Within a few short years Hillel himself had succeeded his teachers as the head of this famous school, and also as President of the Synhedrion. Hillel's career is a shining example of the democratic principle which has always prevailed in Jewish life, of the opportunity open to all men of talents, however humble their origin, to achieve position in the republic of Jewish learning. And learning combined with noble character, as in the case of the great Hillel, carried authority in Jewish life. It is true that Hillel was not without letters patent of nobility; though he came from poverty and obscurity and from an alien land, he was, according to tradition, of the blood of David. It is not, however, to this accident of birth, known only later, that Hillel owed his quick rise and supreme eminence in Jewish life, but to his distinguished attainments, to his profound learning not only in the Jewish Law but in many secular fields of knowledge, to his bold and original mind combined with a pious devotion to tradition, to his indomitable energy and industry, his nobility of character, his sympathy with the people and his understanding of their needs.
"What To Thee Is Hateful Do Not Unto Another"
IT was Hillel who first enunciated the Golden Rule, although in negative form. The story that is told in the Talmud is one of the most familiar; yet no repetition can lessen its point and charm. A heathen, it is related, came to Shammai, the leader of a rival school, requesting to be received into Judaism and instructed in the whole of the religion while he stood upon one leg. Shammai, an architect by profession, threatened the heathen with his builder's measuring rod and drove him out. The man went to Hillel with the same request. Hillel, gentle, patient, democratic, received the man hospitably and answered: "The whole of Judaism can be summarized in one short sentence: 'What to thee is hateful do not unto another.' That is the essence of the whole Torah; the rest is commentary."
And in the interpretation of that "commentary" which, together with the Torah itself, enshrined the spirit of Judaism and made it a throbbing reality in the life of the nation, Hillel brought out the humanity of every regulation, the true intent behind it, whenever literal enforcement would have worked hardship or might have defeated its true intent because of the changed circumstances since its enactment. While keeping faithfully within the spirit of Jewish tradition, Hillel struck out into innovations, new precedents and legal institutions, which testified at once to the remarkable insight and boldness of his mind as a jurist and to his tact and sympathy as a leader of the people. Some of his innovations anticipate in a striking way the developments under similar circumstances of the common law of England and the United States many centuries later.
Hillel As A Jurist: His Sense of Social Justice
FOR example, it happened that the first year after Herod's accession was a Sabbatical year, which, according to the Deuteronomic provision (Deut. 15, 2), set up a Statute of Limitations and effectively barred the recovery of all debts. The people, impoverished by the exactions of the Government and by the failure of the harvest, were compelled to have recourse to money lenders. But those who were able to accommodate the needy were reluctant to do so on account of the imminence of the Sabbatical year and its legal bar to the recovery of past debts. Hillel's keen mind and sympathetic heart found a way out of this difficulty. He set up the institution of the Prosbul, by which a creditor received the right, when making a loan, to register the debt in court. In this way the great jurist anticipated in a remarkable manner a principle accepted so many centuries later in the common law of England and America, namely, that the Statute of Limitations does not apply to recorded judgments. Such judgments can always be sued on and recovered. And so the new ordinance established by Hillel removed the hardship of the Biblical enactment, the purpose of which was humanitarian. By Hillel's innovation, the true spirit of that law was maintained, and applied in accordance with its real intent in an age when the economic conditions were vastly different from the time when the law itself was established. Our modern lawyers and reformers in this country may well take a leaf out of this progressive conservatism of our great democratic teacher Hillel.
Other decisions of Hillel equally significant could be cited. To lawyers especially, the study of them is fascinating; they are full of startling relevancy in the present time of unrest and agitation for legal reform in this country. And not without reason. What we are keen for now is a greater measure of social justice in a democratic community. A study of Hillel's jurisprudence—both the theory and the decisions affecting the workaday life of the people—will give one an appreciation not only of the beautiful spirituality of the master, his erudition and his imagination, but the characteristic coalition of letter and spirit, the emphatic sense of social justice, which has prevailed in the whole system of Jewish law.
Hillel's Public Spirit and Humanity
THUS Hillel, while head of his famous school of instruction, became the founder of a school in another sense—a school of interpretation of the Torah. This school, as already indicated, was marked by a leniency and elasticity of interpretation of the traditional law quite in contrast to the harshness and rigidity of the contemporary school of Shammai; it is the school of Hillel, leaning to the spiritual and the humane, that has prevailed ever since in Jewish law. Hillel made the people realize the truth of the famous text about the Torah: "It is a tree of life to them that grasp it, and of them that uphold it, everyone is rendered happy. Its paths are paths of pleasantness and all its ways are peace." Those who have mistakenly conceived the Jewish law as something dour and rigid, unlovable, unspiritual, should study the decisions and dicta of this great master.
Hillel's character is illustrated by a number of pregnant sayings of his that have been recorded in the Talmud. "Do not separate yourself from the community," was one of his characteristic sayings which genuinely expressed his public spirit. His sense of individual and social responsibility is summed up in his three famous questions: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, when?" His peace-loving nature and humanity found voice in his counsel: "Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace, pursuing peace, loving God's creatures and bringing them near to the knowledge of the Law." His disinterestedness, his liberal pursuit of the Law, that is, of knowledge, made him confidently say: "He who aggrandizes his name, his name shall perish. He who does not add to his store of learning and good deeds will suffer diminution. He who does not teach deserves death. He who uses the crown of the Law for selfish needs and personal advancement will be destroyed." Who had a better right than Hillel, graduate of poverty, to warn his contemporaries: "Do not say I shall learn when I will have leisure; perhaps you never will have leisure." And in every case, even when the conduct of a man seems most reprehensible, as when one of his colleagues Menahem left the Synhedrion to take service under the tyrant Herod, Hillel holds to this advice: "Judge not thy neighbor until thou art in his place."