THE ETHICS OF AGING
They enacted thus, perhaps somewhat naively, in the hope that repeated public demonstrations of obeisance would convince the lower classes that the authority claimed by the rabbis was legitimately derived from Heaven. A second motivation for restricting honor to the scholarly few was the fear that if the entire aged population were entitled to some expression of regard, the rasha, the malefactor, would have to be accorded public deference, a notion repugnant to the sages and perhaps to many nonsages as well.*
The process by which some of the sages justified their right to deference may be described as exegesis by assonance, the construction of Halakhah on similar sounds occurring in etymologically unrelated words. The author of the eighth chapter of the Book of Proverbs personifies hokhma, Wisdom , and in verse 22 makes her declare:"The Lord acquired me /kunani] as the beginning of His way, the first of His works of old.” The kof nun of the verb kanani are identical with
the final two consonants of the noun zaken. The rabbis took the first consonant of zaken as an abbreviation of zeh,“this one.” Consequently, zaken is to be understood as an acrostic for zeh kana “This one has acquired,” with hokhma, Wisdom , supplied from Proverbs 8:22. So Sifra’ categorically states in the name of R. Jose the Galilean: Ein zaken ella zeh shekanah hokhma:“Only he who has acquired wisdom is[to be reckoned] an elder.”
A different view is also propounded, anonymously, in Si/74: Ein zaken ella hokhma.“Only a sage is[entitled to be called] a zaker According to this teaching, the appellation zaken need not attest to the attainment of a certain age, but instead denotes one who has achieved high competency in Torah , no matter how few or many his years. He is assumed, of course, to have devoted many decades to his studies before he qualified as a scholar/elder. If, in accordance with this view, the title is not conferred as a recognition of advanced age, it follows
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