{"id":11597,"date":"2008-11-01T15:52:01","date_gmt":"2008-11-01T19:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2008\/11\/01\/11597.html"},"modified":"2021-05-27T19:55:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-28T00:55:00","slug":"perke-avot-be-not-hasty-in-jud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2008\/11\/01\/perke-avot-be-not-hasty-in-jud\/","title":{"rendered":"Perke Avot: Be not hasty in judgment"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

We’re discussing Pirke Avot<\/I>; I started with some general ideas about the discussion before we began<\/a>, and now in order to facilitate some sort of coherent discussion that can be joined in and followed, I’ve broken the first verse into four notes. Here’s the verse:
\r\n

Moses received the Law on Sinai and delivered it to Joshua; and Joshua to the Elders; and the Elders to the prophets; and the prophets to the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be not hasty in judgment<\/strong>; Bring up many disciples; and, Make a hedge for the Torah.<\/blockquote>
\r\n

I broke out the first sentence<\/a>, and I’ll talk about the first of the three things in this note, and then have separate threads disciples<\/a>, and hedge<\/a>. I hope this isn’t confusing. YHB is making it up as we go along, you know.
\r\n

<\/p>\r\n\r\n

They<\/i> of course are the men of the Great Assembly, who were responsible for interpreting the Law (both the Oral and Written) and adjudicating disputes. Although they claimed to be judicial, they really were a deliberative legislative body, capable of affirming a new rule (from an old principle) by agreement and enforcing it on the populace at large. They also had judicial powers, both as an assembly and individually. The sages would sit in panels at courts to judge what were effectively lawsuits; this was an important part of their training and their responsibility.\r\nThe idea is not that these were the only things they said, either. You could think of it as they never shut up about these three things<\/i>, or they wanted people to remember three important things<\/i>, but the Text has just they said<\/i>. And of course three. It’s a magic number. And good for remembering things. We’ll have a lot of threes here, and there is some use at looking at threes, at which things get combined together in a three, what the order of the three is, whether there is some attempt at balance, or at comprehensiveness, or at unity, or what. But at the moment, let’s go on to the first of the three that they said.\r\n

Be not hasty in judgment. Or be deliberate<\/i>. From what I can make out, the positive phrasing is closer than the negative, but as bad as I am at Scriptural Hebrew, I’m much, much worse at the language of the Mishnah. My translations differ.\r\n

Anyway, this first saying is of course from magistrates and legislators to magistrates and legislators. They are certainly not saying don’t make judgments<\/I>, because making judgments is a big part of their job. But they are saying don’t be hasty. The Vitry Machzur (compiled in the 12th Century by Simchah ben Samuel, who studied under Rashi) instructs that when a question of litigation comes to you, and you have already made a ruling on that same point before, twice before, four times before, still you must deliberate and not be hasty; you may discover something you overlooked before. When the saying widens out to us, the people of the land, who don’t rule in courts or make decisions about law, I think it loses something of it’s power. But of course, we make judgments and decisions all the time, and we hardly ever do it deliberately, that is, with deliberation. But I’ll also emphasize again that this collection of wisdom with an audience largely of people who do make judgments as part of their rabbinic duties places at it’s very head, the first thing that carries on the authority of the Great Assembly, the Prophets and Elders, Joshua and Moses and the Divine itself, is caution against haste in judgment, a reminder of humility and mercy. After all, if the Divine takes ten days between writing our lives in the Book and the Judgement on the Day of Atonement, shouldn’t we human judges allow ourselves some time for deliberation as well?\r\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which YHB oddly enough didn't think of using the phrase rush to judgment<\/I> until it was too late.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[212],"class_list":["post-11597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scripture","tag-pirkeavot"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18566,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11597\/revisions\/18566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}