Be a Mentsh

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Friday, June 11, 2010

In my family growing up, if you weren’t married, you might find yourself stuck at the children’s table at large gatherings, well after your Bar or Bat Mitzvah, college graduation, or even 30th birthday.

I always attributed that to a certain marriage centrism on the part of the older generation, but recently I learned from Michael Wex’s book, How To be A Mentsh that this is really testimony to older Jewish values.

Wex, a professor and professional translator of Yiddish, who is also a novelist and stand-up comic, is best known for his surprise best seller, Born to Kvetch, a really funny book. In How to Be A Mentsh, Wex introduces not only Yiddish words and culture but also Jewish values from more classical sources, including the Torah, Talmud and their many centuries of commentaries.

Judaism has traditionally taught that a man without a wife, is not fully a man. Wex’s insight is to cast this as a lesson in ethics rather than sociology. Wex argues that one of the basic foundations of being a mentsh, of being fully human, is to be as concerned about another person as one is about oneself. That’s why our grandparents used to say, “if you’re not married you’re a bum”- that is you haven’t taken the final step into maturity. In Yiddish they say: “It’s never too late to die or to get married.” What does this mean? It means that we are in no rush to go to the olam habbah, (next world) and that it is never too late to mature further as a person.

Wex writes: “If you do it right, getting married means deliberately putting yourself into a position in which it becomes impossible for you to think of yourself as the center of your world, as more important than everybody else, every again. Thus getting married is shorthand for growing up and assuming responsibility,

It’s never too late to get married, he writes, means “it’s never too late to learn consideration, to learn that the only thing that’s really special about you is the ability to set your own self aside once in a while, to make somebody else more special than you are.” This sort of consideration for others, the constant reminder that they and their needs are just as real as you and yours is the basis of being a mentsh.

As Leah and Matt are well aware, marriage is just the beginning of the mentsh making process, having a child, really ratchets up the opportunities to set your own desires aside for the sake of another person. In that sense we can think perhaps of marriage as the bunny slope that prepares for the more serious challenges ahead.

What is a Mentsh? Simply, a decent, respectable, upstanding person, honest and honorable, a man or woman of integrity, Jewish or non-Jewish, a person of moral substance. Mentsh means literally a man, but as Wex writes, “leave it to Yiddish to transform a biological classification into a moral attainment.”

If you are a mentsh then you don’t feel sorry for yourself because that two hour visit to your aunt in the hospital is going to overlap with the season finale of your favorite tv show and you’re so deprived that you don’t even have Ti Vo. You go visit that neighbor you don’t like whose husband just died. To be a mentsh is to do what you know to be your human duty, even when the obligation is at odds with your own preferences.

Looking at Jewish life over the centuries of Diaspora, Wex casts the need to turn young Jews into menschen into evolutionary terms. Young people must learn to put the interests of the community as a whole ahead of their private preferences and demands: “if you can’t see why someone else’s desires might be more important than your own or why the needs of the community subsume and surpass those of any particular member, then you become a liability, no matter how much you might otherwise have to offer.”

A mentsh creates around his or herself a mentschlichkeit society. Concerning this Wex writes that one of the standard questions used in ethics courses doesn’t make sense in a world where mentshin are in charge.

It is the story of a man whose wife was desperately ill. The drugs that would cure her cost far more than the man was able to afford and the local pharmacist was unwilling to arrange a schedule of graduated payments or give him a deal on the price. So the question often asked in ethics class is: Is the man justified in breaking into the pharmacy and stealing the drugs? Is this right, or should he stand helplessly by while his wife dies of her disease?

This is not a Jewish question. In a traditional Jewish community, the kind created by menschin, the husband would go to the bikkor cholim, sick benefits group or the free loan society in his town (or the closest one large enough to have one); he would appeal to the local rabbi or rabbis either for help with raising funds, or if the druggist was Jewish, for applying moral and community pressure on the druggist, If the cost was too great for the local community and the druggist wasn’t Jewish, recourse often through rabbinic intervention might be had to similar organizations in larger towns and cities, philanthropists or more commonly druggists elsewhere who might offer a better price. If there are no good choices, as in this ethical dilemma, then maybe it’s the whole situation that needs to be changed.

Wex uses the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza the two men whose conflict brings about the destruction of the second Temple to teach that being a mentsh also involves standing up when wrongs are being committed to other people. Being a mentsh is more than refraining from shameful behavior; merely holding yourself back from doing the wrong things is not enough.

Bar Kamtza was wronged when he was accidentally invited to his enemy’s party and then dishonored in publically being asked to leave. He offers to cover the cost of his wine and food, in fact the cost of the entire party, if only to avoid this embarrassment in front of the community. The host refuses, and the rabbis of his generation, who are also in attendance do and say nothing. Ultimately, as a result of their closing their eyes and standing aside, Bar Kamtza ends up taking vengeance against the whole Jewish community, setting them up with the Romans to be accused of treachery. According to tradition, this is the prelude to the devastating wars with Rome.

Wex writes: “The rabbis attending the party could have forestalled the host’s sin but did not; they failed to upbraid him, fell short of their biblically mandated obligations as Jewish private citizens and of their duties as the legislators and preceptors-the governing elite –of the Jewish people. “

Wex looks at the rabbis’ failing through the prism of a well known rabbinic teaching: “In a place where there are no men, try to be a man.”

First he notes that it’s rather unusual for a moral directive to be written: Try. The Ten Commandments don’t say, try not to murder, try not to steal, nor can we usually defend ourselves after wrongdoing by saying, but we tried.

The Mentsh is the fifth wheel in a paragraph that introduces four other characters. The boorish person, who is so consumed with appetite that sin isn’t his concern, and the ignoramus, who is unable to be pious, not for lack of will, but lack of knowledge. We also find the overly timid person who cannot learn and the mean tempered person who should not teachA simple understanding of this teaching is: In a place where everybody is like the people here described, it’s up to you to be the exception.

Other commentators go further. Anashim, men, is often the word used in the Bible for the people in charge. Thus what’s being taught here: in a place where there are no mentshen, think elders in the sense of respected authorities, where no one is in charge, try, make an effort, put yourself out, step up even if , like Chief Inspector Fowles, of PBS’s Mystery Theater, you’d prefer a life of cozy retirement.

Abravanel reads this passage slightly differently: in a place where there are no mentor types to teach you and spur you on to do the things that you are supposed to do, you must be your own mentor and spur yourself on. A mentsh after all needs to be self- sufficient and self –motivated.

A 16th century commentary takes a different stance. “What is a place where there are no anashim? It’s a place where there are no people other than yourself. Even in a hidden place where there is no one to see you or know what you are doing, do not on that account say, I will sin, who’s doing to see me, who’s going to know? Even in a place where there are no people, and you are in private and all alone, you must exert yourself to be righteous upright and trustworthy person. “A Mentsch can almost be defined as a person who does the right thing even though no one is looking and there is no possibility of ever being caught.

A final commentary explains that a place without men means a place without worthy men. In a place there are already prominent people and eminent scholars there is no need for you to be cautioned to try to be a mentsh and become as wise as they are-- because jealousy and ambition will force you to try to be a mentsh. But in a place where there is no mentsh, no competitor for greatness, you might let yourself go and not try to be a mentsh because you already see yourself as greater and smarter than anyone around you. it will look to you as if you’ve already attained such perfection as is necessary. Therefore it says: Do not be wise in your own eyes (Prov 3:7) I’m warning you to try to be an mentsh in such a place. Along the way to instructing us on how to become mentshin, Wex tells some great stories, such as the explanation of why the greatest of all Yiddish dictionaries exists only in one volume, the volume for the letter aleph. He speaks about the special need for a practice of menschlichkeit in speach in the Jewish community where “rapid fire take no prisoners debate is so important and so much a part of the culture. A truth that is told solely for the sake of causing harm, of putting someone in their place, or casting them in a bad light, is nothing but a stick in the hands of a bully.”

The book concludes explaining why doing until to others as you would like done to yourself may not be as productive in practice as not doing to others what you wouldn’t want done to yourself.

How to be a Mentsh, not as funny as Born to Kvetch, but still lots of fun and with many interesting ideas to ponder.