, and the Jewish people have distinguished themselves on both sides of that “and.” The one thing that we understand, until it’s time to start dealing with other Jews about Jewish communal politics, is that nobody has ever really benefited from refusing to adopt a live-and-let-live attitude to “enemies,” people and groups whom you might not like, but who have no intention of acting on their personal enmity or of marching toward your house in a uniform that bodes you no good. Just because someone is your enemy is no reason to hate him. The book of Leviticus commands us to love our neighbor, and we have to pause to figure out what that means; in the book of Exodus, which comes before Leviticus, we receive a much more definite command: Do not be a shmuck to your enemy.

And let’s not forget the donkey. He’s the one doing the real suffering, and it is your responsibility to do whatever you can to help alleviate that suffering. As a donkey, he isn’t responsible for the misdeeds or bad attitudes of his owner, not even if he’s Francis the Talking Mule and his master, Donald O’Connor, has taken a sudden turn for the bad. Talmudic tradition places a very high value on kindness to animals, and general directions for their care crop up alongside the laws of saying the Grace After Meals or greeting a heathen during a sabbatical year:

It is forbidden for a man to eat before he feeds his beast, as it is written (Deut. 11:15), “And I shall give grass in your fields for your cattle,” and only afterward, “and you shall eat and be filled.”

(BROKHOS 40A; GITIN 62A)

We’re told in Proverbs that a just man looks out for his animal (Prov. 12:10). Since your enemy’s donkey can’t look after itself, you—as somebody who can care for both yourself and the donkey—are obliged to look after it, no matter whom it belongs to. Indeed, you have a greater obligation to your enemy than to your friend: “If your friend’s donkey needs unloading and your enemy’s needs loading [because it has fallen], your enemy’s takes precedence, in order to make sure that you rein in your evil inclination” (Bovo Metsiyo 32b), even though your friend’s donkey is in a more painful position than your enemy’s. Since your inclination in all matters would be to let your enemy and his donkey ride straight to hell together, this ruling actually overrides the Torah’s teaching on the suffering of animals in order to make a point about the need for humans to get along.

This occasional tendency to place morality ahead of revelation is one of the nicest features of the Talmud. Anybody who’s read the duller parts of the Pentateuch—the laws, the begats, the architectural specs for the Tabernacle—is aware that biblical religion had no problem with capital punishment. People could be put to death for all the usual crimes—murder, adultery, kidnapping, and so on—and also for some that only Jews can commit: gathering sticks on the Sabbath, unauthorized manufacture of anointing oil, consumption of leaven on Passover, and similar offenses against cultic rules. Yet the Mishna tells us:

A Sanhedrin that kills one person every seven years is said to be callous with regard to human life. Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah said: Make that every seventy years. Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva said: Had we been on the Sanhedrin, no one would ever have been killed.

(MAKKOS 1:10)

Despite the fact that the Sanhedrin ruled on many cases for which death in one form or another was the biblically ordained punishment, we are told here that it was so loath to apply the death sentence that an execution every seven years was considered a sign of unbridled cruelty. Rabbi Akiva, who along with Rabbi Tarfon would effectively have abolished the death sentence altogether, is the single most important figure in the Talmud, and could credibly be described as its leading man. What Moses is to the Bible, Akiva is to the Talmud: the hero—a modern biography is subtitled Scholar, Saint, and Martyr. His importance and prestige were not even diminished by his claim that Bar Kokhva, the leader of a revolt against the Romans, was also the Messiah. Yet here he is, stating explicitly that judicial executions are always to be avoided. Although capital punishment remained on the books, it was rarely carried out. The opinions of Elazar, Tarfon, and Akiva all indicate the way in which morality can sometimes trump revelation in the world of the Talmud, the last place where people unacquainted with it might expect to find mentsh-hood conquering halacha.

The main point behind helping your enemy is that the animal shouldn’t be made to suffer for something that has nothing to do with it. Just as important, though, is the heuristic, the educational, effort of restraining your evil impulse in a situation