GEN1185 Seven things are [typical] in a clod, and seven in a wise man; [The Wise Man] speaks of first things first and last things last. Pirkei Avot V:9 … Avoth d’R. Nathan (A37, B40) give examples from Scripture.   When Jacob sent a gift to his brother Esau to appease his wrath and achieve a reconciliation, he told his servants, “When Esau my brother meets you and asks you, To whom do you belong? and where are you going? and whose are these before you? – then you say, To your servant Jacob; this is a present sent to my lord, to Esau; moreover, he is behind us.” Genesis 32:18-19   Expecting a multiple question from Esau, Jacob taught his servants to reply in order. Again, when Rebekah passed the test t the well which Abraham’s servant Eli’ezer had devised to find a suitable bride for Isaac, we read that Eli’ezer asked her two questions at once; “Whose daughter are you? Pray tell me. Is there room in hour father’s house for us to lodge in?” And she said to him, “I am the daughter of Bethuel son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor.” And she said to him, “We have both straw and provender aplenty, and room to lodge in.” [this verse and v. 25] To his first question she gave her first answer; to his second, her second answer. This is the way of an orderly mind.   The commentary MaGenesis Avoth adds a further example. At the burning bush on Mount Sinai, when the Almighty bid Moses go to Pharaoh to have the Israelites set free, Moses protested, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” Exodus 3:11 Moses had two separate objections: First, how could he, a mere shepherd, confront the mighty Pharaoh? To this the reply was, But I will be with you Exodus 3:12 – have no fear of him. And he also asked: how could he lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt they would not believe in him. In response, the reply continued: “and this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you: when you have brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain” Exodus 3:12 – and then they will believe in you.  SINAI3 106-7

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GEN1186 “I will not eat” – From here it is to be derived that if food is set before one, he need not wait to be told to eat, for Eliezer said: “I will not eat until I have spoken my words” – and he had not yet been asked to eat.   But since food had been set before him, asking was not necessary. MaGenesis Avraham 107:18 TEMIMAH-GEN 111

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GEN1187 Rava said to Rabbah b. Mari: “Whence is derived the folk-saying: ‘If there is something that might lower you in men’s eyes, mention it [before others do]’”? He answered: “From the verse: ‘I am Abraham’s servant” Baba Kamma 92b TEMIMAH-GEN 112

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GEN1188 See [[EXOD540]] Exodus 21:10 withhold BLOCH 214-5

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GEN1189 [T]hat compassion for animals is a quality inherent in the righteous person, is articulated most famously in the book of Proverbs: “The righteous person knows the needs [nefesh, literally [“soul”] of his animal” Proverbs 12:10. The same conception seems to be operative in [this verse], where Abraham’s servant Eliezer determines that Rebecca—a paradigm of the good wife—is a suitable spouse for Isaac when she provided water not only for him, but also, without prompting, for his camels. We also find it in rabbinic texts, such as Midrash Tanhuma (Noah 5), where both Noah and Joseph are deeded righteous man “because they nourished creatures.” Perhaps most strikingly, Exodus Rabbah 2:2 relates that both Moses and David--the paradigmatic male leadership of Israel—were tested by God through how they functioned as shepherds. (By Aaron S. Gross, "Jewish Animal Ethics") OXFORD 423

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GEN1190 People appeal to us all the time to trust them, hoping that we won’t dig too deeply to discover why we shouldn’t. So many scam artists abound in today’s world that we are more likely to suspect someone who comes right out and says “trust me,” then to grant that person our confidence. In most cases we base our judgment on our estimate of that person’s general character. The final arbiter often is no more sound then “gut instinct.” The Bible provides two cases of women whose wise judgment led them to put their lives in another’s trust.   Abraham’s servant Eliezer wants Rebecca to accompany him to Canaan to marry Isaac, a cousin she’s never met.   Her father Bethuel and her brother Laban want Rebecca to stay with them a while longer, so they “call the maiden and ask her to speak for herself.” In response to their question, “Will you go with this man?” Rebecca replies, “I will go” [this verse]. Rebecca thus relies on an indefinable intuition and judges Eliezer so trustworthy that she leaves her family to go with him, traveling for several hundred miles to begin a new life in an unknown land. After Naomi’s husband and two sons die in Moab, she decides to return to her people in Israel. Naomi urges her Moabite daughters-in-law to return to their father’s homes.   Orpah obeys, but Ruth will not abandon her mother-in-law: “Entreat me not to leave you or turn back   from following you. For where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge.  Your people will be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, there will I die, and there will why be buried. Let Adonai do what He wants with me if anything but death parts me from you” Ruth 1:16 – 17 Trusting Naomi, Ruth offers to her this classic gift of self. We can’t explain why; the biblical authors provide these stories to show us that sometimes we must give ourselves to that component of emunah we call faith, as Rebecca and Ruth did. And we hope to become the kind person who deserves such trust. We can’t program ourselves with a specific set of behaviors to elicit such feelings, yet we sense that, if our basic characters are worthy enough, they will shine through and speak for themselves, as Eliezer’s and Naomi’s did.   BOROJMV 30-31

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GEN1191 behind the man, and not in front of him.   This teaches us that a man should not walk behind a woman. Berachot 61a TEMIMAH-GEN 113

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GEN1192 It was taught in the forum of R. Yishmael: “One should always speak ‘cleanly,’ for in relation to a zav [a man afflicted with a genital flow] the Torah referred to his seat as merkav [connoting straddling with the legs], whereas in relation to a zavah [a woman so afflicted], her seat is referred to as moshav [connoting a side-saddle position.] But is it not written: ‘And Rivkah and her maidens arose and rode [vatirkavnah (straddling)] on the camels’! – Because of their fear of [being thrown from] the camels’! – Because of their fear of [being thrown from] the camels, this position was considered natural [and not immodest]” Pesachim 3a TEMIMAH-GEN 113

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GEN1193 Simeon the Just was one of the last survivors of the Great Assembly. He used to say: the world stands on three things: on Torah, Divine worship, and acts of loving-kindness.  Pirkei Avot I:2 … The importance of this teaching for the modern Jew lies in its call for totality and balance. Too often today we meet the person who trumpets forth the size of his charitable contributions and proclaims; “So long as I give charity and exhibit a generous heart, I can safely ignore the elements of Torah and avodah.” We also have the person who maintains that since he goes faithfully to the synagogue every single day, he is absolved from giving to charity. What Simeon the Just would have us remember is that one is required to be a total Jew by making a total commitment to Torah, avodah and g’milath Hasidim. … Judaism, in a sense, resembles a tripod, a structure resting on three legs. Remove any one of the three supports and the structure will collapse. If a person be learned but not observant, if he be charitable but not disposed to worship, then he cannot possibly experience a full religious life. Such defective religiosity is bound to be shaky and is destined to topple.  The purpose of Torah in our daily life is to elevate us to a higher plane. Through Torah study we increase our knowledge, we broaden our mental horizons, we extend the frontiers of our understanding.   Avodah governs our relationship to God.   It makes us constantly aware of the presence of the Almighty and of our dependence upon him. G’milath hasadim regulates our relationship with our fellow man. In this area we are taught the meaning of justice, righteousness and compassion.   In this area we learn how to love our neighbor as ourselves.   When the Jew engages in all three of these activities, he is, in effect, engaging all levels of his being in the service of God.   He is thinking, speaking and doing Judaism.  For in Torah, the mind, the intellectual process of thought is primary. In avodah, speech, expression is the main element. In g’milath Hasidim, it is the deed, the act, that is important.   These three aspects of Judaism were in reality first developed by the three Patriarchs; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Each, by virtue of his own temperament, individual circumstance, and personal predilection, blazed a distinct path of service to God. Abraham is the great exemplar of Hasidim; he was ever kind, he fed the hungry, and pleaded to save the people of Sodom. Isaac we encounter “meditating in the fields.” [this verse] Indeed, it is Isaac who attains to the highest avodah by becoming himself the offering brought upon the altar. Jacob, we are told, is the ‘man of tents,” Genesis 25:27, who studies for many years in the academies of Shem and Eber. [This is how the Midrash understands the Bible’s description, “dwelling in tents”; e.g. Tanhuma Buber, Tol’doth 2 and Vayyishlah 9.   He is the student of ancient traditions, the student of Torah. Combine the insights of the Patriarchs: fuse the concepts of God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Bring together the particular way of each, and you have a balanced Judaism; you have total Judaism: Torah, avodah, and g’milath hasadim.  It is precisely in this notion of balance that Judaism is distinguished from the other world religions. These other systems of belief seem to have concentrated on only one of the three basic concepts out of all proportion to the others. Christianity, with its emphasis of self-abnegating love, seems, in a certain sense, to have adopted g’milath hasadim.   Islam, with its emphasis on frequent prayer, seems to have adopted avodah. And then Buddhism seems to suffer from over-emphasis upon man’s mystical relationship with the all-embracing One to the point of losing his own individuality. Only in Judaism is the total man engaged and enveloped in a realistic, comprehensive and balanced program. SINAI1 38-40

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GEN1194 The man of ninety is of the age to go shuah, bent over; the man of a hundred is as though already dead and gone, removed from the world.   Pirkei Avot V:24   Understood so, the mishnah gives a physical description of a nonagenarian, bending at last under the weight of his years. The word shuah may also be related to shuhah, the grave, denoting that at ninety a man goes toward it (there is, alas, little else for him to do) And at a hundred, our mishnah continues, it is as though he reached it. Since the Mishnah was recorded without n’kudoth, marks to fix pronunciation, the word could also be read as suah. Scripture states, “Isaac went out la-suah (to meditate) in the field toward evening” [this verse]; and the Sages understand our text could mean that at ninety a man has no other proper business but prayer. If he has been blessed to reach this extraordinary age, let him not fritter away his precious time but spend it in sacred entreaty. Let him bring alive, for example, the winger words of t’hillim, the Book of Psalms.   Of the hundred-year-old there is little to be said. As Rashi poignantly writes, his face is tragically altered, the well of wisdom is closed to him, and he simply exists witlessly. Gone utterly is all strength. In place of life only existence remains.   SINAI3 232

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