"אל תהי צדיק הרבה" Don't Make Things Up!

"אל תהי צדיק הרבה"

Al Tihiye Tzaddik Harbeh

Don’t Make Up New Laws in The Name of Righteousness!

Rahel Jaskow

This past Shabbat, Parshat Shoftim, at my usual Women’s Shiur/class, I learned the phrase “אל תהי צדיק הרבה.” We discussed what it could possibly mean, especially as there’s another phrase צדק צדק תרדוף, Tzedek Tzedek tirdof, “Justice justice pursue,” which gives the impression that we are supposed to be as just and righteous as possible.

But we’re also supposed to be careful not to add or eliminate Mitzvot, Commandments, and that’s where I think this Tzaddik Harbeh business comes from, adding faux/fake mitzvot.

Yesterday morning on the bus in Jerusalem, a man got up, obviously upset, because a woman and I sat across from him. In response we quickly regrouped and another woman joined us. And as the old Israeli saying goes, “the asimon went in,” I suddenly realized that his running away from us was the proverbial “Tzaddik Harbeh.”

Versions of this true story can be seen all the time on Israeli buses. The Tzaddik Harbeh crowd has forgotten basic Derech Eretz, the mitzvot, commandments between man/woman and fellow man/woman. In their striving to be extra religious/mehadrin, many (most?) males won't look at a woman and end up ignoring the opportunity to assist one, such as in getting up and giving an elderly or pregnant or a lady burdened with packages his seat.

The man who got up from his seat yesterday did not do so graciously, לשם שמיים lishem shamayim, in the Name of Gd as a mitzvah. He looked upset and horrified that we, two middle-aged (plus) women, had invaded "his space." He had placed a bag across from him just to save it from female invaders, such as ourselves.

It is wonderful that so many Chareidi men now volunteer as medics in Israel (and abroad) assisting and saving men, women, religious and not, Jew and non-Jew. Now, the next step will be to do the "little things," the ones that don't make it into the newspaper or tv news headlines. Train males from the youngest age to allow women ahead of them, to give them seats in buses and just be old-fashioned gentlemen.