Pirke Avot, verse ten: the ruling power

      2 Comments on Pirke Avot, verse ten: the ruling power

We’re on the third of Shemayah’s triad, with Hertz:

Shemayah and Avtalyon received the tradition from the preceding. Shemayah said, Love work; hate lordship; and seek no intimacy with the ruling power.

I have to admit to a fondness for Rodkinson’s see to it that your name be not known to the government. Lie low. There’s a story that Shemayah was one of the sages asked to personally pledge his loyalty to Herod; If your name wasn’t on Herod’s list, you weren’t forced to refuse such a pledge and suffer the consequences. The name business is, sadly, not in the text; Hertz seems to be quite straightforward here.

Again, there’s a difference between seeking an intimacy with the ruling power and accepting such an intimacy. Did Joseph seek intimacy with the ruling power? Did Daniel? Did Mordechai? Did Esther? When Yochanan ben Zacchai smuggled himself out of Jerusalem in a coffin to negotiate with Vespasian for the settlement of Jamnia, was he seeking intimacy with the ruling power? Or when Gamliel of Yavne led a delegation to Domitian? No, I think we have to accept that whatever the cost, there are situations where intimacy with the ruling power must be accepted and even worked for. Shemayah is reminding us of the cost, and warning that it isn’t to be taken on lightly.

The verse as a whole seems to be an admonishment against arrogance and self-aggrandizement, in favor of humility. I don’t think it’s simple, though. Taken simply, it could be advice to be an uneducated peasant, uninvolved in anything greater than the day’s labor and the season’s harvest. Shemayah is not saying that. Or it could be a question authority bumper-sticker, and I don’t think Shemayah is saying that, either. I think that he is advising in favor of loving work for its own sake, rather than as a means to an end, against becoming a Rabbi for its own sake, rather than out of love for the Divine and the Torah, and against seeking intimacy with the government for its own sake, rather than as a steward of others. The three legs are making a distinction between work, which can safely be its own satisfaction, and reputation or power, which can certainly be its own satisfaction, but which satisfaction leads to corruption and decline.

If we take this intimacy with the ruling power into our own time, the thing that comes immediately to mind is the behavior of our national press. The press covering the federal government must be intimate with it; you can’t consistently describe it from a distance, no matter what us bloggers attempt. When that intimacy, the dinner parties and the privileged information, the reciprocated norms of the traders in power, the mobile phone numbers and the co-ordinated leaks, when all that becomes the guiding force of the reporter, they are no use whatsoever. They cease to love their work, instead loving lordship. And the country goes to hell.

That’s easy enough to sneer at, but (as with many of these verses), it’s not something that applies only to other people. The same behavior happens in corporations and small businesses, in community theaters and altar guilds and trade associations, in academia and blogging and the underground punk scene and corner barbershop. My own experience in community theater has been wonderful, but I have to say it might have been even better if everybody (including YHB) wrote on the cover of each script: love the work, hate the heirarchy, and don’t kiss ass.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

2 thoughts on “Pirke Avot, verse ten: the ruling power

  1. Michael

    This last part of the verse feels very personally applicable. Over the past 15 months, I’ve become much more familiar with some of my town leaders, and it has definitely changed my perception of them and my eagerness to question their actions and motivations. Access and familiarity does feel like a form of intimacy.

    Reply

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