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Last year in these studies we noted the well-known difference of opinion among the sages about the nazirite – the individual who undertook to observe special rules of holiness and abstinence: not to drink wine or other intoxicants (including anything made from grapes), not to have his hair cut and not to defile himself by contact with the dead.
In relation to the biblical text, the argument turned on the fact that when the nazirite’s period of self imposed restraint came to an end, he was commanded to bring a sin offering (Num. 6: 13-14). According to Nachmanides this was because he was returning to ordinary life after a time spent in special sanctity. He brought an offering for the sin of ceasing to be a nazirite.
According to the Mishnaic teacher Rabbi Eliezer Hakappar, it was for the opposite reason: he brought an offering for the sin of becoming a nazirite in the first place. He denied himself the pleasures of this world – the world G-d created and declared good. Rabbi Eliezer added: “From this we may infer that if one who denies himself the enjoyment of wine is called a sinner, all the more so one who denies himself the enjoyment of other pleasures of life” (Taanit 11a; Nedarim 10a).
Clearly the argument is not merely textual. It is substantive. Specifically it is about asceticism, the life of self-denial. Almost every religion knows the phenomenon of people who, in pursuit of spiritual purity, withdraw from the
Saints are not really interested in society. They have chosen a different, lonely, self-segregating path
world, its pleasures and temptations. They live in caves, retreats, monasteries. The Qumran sect known to us through the Dead Sea Scrolls may have been such a movement.
In the Middle Ages there were Jews who adopted similar self-denial – among them the Hassidei Ashkenaz, the Pietists of Northern Europe, as well as many Jews in Islamic lands. In retrospect it is hard not to see in these patterns of behaviour at least some influence from the non-Jewish environment. The Hassidei Ashkenaz who flourished during the time of the Crusades lived among deeply pious, self-mortifying Christians. Their southern counterparts would have been familiar with Sufism, the mystical movement in Islam.
The ambivalence of Jews toward the life of self-denial may therefore lie in the suspicion that it entered Judaism from the outside. There were movements in the first centuries of the common Era in both the West (Greece) and the East (Iran) that saw the physical world as a place of corruption and strife. They were, in fact, dualisms. They held that the true G-d was not the creator of the universe and could not be reached within the universe. The physical world was the work of a lesser, and evil, deity. The two best known movements to hold this view were Gnosticism in the West and Manichaeism in the East. So at least some of the negative evaluation of the nazirite may have been driven by a desire to discourage Jews from imitating non-Jewish tendencies in Christianity and Islam.
Yet none of this explains the view of Maimonides, who holds both views, positive and negative. In Hilkhot Deot, the Laws of Ethical Character, Maimonides adopts the negative position of R. Eliezer Hakappar. To be a nazirite is bad. “A person may say: ‘Desire, honour and the like are bad paths to follow and remove a person from the world, therefore I will completely separate myself from them and go to the other extreme.’ As a result, he does not eat meat or drink wine or take a wife or live in a decent house or wear decent clothing . . . This too is bad, and it is forbidden to choose this way.” (Hilkhot Deot 3:1) Yet in the same book, the Mishneh Torah, he writes: “Whoever vows to G-d [to become a nazirite] by way of holiness, does well and is praiseworthy . . . Indeed Scripture considers him the equal of a prophet” (Hilkhot Nezirut 10: 14). How does any writer in a single book adopt such contradictory positions – let alone one as resolutely logical as Maimonides?
The answer is profound – so profound that it is hard to assimilate and digest, yet it remains one of the most insightful ideas ever formulated in ethics.
According to Maimonides, there is not one model of the virtuous life, but two. He calls them respectively the way of the saint (Hassid) and the sage (Hakham).
The saint is a person of extremes. Maimonides defines hessed as extreme behaviour -- good behaviour, to be sure, but conduct in excess of what strict justice requires (Guide for the Perplexed III, 52). So, for example, “If one avoids haughtiness to the utmost extent and becomes exceedingly humble, he is termed a saint (hassid)” (Hilkhot Deot 1: 5).
The sage is a different kind of person altogether. He follows the “golden mean”, the “middle way”, the way of moderation and balance. He or she avoids the extremes of cowardice on the one hand, recklessness on the other, and thus acquires the virtue of courage. He or she avoids miserliness on the one hand, giving away all one has on the other, and thus becomes generous. The sage knows the twin dangers of too much and too little – excess and deficiency. He or she weighs the conflicting pressures and avoids the extremes.
These are not just two types of person but two ways of understanding the moral life itself. Is the aim of the moral life to achieve personal perfection? Or is it to create gracious relationships and a decent, just, compassionate society? The intuitive answer of most people would be to say: both. That is what makes Maimonides so acute a thinker on this subject. He realises that you can’t have both – that they are in fact different enterprises.
A saint may give all his money away to the poor. But what about the members of the saint’s own family? A saint 
The sage knows he or she cannot leave all ...commitments behind to pursue a life of solitary virtue.may refuse to fight in battle. But what about the saint’s own country? A saint may forgive all crimes committed against him. But what about the rule of law, and justice? Saints are supremely virtuous people, considered as individuals. Yet you cannot build a society out of saints alone. Indeed, saints are not really interested in society. They have chosen a different, lonely, self-segregating path. I know no one who makes this point as clearly as Maimonides – not Plato, not Aristotle, not Descartes, not Kant.
It is this deep insight that led Maimonides to his seemingly contradictory evaluations of the nazirite. The nazirite has chosen, at least for a period, to adopt a life of extreme self-denial. He is a saint, a hassid. He has adopted the path of personal perfection. That is noble, commendable, exemplary.
But it is not the way of the sage – and you need sages if you seek to perfect society. The sage is not an extremist – because he or she realises that there are other people at stake. There are the members of one’s own family; the others within one’s own community; there are colleagues at work; there is a country to defend and a nation to help build. The sage knows he or she cannot leave all these commitments behind to pursue a life of solitary virtue. For we are called on by G-d to live in the world not in escape from it; in society not seclusion; to strive to create a balance among the conflicting pressures on us, not to focus on some while neglecting the others.
Hence, while from a personal perspective the nazirite is a saint, from a societal perspective he is, at least figuratively, a “sinner” who has to be bring an atonement offering.
Maimonides lived the life he preached. We know from his writings that he longed for seclusion. There were years when he worked day and night to write his Commentary to the Mishnah, and later the Mishneh Torah. Yet he also recognised his responsibilities to his family and to the community. In his famous letter to his would-be translator Ibn Tibbon, he gives him an account of his typical day and week – in which he had to carry a double burden as a world-renowned physician and an internationally sought halakhist and sage. He worked to exhaustion; there were times when he was almost too busy to study from one week to the next. Maimonides was a sage who longed to be a saint – but knew he could not be, if he was to honour his responsibilities to his people. That seems to me a profound and moving judgment – and one that speaks to us today.
When someone is drowning, you do not stop
to ask who the best swimmer is.
from “To Heal a fractured World” pp 252-253 Continuum
The first question asked in books and lectures on ethics is usually “Why be moral?” – as if the greatest roadblock on the way were selfishness, egocentricity, indifference. I suspect, however, that the real question is “Why me?” Who am I to do the noble deed, the courageous act? I am just an ordinary person, not the kind you read about in books. But the great people, the lamed-vovniks, who change lives and mend the fractures of the worlds, just are ordinary people who think there is nothing special about them and what they do.
Lionel Trilling made an interesting observation in his Sincerity and Authenticity:
I once had occasion to observe in connection with Wordsworth that in the Rabbinical literature there is no touch of the heroic idea. The Rabbis, in speaking of virtue, never mention the virtue of courage, which Aristotle regarded as basic to the heroic character. The indifference of the rabbis to the idea of courage is the more remarkable in that they knew that many of their number would die for their faith.
A similar story could be told about the majority of the heroes of the Holocaust, the people who saved lives. According to the researchers, they were neither “Saints nor ideologues but ordinary people with an extraordinary willingness to alleviate suffering when they encountered it”.
There is a famous phenomenon known as the Genovese effect. It owes its name to the incident in 1964when Kitty
Leadership is response-ability, the ability to respond. Genovese was stabbed to death in a New York suburb. Dozens of her neighbours heard her cries for help but none came to her rescue. At the time, appalled interpreted their failure an apathy, callousness, or the effect of urban anonymity in which we do not “love our neighbor as ourselves” because we simply do not know who our neighbours are. However, two social scientists Bibb Latané and J.M. Darley staged a series of emergencies (physical collapse, fire alarms, thefts ) in stores and offices and came to a remarkable discovery. In every case, a lone bystander was more willing to intervene and help than was a group of bystanders. Often, we fail to act because we think someone else will, or should, or is better qualified than I am. More than evil or indifference, the fundamental moral problem is “Why me?” What connects me to this person in need? What gives me the right or duty to intervene?
The Hasidic master, Rabbi Solomon of Karlin, (1738-92) said something beautiful and unexpected: “The greatest yetser hara [inhibition against doing good] is that we forget we are children of the King.” We are not no one. We are here because God brought us into being in love and gave us work to do, saying in his still, small voice: “Bring a fragment of my presence into other lives.” What made Moses and Jeremiah and David special as not that they had a high opinion of themselves – the opposite was the case – but that they heard and heeded the cry of human suffering. For them, injustice was not a fact but a call. They believed, not in themselves, but in the cause. They knew that when someone is drowning, you do not stop to ask who the best swimmer is. You jump in. leadership is response-ability, the ability to respond.