More on Complex Evaluation: Reflections on Shimon Peres (Column 30)

With God’s help

In the previous column I discussed the complex evaluation of people. I argued there that we should look at the total person, and take his weaknesses as the basis for evaluating his virtues. In spite of the former, he attained the latter. This does not mean that one should excuse a person for every flaw he has, but that the flaws do not prevent us from seeing the virtues, and may even heighten the appreciation due to them (since he attained those virtues despite the flaws). Following the death of Shimon Peres, I thought this would be a good opportunity to practice this idea and sharpen and elaborate it further.

I assume that, upon reading these words, there will be readers who feel uncomfortable, since there is also sharp and piercing criticism of the man here (and, as is well known, there is an ancient ban against speaking ill of the dead). But it seems to me that my words here give voice to the feelings of many. It will not help to hide them and let the sticky gush enveloping us from all sides these days take over the conversation. I therefore thought that I should nevertheless write these things even while the deceased lies before us, and perhaps precisely then, and thereby give voice to the feelings of many, perhaps even channeling them to a more constructive place.

Shimon Peres as a person

I will not repeat his biography here, partly because there is no room here to write an encyclopedia, and partly because lately we have all been fed it morning and night. The man indeed accumulated many merits; he was a man of many deeds and of vision. His personal imprint is on many of the state’s achievements and on its survival (I assume also on some that did not really come from him). On the other hand, who does not remember the indefatigable intriguer (from Rabin’s service notebook), the incessant scheming, the dirty tricks and wheeling and dealing (together with his ill-remembered associate Aryeh Deri), the lies and the subversion. All these made me, like many others from every camp, whether close to or distant from his views, very much dislike this man. True, in recent years he became the champion of peace and underwent rehabilitation and won great affection, and as president he became the lovable and unifying father of us all (except when he didn’t). All this only intensified my feelings of revulsion toward him. As for his moves and conduct in those years as well, it seems to me that no one knows whether this was not simply more dirty, self-interested maneuvering undertaken for status (the Nobel Prize) and for the international and domestic honor that he enjoyed in very great measure already during his lifetime (almost no one has places and institutions named after him while still alive. It seems likely to me that Peres did not protest too vigorously when he heard of this). It is no wonder that Peres is a prime exercise in the complex evaluation of people. As he is being laid to rest, this is a good time to examine whether one can nevertheless see positive sides in him.

On motives and weaknesses

In the previous column I noted that a person’s weaknesses can, and perhaps should, increase our appreciation of his achievements. But that is contingent on the achievements indeed being achievements. A person who has weaknesses and nevertheless strives for greatness and attains genuine achievements certainly deserves appreciation for that. But what about a case in which the achievements themselves were attained out of those weaknesses, that is, out of self-interested motivation? For example, if a person suffers from a pursuit of honor and overcomes it and reaches human and moral achievements, even if he sometimes fails, one should appreciate his achievements and condemn his weaknesses. These are separate matters. But what about a person whose very achievements were produced by his lust for honor and by those very weaknesses themselves? Is there room to appreciate him as well?

This question arises with special force regarding Shimon Peres. In my assessment, many of his achievements (and perhaps all of them) did not stem from pure altruism but from personal motives. This is certainly true of his activity in recent years, which brought him international standing and impressive affection. I assume that the cocktails in international jet-set circles, with substantial budgets and institutes named after him for peace, equality, and brotherhood among nations, were quite pleasant for him. His maneuvering to receive the Nobel Prize together with his two distinguished partners (Rabin and Arafat) is public knowledge. I wonder how much he would have paid to be present at the funeral taking place today together with all the great ones of the earth. What a missed opportunity! Precisely this event he missed. Or perhaps not? Presumably he derives a good deal of satisfaction from seeing this distinguished gathering from above. And what of his impressive persistence – after all the political defeats he somehow managed to suffer (they say he could have lost even an election for the house committee of a villa), he continued his activity and did not give up; he stayed in the game. Is this steadfastness in the mission not worthy of appreciation? On the other hand, does it not itself stem from self-interest and the pursuit of power and honor? Well, enough of a little nastiness that apparently I cannot do without (it seems I too have shortcomings). Just don’t tell me that you yourselves did not think the same thing.

Let us now return to our discussion. A similar question also arises with businesspeople who donate charity with great fanfare. Should they be appreciated for good deeds done from self-interested motives? The same is true of army generals who always tell us that they devoted their lives for our sake, when it is quite clear that many of them did so simply because they wanted a military career, with everything that implies. It is comfortable, lucrative, gives power and influence, esteem and honor, a nice salary for uneducated young men, and financial security after retirement as well. Is it proper to appreciate a person who benefited us out of self-interested motives?

Eliminating two opposing viewpoints: determinism and uncertainty

Determinism. One can reject these things from a pessimistic and deterministic starting point, and say that all of us act this way. From that point of view, there are no altruistic human actions, since all of us act out of self-interested and personal motives.

To this I would say that from such a point of view precisely the opposite conclusion follows. Not the conclusion that the self-interested person should be appreciated, but rather that there is no room to appreciate anyone under any circumstances. True, in a deterministic worldview we too are compelled to appreciate people, but in any case this discussion becomes superfluous. Beyond that, I reject the thesis itself (both determinism and the cynical pessimism that follows from it). A person’s moral action can certainly be done because of his decision to be a moral person and to act in this way, and not out of self-interest. A person’s achievements can be the result of decision and effort, not of a mechanism forced upon him. My claim is that even if not all actions are like this, altruistic actions are at the very least possible.

Uncertainty. One can of course also say that we as human beings have no ability to know when an action is of that kind and when it is self-interested. We have no way of knowing a person’s motives in doing something, and therefore we must not take them into account when we come to evaluate and judge him. From this one can derive the conclusion that we should evaluate a person by his actions and ignore his motives. But it seems to me that this is sanctimony or evasion. True, it is difficult to judge with certainty, and yet we all have assessments. Should we ignore them? This is similar to the bizarre ruling in the laws of slander according to which one may hear and be wary of what one has heard, but may not accept it as true. Seriously? Can one really behave that way? (See below.)

A dispute among the Tannaim

In tractate Shabbat (33b) we find an interesting dispute among the Tannaim on this subject:

Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Yosei, and Rabbi Shimon were sitting together, and Yehuda ben Gerim was sitting with them. Rabbi Yehuda began and said: How fine are the deeds of this nation: they established marketplaces, they established bridges, they established bathhouses. Rabbi Yosei remained silent. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai responded and said: Everything they established, they established only for their own benefit. They established marketplaces—to place prostitutes in them; bathhouses—to pamper themselves in them; bridges—to collect tolls from them. Yehuda ben Gerim went and related their words, and they were heard by the government. They said: Yehuda, who praised, shall be elevated; Yosei, who remained silent, shall be exiled to Tzippori; Shimon, who denounced, shall be killed.

Rabbi Judah opened with gratitude to the Romans for all they had done: they established markets, bathhouses, and bridges, things from which we all benefit. Rabbi Shimon argues that one should not appreciate them for this, since they did it for their own benefit and pleasure (out of self-interested considerations). It is not entirely clear from the passage which of them was right, that is, whether the Talmud itself has a position in this dispute. At least judging by the outcome, it seems that Rabbi Judah’s words were ultimately adopted, and indeed several books state that the duty of gratitude does not depend on motives.[1]

Some see this dispute as an expression of a cluster of several systematic disputes between Rabbi Judah and Rabbi Shimon in the laws of the Sabbath and generally. For example, regarding an unintended act or a labor not needed for its own sake, that is, actions done for a purpose different from the prohibited one (digging a hole on the Sabbath when one needs only the dirt, or dragging a bench on the Sabbath and thereby making a furrow in the ground). Rabbi Shimon does not hold one liable for the furrowing, since for him the intentions are no less important than the act, whereas Rabbi Judah does hold one liable, because he ignores the intentions and relates only to the act. If there is indeed a connection between these disputes, then one should remember that the ruling of Jewish law is specifically in accordance with Rabbi Shimon (except for Maimonides, who in the case of labor not needed for its own sake ruled like Rabbi Judah).

And yet, even if Jewish law does not follow him, one may ask what Rabbi Judah’s reasoning was. Why ignore motives when judging a person’s actions? One might explain this by appeal to gratitude. If someone did something good for us, we owe him gratitude. But it is important to understand that gratitude is not judgment. One can be grateful to a person for the good he did me, and at the same time not appreciate his actions and his personality. See my article here on two kinds of gratitude, and on the connection between it and the effort the benefactor invested for my sake. Perhaps this is the meaning of the midrashim that explain that striking the Nile in Egypt was assigned to Aaron rather than Moses because Moses owed the Nile gratitude. The Nile is inanimate and certainly not a subject of personal and moral judgment regarding the heroic act of rescuing Moses our teacher, and yet gratitude toward it is still obligatory. This is of course a metaphorical midrashic story, but perhaps that itself is the message it comes to express: the separation between the duty of gratitude and personal judgment.

If so, even if we reach the conclusion that Shimon Peres acted out of self-interested motives, he is still certainly worthy of gratitude. But at the same time, this does not mean that we must judge him favorably and appreciate his personality and his actions. And all this is according to Rabbi Judah. According to Rabbi Shimon (!), there is not even any duty of gratitude toward him.

The nature of judging favorably

We saw above that we have no certain way of knowing a person’s motives. We have only assessments, and the question is whether one may rely on them. Some will bring as support the Mishnah in Avot (1:6), Judge every person favorably. (‘judge every person favorably’).[2] It is said in the name of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk that he wondered: if everything that was created has a purpose, why was a crooked mind created in the world? He answered that this was done in order to judge favorably. His assumption is that judging favorably requires interpretive creativity and crooked thinking, that is, a departure from what straight common sense says. However, the commentators on the Mishnah ad loc. (Rabbeinu Yonah and Maimonides and others) explain this differently. There is no obligation whatsoever to act with a crooked mind. To judge favorably means to judge a person honestly, but not to be swept along by the superficial interpretation. One must examine carefully whether what I see or hear about him necessarily expresses something bad, or whether another reasonable interpretation is possible. But if the harsher interpretation is indeed the reasonable one, there is no obligation and no logic in deviating from it. If one sees Mother Teresa chasing an engaged young woman with a drawn knife in her hand, the reasonable interpretation is that the young woman forgot the knife with her and she wants to return it. It is not plausible that Mother Teresa, who is known as a great saint, is chasing her in order to kill her. In this case the interpretation we found is the reasonable one, although it requires a measure of creativity. And perhaps that is also what Rabbi Chaim meant when he spoke of a crooked mind. His intention was to examine all the interpretive possibilities, whose very formulation requires creativity. But the examination should be done with straight thinking.

This may also be the meaning of the instruction I mentioned in the laws of slander: to be wary, but not to accept. It refers to a situation in which there is another possible interpretation, so that we do not know which is correct; then the instruction is that being wary is permitted, but deciding that the bad interpretation is the correct one is forbidden. But if there is only one reasonable and compelling interpretation, then it is also permitted to accept it. A person has a tendency to accept testimony or rumor at face value and in its immediate interpretation, and the Torah expects us to consider other interpretive possibilities before we reach conclusions. If so, even judging favorably will not really tip the scales if in our assessment a person’s actions were done out of self-interested considerations.

Back to complexity

But there is another aspect that we must take into account when judging a person’s motives. A human being is a complex creature, and it is hard to determine that a given act has a single motive. A person can do something out of an entire complex of motives. Therefore, when a person acts from a motive that appears self-interested, and even if we do not suspect that we erred in assessing his motives, we must still take into account that other motives may also be involved here, some of them purer. Sometimes we make use of self-interest and harness it to goals in which we truly believe (and of this it was said: to serve Him with both your inclinations (‘to serve Him with both your inclinations’)). In such a case, clinging to the self-interested interpretation is partial, and as is well known, a half-truth is sometimes worse than a lie. Perhaps this is why a person who acts out of self-interested motives – even if it is likely that these are indeed his motives (and we have no other reasonable interpretation) – can still be judged favorably because of the purer motives that accompanied the interests.

In this context I am fond of the example of a person who becomes religiously observant. His secular friends wonder what crisis he went through, what caused him to take such a foolish step. They raise various possibilities: perhaps he broke up with his girlfriend, or perhaps he is suffering at home? By contrast, his religious friends explain his step by saying that he discovered the supreme light of truth (in the Chazon Ish’s well-known phrasing in his letters). So the secular people are psychologists and the religious people are philosophers. Now let us look at a person who decided to leave religion. His religious friends explain that he wanted to permit forbidden sexual relations to himself, that is, he sought an easy life and momentary pleasures. This time, for some reason, they chose specifically the psychological point of view. And his new secular friends – lo and behold – explain that he finally understood the nonsense in which he had been living and discovered the truth. That is, this time they chose specifically the philosophical point of view.

So who is right? It is quite clear that both sides are right. Every step a person takes can receive an explanation on the psychological plane and also on the philosophical plane. A person who makes a change (certainly if it is a drastic change) sometimes does so because of one psychological crisis or another. But it is still likely that he takes the step in a direction that also seems philosophically justified to him. Even in times of crisis he will not go in directions that seem to him foolish and unfounded. If so, his step has a psychological explanation and at the same time also a philosophical explanation. Of course, every interpreter chooses for himself the interpretation that is convenient from his point of view. One for whom the step taken contradicts his worldview prefers to attribute it to psychological crises, because this saves him from confronting the questions his worldview raises. By contrast, the interpreter for whom the step taken fits his worldview will naturally prefer to interpret it on the philosophical plane. The choice of interpretive plane is self-interested, but both interpretive planes are correct. In parentheses I would note that substantive judgment would do better to focus on the philosophical plane, since we all have psychology and therefore it is not relevant to the discussion. It is better not to flee from dealing with the questions and challenges raised by the one who has left in relation to our worldview, and to examine his claims on the philosophical plane.

The same is true of a person’s actions and achievements. These are done from complex motives, including both interests and values. One can focus one’s gaze on the interests and condemn him, but one can also focus on the more positive and purer side and judge him charitably. Since most human beings operate on both planes, the self-interested and the value plane, when judging them it is preferable to focus on the value plane. As noted, they may even have harnessed their interests for the sake of values. If we do this, perhaps we too will learn to harness our own self-interest for the sake of valuable goals and achievements. In such a situation one can indeed say that the achievement was made out of self-interested considerations and motives, but equally we should not forget that harnessing the interest to that goal was done for reasons of value.

An example: on righteousness, impulse, and creative barrenness

This reminds me that during the period when I taught at the hesder yeshiva in Yeruham, we established a Torah journal for the yeshiva (Meisharim). At first there was no response from students to write articles for the journal, and suddenly I realized that at least some of them were far too righteous. They were afraid of the pride that would enter them when they received respect following the publication of their article. I then gave a talk in the yeshiva and said that in Hebrew ‘inclination’ shares a root with ‘creation,’ and without the use of our inclinations there will be no creativity. I told them that they must harness their evil inclination for positive purposes, not extinguish it. Extinguishing the inclination is extinguishing the person.

It is not for nothing that artistic creators are full of passions, for the one depends on the other. The Talmud tells that the Men of the Great Assembly abolished the sexual impulse (‘the impulse for sexual transgression’) (and idolatry), and then they could not find a hen’s egg anywhere in the whole Land of Israel. Without impulse there is no creativity. Freud already taught us the importance of the sex drive as a fundamental human engine in all areas of our activity. The same is true of the other drives (as other psychological schools maintain, such as honor, the search for meaning, and the like). A human being is driven by his impulses, and the wisdom is not to be overly righteous. One must harness the impulses for the benefit of the goals we have decided are positive. One who tries to be overly righteous and to extinguish his impulses and fight them extinguishes himself as a human being. He will probably get nowhere. The impulse was created not only so that we may overcome it, but also so that we may make use of it. Of this it is said (Ecclesiastes 7:16): Do not be overly righteous, and do not be excessively wise; why should you bring desolation upon yourself? (‘Do not be overly righteous, and do not be overwise; why should you become desolate?’).

I will leave the conclusions for our purposes – and out of respect for the memory of Shimon Peres – to the reader.

[1] However, see Maharsha there, who concluded in accordance with Rabbi Shimon, and even explained that Rabbi Judah said what he said only out of fear of the authorities.

[2] For more on this, see my article here.