Chapter 39: Who Could Be A Friend? (Season 3 Finale)
On the final episode of Season 3 of The Good Place, Tahani encounters John the gossip columnist, and Eleanor leans on the group as Chidi decides he needs to erase his memories of her when Simone arrives in the new experiment. On the podcast, Elliot Goldberg and Jon Spira-Savett return to the theme of friendship – through their experiences as “architects” in schools and camp, and revisiting a Talmudic-era teaching about what friends do for each other’s life and moral development.
Texts
(Go to Jewish Lexicon on this site for more on Jewish terminology, names of texts and other background. The links here in the citations take you to the specific quotes in their full contexts.)
Mishnah Pirkei Avot 1:6
Yehoshua ben Perachia says: Make for yourself a rabbi/teacher, acquire for yourself a friend, and judge each person with the benefit of the doubt/with a finger on the scale of positive judgment.
Avot D’Rabbi Natan 8:1 (slightly different edition than quoted on the podcast)
“Acquire for yourself a friend” How? This teaches that one acquires a person as a friend for themselves when they eat with them and drink with them and study with them. When you learn Torah when they learn Torah and Mishnah when they learn Mishnah and then sleep when they sleep. And when one shares in the mystery with them: those of Torah and those of the world.
When friends like these learn Torah together, if one of them errs in a matter of halacha (Jewish law) or becomes confused in the order of their learning or if they pronounce the impure as pure or the pure as impure of the forbidden as permitted or the permitted as forbidden: one friend will bring the other back. And from where do we learn that when one friend brings the other back and studies with them again there is a good reward for all their toils? As it is written:“Two are better than one; they have a good reward for all their toil (Ecclesiastes/Kohelet 4:9).”
From the covenant of a mystical Jewish fellowship in Jerusalem in the 18th century (published in a chapter by Lawrence Fine, “Mystical Fellowship”
First, we the undersigned, twelve of us…. agree to love one another with great love of soul and body, all for the purpose of giving satisfaction to our Creator through our single-minded association, although we are separated. Each man’s soul will be bound to that of his associate so that the twelve of us will be as one man greatly to be admired… The main principle is that each of us will correct his associated when, God forbid, he hears of any wrong the latter has committed…. each one of us will endeavor, both in this world and in the next, to save, perfect and elevate the soul of each one of our circle to the best of his ability, and with every kind of effort to do everything possible for the others’ eternal bliss.
Each of us agrees to save his associate in the event it has been decreed in heaven, God forbid, that one of us should receive the goodness that belongs to his neighbor…
Each of us resolves to help, encourage and give support to his associate, helping him to do teshuvah, criticizing him and participating in his tribulations, whether in this world or in the next, and all in the ways of faithfulness and even more so.
… We further take upon ourselves the obligation never to reveal to any creature that we have resolved to do these things…
Links and Deeper Dives:
Course coming up in December 2022 at the Shalom Hartman Institute with Rabbi Gordon Tucker, Three Aspects of an Ethic of Friendship (free of charge — register here)
Learn more about Elliot and Jon on our Hosts page!
