Erev Eikev
August 22, 2008
Pirkei Avot, Chapter 1, Mishna 14
Hillel 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?
Rabbi Simkha Bunem, an 18th century Hassid from Pshishke, Poland, said: “Everyone must have two pockets with a note in each one. When we are feeling discouraged and depressed, we can reach into one pocket and read: ‘Bishvili nivra ha'olam [Sanhedrin 37a]; for my sake was the whole world was created.’ On the other hand, when we are feeling lofty and mighty, we can reach into the other pocket and read: ‘Ani eifer v'afar [Bereshit 18:27]; I am simply dust and ashes.’”
This exactly expresses the dichotomy between the first two concepts that Hillel mentions.
Hillel, one of our greatest and best known sages, tells us, on the one hand, that the world was created for each one of us. In order to follow this concept, we have to know the answers to these questions: What are my most essential qualities? What are my basic individual needs and how can I fill them?
It’s very important that we focus on ourselves as individuals completely separate from the rest of humanity. It’s important that we attend to our needs and desires so that we can satisfy them as much as possible. To paraphrase Hillel, if I do not know what I need and want, nobody will do that for me. There is no other person who can truly understand me except me and it is my obligation to fulfill for myself the needs that I know only too well.
But if we stop there, we are not paying attention to Hillel’s second statement. I am but dust and ashes if I don’t care about the rest of humanity. Here Hillel is talking about the part of us that God expects to co-create the world with, to take what we are given and to make it ever better. In paying attention to that part of Hillel’s message, we have to ask ourselves: What can I do as an individual to make this world a better place for everybody to live in? Which of my unique gifts can I use to make other people’s lives more holy and peaceful? Who can I reach out to give some assistance and comfort?
To go to the extreme in the first is to be overly selfish, self-serving and egotistical. To go to the extreme in the other is to be overly selfless, ignoring our individual needs in order to always serve others.
If we look at another of Hillel’s statements, we can get a clearer picture of how he understood the relationship of the individual to the communal.
When Hillel attended the Sukkot ceremony to bring rain, he would say, ‘If I am here, everyone is here.’ He was not speaking egotistically; he did not believe that his presence equaled the presence of every Jew. Rather he knew that if every individual Jew made the effort to come to this ceremony, then truly everybody would be present.
But as important as these two messages are: that we must attend both to our individual needs and those of the community, there is still another message in this Mishna that is even more important.
Hillel says: ‘If not now, when.’
It is not enough to know who we are and what we need to do for our communities. We have to do it now, right now.
In Psalm 90, verse 12 we read: ‘Teach us to number our days that we may acquire a heart of wisdom.’
How do we number our days?
We have all driven on the freeway from Atlanta to Macon. As we go along we see signs telling us how many miles we have left on our journey. The signs do not tell us how many miles we have gone, but rather how much of our journey is left. That’s what this pasuk, this verse from our psalm is telling us.
If we are very aware of how much time we have left in our lives, then we will have the wisdom to know how to use that time.
But the problem is that we have no idea how much time we have left. We could have, God willing, many more years or, God forbid, only a few days. The pasuk tells us to live as though we have only a few days, not to waste or spend our time on things that will not give worth to the world but to spend our time wisely and carefully doing those things that will give to the world as much as we can possible give.
As we move closer to our High Holiday season when we examine our lives over the last year and see what kinds of behaviors we want to increase which we want to eliminate, let’s ask ourselves how we can number the days that we have left so that we gain a heart of wisdom and give as much as we can to ourselves and to our communities.