Harry Truman — Ben Azzai’s Kind of Mensch

Harry Truman surely was a mensch,

never creating any White House stench.

Mensch, in case you do not know, means human,

defining in a nutshell Harry Truman.

Explaining his words, “I would give ’em hell,”

he said, “I didn’t give them hell, I just

gave them the truth,” and when he chose to tell

the truth that they thought hell he won their trust.

I don’t know what reward God gave to Truman

for making sure the US was the first

to vote for Israel, deed this great non-Jew man

did uncommanded and quite unrehearsed.

Morley Safer had a segment on David McCullough on “60 Minutes” two days before a presidential election. What the country needs, he implied, is someone like Harry Truman, a man who dealt with problems, preparing to do what was unpopular.

McCullough says: “He told the people the truth—can you imagine? People said; ‘Give them hell!’ I didn’t give them hell. I just told them the truth.”

In “David McCullough, Best-Selling Explorer of America’s Past, Dies at 89,” an obituary of David McCullough by Daniel Lewis in the NYT, 8/8/22, Lewis writes:

He spoke of the founders’ notion of the pursuit of happiness — which, he said, did not mean “long vacations or material possessions or ease.” Rather, he said, “as much as anything it meant the life of the mind and spirit.”

“It meant education,” he added, “and the love of learning, the freedom to think for oneself.”

Personally, he said: “The reward of the work has always been the work itself, and more so the longer I’ve been at it.”

David McCullough’s statement “The reward of the work has always been the work itself” reflects the Rabbis’ statement שכר מצוה מצוח, the reward for a commandment is the performance of the commandment. Avot 4:2 states:

בֶּן עַזַּאי אוֹמֵר, הֱוֵי רָץ לְמִצְוָה קַלָּה כְבַחֲמוּרָה, וּבוֹרֵחַ מִן הָעֲבֵרָה. שֶׁמִּצְוָה גּוֹרֶרֶת מִצְוָה, וַעֲבֵרָה גוֹרֶרֶת עֲבֵרָה. שֶׁשְּׂכַר מִצְוָה, מִצְוָה. וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה, עֲבֵרָה:

Ben Azzai said: Be quick in performing a minor commandment as in the case of a major one, and flee from transgression; For one commandment leads to another commandment, and transgression leads to another transgression; For the reward for performing a commandment is another commandment and the reward for committing a transgression is a transgression.