Pirkei Avot 3:16

Still catching up. I had some real difficulties presenting this particular mishna, so this is not exactly what I presented, but some thoughts I have had in the intervening days.

Rabbi Yishmael says: Be kal (easy, yielding) to a rosh, noach (restful, pleasant) to a tishchoret, and receive every person cheerfully.

I have purposefully not translated "rosh" or "tishchoret" because understanding these words is the crux to understanding this mishna. Turning first to the seifa or the concluding thought, it is easy to understand the admonition to receive each person cheerfully. Certainly, this is a key to civil society, to receive those we know and those whom we do not know with good cheer. Not always an easy task, but certainly one that is worth striving for.

How then to understand the first two parts of the Mishna. The word rosh literally means "head." It can be the head that siits on ones shoulders, though that is unlikely in this context. More likely, it is the head of some group or community. This is reasonable and the admonition to be yielding or easy to the head of one's group or community is a suggestion that, in most cases, is also worth following.

The whole mishna, it seems to me, hangs on how we translate and understand the word tishchoret. Our sages had difficulty with this word because it is not used with any frequency and has a very ambiguous meaning. Rashi suggests that this word means a young(er) person. He understands the root to be shin, chet, resh, which means "black." One who is young is one whose hair has not turned grey - it is still black. Therefore, the traditional interpretation is that one should be pleasant to the young. Look back at the beginning, we might then understand rosh to be an elder and this leads to the traditional understanding that one should yield to an elder, be pleasant to the young and receive all people cheerfully.

However, this translation of tishchoret, which reasonable, is apparently not correct based on the usage of the word in other contexts. Rather, the tischoret appears to have been what we would call a "press gang." This was a group of Roman soldiers who would waylay Jews and send them on errands for the soldiers. While the Jews were generally not pressed into military service, they may have been made to suffer at the hands of these gangs of Roman soldiers.

In this understanding, we may have a more historical view of Rabbi Yishmael's recommendation. Rabbi Yishmael was,as a boy, a slave who was enprisoned by the Romans and redeemed by Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chanina. Rabbi Yishmael may be giving the advice that in the face of the occupier one should act in a positive and cheeful manner, so as not to give offense to the occupiers.

This is a difficult lesson and one that we very much doubt we would apply today. With the history of the Holocaust still fresh in our minds, even three generations later, we are wary of those who would tell us to be pleasant and accommodating to those who would oppress us. We have learned from the heroes of the Warsaw ghetto and others that Jews must be willing to defend themselves rather than yield to those who would destroy us.

Understanding, as we do, the danger in kowtowing to those who would inflict evil, we are even more obligated not to be bystanders in watching those who would do so to others. Whether we are talking about the genocide in the Sudan and other parts of Africa or the growing anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere, Jews can not afford to receive everyone cheerfully.