I'm starting a new category for tracking down specific citations of wrongly or incompletely attributed quotes. This is the first post, based on a previous post from my microblog Short Thoughts.
Do not be daunted
by the enormity
of the world's grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated
to complete the work,
but neither are you free
to abandon it.
This lovely, lovely, passage is commonly attributed merely to "The Talmud." When I first wrote about its origins, I (carelessly) took Goodreads' word at face value, and attributed this English language version to the scholar Annesley William Streane (1844-1915).
Shame on me -- it's not his.
The passage, as we will see, is a loose translation/interpolation of a verse at the end of Chapter II of Pirkei Avot, a collection of sayings and maxims from the ancient Jewish rabbis. As far as I can tell, Streane never translated or wrote extensively on the Pirkei Avot. He did translate the Chagigah, another treatise from the Talmud, and in the introduction to that work he mentions the 1877 translation Pirqe Aboth, or Sayings of the Jewish Fathers by Charles Taylor.
Taylor's translation of Chapter II, verse 19 The verse numbering differs across different versions of the Pirkei Avot. runs as follows (the bolding is mine):
R. Tarphon said, The day is short, and the task is great, and the workmen are sluggish, and the reward is much, and the Master of the house is urgent. He said, It is not for thee to finish the work, nor art thou free to desist therefrom; if thou hast learned much Thorah, they give thee much reward; and faithful is the Master of thy work, who will pay thee the reward of thy work, and know that the recompence of the reward of the righteous is for the time to come.
The text is said to be a commentary on Micah 6:8. Here's the King James' Bible version of the relevant verse: I selected the King James version simply because that's the English-language version of the Bible at sacred-texts.com.
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
And these together give us the quote that I started with. But who is it from? It appears to be a slightly jumbled version of the passage II:20 from Wisdom of the Jewish Sages: A Modern Reading of the Pirke Avot (Bell Tower, New York, 1993), by Rabbi Rami Shapiro. You can borrow read and the text at the Open Library, with an account, but I'll give you the whole passage, here.
Rabbi Tarfon would say:
You are not obligated to complete the work,
but neither are you free to abandon it.
Do not be daunted
by the enormity of the world's grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
If you attend to Reality,
you will receive great reward;
for effort itself is good fortune.
Reality can be trusted
to pay you the value of your work;
every deed has a consequence.
And know this---
the payment of the righteous is tranquillity:
knowing that "this, too, shall pass."
Who first presented the opening two sections reversed? Well, that presentation appears as the epigram to Chapter 7 of Moving Beyond Individualism in Pastoral Care and Counseling (2010), by Barbara J. McClure, on page 235. Since she correctly attributes the passage, and also calls it "paraphrased," one might guess that she originated the version that is now most commonly quoted. This is just a supposition, but it's also as deep as I care to dig.
What's more puzzling to me is: how on Earth did Annesley William Streane's name get attached to the quote? It's not uncommon for memeable quotes to detach from their authors, and re-attach to some plausible, more famous, person. But Streane isn't exactly famous--he doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.
I guess to be fair, attributing the quote to "The Talmud" isn't wrong; just incomplete. I'm also sorry that I helped to propagate an inaccuracy with my original attribution. This post is my way of making up for it, to the extent that I can.
And as I said the first time around: whoever said it, it's a beautiful passage.