Why not Jacob Neusner’s translation of the next verse, the one he numbers 10, although we’re calling it 15 (along with Joseph Hertz):
They said three things.
R. Eliezer says, “(1) let the respect owing to your fellow be as precious to you as the respect owing to you yourself.
“(2)And don’t be easy to anger.
“(3) And repent one day before you die.“And (1) warm yourself by the fire of the sages, but be careful of their coals, so you don’t get burned.
“(2) for their bite is the bite of a fox, and their sting is the sting of a scorpion, and their hiss is like the hiss of a snake.
“(3) And everything they say is like fiery coals.”
Well.
Let’s go back to my favorite story in the Talmud; Rabbi Eliezer (ben Hyrcanus) is clearly beloved of the Divine, but disputes against his fellow sages in anger, far past the point of reasonable argumentation, storms out of the council and is excommunicated. He lives the rest of his life under the ban, until the other rabbis come to him on his deathbed to discuss the laws of purity effectively lifting the excommunication, which they formally do after his death. Within the context of that story, these three sayings become very specific.
When Rabbi Eliezer attempted to browbeat his fellows into agreement with wonders and miracles rather than persuasion, he did not give them the respect that he demanded for himself. When he got angry, he left the company of sages, leading to his excommunication. And his deathbed reconciliation came too late to truly rejoin the community. Looked at in that way, they are warnings. In a conflict, as yourself What Would Rabbi Eliezer the Great do? and then don’t do that. Or rather, ask yourself What Would Rabbi Eliezer the Great Later Regret Having Done? and then don’t do that.
I think the context, in applying the verse to myself rather than to generalize it out of applicability, is in a conflict of ideas. Go back to the story again: There is a dispute over a particular kind of oven, whether it is to be used or not. Rabbi Eliezer finds himself in a minority; he works a series of wonders to claim Divine authority for his position, but the assembly does not give in. He walks out; the group expels him. When he is told about it, there are disasters, tidal waves and crop failures, fires and storms. And he goes off on his own.
Now, this only makes sense, and I think this is important enough to emphasize that I will probably say it several times, it only makes sense if Rabbi Eliezer is absolutely sure that he is right about the oven. Again, not if he thinks there are arguments on both sides, not if he thinks that the conclusion of the majority is probably the wrong one, not if he has any doubt in his mind. And not only does he have no doubts, but he is confirmed in his confidence by miraculous evidence. At each point, his refusal to back down is strengthened by his ability to work wonders. The assembly (quite correctly) will not be browbeaten, but neither are they able to shake Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion, or his passion. It ends badly.
Now, Your Humble Blogger is correct about a bunch of things. I have a variety of opinions, some of them more weakly held than others, but there are a bunch of things on which I simply know I’m right. I believe in compromise, I believe in negotiation, I even believe in consensus sometimes, but that doesn’t really change my mind about being fundamentally correct. If I were in a legislature of some kind, and we wound up discussing something that I am fundamentally correct about (say, some nonsense about tax cuts increasing government revenues, or about health insurance increasing moral hazard, or about suffrage, or about equality under the law), I could easily imagine myself emulating Rabbi Eliezer, refusing to back down or be quiet. And if the world itself seemed to come to my assistance? How could I stop myself?
And again—Eliezer was right. Or, since I know nothing about the laws of kashrut, there is nothing in the story to suggest that the majority of Rabbis were correct in their interpretation than he was. Should he have backed down? When the Voice of Heaven itself was prepared to support him?
And, of course, the system (any system) only really works if there are people prepared to stand for their beliefs. If everybody begins seeking compromise the moment conflicting interests or aims are revealed, then we will lose the chance to be persuaded by somebody who is right, who does have that better idea. If I take the lesson of Rabbi Eliezer to be keep your mouth shut when you are in the minority, surely that is wrong, too, and perhaps more damaging than the tidal waves and crop failures.
So what do we learn from the story? Do we have any guidelines for improving our path between Eliezer’s furious browbeating and expulsion and the silent acquiescence to wrong decisions?
The first two of the three legs here seem to speak to that perfectly: show respect, not because you judge your fellow to be worth respect, but because you are worth respect yourself. When discussion begin on that basis, perhaps they will not get to the walls-caving-in stage. And don’t be easy to anger. Not impossible, mind you. But difficult.
What about the third, the advice to repent one day before your death? The point of this is pretty obvious, but it is made explicit elsewhere in the Talmud: you may die tomorrow, so repent today. I’d like to talk about that a little more, though, in our context. Because when we talk about repenting, and death, what we’re being warned about is that of course after death, we would be too late. There’s a finality there.
Digression: Did y’all see Ghost Town? It was a sweet movie. Very nice. I wanted to see it, but my expectations were middling; I haven’t liked Ricky Gervais much (haven’t seen him in much, and the little I’ve seen hasn’t made me want to see more) (except, I should say, his interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, where he completely cracked her up (not that hard) and then responded to her forgetting what she was about to ask with something like “That’s all right, I’ll answer it anyway: ducks, swans and then penguins.”) and the whole Ghost-Assisted Romantic Comedy subsubgenre didn’t seem to have a lot of life in it. Still, I watched it and I was charmed. Lots of good stuff. But it came to mind because the whole ghost-hanging-about-with-unfinished-business trope is another way of probing the finality wound. It speaks because we know it isn’t true, that if we don’t finish our business the day before we die, we won’t be able to finish it afterward. End Digression.
But what do we mean, here, by Eliezer advising us to repent the day before his death? Presumably, if the statement is included here, it wasn’t something he said after the deathbed reconciliation. Is it a statement from his exile? Perhaps, by talking about death, we are really talking about the impossibility of taking back actions once taken, of unsaying what is said. The truth is, the time to repent is before the action taken. Before making the carob tree prove your argument about the oven. Before walking out of the assembly. Before the Heavenly Voice speaks. After is too late. You may as well repent after you are dead. Y’all know how YHB hocks about the impossibility of stepping in to the same river twice? Not the same water, not the same foot? It’s impossibly to step back into that stream from the other side. There’s a sense in which the Eliezer that walked out of the assembly died at that moment. Died having failed to repent, the day before. The Eliezer that was reconciled, years later? That was a new Eliezer, as we are all new every day. If you shout at your spouse (or, worse, ignore him) tonight, you can repent tomorrow, but take Eliezer’s advice and repent yesterday. He’s been there. And if you are working on (f’r’ex) health care, or climate change amelioration, or civil rights, work with people who are wrong, respecting them, keeping your temper, and avoiding the point of no return, the thing that can’t be taken back, the thing it will be too late to repent.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.