Unsplash Max Kukurudziak
Much of the Talmudic material we have about infamous anti-hero Elisha ben Abuyah is an attempt to understand why he left Rabbinic Judaism, what he did that was so bad, and how he came to be known as Acher, the ‘other’.
Acher ‘cuts down the shoots’ in the Four Entered Pardes story (BT Chagigah 14b; PT Chagigah 2:1). Several passages riff on this, speculating that he killed children, or he wanted to kill children, or he killed their joy in learning Torah (BT Chagigah 15b; PT Chagigah 2:1). In another version of his wickedness he uprooted (עקר) a radish on Shabbat and presented to a sex-worker, who noted he was something ‘other’ than Elisha ben Abuyah (BT Chagigah 15a). In yet another version of wickedness, he read ספרי מינים, heretical books (BT Chagigah 15b). What exactly that heresy was is still up for debate. In a frustrating sea of narrative gaps and Talmudic and scholarly speculation, we can perhaps hold to only one close-to-certainty about Elisha, or Acher – he left, and he did not return.
The grief of rejection is central to Elisha’s continued presence in the Talmudim. This is evident especially in Chagigah 2:1 of the Palestinian Talmud. In this possibly earliest version of the tale, Elisha’s former student Meir encounters Elisha three times, each encounter a snapshot of Meir’s unresolved grief and loss.
In the first encounter Elisha, on a horse not a donkey, rides by Meir’s study hall on Shabbat. Meir comes out and follows Elisha on foot up to the Sabbath boundary. As they go, they speak to each other in Hebrew and Aramaic. Elisha asks Meir what he has been teaching, and Meir takes the opportunity to proselytise through passages from Job and Qohelet. Meir’s interpretation of each passage exhorts Elisha to return to Rabbinic Judaism. Elisha twice responds in Aramaic, ‘Woe to the one who is lost (אבד) and not found (שׁכח)’, then counters Meir’s drash with teachings from Rabbi Akiva.
Beneath this unsubtle exchange they are having a second, related conversation on the pain of loss. In his drash on Qohelet’s ‘Better is the end of a thing than its beginning’, Meir speaks in Hebrew, using the Hebrew shoresh for ‘forget’, שׁכח. He has picked up on Elisha’s use of שׁכח, which in Aramaic means ‘find’, and uses it with both meanings. What has been forgotten (Torah) can be remembered; what is lost (Elisha) can be found. When Elisha next responds with his refrain, ‘Woe to the one who is lost and not found’, his use of the Aramaic שׁכח holds the same dual resonance. The statement is not only a playful ribbing of Meir’s lack of exegetical skill. It also comes to mean, ‘Woe to the one who is lost and not forgotten’. Woe to the person who is gone for good, but those they leave behind cannot accept it. Meir’s attempts to draw him back cause Elisha pain. Meir shows he understands the subtext by trying once more to respond, this time drawing in the shoresh אבד, pairing it with שׁכח. Elisha puts an end to this: דייך מאיר! Enough Meir!
In the second encounter Meir inflicts further pain on Elisha, now on his sick bed. He greets Elisha by repeating what he last asked, ‘Is there no turning (חזר) in you?’ Elisha’s reply is no doubt difficult to understand, and there is great subtlety in Elisha’s statement and in Meir’s response. Elisha asks, ‘And if turning (חזרין), receiving (מתקבלין)?’ While for Meir it is Elisha alone who must turn, Elisha broadens the turning to the plural, and the receiving to the Aramaic Itpael, a reciprocal receiving. In his response to this, Meir reduces the turning again to the singular (תשׁב) and denies the possibility of mutuality (מקבלין). Elisha cannot return to a community that is unwilling to turn to receive him. Meir’s insistence that it is Elisha alone who must change so pains Elisha that he dies in tears.
When, in the third encounter, Elisha’s grave burns with אשׁ מן השׁמים, the fire from heaven, Meir doesn’t recognise this as the same fire burning on the day of Elisha’s circumcision. On that day, Rabbis Eliezer and Joshua drew down this fire from heaven, representing Torah, simchah, and divine approbation. Meir however misinterprets the fire and performs a desperate act of redemption, taking on the role of Boaz to Elisha’s Ruth. It is profound, moving, exegetically advanced, and wholly unnecessary. Through it, Meir snuffs out Elisha’s fire.
It isn’t difficult to draw comparisons between Meir’s behaviour and our own responses when we feel we or our values are rejected. In the first snapshot, though Elisha says his decision is final, Meir attempts to convince him it is not. In the second snapshot, Meir states that while Elisha has done something wrong and bad, Meir, or the community, is innocent of any part in the relationship’s failure. In the final snapshot, Meir positions himself as righteous saviour to the unfortunate Elisha. These three snapshots of grief take us from the external behaviour (please, say you’re sorry and come back), to the underlying reasoning (you have done something wrong, but I have not), to the core belief (you are fundamentally wrong in your person and in your actions).
It’s no surprise then that in this version of the Elisha story it is Meir who addends the term ‘Acher’ to Elisha’s name. ‘One saves Elisha Acher (אלישׁע אחר)’, he says, ‘by the merit of his Torah’. Meir introduces the notion that a sage’s Torah is separable from their actions. Yet elsewhere a sage’s Torah is not just inseparable from their actions, their actions are Torah (BT Berakhot 28a, 62a). Elisha’s movement away from his group of origin, whatever the cause for that move, and his unwillingness to return to a community that is unwilling to return to him, is Torah from the heart of heaven. Meir, in the sting of rejection, could not comprehend that.