One of the most enduring Torah lessons I ever learned came from a 19-year-old college student named Joey. He was interviewing for a campus “engagement” (i.e. outreach) internship when I was the Hillel rabbi at Northwestern. As part of the interview, we asked the applicants to read Hillel’s famous three questions (in English) and comment on them: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? When I am for myself, what am I? And, if not now, when?”
It was Joey’s response to the third question that stuck with me the most. I had always read that question as a Jewish version of carpe diem—seize the day, which my generation learned from Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. But Joey looked at the text, paused, and said: “Yeah, if now’s not the right time, you really gotta know when the right time is.”
It was a total 180, completely changing my understanding: Life isn’t always about seizing the moment; it’s also about recognizing what the moment is, and what it needs from us. To this day it remains one of the most beautiful moments of Torah learning I can remember.
Ever since, I have found that I often have two voices in my head. One says, “Do it now, why wait?” But another reminds me of Joey, saying, “Now may not be the right moment. Pause and consider.” A paradox, not unlike the two slips of paper that Reb Simcha Bunim taught us to carry in our pockets: one that says, “the world was created for me,” and the other that reads, “I am but dust and ashes.”
We can find a parallel dialectic in two comments on Parashat Tazria-Metzora.
While on its face this double-portion deals with the ritual laws surrounding skin diseases and impurities in the walls of the home, the Midrashic tradition has long read them as instructing us about the ethics of speech. Rabbi Jacob Kranz, the Maggid of Dubnow (1741–1804), illustrates this approach in a comment on Leviticus 14:2, the opening verse of Metzora:
“‘And the afflicted person shall be brought to the Priest.’ People treat lashon hara (evil speech) lightly because they do not know the severity of the matter or the crushing power of the mouth. They do not know how to evaluate the negative influence of evil speech. People think: ‘What have I done? I only uttered a sound from my mouth; these are just mere words.’ Therefore, ‘that person shall be brought to the Priest’ so they may see that the speech of the Priest decides their fate, for better or for worse. By the Priest’s utterance of ‘Pure,’ the person becomes pure; by saying ‘Impure,’ they become impure. From this, the person will learn to value the immense power within speech for both good and evil—’Life and death are in the power of the tongue.'”
In the Maggid’s reading, the point of the procedures outlined in the Torah is to teach us humility. Why do we engage in lashon hara, mindless speech, in the first place? Because we aren’t sufficiently humble, and thus we don’t recognize the damage our words can do. By submitting to the word of the Priest, who will pronounce the person pure or impure, the Torah teaches us to remember the power of speech and treat it with the proper care and respect.
Yet we find a different, seemingly contradictory, understanding from Rabbi Meir Simcha HaKohen Dvinsk (1843-1926) in his commentary Meshekh Chokhma. For him, the lesson here is not only about teaching humility but also reminding us that each situation has its own context, and that one rule should not necessarily apply in all situations. Here is what he says:
“‘And the Priest shall see the affliction… and the Priest shall see the afflicted person…’ Why the repetition? One can say that this speaks of two types of perception: ‘The Priest shall see the affliction’: This is according to its plain meaning—that he should look at the affliction to see if it contains signs of impurity, such as white hair and so on. ‘And he shall see the afflicted person’: There is another type of ‘seeing,’ or perception, regarding whether it is appropriate to declare the person impure, which is not connected to the affliction itself but rather to the person and the timing. For example: A newlywed is given all seven days of the wedding feast [before being inspected]. Similarly, on a Festival, a person is given all the days of the festival so as not to disturb their joy. The ways of the Torah are ‘ways of pleasantness’ (Proverbs 3:17), and this second ‘seeing’ refers to the Priest truly perceiving the person—their quality and situation—to determine if the timing and circumstances make it appropriate to declare them impure.”
While these are two divergent readings, they share an emphasis on mindful awareness of our speech. The Maggid of Dubnow invites us to be aware of the power of even the smallest speech acts, words we think are meaningless, and recognize the power they hold. If nothing else, the words we tell ourselves have the power to shape our experience of the world—and that’s before we get to how they can affect others. In many ways the Meshekh Chokhma is saying something similar: the Priest has enormous power in his hands. With his words he will create a ritual and social reality for the afflicted person. Thus, he is exhorted to be mindful before speaking, and to truly perceive the situation of the person before him.
Which brings us back to Hillel’s “If not now, when?” A core mindfulness teaching, of course, is that we can only know the present moment. That could lead us to a kind of carpe diem (or, in more contemporary parlance, YOLO) orientation. Yet mindfulness also counsels us to be fully present in the moment we’re living in. That requires taking the time to really perceive and understand the context in which the present moment is occurring. On the deepest levels, the discipline of spiritual practice is about living both of these truths simultaneously.
For Reflection & Conversation
- If you had to put yourself on a spectrum between “seize the day” (1) and “wait for the right moment,” (5) where would you put yourself? When, if ever, have you wished you were more one or the other?
- As you think about your life right now in the world that we live in, how might you want to strengthen either or both ends of this spectrum for yourself?