By George E. Johnson
In his autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me, Marlon Brando writes extensively about the significant role Jews played in his personal growth during the 1940s. He concludes his tribute to Jews and Judaism by attempting to encapsulate the essence of what makes Jews unique with a single word: sechel. Brando explains, “There’s a Yiddish word, sechel, that provides a key to understanding the most profound aspects of Jewish culture. It means to pursue knowledge and to leave the world a better place than when you entered it… It must be this cultural tradition that explains their remarkable success, along with Judaism, the enduring constant that survived despite the dispersion of Jews around the world.” With these words, Brando delves into the deep-rooted meanings of the word sechel, a word as ancient as the Jewish people themselves, playing a crucial role in the moral and cultural fabric of Jewish life.
Sechel is a term found in both Hebrew and Yiddish, with the Hebrew meanings integrated into Yiddish. Pronounced as sekhel in Modern/Israeli Hebrew and seykhel in Yiddish, it can signify intelligence, smarts, reasoning, common sense, cleverness, or wisdom. The authoritative Eben Shoshan Hebrew Dictionary defines sechel as “the spiritual ability to think, to evaluate, the capacity to judge and come to a resolution.” Michael Swirsky, an educator and Hebrew texts translator based in Israel, differentiates sechel from other Hebrew words for wisdom, like chochma, explaining it as “a trait, akin to IQ or good judgment, that one possesses inherently.” He further elaborates that chochma, binah, and da’at are skills or talents that may take a lifetime to acquire, unlike sechel.
Deeply embedded in Yiddish proverbs, sechel is generally regarded as a desirable quality. Examples of such proverbs include: “With a horse, you look at the teeth; with a person, you look at their sechel,” or “For money, you can acquire everything except sechel,” and “Seek advice from everyone, but act based on your own sechel.” However, it can also be used in a subtly negative context. In his book, Just Say Nu: Yiddish for Every Occasion When English Just Won’t Do, Michael Wex highlights the plethora of expressions in Yiddish to describe individuals deemed less intelligent than the speaker, such as “She has as many brains (saykhl) as a church has mezuzahs!”
While contemporary usage of sechel may not fully reflect its serious moral and ethical implications in religious texts, the word and its related forms like maskil and l’haskil appear over a hundred times in the Bible. The term sechel first appears in Genesis, when Eve mentions that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is “desirable as a means to wisdom [l’haskil].” This introduction in the Bible conveys the moral lesson that wisdom can be used for both good and evil, a theme reiterated in subsequent Jewish texts. Biblical references to sechel foreshadow its modern interpretation as “common sense” tied to action. Examples include Jacob’s strategic maneuver to bless Ephraim and Avigail’s wise actions to appease King David.
The root of haskalah, the Hebrew term for enlightenment, is sechel. This term is associated with the 18th- and 19th-century movement that introduced European Jewry to secular ideas and society. Traditional religious leaders viewed sechel and its derivatives negatively, linking them to apostasy. However, contemporary interpretations have evolved, shedding the negative connotations once associated with sechel. Despite its diminishing usage, some individuals still find sechel relevant in various contexts, even beyond the Jewish community.
Although sechel has not gained widespread usage in English compared to other Yiddish terms like mensch or chutzpah, its principal meanings of common sense and wisdom are effectively conveyed in English. Contemporary Jewish studies professor Sarah Bunin Benor suggests that the decline in the use of sechel among Jews in interactions with non-Jews may contribute to its lack of integration into the English lexicon. Regardless, many believe that the world could benefit from a dose of sechel, irrespective of the language in which it is expressed.
In the words of Yiddish scholar and Harvard professor Ruth Wisse, “Three things always come too late—wisdom [sechel], regret, and the fire brigade.”
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