The second-century Rabbi Tarfon was best known for his practical aphorisms, one of the most famous being: "The work is not upon you to finish; nor are you exempt from trying" (Mishnah, Avo't 2:16).  This lesson appears to discourage urgency, the desperation we often experience around completing something, fixing something, achieving, accomplishing. We would love to just make everything okay in this world, and we suffer severe disappointment in our failure to do so. No matter how many peace protests we attend, no matter how many petitions we sign, no matter how many rallies for this or that or the other...things just don't seem to always change that much, or make a difference. After a while, it gets tiring and we start to wear down, even throw up our arms, stop trying altogether, and automatically delete those pesky emails that beckon us to forward it to others.

And so, Rabbi Tarfon's addage comes along and soothes our dampened spirits with reminding us to cool-out our urgency, our drive to complete, to accomplish -- that the task is not upon us to finish, rather it is upon us to keep trying anyhow. This life is not so much about accomplishment as it is about effort. "In accordance with the degree of the effort," taught Ben Hayhay, one of
Tarfon's contemporaries, "is the degree of the reward" (Mishnah, Avo't 5:22).

What puzzles me regarding Rabbi Tarfon's teaching about stepping back from urgency is his teaching that appears immediately before it: "The day is short, the work is great, the laborers are lazy, the remuneration is magnanimous, and the master of the house is anxious" (Mishnah, Avo't 2:15) -- seemingly a completely opposite teaching from the more laid-back addage that follows it!

Way back in my early days as a yeshiva boy in Jerusalem, I asked one of my teachers, the sagely Rav Efrayim Zeitchik about this.  He gave me one of his warm grandfatherly smiles, stroked his long grey disheveled beard and said: "Timing and context. It's all about timing and context. There is no contradiction. Life is short, there is a lot to do in our short lifetime, and to do this work is richly rewarding. But alas! we grow lazy, tired, worn down from trying and trying and trying and seeing little or no results. And God is urging us on, reminding us that -- and this is Tarfon's next sentence in the Mishnah -- that the work is not upon us to necessarily complete, but neither are we exempt from the work itself, from the effort, from the endeavor."

Good. Fine. That explains the Context part of the equation. What of the Timing factor?

"Timing?" he continued, "timing is everything. The Golden Calf, for instance. David and Bathsheba, for instance."

As was his way, he paused and waited, watching me ponder, waiting for me to remember by his clues the teachings of the ancient rabbis about how the Golden Calf was not such a horrible thing to create. What was wrong about it was the urgency with which we built it, not that we made it altogether. We strayed from the path hurriedly, with urgency (Exodus 32:8 and Deuteronomy 9:16).

It was the urgency in building it that spun us into worshiping it (Exodus 32:8). Otherwise, it was a meaningful enough sculpture --meaningful enough that several of them adorned the sacred sites of the northern kingdom of Israel without incident and absent the wrath of God or anyone else (Second Kings 10:29). Had our ancestors built the Golden Calf like a week or two later, a couple months later, not out of their desperation for a Moses-substitute, it would have been inconsequential (Rabbi Zeitchik in "Toras Hanefesh," (folio 656).

As the third-century Rabbi Shimon bar Chalafta taught: "You set out on a journey, perhaps after the second or third mile you might err in your sense of direction; but certainly not in the first mile! Likewise, did the Holy Blessed One say to our ancestors after they hurriedly built the Golden Calf, 'I would not have expected you to be on the right track in the second cycle of your wanderings, or the third -- but on the first?! I am mystified" (Midrash Exodus Rabbah, Ch. 32).

As for David and Bathsheba, they indeed belonged together, just not right then, not in the bubble of time that was born out of David's urgency, out of his desperation to have her right then and there. Had he waited, she would have become his wife under more legitimate circumstances. After all, Solomon, who was destined to continue the dynasty and build the Holy Temple, and
whose life mission was so divinely ordained that God called him "My son" (Second Samuel 7:14 and First Chronicles 17:13, 22:10, and 28:26) -- was eventually born of the union of David and Bathsheba, but years later, after the tragic incident of their illicit union (Second Samuel 12:24). Had David waited, had he not acted out of urgency, circumstances would have shifted and Bathsheba would have been unmarried and it would have coincided with the actual time of Solomon's time to arrive on earth. As the ancient rabbis put it: "David and Bathsheba were destined for one another from the time of Creation, but alas! David ate raw [Rashi: 'meaning,
he jumped ahead of the destined hour and joined with her illicitly]"  (Talmud, Sanhedrin 107a).

Context and Timing. What a concept.

In the story of David's later warfares, it seems he has indeed learned his lesson. God advises him not to respond to the charging Philistine army until he is given a sign: the branches of the nearby trees will start to shake. The Philistines charge at the Israelites in full force, yelling, screaming, their spears at the ready, aimed right at the hearts of David's warriors who stand firm under his orders, puzzled as to why David was delaying the order to charge. They start complaining to David: "What are we waiting for? We can see the whites of their eyes!" And David says "I am instructed by Adonai not to make a move toward them until I see the branches of the trees begin to shake; and if we attack them before that time, we will surely die. Rather let us die as righteous beings than we die in disobedience to God. So let you and I lift our eyes toward the Holy Blessed One."  In that moment, the branches of the trees began to shake, the Israelites attacked
and the victory was theirs (Second Samuel 5:23-25; and Midrash Yalkot Shimo'nee on Second Samuel, No. 142).

These ancient lessons clearly advise us to not jump the gun, to work at being patient with what comes at us, with what we study or experience and cannot in the moment understand -- to wait, to let a little time pass before rendering judgment, before jumping to hurried conclusions, before worrying. In so doing, we may stand a far better chance at achieving that which seems to elude us the most: Clarity.

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