Knowing Your Place

“Who is wise?” ask our sages. “A person who knows their place.” (Avot 6:6) This isn’t the only answer to be found in Pirke Avot. Other answers include, “Someone who learns from everyone” and “A person who foresees the consequences of their actions.” But for me these days, knowing your place feels timely.

Why? Because too often it seems people’s energies seep into settings where they have no business being. If you’d like me, you don’t really want to know the voting patterns of the person who cuts your hair. Any more than you need the geopolitics of your dentist. Or the opinions of America-at-250 of your automechanic. You want them to be good at what they do. Sure, you care that they’re a good person. But the way you can tell if they’re capable and trustworthy has little to do with their ideological aptitudes. 

A friend likes to advise: stay in your lane. As the sages counsel, you’re better off not swerving too far into arenas where you lack fuller awareness and deeper familiarity. This doesn’t mean you can’t feel passionately about lots of things you don’t specialize in. It just means to recall the difference between what you specialize in and what you don’t. 

This week’s portion of Torah applies this distinction to a whole generation’s coming to recognize its place. The Spies fail. They turn what should have been an 11-day journey from Mt. Sinai to the Promised Land into a 40-year wilderness wandering. Yet, mere verses after their fate is announced, God tells them about a series of laws by opening: “After you enter the land.” (Num. 15:2). Yes, you read that right. But the application doesn’t apply to them. The wilderness is their dead end. It applies to their children who will occupy themselves with land and state-craft. 

Know your place (ha-makir et m’komo). May the clarity you bring to being wise in this way, point you forward and encourage those around you to flourish in kind.