Middot – The embodied Torah of Character Values

Psalm 90

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The span of our life is seventy years, or, given the strength, eighty years; but the best of them are trouble and sorrow. They pass by speedily, and we are in darkness. (90:10)

The title of this Psalm is “A Prayer of Moses.” According to Deuteronomy, Moses lived to the age of 120. Although he had his share of aggravation, dealing with a sometimes uncooperative Israelite people, to characterize the best of his years as “trouble and sorrow” is pessimistic, to say the least.

Were I to write a Psalm imagining Moses contemplating his life and speaking with God, my Psalm would focus on the miracles and the redemption from Egypt. “You give life to human beings, nurture and sustain us in the desert of our lives; when all seems bleak, you are a source of blessing, comfort, and strength.”

The historian Salo Baron argued that the age of the “Lachrymose view of Jewish history” is over. No longer should we write history from the perspective that “gentile persecution and Jewish suffering have been the shaping forces of Jewish history.” Rather, as he said in a 1975 interview, “suffering is part of the destiny’ of the Jews, but so is repeated joy as well as ultimate redemption.” The 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia has an article entitled “Optimism and Pessimism” arguing that optimism is a fundamental Jewish value.

Moses died a hero, so much so in fact that the Torah deliberately obscures his burial place lest it become a place of pilgrimage and Moses take the place of God as a focus of worship. Moses died with his zest for life intact (Deuteronomy 34:7). Many of us, perhaps most of us, will experience significant physical infirmity at the end of our lives. However, isn’t it a worthy goal to remain positive and energetic to the best of our physical ability right up to the moment we die?

Whether we live through the century mark or whether our years number only 70 or 80, let us live them in the light of optimism, rather than the darkness of pessimism. Our years might fly by, but let us notice and celebrate the moments of joy as they come – the births, the b’nai mitzvah, the high school and college graduations, the weddings, the birthdays and anniversaries and other celebrations.

Psalm 77

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Has God forgotten how to pity? Has God in anger stifled God’s compassion? (77:10)

We commonly speak about God with human characteristics and emotions. We talk about God’s fingers, hands, arms, eyes, ears, and even nose, even though God has none of the above. We also commonly speak of God’s happiness, enjoyment, desire for obedience, sadness, regret, and compassion and other such human emotions. The 12th century philosopher Maimonides believed that we should not use such language for God, because to do so places limits on a God who is by definition infinite. However, Biblical literature is rich with anthropomorphic and anthropopathic language for God because it is the only way we have to to communicate our our sense of the Divine.

The Talmud (Sota 14a) suggests what we might learn from language attributing human behavior to God:

What is the meaning of the verse, “Follow none but Adonai your God” (Deuteronomy 13:15)?  Is it possible for a human being literally to follow God?  Rather, we should imitate the attributes of God.

Just as God clothed the naked, as it is written, “And Adonai God made Adam and his wife garments of skin and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21)–so too should you clothe the naked.

Just as God visited the sick –as it is written, “Adonai appeared to Abraham by the terebinths of Mamre” [following his circumcision] (Genesis 18:1)–so too should you visit the sick.

Just as God comforted the mourners –as it is written, “After the death of Abraham, God blessed his son Isaac” (Genesis 25:11)–so too should you comfort the mourners.

Just as God buried the dead –as it is written, “God buried him [Moses] in the valley” (Deuteronomy 34:6)–so too should you bury the dead.

The Psalmist hopes that God’s hen, graciousness or pity, and rahamim, compassion, have not disappeared. Because such traits are the central part of what it means to “Love your fellow as yourself,” it is also a reminder to ourselves not to let our anger overwhelm our compassion.

John Quincy Adams

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John Quincy Adams grew up with his parents’ expectation that he would serve his country as president. His father, John Adams, took him at the age of 10 to Europe on a diplomatic mission to Paris. He spent his teenage years in France, the Netherlands, Russia, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. After graduating from Harvard, he served under President George Washington as Minister to the Netherlands; he served under his father, President John Adams, as minister to Prussia; and he served under President James Madison as Minister to Russia and later to the United Kingdom. He also served one term as a Senator from Massachusetts, and served under President James Monroe as Secretary of State.

With all his training and all these credentials, how was it that he became the worst, most ineffective, president in history? The short answer is that all his education taught him how to relate to the educated elite of society. He was a great diplomat because he spoke many languages and could connect with European royalty and high society. His education taught him to speak to the intellectual elite – he never bothered campaigning or speaking to the common people of the country. As president, he alienated the American people and most of Congress by appearing to make a deal with Henry Clay to give Clay the position of Secretary of State in exchange for Clay’s delegates’ votes for the presidency, thus stealing it from Andrew Jackson, who had won the popular vote for the presidency.

However, after his one term as president, he was given another national political life as an independent member of congress from Massachusetts for 17 years, where he was a defender of justice, winning freedom for kidnapped Africans on the slave ship Amistad. During his time in Congress he learned to connect with people all across the country, bringing their petitions to the floor of the House of Representatives. He fought against slavery and by doing so alienated his fellow House members, who created a new rule that became known as the Gag Rule in order to keep him from talking about slavery. At the end of his career, he finally got the Gag Rule repealed with the help of Abraham Lincoln.

The most important leadership lesson I gleaned from John Quincy Adams is that a leader needs to speak the language of the people. A leader cannot be disconnected from the people that he serves. John Quincy’s ideology disconnected his from most of his fellow representatives, but he was reelected time and again because he spoke the language of and served the abolitionist cause of the people of the northern United States.

Next up: Andrew Jackson

Psalm 75

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There is a cup in Adonai’s hand with foaming wine fully mixed; from this God pours; all the wicked of the earth drink, draining it to the very dregs. (75:9)

The topic of this Psalm is a condemnation of arrogance. This particular verse caught my eye for its evocative imagery, but I didn’t immediately understand the point. In ancient times, wine was always mixed with water. This particular cup of wine is foaming – not a word one usually associates with a cup of wine. In fact, the root hamar is found only three other times in the Hebrew Bible, meaning anguish, tumult, and foaming (with rage). The cup of wine that God is serving here, therefore, is questionable. Perhaps the scene is an elegant dinner party at which poisonous wine is served. The wealthy, well dressed, arrogant, guests elbow their way to the front and snatch all of the bubbling, foaming, glasses of wine, leaving the more modest and polite guests with none. They drain the cup to the last drop and die horrible deaths, and finally, the meek inherit the earth (wait — that’s not one of our texts …)!

Leaving aside the question of theodicy, that God literally rewards and punishes, there is a clear truth in the idea that arrogance plants the seeds of its own downfall. An arrogant person will tend to make the same mistakes over and over again, unable to understand that bad outcomes are a result of bad decisions. Those who are humble will examine their behavior for things that they could have done differently. Those who are arrogant will blame their misfortune on the behavior of those around them.

In the end, a person’s arrogance and refusal to change patterns of behavior will lead to his or her downfall. We reap what we sow, and in the end, we drink the cup of wine that we ourselves have mixed and poured.

Psalm 72

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Let him champion the lowly among the people, deliver the needy folk, and crush those who wrong them. (72:4)

This is the final Psalm of the second (of five) book of Psalms. The subject of this composition is the king.

If we read the Psalm more generally as speaking about any leader (not just a king), the Psalm raises the question of what are the most important qualities in a leader? The quality of this verse is that of fighting on behalf of those who cannot fight for themselves. Those without power have virtually no voice. No one listens, because they don’t have the standing to be able to do anything about the injustice they face. The leader is a person people listen to. It’s like the old commercials about E.F. Hutton, in which there is a crowd of people all talking. One person says the words “E.F. Hutton,” and the entire room falls silent. The tag line is, “When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen.” [Here and here are some examples.]

The willingness of a person of great importance to fight on behalf of those whom society has all but forgotten takes humility, another great quality of a leader. Specifically, the ability to admit that a past action or past statement or past proposal was wrong and change one’s behavior or change one’s mind or position takes humility. Sadly, the political world, rather than recognizing this as positive growth, often condemns it as inconsistency, flip-flopping, or even hypocrisy.

If we don’t allow our politicians to change their minds then we are not allowing them to mature as leaders. We ought to expect that 25 or 35 year old politicians will make mistakes that a 50 year old candidate for president would not make. We ought to have the humility to recognize that the people we choose as leaders might change their minds and make as many mistakes as we have, as long as we look at our lives with honesty.