We’re realio trulio going to talk about the first verse of Chapter Two now.\n
Rabbi (Jehudah the Prince) was in the habit of saying: “In choosing the right path, see that it is one which is honorable to thyself and without offence to others.<\/strong> Be as scrupulous about the lightest command as about the weightiest, for no man knoweth the result of his actions. Weigh the present temporal disadvantages of a dutiful course against the reward of the future, and the present desirable fruits of a sinful deed against the injury to thine immortal soul. In general, consider three things and thou wilt never fall into sin: remember that there is above thee an all-seeing eye, an all-hearing ear, and a record of all thine actions.”<\/blockquote>\n
This is Michael L. Rodkinson’s translation, because it’s on-line and I can cut and paste, saving wear and tear on my fingers. Other translations phrase it in a positive, rather than a negative frame (that which brings him honour from others), and I can’t easily tell which is in the Hebrew, and even if I could, I don’t know the nuances of negative and positive phrasing. I think it makes a big difference, whether the path is one that actively brings praise from others, or just avoids their censure.\n
At any rate, want I usually think about, regarding this verse, is the humility and modesty of it. If you look at the grid of outcomes, nobody really thinks that the actions that both you and other people find dishonorable are good, and the actions that other people praise but you think are dishonorable are probably not so good. It’s the third category, the stuff that you think is fine but other people don’t that is the tricky one, and what I think Judah is saying is that if you can’t persuade the community of the rightness of your actions, you need to consider whether the community is right and it’s you that’s wrong.\n
Now, there are of course times when the standards of the community are awful, so Judah the Prince doesn’t rule out this category as such. But he implies, I think, that it’s clearly better<\/i> to persuade the community. There’s no badge of honor in the community calumniating you; even when you must<\/i> earn their disdain in the service of Justice, Love and Stuff, there’s a bit of fail in it, too.\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger does that logic-problem thing again.<\/p>\n","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-12028","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\/12028","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=12028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18738,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12028\/revisions\/18738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}