We are almost through the text of the second verse. Aren’t we barreling along at a tremendous pace? It just picks up in intensity and excitement as we go. Here’s the Hertz again:
Simon the Just was one of the last survivors of the Great Assembly: He used to say, Upon three things the world is based: upon the Torah, upon Divine service, and upon the practice of charity.
I don’t like this translation at all, I’m afraid. Charity is generally tzedakah, and this is chasidim. I was taught (when I was taught the song, or rather one of the songs) that this was acts of lovingkindness. In fact, there’s a distinction made between tzedakah and g’milut chasidim, that the former is made from a desire to alleviate a problem and are done out of pity and with sorrow, but the latter are made from a desire to enrich and are done out of love and with joy. Of course, having made the distinction, it isn’t necessarily clear which category any individual act comes from, so it isn’t really a practical difference. But there is a difference in connotation, and I prefer to keep that difference.
Still, unlike the previous two legs, I don’t think there’s any real question what the leg is. Acts of chesed, of kindness (and yes, that’s why Chasidim are called Chasidim) are one of the foundations of the world. With all the study and prayer, with all the law and service, with all the words and the feelings, with the Torah and the siddur, all of that is not enough foundation for the world without g’milut chasadim.
Reb Jochanon ben Zaccai and Reb Joshua were of the generation that saw the destruction of the Second Temple. When they left the holy city, they looked back and saw the ruins of the Temple, and Reb Joshua wept with a great weeping, for only the in the Temple in the city of Jerusalem could the sins of Israel be atoned. And now it was gone. But Reb Jochanon said that there was another way, as it is written in Hosea: the Lord desires chesed and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of the Divine more than burnt offerings. And what of Daniel, asked Jochanon. Daniel did not offer sacrifices in Jerusalem. And it is written: he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks. He gave charity to the needy, he rejoiced with people in their joy, he wept with them in their sorrow, he helped and cheered brides on their wedding days, he honored the dead by following the funerals to the cemeteries. And were Daniel’s prayers not received?
Note: This story is paraphrased from Rabbi Natan’s tosefta, with his illustrative verses. It would be misleading and wrong to try to study the text without stories like these, but I don’t just want to cut and paste them from an old translation that happens to be on-line. So I figure I will retell the stories myself, out of the old texts, and y’all will read them and like it. Yes? If this is insufficiently rigorous, or is too arrogant, or just annoying, let me know and I’ll try to come up with something else. End note.
So. The last and greatest of the foundations of the earth is g’milut chasadim, acts of lovingkindness. And here we have yet another way to spin the metaphor around, not physical foundations but logical foundations, they are the reasons the world exists. The Divine created the universe (this view implies) so that Jews could study Torah, yes, and to receive the prayers of the righteous which like the smoke from the sacrifices was sweet to the Divine Nostrils, but also to provide a place for acts of lovingkindness, without which the universe is incomplete. And which of course would not be possible without a universe, a physical, temporal universe to act in.
And spin it again: if the universe being discussed is your own personal universe, the one you perceive, as I often take it to be, there are the three foundations that will last: Scripture, prayer and love. Build ye not your house upon sand, because, you know, sand, not a great foundation, I don’t think there’s anyone going around saying I know! Sand! (although a quick Google search to make sure I got the reference right (it’s Matthew 7:26) brought up a sponsored link to designs for beach houses) (and eternal damnation) (now I’ve lost the thread of the sentence) but you have to find your rocks to build on, and Just Simon used to say there were three good ones.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
…and here I was, all whetted for your incisive discussion of the immense gaps in implication between the five translations when they get to this word:
Chabad and Hereford are the only ones who appear to agree, and then only by half (clearly, a kind deed might not be shown, and kindness shown is infamously incongruent with kindness done).
Hertz’s “charity” you do raise your quibble against, which I regard as a cruel trick on your part if you’re not going to go on to talk about the stunning change of tone imparted by:
Goldin’s piety, which doesn’t necessarily relate to other people or any outward deed, or
Rodkinson: favors! bestowal of favors! political back-scratching translated out from the same word that, to you, evokes Daniel who “gave charity to the needy, he rejoiced with people in their joy, he wept with them in their sorrow, he helped and cheered brides on their wedding days, he honored the dead by following the funerals to the cemeteries.” How did that happen?
You are right, and you’ve done a fine job of it yourself. I’m afraid I dismissed Hertz’s piety out of hand, and looking at it for a moment more carefully, I think it’s of a piece with his insistence on a temporally narrow interpretation of Simon’s words. And for Rodkinson—do me a favor! I know the bestowal of favors comes off very badly now, but there’s been enough of a shift in the language that I am willing to give him a break, there.
Still, I think that lovingkindness, or at least kindness, is a much better word to use for chesed. As for the first word, it appears (from clicking around the concordance) to be something like to deal with or pay for, with the gimel-mem-lamed root. I don’t think there’s a connotation of visibility (as in show), but I don’t want to rule it out. I was always taught it as acts of lovingkindness, although the word for acts as in the acts of the kings is something entirely different. It seems to me that one almost might make it the repaying of lovingkindness, or perhaps the distribution, but there are problems there, too.
Thanks,
-V.
Perhaps it’s an admonition that tzedakah should be instead g’milut chasadim? Or some sort of nod to the notion that tzedakah in fact are g’milut chasadim, after all?
And wouldn’t that be nice?
peace
Matt
Briefly:
I’m perfectly willing to believe that “bestowal of favors”, in a particular context, might not be such an outlier from the others as it might first appear. Still, it suggests to modern ears such a fundamentally different understanding of one pillar of the world that I’d be fascinated to see that union of meanings illuminated step by step; the “how did that happen?” wasn’t meant to be rhetorical.
…and free-associating from your last paragraph, I believe I can — with no knowledge of Hebrew and with only two obfuscating gestures of my hands — produce as a possible modern translation, “the redistribution of wealth.”
In a moment of post-posting recrimination, I realized that my last comment there might easily be read as sarcasm when I was shooting more for whimsy and a cheap political reference.