After Binyamin HaTzadik and the Kamtza story, a new section on character and humility opens. It starts with a man who did not get angry where anger was the obvious thing.
Driven Out With a Rod
A man went to the academies of Hillel and Shammai in turn. He came with a condition. Teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.
He went to Shammai first. Shammai took it as a rude demand and drove him out with the builder’s rod he was holding.
What Hillel Said
When the man went to Hillel, Hillel accepted him.
דַּעֲלָךְ סְנֵי לְחַבְרָךְ לָא תַּעֲבֵיד (da’alach sanei lechavrach la ta’avid) What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary. Go and learn it. (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a, translated directly)
Inside the time a man can stand on one foot, he had his answer.
There Were Two More
Two other men came to the same academies.
One said he would not accept the Oral Torah. Shammai drove him out. Hillel took him in and showed him, step by step, why the written and the oral are needed together.
The other said he would convert only on condition of being made High Priest. Shammai drove him out. Hillel took him in and taught him that even King David could not perform priestly work without the standing for it.
The Day the Three Met Again
Years later the three men found themselves in one place.
They said this.
“Shammai’s impatience sought to drive us out of the world. Hillel’s patience brought us under the wings of Heaven.” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a, translated directly)
What Separated Them
There was nothing strange about Shammai’s reaction. Answering a rude demand that way is the natural thing.
What Hillel did differently was to look not at the form of the demand but at what the person in front of him actually wanted. None of the three asked in a normal way. Hillel answered the question inside the asking every time.
Today, in Front of a Rude Request
Requests arrive roughly thrown. Someone attaches a condition, or the tone is not kind, or the whole thing looks unreasonable.
Respond to the form alone and you are driving people off with a rod, as Shammai did. Whether you will look past the form to the real question is a choice that has to be made again each time.