Dear Rav Kornfeld:
Next shabbos is the bar mitzvah of my grandson. I have been asked to speak.Because he wants to enter politics after his yeshiva years,I plan to speak about the obligations and dangers that a shomer torah faces as a leader .I thought I would focus ,in the brief period I will have,on two incidents in TA'anis---28a ( the incident involving Rabbi Eliezer and the ugly man) and the incident involving Rabbi Yehoshua and Caesars's daughter on 7A.I would like to use the first( the treatment of the ugly man) to stress the need not to sterotype people and to take in to account peoples feelings;and the second to stress the problem of not using ones power and position to punish people. I want to ensure that I will not be misinterpreting the gemorrahs and thus I am turning to you.If you have the time,could
you please let me know if these are possible correct interpretations and if there are meforshim that talk about such interpretations?The ones I have available focus on defending and rationalizing the proprietry of the behavior of the Rabonim.
I tried to send in questions thru the daf yomi advancement forum but I am not sure they went through.
Thank you for your consideration---
B'col Hakavod
Binyamin Lebovits,Lebovi7@aol.com
Greetings,
We are sorry that we have not been able to respond to your questions promptly. We are very busy now, and priority is given to questions on the present Masechta of Dafyomi.
Mazal Tov on the upcoming Bar Mitzvah of your grandson.
Your interpretations of both incidents in Ta'anis (the incident involving Rebbi Eliezer is on 20a-20b, not 28a) are not the type of interpretation that our sages give, because our sages recognized the need to be careful not to ascribe our own motivations and feelings to the acts of the great Tana'im and Amora'im. There was a much more profound mistake on the part of Rebbi Eliezer than merely not taking into account other people's feelings or stereotyping; Rebbi Eliezer was not one of us, or less tolerant or sensitive than we are. He was a great Torah sage, great in wisdom and great in Midos Tovos, and we have to work very hard to understand the mistake that he made. To ascribe the types of mistakes that we tend to make to such a Torah sage of such a generation is not an accurate resolution to the dilemma.
I think a much more appropriate Gemara to express the lessons that you want to convey is the Gemara that was learned by the Dafyomi world just a few days ago. In Tamid 32a, Alexander the Great attempted to praise the great advantages of being in a position of political power. As we wrote in the Insights there, in the name of the Maharsha, Alexander argued that one should love authority and power so that one can do good for others and win their favor and admiration. The Elders replied that, on the contrary, one who wants to be liked should despise authority and power. The Maharsha explains that even though Alexander seemed justified in his claim that one can utilize power to help people and thereby become popular, the Elders argued that one should stay
far away from a position of authority, because it is impossible to act justly to everyone without harming others.
While you can develop this further, we see from here that the notion of pursuing positions of prestige in authority is a notion of Alexander's, and is not consistent with the Jewish way of truth in loving kindness.
Y. Shaw