The Carpenter’s Assistant

Recently I have been thinking about a story I heard almost three decades back, and how the moral of this story should inform our behavior today. I have not found the story anywhere in writing. The late Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Abraham Shapira, heard the story from a person who witnessed what happened, and he told it my rabbi, who told it to me.

One of the most prominent rabbinic icons of the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century was Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan. Kagan was renowned not only for his scholarship, but for his exemplary interpersonal behavior and humility. He shied away from any formal office or appointment. Instead he and his wife ran a modest grocery store in the small Lithuanian town of Radin (now Radun, Belarus).

A portrait of Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan

The story occurred towards the end of the great man’s life, in the early 1930s when he was in his nineties. He had heard that Radin’s carpenter’s assistant had died, and he informed his household that he would be attending the funeral. He asked them to find out when the funeral was, and let him know, as he did not want to miss it.

The members of his household were perplexed. Why on earth would one of the greatest rabbis of Europe attend the funeral of one of the simple workmen of Radin? They felt that this was not a good use of the rabbi’s time, and that he should conserve his strength. They, therefore, neglected to inform him of the time of the funeral, and instead let it come and go, hoping the rabbi would just forget about the whole thing.

Eventually, the rabbi found out that he had missed the funeral, and he became terribly upset. Try as they could, the members of his household could not mollify him. They became so worried that they called on Radin’s official town rabbi, to come and speak to him. The town rabbi said, “Rabbi Israel, I don’t understand why you are so upset. The deceased was just the carpenter’s assistant!”

The great man reacted as if he had been struck by lightning. He grabbed the lapels of the town rabbi’s jacket, and said, “You don’t understand! This man’s wife became an invalid, and could not care for herself, at all. He lovingly cared for her, feeding her, dressing her, tending to her every need, for twenty-two years, until she died. Not once did he complain or say a cross word to her or anyone else about this. Do you realize the level of godliness this man reached, through this saintly behavior? I was so looking forward to the great privilege of honoring this righteous man, by attending his funeral. Now, I will never get the chance to do so!” The town’s rabbi continued to try to console Rabbi Israel, but to no avail.

The building which housed the academy founded by Rabbi Israel, at 29 Sowiecka St.

I was wondering why I had been thinking of this story lately. Then it hit me. We, today, act just like the other characters in the story. We judge people by how they seem to us outwardly. We judge the rich to be worthier than the poor. We judge those who have had great luck and fortune in life to be, literally, worth more than those who have had bad luck. We judge those who have reached high office or professional prominence to be more important than those who merely toil in the shadows in jobs we regard as lesser.

What the great rabbi teaches us, more than eighty years after his death, is, quite simply, that we need to stop doing that. A person’s worth, worthiness and importance are, well, far too important to be based on such superficial things. The true worth of a human being is to be found in how they act, how much they give of themselves, and how much they sacrifice for others. And just like in the case of the carpenter’s assistant, we often have no idea what greatness hides behind the façade of a seemingly simple person.

Stop Shaming and Blaming the Poor

I found this recent article on Slate tremendously edifying: The Church of Self-Help, by Helaine Olen. She really hits the nail on its head in that many of us attribute our success to our hard work, with not an ounce of luck thrown in. Now, that is definitely delusional, but probably does not hurt anyone aside from ourselves.

However, many of us take it a step further, and assume that the poor are where they are not because of circumstances or luck or other factors beyond their control. Oh, no. Since anyone in the good ‘ol U.S. of A can pull him or herself up by their bootstraps, the poor must be lazy and morally deficient. It is their fault that they are in the situation they are in. Of course, the “great” thing about this conclusion is that we don’t really need to, nay shouldn’t help those down on their luck. They don’t deserve it. It will only exacerbate their moral and financial failure.

How any of us, especially following the economic crisis of 2008 can still hold on to this view is mind-boggling! Two good reads that clarify this in a really clear way are Hand to Mouth and the Wealth of the Poor.

By the way, here is an interesting aside for fans of the Hebrew Bible:

In a way this is analogous to the Book of Job. It is very human of us to want to explain away everything in way that lets us feel comfortable. Job’s friends tell him that if indeed he has suffered all of the tragedies that have beset him, it must be because he has sinned to God. Job, on the other hand, says he has not. Just because bad things have happened to him, does not mean he did anything wrong. After many days of arguing, so goes the biblical story, God appears, says Job is right (and says a bunch of other things too), and commands the friends to repent and ask for Job’s forgiveness. Just because bad stuff happened does not mean it was his fault. QED. No wonder the Talmudic Rabbis state that this book was written by Moses himself…