Talmud Class: Local Imperfect Peace Part 2: Mipnei Darchei Shalom (Being Nice to Promote Peace)

Last week we encountered one kind of “imperfect peace,” to use the term coined by our teacher, Sara Labaton of Hartman: shalom bayit, domestic harmony, made possible by a lack of transparency in a marriage. We read the ruling of Ovadia Yosef that a wife not disclose the fact of her abortion before she had met her husband so that their marriage could continue.

This week we encounter another complicated rabbinic category of imperfect peace: mipnei darchei shalom, the things we do for the sake of peace. Tomorrow morning we will encounter the Talmudic teaching that encourages Jews to be nice to gentiles: to bury their dead, to visit their sick, and to provide financial support to their poor, for the sake of peaceful relations. Is that transactional or relational? Is that practical or admirable? Is that aspirational or calculated? We will compare the Talmudic teachings of mipnei darchei shalom to Donniel Hartman’s most frequently taught text about a person who does the right thing just because it is the right thing to do, without calculating any benefit, and in fact losing out financially by doing so.

Is local peace, whether transactional or relational, an adequate response to a world on fire?