Make, Acquire, Judge

On Pirkei Avot and Becoming a Life Artist

Here is one of my favorite teachings (it’s about 2,000 years old!):

Joshua ben Perahiah used to say:

1. Make for yourself a teacher, and

2. Acquire for yourself a friend;

3. Judge all people with the scale weighted in their favor.

   — Pirkei Avot 1:6

Joshua ben Perahiah could have picked any three verbs, but he chose “make,” “acquire,” and “judge.” Why?

First, note that these three verbs are all verbs that are attributed to God in both the Bible and Jewish liturgy. God is a maker, an acquirer, and judge. Second, the process from making to judging parallels a full creative process from inception to completion, or, if you will, birth to death.

In the beginning we make; in the middle, we acquire; in the end, we judge.

To put it poetically we might rewrite the advice:

1. Make for yourself a beginning

2. Acquire for yourself a middle

3. Judge all completed works favorably

Making is both the hardest and easiest thing to do. It’s hard, because you’re battling inertia. It’s easy, because there are no strings attached. If you don’t like the thing you’ve made you can just toss it in the bin.

Once you’ve acquired something, you’re committed to it. It’s now a part of you and you it. Acquisition turns the question from “should this exist” to “how can I improve it?” Yet, trying to change completed things is an effort in both futility and madness. Once you’ve given something your all, you have to accept the results.

Joshua ben Perahiah asks us humans to emulate both divine creation and artistic creation. What makes his advice radical is that he applies the advice for creating things to creating and cultivating relationships. Not only that, but he implicitly suggests that the creation of the world is akin to making for oneself a teacher. The metaphor cuts in two unexpected ways. First, God turns the world into God’s teacher. Second, the act of turning someone else into our teacher is likened to world creation. Another radical point in Joshua ben Perahiah’s teaching is that making teachers, like making worlds, is just a beginning. But the test is in how we relate to all people, not just those we esteem.

To judge others with the scale weighted in their favor is a sign not of weakness or gullibility but of creativity. The job of the artist is to make things that are beautiful. But the job of the critic is to find beauty and wisdom even when they are non-obvious. We all start out as artists, makers, doodlers. But in the end the highest level is to make perception itself into an art, to become life-artists.

God starts off as a writer, as it were, but ends up a reader. Good books make good readers, but good readers also make good books.

The theme in all three pieces of advice is—don’t wait for others to impress or help you. The onus is on you to creatively transform and elevate your encounters into sources of insight. The life-cycle of human encounter takes us through the forms of world-building, world-acquiring, and world-discerning. All three require our active, full presence. And that is why the text emphasizes make for yourself, acquire for yourself.