I may have said this before, but one of the advantages of having the level of familiarity with Hebrew that I have (that is, I have lots of liturgical stuff memorized and a few years of pathetic instruction but no fluency whatsoever) is that I make connections that aren’t actually there, based on words and sounds and whatnot. So. Here’s our verse:
He used to say, If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?
The Hebrew for the first leg transliterates as im ayn ani li, mi li?. The last bit, mi li echoes (to my mind’s ear) one of the other famous verses, this one from the Song of Songs: ani l’dodi, v’dodi li. This is usually translated I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. Following this, we can translate the question If I am not mine, who will be mine?
I am tempted to take the question and answer as question and answer: mi li? dodi li!. Of course, even if I do that, I am left with mi dodi?, who is my Beloved? One answer is my Best Reader, of course, and I do like that answer: If I am not for myself, my Best Reader will be for me, and certainly, she does take care of me better than I take care of myself (and I ought to reciprocate). Or, if we accept (for a moment) the rabbinic interpretation of the Song, perhaps my Beloved is the Divine, which is also a powerful image: If I am not for myself, the Divine will be mine. But that’s not quite the Song of Songs interpretation, because the rabbis take is as love between the Divine and the People of Israel, not an individual Jew. Now we have: If the People of Israel are not for themselves, then will they belong to the Divine. Another powerful idea.
But then, the two verses are not necessarily question and answer. They echo each other, to my ear, but that doesn’t mean I have to restrict the echo to a direct and literal response. Let’s try keeping Hillel’s verse as a rhetorical question, and see if the echo still can inspire something…
I think there’s a profound difference in the English between if I am not for myself and if I am not mine. I can be for myself, in the sense of rooting for myself, doing for myself, keeping to myself. Most of the time, I think of the verse as indicating a necessary level of selfishness, or at least taking care of your own needs. But can I be mine? If this is about loving yourself, respecting and valuing yourself, that’s a different emphasis. The Jewish tradition does tell us to love ourselves; for you the whole world was created. You are the image of the Divine. You are a Creation of the Creator, and should value yourself accordingly. On the other hand, there is the self-help relationship-advice interpretation, that if you can’t love yourself, it’s hard for other people to love you.
Digression: chalked on the wall between where I am usually dropped off and the front door of the library is the instruction touch yourself until you scream with joy. Three or four times a week, I pass that graffito and think who’s got that kind of time? End Digression.
Reading the two verses in the other direction, I can translate the Song of Songs verse as I am for my Beloved, and my Beloved is for me. If we listen to the echoes of the common interpretation of the Pirke Avot verse, we see the two as looking out for each other’s interest, rather than their own. This is, of course, really just a factual description of romantic love, in which the pleasure, satisfaction or achievement of your mate is a deeper source of your own happiness than your own. But then, we hear another echo of the traditional interpretation there combining with it, and see that while the Divine looks out for his Chosen People (however we look at that), the People Israel look out for the interests of the Divine. And if we don’t? mi li?
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.