Bahya Steps Forward

Last week, I invited readers to join me in peering through the mist to catch a glimpse of King Kohelet stepping up to take his place on the debaters’ stage amidst the top dozen people vying for the Democratic nomination and then to join me in imagining what he might have had to say if he had been there in person and not merely as a figment of our collective imagination. I tried to come up with several distinct lessons he might well have wished to teach, but all turned out to be variations on the same theme: that humility is the surest sign of wisdom and that, therefore, the least qualified leader or would-be leader will almost always be the individual the most of sure of him or herself, the proudest of his or her accomplishments, and the most certain that no one could possibly know more or do better than him- or herself. And then, life occasionally actually imitating art, I opened the newspaper the other day and found myself reading about a scientific study published just last summer in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Research that detailed the latest thinking on degree to which humility is not merely a virtue (like patience or generosity) but rather a critical personality trait that truly mentally healthy people cannot do without. (The original journal article has to be purchased—and for an exorbitant $35—to be read on- or off-line, but to see the New York Times article by Benedict Carey about the journal piece, click here.)

It makes sense too: in a world of highly polarized attitudes towards everything, people possessed of the kind of humility highlighted in the study turned out to be less dogmatic, less judgmental, less aggressive, and less likely to fall prey to what the author calls ideological or political polarization. They’re also less likely to fail in their committed relationships—which only makes sense given the need for compromise in such relationships. Perhaps even more to the point, the study found that the humble among us are more likely to have the psychological resources “to shake off grudges, suffer fools patiently, and forgive” themselves for inadvertent missteps or errors of judgment. In that regard, I can also recommend a very interesting essay by Peter Wehner that came out in 2017 (click here) about the worth of humility from a spiritual point of view. (Wehner writes specifically in Christian terms, but Jewish readers will find his views very resonant and highly applicable to themselves.)

I have my own odd relationship with the concept. One of my own culture heroes, although not one I’ve written much about in this space, lived in Spain a cool thousand years ago in the first half of the eleventh century. And, as the author of the first Jewish book devoted solely to ethics and ethical issues, he deserves to be far more famous than he actually is. There are a few reasons for this. First, my guy, Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda, is regularly confused—including by people who should certainly know better—with Bahya ben Asher ibn Halawa, who lived about two and a half centuries later, and who became known as one of the greatest biblical commentators of his day. So maybe it was inevitable that the two Bahya’s would get confused with each other, but it’s a shame that that happens: Bahya ben Asher was insightful, creative, and intelligent, but Bahya ibn Pakuda was one of the handful of true greats: a giant in terms of his incisive intellect, his ability to synthesize diverse material, his literary ability…and the humility he brought to his writing desk even when working on a book that he could not possibly have imagined readers a millennium later still considering novel, interesting, and not even slightly stale. And then there’s the matter of language: Bahya wrote not even in regular Arabic or in Hebrew, but in Judeo-Arabic, the specific dialect of Arabic spoken by the Jews of Spain during what we in our day have taken to reference as the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry. So that means his book is read today in its original language by more or less no one at all.

When I first began to read Jewish classics, I was still in college. And in my junior year, which I slightly unexpectedly spent in France studying Hebrew, I found myself in a class devoted to reading the 1950 French-language translation by André Chouraqui. After a few weeks, I was completely in his thrall. To say that Bahya became my only friend that year is to exaggerate. (I wasn’t that lonely.) But he was a real (if spectral) presence in my life that year…and a very supportive one at that. I don’t know where other people read Bahya, but I read him each night before bed. And I carried his book around with me too, pausing to read a few paragraphs whenever the opportunity presented itself. What can I say? Friends hang out together! (Maybe I really was that lonely.)

It was from Bahya that I learned about humility as something to be cultivated and sought after. In the sixth chapter of his book, which is wholly concerned with the topic, he writes that “one should always show humility toward others and divest oneself of all pride for the sake of showing honor to God, casting off all sense of loftiness, all arrogance and self-importance…both in private and in the midst of a crowd.” And then he goes on to explain how Scripture makes a point of requiring this particularly of people in leadership positions. And now we get to my point for the week.

Aaron, for example, was the High Priest of all Israel—but he was not above cleaning the ashes off the altar each morning and delivering them to the dump personally as a way of reminding himself to avoid haughtiness and arrogance. Similarly, the Bible reports that when the Holy Ark was finally brought into the City of David, King David himself offered up the burnt-offerings and danced in the street to remind himself that, when all was said and done, he was just as unworthy to sit on the throne of Israel as any other mortal would also have been.

And then Bahya goes on to describe the true leader specifically in terms of the degree to which such a person successfully cultivates a sense of natural humility, speaking as little as possible, declining ever to pontificate in public, always avoiding vulgar language, never behaving in a tawdry, tasteless, or crude way in front of others, and instantly intervening when someone is being treated unjustly. True leaders, he goes on, always seek to avoid public praise and never pass up an opportunity to own up to their own moral or ethical errors. “Such people,” Bahya writes, “never blame the ones who blame them (for having done things that they did in fact do), nor would they ever be angry with whomever uncovered the misdeed in question. On the contrary, the true leaders will always say to an accuser, ‘O my friend, what is this evil act of mine that you know of in comparison to those of which you are ignorant and which have been concealed by God for my sake for such a long time? Were my deeds and sins known to you, you would run away….” That, Bahya says, is what it means to embrace humility as a personal virtue...and to qualify as a national leader.

What would our American landscape be like if the people vying for political office were to take these words to heart—actively seeking forgiveness for past missteps, owning up to an inability to know with certainty where any chosen path will eventually lead, openly admitting ignorance and shortsightedness, and actively—and vigorously—seeking the counsel of the wise when decisions have to be made instead of relying solely on an inflated sense of their own ability magically to know the unknowable? I can answer that question myself: a lot more appealing and a lot healthier than the endless contest we now endure to see which candidate or would-be candidate can speak with more brazen certainty about the future, can be more disdainful of his or her rivals’ points of view and opinions, and who can be as little self-effacing as possible in an attempt to convince the undecided voter to choose him or her as our nation’s next leader.

Bahya’s book is almost a full thousand years old. Its author has been gone from the world for almost that long. His precise dates are unknown, as is the site of his grave and the details of his personal life—whom he married, how many children he had, what became of them, etc. He is hardly known to the non-Jewish world at all, but even within the world of Jewish letters there are only very few who can say that they have read his book from beginning to end even once, let alone many times. If only our would-be leaders were among them!