Chapter 12: How To Be Medium

Chapter 12: How To Be Medium

On “The Good Place” Eleanor, Jason, and Janet visit Mindy St. Claire, and on the podcast Jon and Sari discuss many ways of being medium, and how medium relates to isolation, selfishness, and possibility. (But funnier than it sounds!)

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 5:10
There are four qualities among people.
One who says, “What is mine is mine and what is yours is yours” — this is an in-between/medium quality. And some say this is the quality of Sodom.
One who says, “What is mine is yours and what is yours is mine” — an ignoramus.
One who says, “What is mine is yours and what is yours is yours” —devoted/pious.
One who says, “What is mine is mine and what is yours is mine” — evil.

Rabbi Moses Maimonides or “Rambam”
Mishnah Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 3:4
Every person should see oneself the entire year as though perfectly balanced between merit and guilt, and also the entire world as though perfectly balanced between merit and guilt.

If a person does one more wrong, that person tilts the balance personally and tilts the balance for the whole world to the side of guilt...

If a person does one mitzvah, that person tilts the balance personally and tilts the balance for the whole world, all of it, to the side of merit, and saves and rescues both oneself and the whole world.

Bonus seasonal text: Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 8a
The Sages learned: When the first human/Adam saw that the day was getting shorter and shorter, he said, “Woe to me! Perhaps it is because I spoiled, the world becoming dark because of me and is going back to primordial chaos, and this is the death that was sentenced upon me from Heaven!” He resolved to sit for eight days in fasting.

When he saw the winter solstice of Tevet and saw that the day was getting longer and longer, he said, “This is the way of the natural world.” He went and made eight days of festival.

The next year, he made both of them festivals. He established them for the sake of Heaven, and then they [the pagans] established them for idolatry.

Link — Deeper Dive:
Very deep dive: The first rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, Schneur Zalman of Liadi, wrote a whole work about the medium or average person, which has come to be known as Tanya. Here is the first chapter in the original.

Here’s the meme Sari referenced, about the “four children” of the Passover Seder:

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