What are names for?

The Talmud and commentators on Tanach have a great deal to say about the meaning of a person’s name, the significance of divine and human-generated name changes and whether a name reveals one’s character. But, for most of us, we choose names for more mundane reasons. Perhaps they honour or recall the memory of a friend, a family member or a spiritual leader. Or maybe we pick them because we like the sound of them. Whatever the motive, we use names so that we can identify one another. Failure to tell one person’s name from another—in this instance Kamtza and Bar Kamtza—is  famously described in the Talmud (Gittin 55b to 56c) as the incident that ultimately led to the destruction of the Second Temple.

There are two elements to a person’s name: what the name is, and what a person is actually called by others. Two Tannaim in Avot 4:1-3, Shimon ben Zoma and Shimon ben Azzai, are known only as Ben Zoma and Ben Azzai. Why?

The commentary on Avot that is ascribed to Rashi offers two reasons. First, that they both died young and were therefore referred to only by their fathers’ names. Secondly, they had not yet received semichah, rabbinic ordination and had thus to be referred to only by their fathers’ names.  The Bartenura agrees with these explanations. 

Neither of the explanations offered above would seem to compel the use of the father’s name alone. One might have thought that it was all the more important to preserve a person’s memory by citing his name in full if he had died young; further, if the son only taught what he had learned from his father, the mishnayot should be learned in the father’s full name (e.g. Zoma ben Ploni), not the son’s.  In any event, another Shimon who is known only by his father’s name, but who is not said to have died young, is Shimon ben Nanos, a distinguished contemporary of Rabbi Akiva. I do not think that it is anywhere suggested that he had not received semichah. We might also consider, regarding lack of semichah, that this factor would have disentitled a Torah scholar from being called ‘Rabbi’, but why jettison his forename?

Not all commentators accept that Ben Zoma and Ben Azzai died young. The Tashbetz and the Maharal both assert that they had long lives. Since the Talmud later describes each of them by their full name, they conclude that it was only the want of semichah at the time when they taught their mishnayot that resulted in the suspension of the use of their forenames. Ben Zoma is however mentioned as “Rabbi Shimon ben Zoma” in the mishnah and gemara at Chullin 83a and Ben Azzai is “Rabbi Shimon ben Azzai” in a mishnah (Yadayim 3:5) and in the gemara (Yevamot 49a-b).

There may be another, simpler explanation of why these two Tannaim are known only by their father’s names, an explanation that applies to Ben Nanos too. Shimon was the most popular name among Tannaim. The Jewish Encyclopaedia lists no fewer than 33 of them, including Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (known simply in Avot as ‘Rabbi Shimon’) and the various Shimons who were descended from Hillel the Elder. Many of us have experienced Shimon-confusion at one time or another. If at least some of them are given another handle by which they may be called, the likelihood of confusion diminishes.  

It is important for us to know the names of our teachers, and this importance goes beyond the realm of good manners. The baraita at Avot 6:6 lists the citation of one’s learning in the name of the person who first said it as one of the 48 means of acquiring Torah and then adds:

הָא לָמַֽדְתָּ, כָּל הָאוֹמֵר דָּבָר בְּשֵׁם אוֹמְרוֹ, מֵבִיא גְאֻלָּה לָעוֹלָם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וַתֹּֽאמֶר אֶסְתֵּר לַמֶּֽלֶךְ בְּשֵׁם מָרְדְּכָי

This is what we have learned: One who says something in the name of its speaker brings redemption to the world, as it states: "And Esther told the king in the name of Mordechai."

This baraita cites Esther 2:22, a pivotal verse in the Megillah which opens a narrative that ultimately leads to the king’s Jewish subjects being spared the fate that Haman had in store for them. Esther cites her trusted source, and the rest of the story shows how God manipulates events without the need to reveal His presence.  Is this not an incentive to us to make at least an effort to quote our sources in full?

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When it's fatal to forget

Sometimes we find a teaching that is expressed in terms so menacing that we heave a sigh of relief on discovering that the situation is by no means as grave as we first thought. Avot 3:10 contains one such teaching, promulgated by Rabbi Dostai beRabbi Yannai in the name of Rabbi Meir:

כָּל הַשּׁוֹכֵֽחַ דָּבָר אֶחָד מִמִּשְׁנָתוֹ, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: רַק הִשָּֽׁמֶר לְךָ וּשְׁמֹר נַפְשְׁךָ מְאֹד פֶּן תִּשְׁכַּח אֶת הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר רָאוּ עֵינֶֽיךָ. יָכוֹל אֲפִילוּ תָּקְפָה עָלָיו מִשְׁנָתוֹ, תַּלְמוּד לוֹמַר: וּפֶן יָסֽוּרוּ מִלְּבָבְךָ כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּֽיךָ, הָא אֵינוֹ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ עַד שֶׁיֵּשֵׁב וִיסִירֵם מִלִּבּוֹ

When a person forgets even a single word of his learning, the Torah considers it as if he had forfeited his life. As it states: "Only be careful, and guard your soul with care, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen". One might think that this applies also to one who [forgets because] his studies proved too difficult for him; so the verse tells us "and lest they be removed from your heart, throughout the days of your life." Thus one does not forfeit his life unless he sits down and removes them from his heart.

I would guess that there is not a single reader of this piece who would not consider him- or herself well protected by the get-out clause which Rabbi Dostai infers from Devarim 4:9. Our studies may be too difficult to retain because we couldn’t understand them in the first place, or maybe we were distracted other things happening in our lives and it was too hard for us to concentrate on them. Or again, we may have planned to have another go at learning something that was beyond us, but it was too hard for us to make time to do so because of competing priorities. And so forth. Rabbi Meir would have been quite prepared for us to justify the time we spend in not mastering Torah, for it is he who teaches (at Avot 4:12):

אִם בָּטַֽלְתָּ מִן הַתּוֹרָה, יֶשׁ לָךְ בְּטֵלִים הַרְבֵּה כְּנֶגְדָּךְ

If you neglect the Torah, you will have many excuses to give yourself

Rabbi Dostai, speaking to his own generation, is clearly pressing budding Torah scholars to be as diligent as humanly possible in absorbing, recalling and understanding their learning. It can be learned as one of a pair of mishnayot that address the same issue, the other being Rabbi Yehudah’s teaching at Avot 4:16:

הֱוֵי זָהִיר בְּתַלְמוּד, שֶׁשִּׁגְגַת תַּלְמוּד עוֹלָה זָדוֹן

Be careful with your studies, for an error of learning is tantamount to a willful transgression.

Commentators like the Me’iri take a firm line with anyone who does not retain his learning. For him, “sitting down and removing” his learning means no more than spending time on “inessential temporal needs”—a category of activities that may have been quite small in his lifetime but which must surely be vast in an era in which the leisure and entertainment industries claim so much of our attention and money.

But how should we read and understand Rabbi Dostai’s mishnah today, when the vast majority of practising Jews enjoy their learning and are generally quite committed to it in one form or another—but would never claim to be aspiring Torah scholars of the sort that we encounter in the pages of the Talmud? Some take just a hard line as the Rishonim. Thus Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka (Chapters of the Sages) views one as putting one’s soul on the line even if one has remembered one’s learning but has not internalised it. Gila Ross (Living Beautifully) applies this mishnah to anyone whose learning is lost through laziness or indifference. Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of the Fathers) relocates the teaching in the realm of chassidut: one’s life is forfeited not for forgetting one thing but for forgetting the one thing—God, who is One.

I rather like an explanation of this mishnah given by Rabbi Yosef Shaul Nathanson (author of the Sho’el uMeshiv), brought by Rabbi Asher Weiss in his commentary on Avot. Rabbi Natanson picks up on the word מִמִּשְׁנָתוֹ (mimishnato, “of his learning”) and asserts that what a Torah scholar is commanded not to forget is his own learning, i.e. his own original ideas and novellae: he should write them down so that they should not be lost or forgotten. After all, if a Torah scholar forgets a halachah or devar Torah that other scholars know, it may be lost to him but it will not be lost to Jewish scholarship as a whole. But if he forgets something that only he knows, that item of knowledge may be irreplaceable—and it is that which incurs the notional penalty of death.

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Material wealth, human needs: when does a luxury become a necessity?

Some mishnayot in Avot generate never-ending and ever-inconclusive arguments which, in the great and noble tradition of “how long is a piece of string?”, are by their very nature simply incapable of being resolved. A classic example is found in an extract taken from Avot 2:2 where Rabban Gamliel, son of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, teaches:

יָפֶה תַּלְמוּד תּוֹרָה עִם דֶּֽרֶךְ אֶֽרֶץ, שֶׁיְּגִיעַת שְׁנֵיהֶם מַשְׁכַּֽחַת עָוֹן, וְכָל תּוֹרָה שֶׁאֵין עִמָּהּ מְלָאכָה סוֹפָהּ בְּטֵלָה וְגוֹרֶֽרֶת עָוֹן

Torah study is good together with derech eretz [usually translated here as a job or occupation], for the exertion of them both makes sin forgotten. All Torah study that is not joined with work will cease in the end, and leads to sin.

While the length of a piece of string has just one variable, without which its length cannot be determined, Rabban Gamliel’s teaching consists of almost nothing but variables: what constitutes Torah study, what the ambiguous term derech eretz means in this context, the quantification of the relative portions of Torah and derech eretz that produce the result, not to mention the parameters of sin. Does “sin” for this purpose encompass the transgression of the Torah’s prohibitions alone or does it embrace also the failure to fulfil positive commandments, and is “sin” defined solely by legal parameters or does the concept also include a failure to live up to the standards set by the middot, the good ethical and behavioural qualities that are articulated in Pirkei Avot itself?

Rabbi Yaakov Hillel renders derech eretz as “earning a living”—a term that we understand well today but which can’t help being a variable because our material demands are not objectively determined but vary as between communities, families and individuals. This variation is recognised outside Avot, in the context of charity. Rambam (Mishneh Torah, hilchot Matanot le’Aniyim 7:3) explains:

לְפִי מַה שֶּׁחָסֵר הֶעָנִי אַתָּה מְצֻוֶּה לִתֵּן לוֹ. אִם אֵין לוֹ כְּסוּת מְכַסִּים אוֹתוֹ. אִם אֵין לוֹ כְּלֵי בַּיִת קוֹנִין לוֹ. אִם אֵין לוֹ אִשָּׁה מַשִּׂיאִין אוֹתוֹ. וְאִם הָיְתָה אִשָּׁה מַשִּׂיאִין אוֹתָהּ לְאִישׁ. אֲפִלּוּ הָיָה דַּרְכּוֹ שֶׁל זֶה הֶעָנִי לִרְכֹּב עַל הַסּוּס וְעֶבֶד רָץ לְפָנָיו וְהֶעֱנִי וְיָרַד מִנְּכָסָיו קוֹנִין לוֹ סוּס לִרְכֹּב עָלָיו וְעֶבֶד לָרוּץ לְפָנָיו שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר דֵּי מַחְסֹרוֹ אֲשֶׁר יֶחְסַר לוֹ. וּמְצֻוֶּה אַתָּה לְהַשְׁלִים חֶסְרוֹנוֹ וְאֵין אַתָּה מְצֻוֶּה לְעַשְּׁרוֹ

We are commanded to give a poor person according to what he lacks. If he lacks clothes, we should clothe him. If he lacks household utensils, we should purchase them for him. If he is unmarried, we should help him marry. And for an unmarried woman, we should find a husband for her. Even if the personal habit of this poor person was to ride on a horse and to have a servant run before him and then he became impoverished and lost his wealth, we should buy a horse for him to ride and a servant to run before him, providing him with enough to[fill the lack that he feels. You are commanded to fill his lack, but you are not obligated to enrich him.

Within Avot, our rabbis challenge us to find the right balance in our daily lives between learning Torah and earning a living. A baraita at Avot 6:4 advocates living a life of poverty and physical hardship, subsisting on a diet of bread and salt and sleeping on the ground while engaging solely with Torah. But, taken at face value, Rabban Gamliel’s strong recommendation that one blend Torah learning with a day job seems far more in accord with modern expectations and propensities.

What does Rabbi Yaakov Hillel himself say (Eternal Ethics of the Fathers, Avot 2:2)? His words are instructive. After giving the now routine warning about the dangers of rampant materialism and soaring expectations, he writes:

…We are here for Torah, not for money. We cannot ignore the need to pay the bills, but we must keep our priorities in good order.

As with every decision we make, we need to be aware of exaggerating in either direction. In our times, if a family’s life is very difficult and very deprived, the wife may find it unbearable and reach the brink of collapse.... The children may turn away from Torah altogether … Our generation is not up to handling too much suffering, and we cannot live differently from everyone around us …

This is a remarkable concession to reality, on the part of one of the strictest and most unyielding modern commentators on Avot. We find here both an indication that, while the values of Pirkei Avot have not changed, people have, and a recognition of the power exerted by peer pressure in the modern world.

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Canadian canaries in the coalmine

“Should Canadian Jews still be reciting the prayer for the government?” is a provocative opinion piece in the Toronto Sun by Jonathan L. Milevsky, a Toronto-based teacher and author.

In short, Dr Milevsky recently met Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, chief Rabbi of the UK, and asked him whether Canadian Jews should still recite a prayer for the current Canadian government, given its inaction while synagogues are being vandalized, Jewish schools and institutions targeted and harassed, with Jews no longer feeling safe even in Jewish neighborhoods. As Rabbi Mirvis reminded him, at Avot 3:2 Rabbi Chanina segan HaKohanim teaches:

הֱוֵי מִתְפַּלֵּל בִּשְׁלוֹמָהּ שֶׁל מַלְכוּת, שֶׁאִלְמָלֵא מוֹרָאָהּ, אִישׁ אֶת רֵעֵֽהוּ חַיִּים בְּלָעוֹ

Pray for the integrity of the government for, if it were not for the fear of its authority, a man would swallow his neighbour alive.

Dr Milevsky goes on to question whether this applies to Canada today:

“Rabbi Mirvis did not mention the first source for the prayer, which is the prophet Jeremiah’s letter to the Babylonians, as recorded in Jeremiah chapter 29. In this letter, Jeremiah instructs the Jews to seek the welfare of Babylon, the city of their captors.

In Canada, like so many other democratic countries, Jews have had very little reason to reconsider this ancient practice. If Jews said a prayer for the Czar, as my late 19th century prayer book indicates, certainly they should do so for a democratic country such as Canada. Several generations of Canadian Jews speak so proudly of their heritage … [b]ut Jews are not being treated as they use to be. And the government is not what it used to be either.

…Rabbi Mirvis referred to the basis for both these sources, an almost Hobbesian social contract, in which we hand over our rights to the government in return for protection. But the argument to stop the prayer is that this government no longer meets the criteria for the prayer. The reasons are as follows:

The passage in Jeremiah, which serves as our first source, makes it clear that the benefit of seeking the city’s welfare is ultimately the safety of Jews – the words are, “for in its welfare, you will find your welfare.” However, the current policies of this Canadian government, including backing anti-Israel resolutions of the UN, have served to undermine the safety of Jews. More troubling is that Canadian forces stand by as those calling for worldwide intifada and dressing up as Yahya Sinwar are allowed to roam the streets.

The aforementioned mishnah, which is the second source, grounds the practice in the safety of society, and that may not apply in these circumstances. As the 16th century sage Obadia of Bertinoro states, it is fear of the government that promotes peace. But there is arguably no fear of this government. On the contrary, this government has stood by as Jews are themselves intimidated.

The Spanish 13th century sage, Rabbi Jonah of Gerondi, writes that the mishnah expresses the idea that Jews are concerned not only with themselves but with society as a whole. Seen in this way, there are two obstacles to continuing the prayer: it is not only that the government fails to do enough to protect Jews, but also that a society that does not protect Jews is likely to itself be subject to persecution. 

For over eighty years, the expression that has given voice to this fear is “the Jews are the canary in the coalmine” when it comes to the safety of minorities and religious freedom. As the eternal outsider, Jews represent how society can turn on its own. In this way, the ultimate purpose of the prayer is undermined as well.

Rabbi Mirvis categorically rejected my argument, arguing the prayer is for stability rather than a particular figure. Rabbi Mirvis’ view is reminiscent of the opinion of 18th-19th century rabbi Israel Lipschitz, who explained the mishnah in question does not mention a specific ruler but the government as a whole. Here we return to the notion of the social contract. As Canadian Jews, we wonder if this government is keeping its side of the bargain.

This point is put into sharp relief when we consider the fact that, by Canadian law, guards of houses of worship cannot be armed. It is likely because of this provision that synagogues in Canada have been shot at, defaced and vandalized.

Thus, it is fair to suggest that the social contract is fraying here in Canada. And as time goes on, and more Jews recognize the hatred this government has allowed to flourish, I wonder if it will soon be time to raise this question again?”

Until very recently Canada was a country that was widely regarded as a “safe space” in which Jews could practise their religion and live a Jewish lifestyle without threat or hindrance. It has come as a shock to most of us to see how rapidly the situation has changed. Even so, it seems to me that this opinion piece is unfounded.

In the first place, there are many discussions of this mishnah and they are far from unanimous in their explanation of its meaning and its practical implementation. I wonder why Dr Milevsky opted for Rabbenu Yonah’s brief comment, which appears to be directed solely at the need to pray for global peace and says nothing about domestic government and its deficiencies. Secondly, we can question the relevance of the passage in Jeremiah, which the mishnah does not regard as a source (as Rabbi Meir Shapiro and Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein note). Additionally, Rabbi Chanina was himself living at a time of chaos, when the Romans stood by and watched while Jews were engaged in devastating internecine warfare and did nothing to protect the civilian population—but he still taught that one should pray for the welfare of the government.

The failure of the Canadian government to protect its Jewish citizens adequately cannot be ignored or condoned. But if we do not pray for God to guide it with wisdom and understanding, what are our alternatives? Praying for a government is not a sort of metaphysical reward for good performance. Surely, do we not pray because it is our interest that God listens to our prayers and answers them?

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For earlier Avot Today posts on this mishnah and the problems of praying for failing or inadequate governments, see the following:

Syria After Assad: a question for Avot https://www.facebook.com/groups/avottoday/posts/1030442092176018/

Prayer for the Welfare of a Bad Government https://www.facebook.com/groups/avottoday/posts/298131372073764/

Prayer for the Welfare of Whose Government?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/avottoday/posts/980694073817487/

On the March with Pirkei Avot

https://www.facebook.com/groups/avottoday/posts/802574111629485/

In praise of the ego?

The fourth chapter of the tractate of Avot features two mishnayot that address the same subject: humility. At Avot 4:4 Rabbi Levitas of Yavneh teaches:

מְאֹד מְאֹד הֱוֵי שְׁפַל רֽוּחַ, שֶׁתִּקְוַת אֱנוֹשׁ רִמָּה

Be very, very humble, for the hope of man is the worm.

Later, at Avot 4:12, Rabbi Meir teaches:

הֱוֵי מְמַעֵט בְּעֵֽסֶק וַעֲסוֹק בַּתּוֹרָה, וֶהֱוֵי שְׁפַל רֽוּחַ בִּפְנֵי כָל אָדָם, וְאִם בָּטַֽלְתָּ מִן הַתּוֹרָה, יֶשׁ לָךְ בְּטֵלִים הַרְבֵּה כְּנֶגְדָּךְ, וְאִם עָמַֽלְתָּ בַּתּוֹרָה הַרְבֵּה, יֶשׁ שָׂכָר הַרְבֵּה לִתֶּן לָךְ

Engage minimally in business and occupy yourself with Torah. Be humble before every man. If you neglect the Torah, you will have many excuses for yourself; if you toil much in Torah, there is much reward to give to you.

Two obvious questions to ask here are (i) why do we need two mishnayot to teach the same point—that we should be humble—and (ii) why does Rabbi Levitas impress upon us the need to be very, very humble while Rabbi Meir is content to caution us only with regard to ‘entry level’ humility?

We could seek to strengthen the first question by suggesting that there is actually no difference between “humble” and “very, very humble”, humility being by definition the absence of ga’avah, pride or arrogance. If one possesses any degree of ga’avah, even a small amount, one is not humble. Rambam’s seminal discussion of the quality of humility (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot De’ot 2:3) does not however support this answer: by maintaining that one should go to the opposite extreme from pride and arrogance rather than adopt a midway path between pride and humility, he recognises the existence of a gradated form of humility.

However, even assuming that there is no difference between the types of humility posited by Rabbi Levitas and Rabbi Meir, we can still appreciate why both teachings are needed. By citing man’s aspiration as being no more loftier than the worms that will consume his body after his death, Rabbi Levitas is referring to man’s humility before God, who gives life and takes it away—and whose love extends to all His creatures, including the worms that will consume us all. Rabbi Meir however refers to a different focus: that of humankind towards one another. Though we may spend our lives comparing ourselves with others and consider ourselves more important than many of them, we should scale down our self-assessment and realise how little, in the great scheme of things, we are really worth.

Turning to the second question, I found a thought-provoking observation by Rabbi Norman Lamm in Foundation of Faith, a collection of Avot-related perspectives edited by his son-in-law Rabbi Mark Dratch. This observation builds neatly on our answer to the first question:

“[W]hereas R. Levitas argues that in effect man has no reason to assert an ego, R. Meir acknowledges the existence of the ego and its legitimacy. Man possesses self-worth despite death. For R. Levitas, humility is a metaphysical judgement based upon man’s physical condition: since he will physically disintegrate, he has no metaphysical self worthy of esteem. R. Levitas thus negates the ego. For R. Meir, however, humility is an ethical-social obligation. R, Meir affirms the ego, with limitations. Finally, while R. Levitas is absolute in his denial of the ego, R. Meir urges that it be limited only “bifnei kola dam, before every man”., that is, man should not manifest arrogance in his human relations. He should seek out the ways in which to convince himself of the worth of his fellow man, even the superiority of his neighbor over himself, but he need not deny his self-worth”.

Rabbi Lamm goes on to examine the practical significance of this distinction in greater detail. There is something anachronistic in his explanation, in that the use of terms such as ‘ego’ and ‘self-worth’ would have been unfamiliar to Rabbis Levitas and Meir. Having said that, if we accept Rabbi Lamm’s explanation here, we must also accept that the two Tannaim had an understanding of the human psyche that was deep enough to embrace the concepts that lie beneath these modern labels.

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The truth about eyes

Let’s start the new calendar year on a positive note. At Avot 2:13 Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai tells his top talmidim to take to the streets, as it were, and see for themselves which approach to life is the most preferable. This is how they respond:

רַבִּי אֱלִיעֶֽזֶר אוֹמֵר: עַֽיִן טוֹבָה. רַבִּי יְהוֹשֻֽׁעַ אוֹמֵר: חָבֵר טוֹב. רַבִּי יוֹסֵי אוֹמֵר: שָׁכֵן טוֹב. רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן אוֹמֵר: הָרוֹאֶה אֶת הַנּוֹלָד. רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר אוֹמֵר: לֵב טוֹב. אָמַר לָהֶם: רוֹאֶה אֲנִי אֶת דִּבְרֵי אֶלְעָזָר בֶּן עֲרָךְ מִדִּבְרֵיכֶם, שֶׁבִּכְלַל דְּבָרָיו דִּבְרֵיכֶם

Rabbi Eliezer says: A good eye. Rabbi Yehoshua says: A good friend. Rabbi Yose says: A good neighbour. Rabbi Shimon says: To see what is born [out of one’s actions]. Rabbi Elazar says: A good heart. [Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai] said to them: I prefer the words of Elazar ben Arach to yours, for his words include all of yours.

Rabbi Eliezer’s choice of a “good eye” is generally understood to be a shorthand term for magnanimity towards others, being able to share their success or happiness, and not begrudging what they have. His answer, like those of his colleagues, is not incorrect, but it is passed over in favour of that of Rabbi Elazar, which embraces it but is of wider application.

At Avot 2:14 Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai gives a very different instruction, relating to the path in life that his talmidim should make an effort to avoid. This is how they answer:

רַבִּי אֱלִיעֶֽזֶר אוֹמֵר: עַֽיִן רָעָה. רַבִּי יְהוֹשֻֽׁעַ אוֹמֵר: חָבֵר רָע. רַבִּי יוֹסֵי אוֹמֵר: שָׁכֵן רָע. רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן אוֹמֵר: הַלֹּוֶה וְאֵינוֹ מְשַׁלֵּם, אֶחָד הַלֹּוֶה מִן הָאָדָם כְּלֹוֶה מִן הַמָּקוֹם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: לֹוֶה רָשָׁע וְלֹא יְשַׁלֵּם, וְצַדִּיק חוֹנֵן וְנוֹתֵן. רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר אוֹמֵר: לֵב רָע. אָמַר לָהֶם: רוֹאֶה אֲנִי אֶת דִּבְרֵי אֶלְעָזָר בֶּן עֲרָךְ מִדִּבְרֵיכֶם, שֶׁבִּכְלַל דְּבָרָיו דִּבְרֵיכֶם

Rabbi Eliezer says: An evil eye. Rabbi Yehoshua says: An evil friend. Rabbi Yose says: An evil neighbour. Rabbi Shimon says: To borrow and not to repay… Rabbi Elazar says: An evil heart. [Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai] said to them: I prefer the word of Elazar ben Arach to yours, for his words include all of yours.

Rabbi Eliezer’s response complements his earlier answer by framing the same advice in negative terms: if the right path is one of magnanimity, the path to avoid is the route leading in the opposite direction, towards envy, jealousy, negativity, resentment and dissatisfaction with one’s lot. Once again, his answer is not wrong but is too specific. His path to avoid is narrow; that of Rabbi Elazar is wider.

 As always, if one looks more closely at the words of a mishnah there is more to be said about it. For example Rabbi Marcus Lehmann, invoking the law of the excluded middle, points out that there is a zone in which a person’s attitude may be neutral or at any rate motivated by feelings and emotions that are not governed by goodness or badness per se. This is true, but is it relevant?  Our mishnayot are only concerned with the road one should take and the road one should avoid, not the roads that lead in different directions.

Gila Ross (Living Beautifully) goes beyond the obvious meanings mentioned above. She writes:

“Rabbi Eliezer said an evil eye: someone who sees the negative whether in things or in other people. It’s fascinating that he says “eye” in the singular. He’s teaching us that a person becomes negative by shutting one eye, the eye that sees Godliness within another person. Everybody has both good and bad within him, so by shutting that eye and only seeing the human, flawed side, a person develops an “evil eye”. When we shut our eye and don’t look at the good within the other person, we are left with the negative. Then, a person can even give negative motives to what other people do”.

This metaphor fits neatly with other mishnayot in Avot, notably Yehoshua ben Perachya’s injunction at Avot 1:6 to judge other favourably and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananyah’s condemnation of “an evil eye, an evil inclination and the hatred of others” (Avot 2:16) echoed in Rabbi Elazar HaKappar’s caution (Avot 4:28) regarding the self-destructive effect of jealousy, lust and the desire for kavod, honour.

But Avot does not say that we should look at others only with the “good eye”.  We are obliged to see what is truly there, since truth is one of the three values on which the continued existence of humanity depends (Avot 1:18). More than that, we are obliged to recognise and accept the truth, not deny it (Avot 5:9), and to set others onto the path of truth (Avot 6:6).

Today is the first day in the secular calendar for 2025. My sincere wish for this year is that we should all be blessed with the ability to recognise the truth when we see it—and to be able to accommodate ourselves to the truth rather than bend it to suit ourselves.

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Not such a saint

We are only human and, try as we will to be clinically objective in our analysis of mishnayot in Avot, our opinions, biases, preferences and prejudices inevitably leak out.

At Avot 5:17 an anonymous mishnah teaches:

אַרְבַּע מִדּוֹת בְּהוֹלְכֵי בֵית הַמִּדְרָשׁ: הוֹלֵךְ וְאֵינוֹ עוֹשֶׂה, שְׂכַר הֲלִיכָה בְּיָדוֹ. עוֹשֶׂה וְאֵינוֹ הוֹלֵךְ, שְׂכַר מַעֲשֶׂה בְּיָדוֹ. הוֹלֵךְ וְעוֹשֶׂה, חָסִיד. לֹא הוֹלֵךְ וְלֹא עוֹשֶׂה, רָשָׁע

There are four types among those who attend the study hall. One who goes but does nothing—he has gained the rewards of going. One who does [study] but does not go to the study hall—he has gained the rewards of doing. One who goes and does, he is a chasid. One who neither goes nor does, he is wicked.

It is difficult to retain the flavour of the Mishnaic-era term chasid when translating it into modern English. “One who is pious” is clumsy and misses the mark because words like “pious” and “piety” have attracted in today’s English an aura of sanctimony rather than sincerity.  Left untranslated, the word chasid conjures up images of ultra-religious followers of a rebbe, garbed in black hats and long black coats and sporting sidelocks and beards.

Rabbi Shlomo P. Toperoff (Lev Avot) designates the chasid as a saint. In doing so he has a precedent from the world of philosemitic scholarship: the Reverend Travers Herford employs it in his The Ethics of the Talmud.

The word ‘saint’ carries baggage: it may be deployed as a term of approbation of someone’s righteous and selfless behaviour, often in the face of temptation or with the prospect of suffering an enduring loss; it is also frequently used in a highly sarcastic comment on a person’s far-from-righteous behaviour.  Rabbi Toperoff was a pulpit rabbi in a town which then had two synagogues—one frequented by serious Torah scholars, the other (the “Englische shul”, which was his) being attended by more of the town’s rank-and-file population. The Englische shul was looked down on by some of the members of the frum synagogue who would likely not wish to hear his English sermons, and maybe it was this that was his motivation for writing the following:

“Hasid, saint. The hasid is one who attends and practises. Some authorities question the advisability of referring to the Hasid as a saint: he is performing the normal duties incumbent upon every Jew. However, …[t]here are those who consider themselves intellectually and morally superior to their co-religionists and consequently refrain from mixing freely with the multitude and do not attend the Beth Hamidrash. They do not hear the sermons and lectures of the Rabbis and therefore create divisiveness. More praiseworthy and meritorious is the conduct of the scholar who, in spite of his knowledge presents himself at the House of Study and listens to the discourse of the Rabbi. Such understanding bespeaks humility and meekness, and such a person is worthy of the title Hasid, saint”.

I personally doubt that any of the people who avoided going to Rabbi Toperoff’s synagogue and hearing his sermons would have read these words, but he does raise an interesting point: is there any real value in attending a sermon when you doubt that you will learn anything new from it and are confident that time spent engaged in other forms of learning would reap a greater benefit? Gila Ross (Living Beautifully) may think so. As she observes:

“Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk points out that the very act of pulling himself out of his comfort zone and going to a place of learning is going to help that person focus on his spirituality”.

Pulling oneself out of one’s comfort zone is the key point here. The very act is itself part of an ongoing process of character development. Gila Ross does not quote Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai on this, but in the second perek of Avot we see how, not once but twice, he orders his best talmidim to leave the Beit Midrash and go out and see for themselves how people live, to enable them to learn what best to do and what best to avoid.

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Big brother, or book learning?

For some people the third of Rebbi’s teachings at Avot 2:1 has a slightly menacing flavour:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה, דַּע מַה לְּמַֽעְלָה מִמָּךְ, עַֽיִן רוֹאָה וְאֹֽזֶן שׁוֹמַֽעַת, וְכָל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ בְּסֵֽפֶר נִכְתָּבִים

Contemplate three things and you will not come to the hands of transgression. Know what is above you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds are inscribed in a book.

The fictional nightmare of George Orwell’s 1984, a world of constant surveillance of the actions of individuals, became a reality years ago. We have become quite used to security cameras and to developments in computing and AI that create the uncomfortable impression that there are machines out there that know more about ourselves than we do. Many commentators on Avot, even in earlier generations, were quick to remind us that God sees and hears everything we do—and that nothing is omitted from His database of human actions, words and thoughts.

Rabbi Yaakov Hillel (Eternal Ethics from Sinai) brings a refreshing perspective to the part of the mishnah that mentions how our deeds are written in a book. For most of us the message of Rebbi is a cautionary one: don’t do it or, if you do it, don’t imagine that you can get away with it without being noticed. But Rabbi Hillel finds a positive message in it too.

Many of us are occasionally motivated to raise our game, as it were, and cultivate a more spiritual attitude towards the way we live in this, our physical and materialistic world. But from where can we derive our spiritual inspiration?

The path to one’s spiritual elevation isn’t tangible; it isn’t something that can be seen. We don’t normally experience spiritual visions and, if we started telling people we were having them, they would likely consider us likely candidates for psychiatric care. Likewise, though a baraita at Avot 6:2 mentions a Heavenly voice emanating daily from Mount Horeb (Sinai), our non-prophetic ears are not equipped to pick up celestial soundbites. That leaves only books.

Our Sages old and new have left us with a rich literary heritage in terms of Jewish subject matter: halachah, mussar, midrash, kabbalah, chassidut, philosophy and much more besides. If we find the right books, we can grow from them, enriching our understanding, our commitment and ultimately our closeness to God. So, explains, Rabbi Hillel, when our mishnah states that “all your deeds are inscribed in a book”, we can take this to mean that all our deeds—the deeds which we consciously seek to emulate or implement in our own lives—are already written down in the kodesh books we read. All we have to do is follow the instruction we find in the printed word.

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Are we truly afraid any more?

Fear (יִרְאָה, yirah) is a theme that runs through Pirkei Avot. We meet it first at Avot 1:3, where Antigonos Ish Socho counsels:

וִיהִי מוֹרָא שָׁמַֽיִם עֲלֵיכֶם

And let the fear of Heaven be upon you.

At Avot 2:11 the highest accolade that Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai can give to one of his leading talmidim. Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel, is to describe him as a יְרֵא חֵטְא (“a fearer of sin”). In the baraitot at the end of the tractate, to be בְּיִרְאָה (“in a state of fear”) is one of the 48 modes by which one acquires Torah—and there are other references to fear. But what does the word mean, both inherently and to us now?

Our sages have had much to say about fear. They have taught us to distinguish between fear of punishment, fear of actually doing wrong and the sort of fear one experiences (which we probably equate with awe) when in the presence of something so great that we simply can’t take it in, something that, we intuitively feel, substantiates our belief in God’s role as Creator of the world or His immanent presence. When used by our Sages, the word yirah, in one context or another, seems to span a vast range of human emotions: at one extreme it is a deep sense of terror while, at the other, it is more like a profound form of respect.

What I want to ask here is not what yirah means but whether we really feel it the same way as the early audience of Avot students would have done. This question is sparked off by a comment made by Rabbi Yisroel Miller, The Wisdom of Avos, on Avot 2:1—a mishnah that doesn’t even contain the word yirah. He writes:

“[I] believe without question that on Rosh Hashanah my life hangs in the balance as Hashem decides my fate for the coming year, and yet I do not tremble as much as I did when a policeman once pulled me over for a traffic violation!”

I suspect that this honest personal admission by a respected orthodox rabbi reflects the experiences of many, if not most, of us today. If we truly felt that God was with us and watching us all the time, and genuinely felt that He rewards us for our good deeds and punishes us for our bad ones, our personal experience of fear would no doubt be greatly enhanced.  As it is, in our busy lives we find times to tune in to God’s supervision, for example at times of prayer or when we are preparing to perform a mitzvah, and times when, like a divine App, we do not turn Him off but leave Him running quietly in the background.

This leads to another question: what is the role of fear in our lives today? Is it to be reserved for threats to our physical and economic well-being, leaving us to rely on the censure of our fellow humans and peer pressure instead? And have we really forgotten how to fear?

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The times they are a'changin...or are they?

For the observant practising Jew it is axiomatic that the Torah is eternal and unchanging. It is the blueprint for the creation of the universe (Bereishit Rabbah 1:1) and the words with which God’s will is expressed are eternally valid. Truth being a complex and multifaceted concept, we accept that the Torah has shivim ponim—“seventy faces”—meaning that, while it is an absolute value, the meaning it reveals to us may depend on the place from which we view it. This is the Torah’s strength: it offers both permanence and flexibility. The enduring relevance of the Torah also helps explain the high level of respect given to commentaries throughout the generations: we still study the Targum Onkelos and the explanations of Rashi, Ramban and others because the passage of time has not raised a barrier to their relevance.

Although Pirkei Avot is a major component of the Torah sheb’al peh, the Oral Torah, our sages’ commentaries on this tractate do not command the same level of appreciation or acceptance through the ages. This is unsurprising. Avot addresses the social, political, spiritual and emotional dimensions of our lives—and these in turn are conditioned by factors that are constantly subject to change. But even apparently obsolete comments may have something to teach us.

A good example of this is the commentary of Rabbenu Yonah on Avot 2:3, where a mishnah of Rabban Gamliel the son of Rebbi reads:

הֱווּ זְהִירִין בָּרָשׁוּת, שֶׁאֵין מְקָרְבִין לוֹ לְאָדָם אֶלָּא לְצֹֽרֶךְ עַצְמָן, נִרְאִין כְּאוֹהֲבִין בְּשַֽׁעַת הַנָּאָתָן, וְאֵין עוֹמְדִין לוֹ לְאָדָם בְּשַֽׁעַת דָּחֳקוֹ׃

Be careful with the government, for they befriend a person only for their own needs. They appear to be friends when it is beneficial to them, but they do not stand by a person at the time of his distress.

On this Rabbenu Yonah comments:

“When you have no more money to give them, even if it is because you are really financially pressed, they will have no mercy on a poor man. They will impoverish you and forget the old friendship, because that is all in the past. This is the simple meaning of the mishnah.

However, if this is what it actually meant, it would be a slur against kings, God forbid, and that cannot be. The world continues to exist through sovereigns who dispense law and justice. No one in the world can be as truthful as a king, as he has no need to flatter others or to fear them. There is nothing to prevent a king following the path of justice…” (tr. Rabbi David Sedley).

We do not live in an era of monarchs who wield absolute power over their subjects, and the kings and queens we encounter today are in the main constitutional rulers whose powers, if any, are token. What’s more, the propositions Rabbenu Yonah articulates here seem preposterous. How is it that the continued existence of the world depends on sovereigns? And surely it is unimaginable that no one in the world can be as truthful as a king! So how could Rabbenu Yonah have written what he did?

Rabbi Shimon ben Zemach Duran (the Rashbatz) suggests that Rabbenu Yonah only wrote what he did because he was afraid of the kings of his time. But can this be so? There’s a verse in Proverbs (Mishlei 21:1) that reads:

פַּלְגֵי־מַ֣יִם לֶב־מֶ֭לֶךְ בְּיַד־יְהֹוָ֑ה עַֽל־כׇּל־אֲשֶׁ֖ר יַחְפֹּ֣ץ יַטֶּֽנּוּ׃

The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.

On this, Rabbenu Yonah comments:

“The goal of the hearts should be to fear God and not to fear the anger of a king. A person should ask mercy of God and hope and raise his eyes towards Him, for He tilts the heart to wherever he wants”.

These do not read like the words of a man who quakes with fear at the prospect of incurring a monarch’s anger. So what does his extraordinary explanation of our mishnah in Avot really mean? I think that there is more to it than meets the eye.

The first part of Rabbenu Yonah’s comment tells the mishnah as it really is. Rabban Gamliel warns us that government—whether in the form of kings, counsellors or politicians—is a career in which those who participate in it expect to enrich themselves or at least derive some form of benefit from those whom they purport to serve. It is an early expression of the sentiment that “they’re only in it for what they can get”, a view which, if cynical, is born of our experiences of being governed throughout the ages.

The second part of the comment is entirely tongue-in-cheek and it is really a subtle and pointed piece of mussar (moral chastisement) addressed to absolute rulers: Only if you dispense law and justice does the continued existence of the world depend on you (see Avot 1:18).  So why do you not respect the truth (which also features in Avot 1:18)? If your actions are just, you have nothing to fear from it. And if there is nothing to prevent you, a king, from following the path of justice, why don’t you? It is no accident that Rabbenu Yonah’s commentary on our mishnah ends with the words:

“For even if a king has his own ideas and has the ability to act as he sees fit, in truth he has no power to harm or to help, except by the will of the Living God, the eternal king”.

We have no old-style kings today, but across the world there are many regimes governed by the tyranny of an individual over a terrorised people. For such rulers and those whom they govern, Rabbenu Yonah’s words remain highly relevant.

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Syria after Assad: a question for Avot

At Avot 3:2, Rabbi Chanina segan HaKohanim teaches:

הֱוֵי מִתְפַּלֵּל בִּשְׁלוֹמָהּ שֶׁל מַלְכוּת, שֶׁאִלְמָלֵא מוֹרָאָהּ, אִישׁ אֶת רֵעֵֽהוּ חַיִּים בְּלָעוֹ

Pray for the integrity of the government; for were it not for the fear of its authority, a man would swallow his neighbour alive.

Few readers of Avot Today will have missed the news of the remarkable developments in Syria, where President Assad’s much hated but hitherto unassailable regime has been swept aside. In its place there has emerged a coalition of forces that share some aims but are themselves in conflict over others.

What are the stated objectives of the successful forces? According to an early statement we learn the following:

"After 50 years of oppression under the regime, and 13 years of crime, tyranny and displacement, and after a long struggle and fight and confronting all forms of occupation forces, we announce today on 12-8-2024 the end of this dark era and the beginning of a new era for Syria.

To the displaced all over the world, free Syria awaits you”.

This new Syria is declared to be a place where everyone

."…coexists in peace, justice prevails and rights are established, where every Syrian is honoured and his dignity is preserved, we turn the page on the dark past and open a new horizon for the future."

These are noble aspirations, but is there any prospect that they will be delivered? Success has come through the cooperation between numerous factions which, though united in their determination to force a regime change, are themselves deeply divided along political, religious and ethnic lines.

Though Syria has been technically at war with Israel since 1948, the Assad regime agreed a cease-fire with Israel which, though there have been breaches, has been in the main respected by both sides. At the time of writing this post, the long-term fate of this cease-fire remains uncertain. If the maintenance of the cease-fire depends on the ability of the new regime to prevent potentially lethal border incursions by any of its anti-Israel factions, should we be praying for the welfare of the coalition if Israeli lives depend on it?

There is a further point to consider. The once-thriving Syrian Jewish community effectively vanished in 1992 when the father of the current President permitted the last remaining 4,000 Jews to emigrate on condition that they did not make aliyah. Most settled in the United States. Might they respond to the clarion call of the coalition: “To the displaced all over the world, free Syria awaits you”? In the event that they are tempted to return (and we Jews have returned to many countries that sought to eliminate us), we would need to ask what this means to us. Does this mishnah address only the needs of the country in which we live, or does it speak also to those countries in which our brethren live and in which their welfare and safety depend on enforcement of the rule of law by a government with integrity?

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Learning a compound mishnah: where do we start?

Many times in Pirkei Avot we find a mishnah in which a Tanna says three or more things. A typical example is Avot 1:7, where Nittai HaArbeli says:

הַרְחֵק מִשָּׁכֵן רָע, וְאַל תִּתְחַבֵּר לָרָשָׁע, וְאַל תִּתְיָאֵשׁ מִן הַפּוּרְעָנוּת

(i) Distance yourself from a bad neighbour, (ii) do not stick to a wicked person, and (iii) do not abandon belief in retribution.

Commentators have long discussed the significance of these grouped teachings: are they put together because they are intended to be understood or interpreted in the context of each other? Or are they separate, free-standing teachings that do not in any way demand to be associated with one another, being brought together only for the sake of making them easier to remember? This is the only place in Avot where we find Nittai’s words. Keeping them together in the same mishnah makes them easier to recall than if they had been scattered through different chapters.

We can easily connect these teachings if we so wish, learning that bad neighbours are a greater threat than wicked non-neighbours and that, in either case, if such a person harms us he or she will get their come-uppance even if we don’t see it with our own eyes. Alternatively we can say that Nittai is teaching three unrelated principles, each of which demands to be considered and understood on its own terms.

We can also find examples of mishnayot containing teachings that are more challenging to connect. Thus we see the following from Rabbi Tzadok (Avot 4:7):

אַל תִּפְרוֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר, וְאַל תַּֽעַשׂ עַצְמְךָ כְּעוֹרְכֵי הַדַּיָּנִין, וְאַל תַּעֲשֶֽׂהָ עֲטָרָה לְהִתְגַּדֶּל בָּהּ, וְלֹא קַרְדּוּם לַחְתָּךְ בָּהּ

(i) Do not separate yourself from the community. (ii) Do not make yourself like a lawyer. (iii) Do not make the Torah a crown with which to glorify yourself, or a spade with which to dig …

Here the connections between the three teachings are far less obvious.

Among commentators there are those who strive to find connections wherever possible on the ground that, if there no such connections, the teachings would not have been grouped together in the same mishnah. According to Shimon Abu (Shomanu Avotenu), this principle derives support from Rashi (Betzah 2a, at se’or bekezayit), and scholars such as Rabbi Ovadyah Hedayah (Seh leBet Avot) apply it rigorously.

The problem with this principle is that there are so many mishnayot in which connections are not apparent and attempts to make them seem contrived to the student. For example, in Avot 2:15, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus says four things (officially three) which can be connected but only at the expense of plausibility:

יְהִי כְבוֹד חֲבֵרָךְ חָבִיב עָלֶֽיךָ כְּשֶׁלָּךְ, וְאַל תְּהִי נֽוֹחַ לִכְעוֹס. וְשׁוּב יוֹם אֶחָד לִפְנֵי מִיתָתָךְ. וֶהֱוֵי מִתְחַמֵּם כְּנֶֽגֶד אוֹרָן שֶׁל חֲכָמִים, וֶהֱוֵי זָהִיר בְּגַחֲלָתָן שֶׁלֹּא תִכָּוֶה, שֶׁנְּשִׁיכָתָן נְשִׁיכַת שׁוּעָל, וַעֲקִיצָתָן עֲקִיצַת עַקְרָב, וּלְחִישָׁתָן לְחִישַׁת שָׂרָף, וְכָל דִּבְרֵיהֶם כְּגַחֲלֵי אֵשׁ

(i) Let the honour of your fellow be as precious to you as your own, and (ii) do not be easy to anger. (iii) Repent one day before your death. (iv) Warm yourself by the fire of the sages, but be careful not to get burned by its embers; for their bite is the bite of a fox, their sting is the sting of a scorpion, their hiss is the hiss a serpent, and all their words are like fiery coals.

My feeling is that, when approaching any compound mishnah, one can maximise the scope for learning from it by taking the following route:

• Examine the possibility that two or more teachings in the same mishnah may be connected, or may even constitute a single teaching, but accept that this may not be the case.
• Where there is no apparent connection between distinct teachings, accept the possibility that they were understood to be related when Rebbi compiled the mishnah but that we no longer possess Rebbi’s understanding of what they meant.
• Whether connectivity between teachings in a single mishnah is established or not, examine each one separately and consider its content without reference to the others.
• Where a connection between component parts of a mishnah can only be established by coming up with an explanation that appears awkward or contrived, ask yourself whether—if that is the correct meaning—it is a meaning that Rebbi would have considered valuable enough to transmit through the generations.
• Never let a methodology for learning a mishnah distort or obliterate the plain meaning of the words which the Tanna chose in teaching that mishnah.

I’m sure many readers of this post will have other suggestions, some of which may prove more useful when learning Avot. If you are such a reader, please share your thoughts.

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Too many words

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel (Avot 1:17) teaches:

כָּל יָמַי גָּדַֽלְתִּי בֵּין הַחֲכָמִים, וְלֹא מָצָֽאתִי לְגוּף טוֹב מִשְּׁתִיקָה, וְלֹא הַמִּדְרָשׁ עִקָּר אֶלָּא הַמַּעֲשֶׂה, וְכָל הַמַּרְבֶּה דְבָרִים מֵבִיא חֵטְא

All my life I have been raised among the wise, and I have found nothing better for the body than silence. The essential thing is not study, but action. And anyone who increases words brings sin.

It has sometimes been asked whether, if the most efficacious commodity in a person’s life is silence, it is truly necessary to add that “anyone who increases words brings sin”.  The answer depends on whether “one who increases words brings sin” is simply an explanation as to why silence is so good or whether it is a separate stand-alone teaching.

Until Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi (Rebbi) compiled the oral teachings into the body of law we now call the Mishnah, it seems to be generally understood that oral teachings were taught, explained and passed down the generations by word of mouth. Some Tannaim had their own collections of teachings which may have been written down for their own convenience, but these were not taught as normative text.  However, once Rebbi had compiled the six Orders of the Mishnah, the oral law now had a written text to which both teacher and talmid could refer.

The Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel who is cited as the author of our mishnah lived a century and a half before Rebbi, who was his great grandson. This Rabban Shimon, a contemporary of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, would have been active around the time of the destruction of the Second Temple—a time of great turbulence and uncertainty. With the benefit of hindsight we can ask why it was not in his generation, when continuity of Torah learning must have come under severe stress, that the idea of setting the oral law down in writing was not implemented as a way of preserving it.

Perhaps this issue was indeed debated in the lifetime of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel and the teaching in this mishnah—that “anyone who increases words brings sin”—refers implicitly to his opposition to ‘increasing’ words by writing them down and thus increasing opportunities for transcriptional errors to creep in.

Thoughts, anyone?

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Where have all the scholars gone?

It sometimes happens, particularly with modern commentaries on Avot, that their most interesting and provocative content lies not in the commentary itself but in the casual, throwaway lines of the commentators that shed more light on their view of the world than on the meaning of the mishnah. A good example can be found in Rav Asher Weiss on Avos. Almost all of this two-volume work could have been written a hundred years ago without any changes, since Rav Weiss—a popular and highly learned teacher with a large personal following—is a dedicated Torah scholar who seeks to explain what the mishnayot in Avot must have meant at the time of the Talmud, from which he quote liberally when elucidating and developing the thoughts expressed in Avot. However, we occasionally find a comment from Rav Weiss that is aimed at contemporary Jewish society.

At Avot 1:10 we find a teaching by Shemayah:

אֱהוֹב אֶת הַמְּלָאכָה וּשְׂנָא אֶת הָרַבָּנוּת, וְאַל תִּתְוַדַּע לָרָשׁוּת

Love work, hate mastery over others, and do not make yourself known to the government.

After making reference to a gemara (Berachot 35b) in which Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and Rabbi Yishmael debate as to whether it is better to learn Torah exclusively or combine it with the pursuit of a livelihood, Rav Weiss comments:

“In our times … it is uncommon to find those who pursue a livelihood but who nevertheless achieve greatness in Torah. It would seem that with the steady decline of the generations, Torah no longer endures except in those who dedicate their entire lives to it, day and night, and do not turn their attention to any other matters”.

This statement stopped me in my tracks since it raises so many issues. How does one measure “greatness in Torah”? Is “greatness in Torah” a constant, or do the criteria change through time? How relevant is it that even the sages of the gemara could not agree as to whether being able to absorb Torah data was greater than being able to innovate and establish new learning through Torah exegesis? How does this proposition fit with Rabbi Gamliel’s mishnaic claims (Avot 2:2) that Torah, when combined with a livelihood, was beautiful but, without a livelihood, leads to sin?

Beyond that, there are wider questions. As the rate at which human knowledge and artificial intelligence appear to be growing exponentially, does God demand of us that we focus more strongly on our traditional core studies of Tanach, Mishnah, Gemara and the classical commentators, or that we embrace and study new sciences, technologies and social trends in order to bring our Torah understanding to them and “tame” them by framing them within the superstructure of Jewish values?

Rav Weiss has given us an opening for a keen debate, but we have to accept that there are no easy answers to our questions—and perhaps each question has more than a single valid answer.  We have to acknowledge the learning of a talmid who has locked himself away in the Beit Midrash day and night to learn the whole of tractate Chullin, a long and complex tractate that addresses the kashrut of animals and birds. But we also have to acknowledge the learning of the person who has only learned the practical laws of ritual slaughter but can actually identify the spleen or gall bladder that his more learned counterpart has never seen.

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Dealing with heretics

The brilliant, mercurial Rabbi Elazar ben Arach offers us three pieces of advice at Avot 2:19, one of which is this:

דַע מַה שֶּׁתָּשִׁיב לְאֶפִּיקוּרוּס

Know what to answer a heretic.

How relevant is this teaching to us today? At a time when religious observance was the norm and the notion of God’s existence was generally beyond question, the apikoros (heretic) could be expected to be well-informed and thoroughly versed in religious matters, and capable of arguing the case against Judaism (or, for that matter, any other religion). To take on an apikoros was no easy task: one needed mastery of the Torah and of our extensive and complex prophetic literature as an absolute minimum. Nowadays, as Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks once observed, the apikoros is most likely to be someone who has neither knowledge nor interest in the existence of God and the truth of the Torah. Cynical and likely to be hostile to religion, he has no doubts to call his own, but to argue with him is to risk generating doubts in oneself.

Many rabbis, including most recently R’ Yisroel Miller (The Wisdom of Avos) have pointed out that Rabbi Elazar ben Arach is not urging anyone to debate an apikoros. All he says is that one should know how to counter one. If we have the answers, this should secure us against our own doubts. To argue with an apikoros is to risk losing one’s own faith, so we should avoid doing so (Rabbi Yitzchak Magriso, Me’am Lo’ez). The Me’iri’s view is however quite the opposite: we should argue with the apikoros in order to refute his arguments and demonstrate the force of reason that underpins our own.

Rabbi Norman Lamm (Foundation of Faith, ed. Rabbi Mark Dratch) uses this mishnah as the basis of an idea of his own—that, in our portrayal of Judaism in contemporary society, we should be careful not to create heretics. He writes:

“[W]e Jews ought to be so very concerned not only by the impression we make upon outsiders, but by how we appear to our fellow Jews who have become estranged from our sacred tradition. We have labored long and hard and diligently to secure an image of Judaism which does not do violence to Western standards of culture and modernity. But at times the image becomes frayed and another, less attractive image is revealed… Sometimes we have made it appear that we are barely emerging from the cocoon of medievalism”.

This is a difficult line to take. Yes, we do try to portray our Judaism as being compatible with the norms of contemporary society—but this is not easy when that society is not hospitable to most forms of religious practice and is quite sceptical regarding religious belief.  We can’t pretend that the Torah only teaches things that are woke or politically correct when we know it doesn’t. That’s why two recent English-language books have proved so important. In Shmuel Phillips’s Judaism Reclaimed (Mosaica, 2019) and Raphael Zarum’s Questioning Belief (Maggid, 2023), the authors are conscious of the need to address uncomfortable questions in a lucid and respectful manner, seeking to explain the deeper meanings contained in the Torah rather than rely on soundbites and rhetoric. 

Rabbi Lamm continues:

“If we are to be witnesses to Torah, then we Jews must have a more impressive means of communicating with the non-observant segments of our people. Saadia Gaon pointed out a thousand years ago that the best way to make a heretic, an apikoros, is to present an argument for Judaism that is ludicrous and unbecoming. We cannot afford to have sloppy newspapers, second-rate schools, noisy synagogues, or unaesthetic and repelling services. When you testify for God and for Torah, every word must be counted and polished!”

Does Rabbi Lamm go too far here?  His citation of Saadia Gaon’s point is apt, but how does he get from that to his conclusion? Do “noisy synagogues and repelling services” create heretics—or merely people who are indifferent to organised Judaism and its traditional rituals?

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