E very human being wants acceptance and recognition from the people around him always on the lookout for signs from others that he’s valued and appreciated. When you initiate a greeting you show him he counts

Efficiency is the call of the hour and that’s part of the appeal of speed-reading. Purveyors of speed-reading courses offer to teach us to absorb the written word in a fraction of the time we’ve been spending until now. And the more we read the more we’ll know. Armed with more knowledge we’ll surely be more powerful effective influential people.
But will we really know more if we read faster? And does the skill of picking up information quickly improve our capacity for comprehension?
We can actually test this idea by means of a short exercise. Let’s try speed-reading the following sentence:
“Hevei makdim bishlom kol adam” (Pirkei Avos 4:15). A quick reading of that sentence conveys a message that might be rendered in English as “Be the first to say hello to everyone you meet.” It sounds like a nice idea being friendly and all but a groundbreaking principle?
Yet anyone familiar with Pirkei Avos and with the way its Sages conducted their lives will know that they were not simply laying down rules of etiquette. Pirkei Avos is a treasury of spiritual wealth accumulated by its authors through years of toil personal struggle and character cleansing. Every mishnah here encapsulates wisdom gained by long experience. Every statement is a precious kernel a seed that if properly sown and cultivated gives rise to a new view of the world as seen through the eyes of the Sage who strove to reach that vantage point.
Indeed the dictum quoted above seems to be particularly important. For the Gemara says of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai great among the Tannaim who lived at the time of the second churban “that no one was ever more prompt than he to offer a greeting even to a non-Jew in the marketplace” (Brachos 17).
That gemara has always made me stop and think. Is this the best his fellow Sages could say of Rabi Yochanan? Is this the crown on the head of the Tanna who (Succah 28a) “did not neglect Scripture Mishnah Gemara halachos and aggados minutiae of the Torah and minutiae of the scribes kal va’chomer inferences gezeiros shavos the calendrical seasons and gematria”?
And getting back to our previous question what actually is so great about this practice of greeting people? Weren’t we all taught as children “Sweetie say hello to Mommy’s friend”? It seems that we’ll have to resort to slow reading to find the answer to reveal the significance that eludes us on a quick cursory glance.
Let’s go back over Rabi Masia’s dictum this time with deeper focus: “Hevei makdim bishlom kol adam.” It doesn’t instruct us merely to say “shalom ” but to precede others in giving the greeting to take the initiative. The text says “kol adam ” not just your friend colleague or peer (as in the more familiar term “rei’echa”) but every single person.
We know the psychological fact that every human being wants acceptance and recognition from the people around him. We’re always on the lookout for signs from others that they value and appreciate us. We long for their support when we’re troubled and our joy isn’t complete without others to share it with — it’s a basic component of the human psyche dictating a person’s behavior for better or for worse.
In fact the results of a recent study by a researcher at the University of Maryland conducted over a 13-year period with children growing up in European orphanages revealed actual changes in the brain composition of kids who spent their first years in an institution versus those who were assigned to more personal foster care. The researcher explained how infants and young children expect an environment in which they will not only receive food and basic physical needs but also psychological nurturing from adult caregivers and not receiving it can actually shrink regions of the brain’s hippocampus.
As the child grows up that thirst never really leaves him. In every familial social scholastic or professional circle at every stage of life he craves appreciation which is often very slow in coming. His behavior in all of these various arenas is influenced to some extent by this need.
Rav Shlomo Wolbe ztz”l the great mussar personality of our times expounds on this in Alei Shur:
“All human beings look expectantly toward one another. Everyone wants his fellowman to look favorably on him.… A husband has expectations of his wife. He looks forward to her greeting him with a smile when he comes home from work tired and worn out irritated and angry. He expects to get appreciation from her the appreciation that is so often denied to him in the daily fight for survival in the street the office or the factory.
“But his wife too has expectations. She anticipates that her husband should devote a little more of his precious time to her and to their home life that he should pay her some attention rather than start reading the newspaper the moment he comes home or other things of that sort. These are small examples from everyday life. Wouldn’t many marriages be saved if couples knew this one little secret?
“Relations between parents and children are also guided by this same feeling. A parent waits for his child to turn to him with all his concerns and problems. He longs for his children to ask him for the help they need which he will happily give. And likewise the children are waiting for the parent. They look for his understanding of their changing world sometimes bound by the torments of adolescence. They want his encouragement they want him to meet them halfway to disengage from the terribly important matters that occupy him and to give them too some of his precious time.
“These two forces form the basis of human society: one the hunger of every person for the favor of others and two the power of giving the ability in everyone with a human soul to show that favor to others. It operates on all levels of society — between social classes and sects between nations and groups of nations. Look at the relations between people and see how sometimes they live side by side without finding a path of communication. See how they live in bitterness and anger because of the lack of understanding between them. If we seek out the source of the trouble we will see that a person is always waiting for the other to make a move in his direction.…”
“Hevei makdim bishlom kol adam.”
Those are five words that can turn a life around. Words loaded with hope for tikkun on the personal and worldwide levels. They signify a complete change of values a whole new approach. The Talmudic Sage Rabi Masia ben Charash is instructing us to make the first move toward peace. Not to wait for the other to come to us. For taking that first step will inevitably lead the relationship in the desired direction.
That small act of taking the initiative of being makdim shalom has the power to push away barriers of estrangement of bitterness of misunderstanding and hostility. It is the golden key to better relationships to finding a common language to mutual understanding to brotherhood and friendship.
Is it any wonder then that Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai is praised for always being the one to initiate overtures of peace even toward a non-Jew in the marketplace?
The human relationships of a person who makes this a central principle in his life are on a level far above that of externally nice manners.
Understanding and applying Rabi Masia’s words could be life-changing. If we let our imagination run with this idea we can see a beautiful new world unfolding from this quiet turnabout in the heart of each individual. (There’s no need to start a revolutionary movement to bring about this change for revolutions have a way of costing more in bloodshed than their results are worth.) The life lesson of Rabi Masia ben Charash is summed up in his dictum and if one man was able to spread circles of peace around himself then that possibility is open to all of us. (Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 665)