Avos 4:18

בס׳ד

אבות ד:יח

Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar says: Don’t appease your friend in his moment of rage; And don’t comfort him when his dead lies before him; And don’t ask questions at the moment he takes a vow; And don’t try to see him in his moment of shame.

רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן אֶלְעָזָר אוֹמֵר, אַל תְּרַצֶּה אֶת חֲבֵרְךָ בִשְׁעַת כַּעֲסוֹ, וְאַל תְּנַחֲמֶנּוּ בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁמֵּתוֹ מֻטָּל לְפָנָיו, וְאַל תִּשְׁאַל לוֹ בִשְׁעַת נִדְרוֹ, וְאַל תִּשְׁתַּדֵּל לִרְאוֹתוֹ בִשְׁעַת קַלְקָלָתוֹ:

This teaching is transmitted in Avos d’Rabbi Noson (A, 29) with three important differences.  First of all, there Rabbi Shimon ascribes the teaching to his own master, Rabbi Meir.  Second, instead of cautioning a person against comforting a friend whose “dead lies before him”, the other version tells us not to comfort a friend “in the time of his mourning”.  Finally, in Avos d’Rabbi Noson, there is a fifth teaching that is not preserved in our versions of Avos: “Do not visit a friend in his home on the day of his misfortune”.

        Most meforshim recognize Rabbi Shimon’s teaching as practical advice teaching us to refrain from making bad situations even worse for the person suffering severe emotional upset.  Part of wisdom is knowing when to speak as well as when to refrain from speaking. Let’s explore more carefully what’s at stake in each situation.

        Our immediate impulse might be to calm a friend down when he’s flying into a rage.  After all, as the Arizal, Rabbi Yitzhak Luria, teaches at the very beginning of his hanhagos, “while other transgressions injure only a single limb of the body, the quality of anger injures the soul in its entirety, altering its character completely. When a person loses his temper, his holy soul deserts him altogether, and in its place a spirit of evil enters.”  Shouldn’t we, then, rush to appease someone overpowered by rage?  The problem is that this kind of intervention can often increase the heat of anger because it introduces even more conflict into the enraged person’s mind. Sometimes, the wiser path is to let the anger pass until its cause can be explored more calmly.

        Rabbi Shimon’s second point, about not comforting a person prior to the burial of a loved one, is not just advice: it is, in fact, a halakhah. Between the time a loved one dies and the time of the burial, the survivors are exempt from all positive mitzvahs, such as davening, saying berakhos, and so forth.  Even the laws of mourning do not yet apply to them.  Just as their beloved dead, but not yet returned to the Earth, they are in the world and out of the world at the same time.  In a mysterious way they are like living dead people.  Their lives do not begin again until the burial, when the life-giving power of mitzvahs is restored to them and they begin the process of avelus, mourning, that ultimately restores them to a full engagement with the world.  For this reason, we do not suffer them the comfort of the phrase: haMakom yenachem eskhem besokh shaar avelei Tziyon v’Yerushalayim until after the burial, during the week of Shivah.  From this perspective, our mishnah’s version of this teaching is better than the one found in Avos d’Rabbi Noson, which would withhold comfort during the entire period of avelus!

        Rabbi Shimon’s teaching about vows presupposes that, in a basic way, it is better not to take a vow in the first place.  Halakhically speaking, a neder is a verbal promise to deny yourself pleasure from another person or thing, or to deny another person any pleasure from yourself.  Tractate Nedarim discusses many of these in which a husband or wife spitefully denies a spouse all benefit from him or her, or promises never to benefit from her or him.  The problem is that the vow is sealed with the Holy Name.  It can be undone only before an official Bes Din. Taking a vow, therefore, always places you at risk of taking the Holy Name in vain should you break the vow without proper annulment.  Better to avoid the vow in the first place.

        But what happens if a person makes a vow without fully understanding the consequences?  There is a terrible story in the Book of Shoftim about Yiftakh who, on his way home from a victory, carelessly vowed to sacrifice ti HaShem the first thing to emerge from the door of his house.  He wound up sacrificing his own daughter who had rushed out of the house to greet him.  All right - this is an extreme example.  The point, though, is that we should not only be careful in making vows.  But once someone makes a vow, we should not immediately look for grounds for annulling it.  In the heat of the moment, a person who makes a vow in anger might reject our efforts to look for reasons to annul and he might become even more insistent on keeping a harmful vow.  As with the enraged person, it’s better to let the moment pass.  Perhaps later the vower will be willing to reconsider and go to the Bes Din with grounds for annulling the vow.

        Rabbi Shimon’s final word on shame is surely easy to understand.  A person exposed to shame wants above all things to shrink from view and be alone. Chasing him or her into that corner of shame will only expose them to more pain and suffering.  It is better to let your friend regain some sense of dignity and self-possession.  Better, even, to not mention the shameful experience unless and until your friend brings it up as something that is alright to discuss.

        Avos d’Rabbi Noson’s additional teaching on not visiting a person on the day of his misfortune is similar in spirit.  When a person has suffered a severe tragedy, it is sometimes better to wait for them to reach out rather than to rush in with jumbles of words.  Better to find out what the suffering person needs BEFORE we project onto them our own needs to feel like we can help.

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