Mensch•Mark For Elul 15: Set Others on the Path of Truth - Ma'amido al HaEmet

Wisdom can come from the most unexpected of places.

About the Mensch•Mark Series

The Talmudic tractate Avot, 6:6 provides a roadmap as to how to live an ethical life.  This passage includes 48 middot (measures) through which we can “acquire Torah.”  See the full list here.  For each of these days of reflection, running from the first of Elul through Yom Kippur, I’m highlighting one of these middot, in order to assist each of us in the process of soul searching (“heshbon ha-nefesh”).

Today’s Middah:

Set Others on the Path of Truth - Middah Ma'amido al HaEmet

URJ’s Take:

Text
"Then I bowed and prostrated myself to Adonai and blessed Adonai, the God of my master Abraham, who led me on a true path to get the daughter of my master's brother for his son." (Genesis 24:48)

Commentary 
In this week's text, Eliezer is speaking about his good fortune in finding the right wife for Isaac, the son of his master Abraham. Being set on the true path, in this case by God, led to Eliezer's success.

The text reflects the intent of this Jewish value, middah, "to set others on the path of truth." Whether physically or intellectually, we can play a role in the success of our fellow human beings. Normally one thinks of truth as not lying or not being deceitful. But the word 'true' can also mean 'correct' or 'appropriate'.

Midrash Samuel, commenting on this middah, explains,

"When a colleague makes a mistake in debate, the true Torah scholar derives no pleasure. Instead, he tactfully corrects his colleague and attempts to focus him or her on the truth. (Pirkei Avos: Ethics of the Fathers, Art Scroll p. 422)

From this we learn not only that a Torah scholar corrects his or her colleague, but also does so in a diplomatic way. This preserves that person's dignity and allows them to be open to accepting the correction.

There is or at least should be a real give and take when it comes to this middah, one corrects and one gets corrected. Midrash Samuel reminds us that the one doing the correcting is to be tactful. Solomon ibn Gabirol addresses his comment to the one receiving the correction, "Be not ashamed to accept the truth from wherever it comes even from one less than you." (Mivhar Hapeninim) Ibn Gabirol is teaching us to be open minded, reminding us that we can learn from all people, regardless of status.

We now know how 'to set others on the path of truth' and how one is to accept that direction. This leads to the question 'why be a part of this process?' Essentially, why on the one hand should an individual set others on the path of truth and on the other why accept someone's correction? There is a Jewish dictum which states, Kol yisrael arevim zeh ba zeh—all Israel is responsible for one another. Judaism does not let us off the hook. We are here to help each other, whether it is financial, physical or intellectual and we are here to accept help from others.

My Take: What I learned from Bernard, the self-confessed bigot

Wisdom can come from the most unexpected of places. I recall being set on the path of truth by a stranger on a plane in a far away land.

During a visit to South Africa in 2011, I stopped at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, hoping to better understand how so despicable a system could dominate that country for nearly half a century, from 1948-1991, and why any comparisons to Israel are ridiculous. I came away humbled, wondering whether there might just be a little residue of apartheid in us all.

After visiting Johannesburg, I boarded a plane for the three-hour flight to Cape Town. Shortly after takeoff, I was reading some of the material I had bought at the museum and I noticed the guy next to me looking over my shoulder. He was a stocky, youthful 40-something, built like he could have played rugby, back in the day.

Abruptly, he asked me a question:

“Do you think I’m evil?”

So what was I supposed to respond? Uh … nice country you got here. How ‘bout them Springboks! No. I was a captive audience.

I told him (Bernard’s his name) I didn’t think he was evil. I thought that apartheid was evil and I was trying to understand it. I said that as an American I had nothing to crow about — in fact we had Jim Crow at the same time he had apartheid, and we had slavery. America has given the world lots of bad things, from the KKK to Watergate.

I looked over but knew that would not make him feel better, because he was struggling with his past and I was not struggling with mine — though perhaps I should have been. I grew up in the Boston of the 1970s busing crisis, and I was part of a Jewish community that had fled its inner-city roots and shed its civil rights partnerships. The Boston of my youth was not all that different from the Jackson, Miss., depicted in the then-recent bestseller and hit film, “The Help.” And that America was not all that different the South Africa of Bernard’s youth. In all these places, racism infected all strata of society, from City Hall to the Ladies Auxiliary. It trickled from top to bottom, getting into the cracks and nooks and those tough to get at places, where we might tell the Help to give it another shot of Windex.

The disease of discrimination spreads from one generation to the next, until everyone buys into its toxic lies, even the victims. It plays itself out at the lunch tables of Woolworth’s and in the bathrooms and water fountains, or wherever someone displays a Confederate flag or tells an ethnic joke. Enough people stood up to the hatred to relegate Jim Crowe and apartheid to history’s dung heap. Boston is now a diverse, inclusive city. But the disease remains.

I came to realize that apartheid was little more than a virulent combination of the same toxic brew that still threatens us today: religious extremism and fear. In 1948, right-wing Afrikaner leaders played to the suspicions of a rising communism and blended that with a belief that white domination is God’s will.

Before my trip to South Africa, I had no idea just how intensely Nelson Mandela was loved, both by his own countrymen (including the Jews) and around the world. When you read his words of reconciliation and visit his tiny cell on Robben Island, you see how easily he could have succumbed to the hatred and the fear. He could have crushed his oppressors and driven them into exile; instead he embraced them, saying, “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

When I posted on Facebook how Mandela is so loved, a rabbinic colleague replied, “Too bad he is anti-Israel.” Not true. Mandela has stated, “I cannot conceive of Israel withdrawing if Arab states do not recognize Israel, within secure borders.”

Think about how counterproductive it is to label as anti-Israel a person who lived his entire life promoting human rights. That puts Israel on the wrong side of history.

I’m not sure what the right side of history is, but I know that Mandela was on it, and we have so much to learn from him and his legacy. The Jewish people have always been there too, as vanguards of justice and compassion. We invented the right side of history at the Red Sea and Sinai. The right side of history loves the stranger; it’s eight lanes apart from playing the victim and has no exit marked “fear.” It does not allow discrimination, hatred and religious extremism to rule.

No Bernard was not evil, and neither was Nelson anti Israel. They were both human beings, complicated and endlessly fascinating, and most of all, they ere both my teachers. They set me on the path of truth.