A. STANLEY DREYFUS
and the rasha. Views differ with regard to those who belong in each group, and the degree of deference to be accorded z kenim in the lower classes. Furthermore, membership in the Jewish gerontocracy is not an inherited privilege like the kehunnah—though the individual’s genome may make for longevity—but access to ziknah and its perquisites is open to all who choose to pursue wisdom and to make it operative in their lives, who search constantly for moral excellence.
The Aggadah , the nonlegal tradition, aware of the antipathy between scholars and laborers, shows a way of bringing about peace between the contending classes. It reports that the rabbis of Jabneh were in the habit of declaring:“I am a creature of God , and so also is my neighbor. I work in the city and he in the field. I rise early to follow my occupation, and so does he. As he cannot excel in my work, so I cannot excel in his. You may suppose that my work is important, while his is unimportant. We have learned: it matters little at what we labor, be it in the fields or in the academy, provided only that we direct our hearts to Heaven™"
We have surveyed the differences of opinion among the Rabbis as they probed the intent of the injunction in Leviticus 19:32 that mandates special respect for those who have attained seivah or ziknah. Is“respect,” however defined, to be manifested merely in recognition of longevity, or must the recipient be possessed of learning and moral stature as well as advanced years, or even of learning alone, without his having(as yet) attained old age? After an exhaustive analysis of others’ exegesis of our verse, a highly respected modern scholar, R. She’ar-Yashuv Cohen, concludes:“Apparently [italics mine], to rise before a sage is a mitzvah of the Torah , but to extend respect to a zaken[in this context, an unlettered aged person] is only a minhag.” A minhag[custom] is generally reckoned less
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