WHEN THE CHATTING HAS TO STOP?

Pirkei Avot speaks twice about what we might call ordinary day-to-day conversation. At Avot 1:5 Yose ben Yochanan Ish Yerushalayim cautions men engaging in too much casual chatting even with their own wives—and how much more so should they not converse overmuch with other people’s wives. The consequences, which are grim, are listed in this mishnah:

כָּל הַמַּרְבֶּה שִׂיחָה עִם הָאִשָּׁה, גּוֹרֵם רָעָה לְעַצְמוֹ, וּבוֹטֵל מִדִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה, וְסוֹפוֹ יוֹרֵשׁ גֵּיהִנֹּם

One who excessively converses with one’s wife causes evil to himself, neglects the study of Torah and ultimately inherits Gehinnom.

Responses to this teaching range from bristling hostility at its attitude towards women in general to warm endorsement of the need for a man to respect boundaries in his dealings with his own and other people’s wives. Some also focus on the word שִׂיחָה (sichah, here meaning “chatter”), urging men to treat women with respect as their intellectual equals rather than refuse to engage them on matters of a more serious nature.

Conversation also features in a later mishnah that focuses not so much on quantity as on quality. At Avot 3: Dosa ben Horkinas teaches

שֵׁנָה שֶׁל שַׁחֲרִית, וְיַֽיִן שֶׁל צָהֳרָֽיִם, וְשִׂיחַת הַיְלָדִים, וִישִׁיבַת בָּתֵּי כְנֵסִיּוֹת שֶׁל עַמֵּי הָאָֽרֶץ, מוֹצִיאִין אֶת הָאָדָם מִן הָעוֹלָם

Morning sleep, noontime wine, children's talk and sitting at the meeting places of the ignoramus drive a person from the world.

I believe that the children’s talk referred to here is children’s talk between adults, not between adult and child. Speaking to a child in a childish manner is so often a vital part of the child’s education in the use of language, the art of communication and the gradual acquisition of cognitive and conceptual understanding. But it can be an embarrassment to listen to adults speaking with one another as though they were children.

Avot returns to the theme of conversation in a context that is neither age- nor gender-specific, in the lengthy Baraita at 6:6 that lists the 48 boxes that an aspiring Torah scholar is to tick if he is to obtain and then retain his Torah learning. One of these is to practise ְּמִעוּט שִׂיחָה (miyut sichah, minimizing ordinary conversation). From the context it is plain that the problem with sichah is not one of inviting greater sexual intimacy or of grooming a prospective sexual partner, but rather of bitul zeman—wasting time that might otherwise be spent on more productive activities in the pursuit of Torah.

Some of the more serious Torah scholars of bygone generations took the limitation or even the avoidance of ordinary conversation to extremes. Thus Rabbi Asher Weiss (Rav Asher Weiss on Avos vol.2) states, citing Midrash Shir HaShirim Rabbah, that for every piece of unnecessary speech that enters a person’s ear, a Torah matter leaves. But Rabbi Weiss then tempers this extreme position with an observation about life in the real world:

“…[T]his is not the way for most people. We may infer from Chazal’s expression “limited conversation” that we are only to lessen our involvement. … Human nature dictates that we cannot completely withdraw from light conversation and the way of the world”.

The need to speak to other people cannot be denied but, like so many other things in Avot, the difficulty lies not in the principle but in the practice. Here it is difficult to draw firm guidelines. One person’s being polite or friendly is another person’s being flirtatious or suggestive. And I would not be as brave as Rabbi Weiss as to write the words “human nature dictates…”, bearing in mind that so much of the challenge that we face in our own lives lies precisely in the battle to resist what human nature dictates.

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"YOU'RE A WASTE OF SPACE!"

One of the messages that Pirkei Avot most persistently hammers home is that it is unwise to judge other people—whatever we may be tempted to think of them. We can’t know why they do what they do unless we are standing in their place (Hillel, 2:5). If we do judge them, we should look at them favourably if at all possible (Yehoshua ben Perachyah, 1:6). In any event, judgement should be a collective exercise, not the prerogative of the individual (Rabbi Yishmael ben Yose. 4:10).

A further encouragement not to judge others, one that is not couched in the vocabulary of judgement but of vilification or scorn, is found in the words of Ben Azai (Avot 4:3):

אַל תְּהִי בָז לְכָל אָדָם וְאַל תְּהִי מַפְלִיג לְכָל דָּבָר, שֶׁאֵין לָךְ אָדָם שֶׁאֵין לוֹ שָׁעָה, וְאֵין לָךְ דָּבָר שֶׁאֵין לוֹ מָקוֹם

Do not scorn anyone, and do not disdain any thing, for there is no one who does not have his hour, and no thing that does not have its place.

Scorning other people, writing them off as what Basil Fawlty would call “a waste of space”, is in essence a judgmental process. We size someone up, we write them off as being worthless, we deem them to be literally “useless”.

In the real world, where humans are trained or expected to perform a multitude of functions, every one of us—if we are honest—is in most respects useless. A person may be generally useful as a spouse, a parent, a friend or community member, but useless if what you are seeking is a dentist, a plumber or a fourth hand for bridge.  We do not write each other off for being useless in this sense and it is fairly certain that this scenario is not what Ben Azai had in mind.

I believe that Ben Azai’s message comes to reinforce that of Ben Zoma at Avot 4:1, that a person is wise who learns from everyone. If everyone has something to teach you, you can hardly point to anyone and declare them to be “a waste of space”.

We do however have a problem. Let us suppose that someone appears to be useless. Ben Azai tells us that everyone has their hour. But what if that hour has already passed, and their usefulness has been spent, as it were? What happens if they have nothing left to offer?  May we not write them off even then? Or are we supposed to take them seriously and treat them with respect in case they still have another hour to come, another moment of significance? And how can we assume that they can no longer teach us anything?

These are not, possibly with justification, issues that trouble our commentators—but the Torah narrative in Sefer Bereishit may furnish us with an answer. After the Flood and the episodes that take place shortly after it, we hear no more of Noach, though he lives for hundreds of years. He is often characterized as a spent force, a man who had his moment but never succeeded in building upon it, a sad soul who sunk into an abyss of alcoholic obscurity from which he could not emerge—or chose not to.

But maybe Noach’s inactivity was itself teaching us a lesson. His sons and subsequent generations took up the story of human life on Earth, but Noach did not take any steps to interfere with them. For many if not most parents it is very difficult to let one’s children grow in terms of taking the reins of responsibility and leading their lives in directions that they have chosen for themselves. Yet this is what Noach did. Perhaps his apparent inactivity was the result of a conscious decision to trust his descendants to take their own decisions and to decide for themselves whether they wished to obtain his advice or not. And that is an important lesson for us all.

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WICKED!

Considering how few words the Tannaim used when teaching, it is hardly surprising that their teachings have generated so many comments and explanations. From our own experience, we see how words that are taken out of context—or which are never given a context in the first place—can be twisted, misunderstood or merely interpreted in so many different ways that the impact of their brevity is lost. In modern times, two “classics” come to mind. The first is the instruction “To avoid suffocation keep away from children”—which only carries a useful meaning when printed on a polythene bag. The second, “Stand in boiling water for two minutes”, requires a different context entirely, being a cooking instruction for a canned pudding. Fortunately, the words of our Mishnaic sages are less extreme cases but, even so, they demand some form of context or background—and may attract several competing explanations.

At Avot 2:18 Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel says:

אַל תְּהִי רָשָׁע בִּפְנֵי עַצְמֶֽךָ

Do not be wicked bifnei atzmecha (“before yourself”, “inside yourself”, “on your own”)

The precise meaning of this injunction, and of the words bifnei atzmecha, is unclear, as we see from our commentators. No context is supplied and the Tanna points to no particular objective. For the Rambam, this teaching means not judging oneself as a wicked person. The Bartenura (with whom the commentary ascribed to Rashi agrees) says it means not doing something today if tomorrow you will regard yourself as being evil for having done it. Rabbenu Yonah, author of the Sha’arei Teshuvah, puts a teshuvah-related spin on it: don’t regard yourself as being wicked since you always have the option to repent. He then adds, with an eye on Yom Kippur and Divine judgement, that you should regard yourself as half-guilty and half-innocent: your next action might then lead either to acquittal or condemnation. As for the Me’iri, his take on Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel’s words is that, if you regard yourself as being wicked when you are not, you may come to do things that are wicked. More recently, the Ru’ach Chaim reads here a caution against looking righteous and wrapping yourself in tallit and tefillin when you are inwardly seething with evil thoughts.

One can travel even further in a quest for an explanation. Thus Rabbi Yaakov Hillel (Eternal Ethics From Sinai) picks up on a Gemara (Berachot 8a) that teaches that anyone who has a synagogue in his city but prays by himself is a shochen ra, a bad neighbour. Perhaps this then is the clue: since bifnei atzmecha can also be understood as meaning “on one’s own”, Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel must have been cautioning against praying at home by home. Alternatively, according to Rabbi Hillel, a person who brazenly defies our Sages by praying by himself is automatically deemed “wicked”. Rabbi Yehoshua Heschel of Monstritch turns this idea on its head: one is only allowed to view oneself as wicked, sinful and downright inadequate if one prays with other people, by analogy of the blend of spices and herbs that made up the ketoret—the incense offering in the Temple—which would be invalidated by the absence of the foul-smelling chelbanah. In such a case, one can feel wicked in the safe knowledge that one’s wickedness is cancelled out by the company one keeps.

How much of this speaks to us today? These analyses do not reflect our way of looking at the world—or ourselves—in an era in which the vocabulary of obedience and deviancy has so greatly changed. Words like ‘sin’ are marginalized and have faded from daily parlance; ‘evil’ is now a convenient epithet for someone with whom one has a major disagreement and ‘wicked’ is now a popular musical-turned-movie (run the word through your favourite browser if you don’t believe me).  But our mishnah is not lost.

Coming to the rescue is Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of The Fathers), who examines the Tanna’s pronouncement from his own perspective as a psychiatrist.  Do not think of yourself as an inherently bad person, he counsels. Rather, view yourself as a person who is fundamentally good but who has done bad things. Condemn the act, not the actor. This explanation might even be what Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel had in mind, and it is closer to his words than some of the explanations we reviewed earlier.

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A REWARD IN HAND

An anonymous mishnah at Avot 5:17 assesses and contrasts four categories of individual who have (or lack) pretentions to be engaged in Torah learning. It runs like this:

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. Someone who goes but does nothing has gained the rewards of going. Someone who does [study] but does not go to the study hall has gained the rewards of doing. One who goes and does is a chasid. One who neither goes nor does is wicked.

This is not one of the red-hot mishnayot that make Avot so exciting; it looks almost like a rote exercise in patting people on the head for going out to learn Torah in public, whether they can be seen and can share their learning with others, rather than sit with their books before them at home—where for all we know they might be playing Minecraft on their iPads.

Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezrich gives this teaching a Chasidic make-over in his inimitable manner by focusing on the second of the four stereotypes described in our mishnah, the הוֹלֵךְ וְאֵינוֹ עוֹשֶׂה (oseh ve’eino holech, who “does but doesn’t go”). This person earns a reward for the learning he does, but he fails to “go”, to progress from the level he has already attained to a higher level as a result of his learning.  His reward is therefore בְּיָדוֹ (beyado, literally “in his hand”), meaning “from the action of his hand” rather than being a reward for the internalization of his thoughts and his understanding of what has been learned—and for his growth in Torah.

This is a neat and elegant way to convey the message that the value of learning is in what understands rather than in the time spent sitting in a shiur, a lecture theatre or a library, going through the motions but emerging quite unchanged by that exercise. However, this meaning of לֵךְ וְאֵינוֹ עוֹשֶׂה and בְּיָדוֹ cannot be what the author of our mishnah intended. If it were, it would be impossible to comprehend the first part of the mishnah which speaks of the opposite case, the הוֹלֵךְ וְאֵינוֹ עוֹשֶׂה (holech ve’eino oseh, the one who “goes but does not do” any learning). By Reb Dov Ber’s reckoning this would be the person who rises in his level of learning and still receives a reward even though he has done nothing.

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WHERE—AND HOW—SHOULD WE LOOK FOR OUR HAPPINESS?

At Avot 4:1 Ben Zoma teaches (among other things):

אֵיזֶהוּ עָשִׁיר, הַשָּׂמֵֽחַ בְּחֶלְקוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: יְגִֽיעַ כַּפֶּֽיךָ כִּי תֹאכֵל, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ וְטוֹב לָךְ, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה, וְטוֹב לָךְ לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא

Who is rich? One who is happy with his lot. As it states (Tehillim 128:2): "If you eat of the effort of your hands, you are fortunate and it is good is to you"; “you are fortunate" in this world, "and it is good for you" in the World to Come.

The notion that happiness and the feeling that one is wealthy are contingent on being happy with what one has is a popular truism that seems to be expressed in many different ways and in every culture with which I am familiar. Jewish literature is rich in teachings that support it. We all know, as humans, that we want more than we have and that, once we obtain the object of our desire, we begin to want something else, something better or more appropriate for our needs. We know this because, if we are honest with ourselves, at one stage or another in our lives we have personally experienced it.

The party line is eloquently expressed by Rabbi Yisrael Miller (The Wisdom of Avot) where he writes, citing Rav Yerucham Levovitz:

… [W]e can all find happiness and success inside ourselves, and need not—and should not—allow our happiness to depend on external factors or circumstances; and with this understanding, “thank Hashem, I am happy always”.

A baraita in the sixth and final perek emphasizes this notion with specific reference to the Torah scholar and citing the same verse in Tehillim. At Avot 6:4 we learn:

כַּךְ הִיא דַּרְכָּהּ שֶׁל תּוֹרָה: פַּת בְּמֶֽלַח תֹּאכֵל, וּמַֽיִם בִּמְשׂוּרָה תִּשְׁתֶּה, וְעַל הָאָֽרֶץ תִּישָׁן, וְחַיֵּי צַֽעַר תִּחְיֶה, וּבַתּוֹרָה אַתָּה עָמֵל, אִם אַתָּה עֽוֹשֶׂה כֵּן, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ וְטוֹב לָךְ, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה, וְטוֹב לָךְ לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא

Such is the way of Torah: Bread with salt you shall eat; water in moderation you shall drink, and upon the ground you shall sleep. Live a life of deprivation and toil in Torah. If so you do, "If you eat of the effort of your hands, you are fortunate and it is good is to you"; “you are fortunate" in this world, "and it is good for you" in the World to Come.

It is possible to employ an objective test in order to establish that a person is fortunate. However, prima facie it seems both unnecessary and wrong to tell a person that they are happy or to prescribe in blanket terms that they will be happy. Happiness is experienced by every individual in a unique manner and to a unique degree.

One can go further in questioning the utility of the teachings in Avot concerning happiness, since there are a number of unstated assumptions that underpin the notion of true happiness being the feeling of being happy with one’s lot. For example:

If I want something that I do not have, I am discontented.

If I want something and God does not provide for me to obtain it, I am criticizing God’s assessment of what I am entitled to have and therefore implicitly consider Him unfair.

My being happy is a conscious choice, an exercise of my free will.

My lot consists of what I have or can access for myself, and not what I should have or need to have—but do not.

These assumptions, like the notion that one should be happy with one’s lot, are important because they play out in a person’s behaviour and response to factors that go beyond personal contentment. They therefore affect middot, norms of behaviour, and are not absolutes. This means that, while we can cheerfully endorse the idea that it is good to be content with one’s lot, we can drill it full of exceptions. Thus we can recite all 13 of the bakashot, the requests that form the heart of the weekday tefillah, without fear. We can seek to make provision for the needs of our family and, to a lesser extent, our wider community even if, in doing so, we make demands for things that we do not want.

Rabbinical thought does not challenge these teachings of Avot, but it does examine them in a variety of ways that make them less sententious and more appealing. Thus, for example, the Ben Ish Chai (cited in Mima’ayanot Netzach) explains that the “lot” (chelek in Hebrew) with which a person is happy is the chelek of his assets that he allocates to the benefit of the poor. He can rejoice in the fact that, by giving away this portion, he increases his own portion in the world to come.

I would like to suggest that there is a practical use for the concept of being happy with one’s lot. 

In our lives we inevitably find there are things we don’t have but would wish to acquire, as well as, less often, things we do have but which we neither need nor want.  Why not use the criterion of happiness with one’s lot as a sort of yardstick by which to measure our position regarding what we do and don’t want.  When contemplating whether to acquire or indeed pray for something, we should ask: “can I honestly say that it will make me happier?”  Likewise, when retaining or hoarding something, or dealing with another person’s requests that are made of us, we should ask: “can I honestly say that the loss of this article or acceding to this request will make me less happy?” This mental audit of our wish lists may not bring us to a state of permanently radiant happiness, but it will force us to confront the question of how much our happiness means to us in material, social, emotional and intellectual terms.

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WHEN IT’S RUDE TO ANSWER THE PHONE

In terms of modern etiquette, making and taking calls—particularly on smartphones—has developed its own set of behaviours. Often we can identify a caller, which gives us the option of letting the phone continue to ring, dismissing the call or answering it. Video calls can be accepted as such or only as audio calls, depending on one’s mood, location and respectability of appearance. We can put one person on hold while we speak to someone else, and so on. If we guess why the caller is trying to contact us, we can decline the call but send an instant message by text or voice in order to anticipate the need to talk at all.

Sometimes a caller is offended by the response of the person called, where it is not the hoped-for one. One such situation arises when the recipient answers the phone, only to tell the caller that he or she is far too busy to speak and then terminating the call. Many people find this behaviour unacceptably rude. “Why bother answering my call,” they complain, “when they don’t have the time to deal with me?” It’s insulting and suggests that the caller is of no worth at all.  Rabbi Shimshon Dovid Pincus (introduction to She’arim beTefillah) tells us that there is no greater honour that we can bestow upon others than the gift of our time. To deny another person one’s time is therefore the greatest snub one can administer. All this means that it is better not to answer at all than to answer with the “I’ve no time” response.

The position described in the previous paragraph is understandable—but is it best practice?

In the first place it is not correct to assume that, if giving another one’s time is the greatest honour, then not giving one’s time is the greatest insult. The opposite of giving honour (more accurately its negative) is simply not giving honour, ust as the opposite of giving someone an ice-cream is not giving someone an ice-cream. In each case, whether the negative of a particular act is good, bad or quite neutral is a value judgement based on other criteria.

Secondly, in Pirkei Avot we learn from Yehoshua ben Perachyah that we should not be inclined to presume the worst in other people. He teaches (Avot 1:6):

הֱוֵי דָן אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם לְכַף זְכוּת

Judge every person on the scale of merit.

This means giving others the benefit of the doubt in situations in which their behaviour, though objectively unacceptable or even inexcusable, may in fact be justified by circumstances of which we have no knowledge.  This principle is underlined by a teaching of Hillel later in the same tractate (Avot 2:4):

אַל תָּדִין אֶת חֲבֵרָךְ עַד שֶׁתַּגִּֽיעַ לִמְקוֹמוֹ

Do not judge your fellow until you have stood in his place. 

If we are honest with ourselves we will concede that, however annoying it is when others have answered your call only to tell you they can’t deal with you now, it is something we have quite likely done to others without feeling any sense of guilt. Common instances of this are where, for example,

The caller is phoning at a time other than one which you have told him you are free to talk;

You know that the caller will call repeatedly if you don’t answer the call or dismiss it;

The call is coming in just before Shabbat and you are frantically juggling a set of immediate commitments;

You know that the caller seeks to repeat a request that you have already refused and that nothing will come from discussing the matter again until there is a change in circumstances.

If we feel quite justified do this ourselves, we should be prepared to accept that others may feel exactly the same way.

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LET’S HANG ON TO WHAT WE GOT…

At Avot 3:10 Rabbi Dostai ben Yannai teaches in the name of Rabbi Meir a lesson that most of us would regard as easy to understand but extremely hard to apply:

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

Anyone who forgets even a single word of this learning, the Torah considers it as if he had forfeited his life. As is stated, "Just be careful, and very much guard your soul, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen" (Devarim 4:9). One might think that this applies also to one who [has forgotten because] his studies proved too difficult for him; but the verse continues "and lest they be removed from your heart, throughout the days of your life." From this we see that one does not forfeit his life unless he deliberately removes them from his heart.

For any Jew learning Torah today, the task is in many respects incomparably harder than it was for the Sages of the Mishnah: Rabbi Dostai and his contemporaries had ‘only’ to master the canonical books of the Tanach plus the Oral Law that Rabbi Yehudah eventually organized into the Six Orders of the Mishnah and the accompanying teachings that became known as baraitot, toseftot and midrash. They never had to face the task of conquering what was to become a possibly exponential growth of literature ranging from the commentaries and codifications of the Rishonim through to the generally far more voluminous output of the Acharonim.  On the other hand, without the convenience of the printed text and the luxury of online data retrieval, anything they failed to commit to memory or were able to explain cogently to others was liable to be lost forever.

The Chasid Yavetz places this mishnah within the context of the arrangement of teachings in the third chapter of Avot. There it follows a series of six mishnayot that deal with different aspects of Torah: sharing it with others, not turning away from it but adhering to it, the importance of studying it with others and the need to resist the temptation to be distracted while learning it.  Once we have mastered these matters, we are all set for a promising role as a talmid chacham—someone who is wise in the ways of the Torah—but there is still one thing left to address.

Explains the Chasid Yavetz, there is a parallel between the pursuit of Torah and the pursuit of profit in the business world. Most of us are probably familiar with the types of businessmen that inhabit our commercial world. Discounting those poor souls who really don’t have a clue, there are three other personalities in the business world: those who make money and don’t know how to hang on to it, those who know exactly how to hang onto it but never seem to be able to make it, and those happy folk who possess the knack of making money and the wherewithal to safeguard it. So too in the world of Torah, we see those who know how to learn but can’t retain it, those who would retain it well if they could but remember it, and those who are not only good at learning but keep their knowledge and their understanding secure. The Chasid Yavetz bases his categorization on the proof verse from Devarim and the two verses that precede it, though he could equally have treated it as an echo of the -authored “four types of Torah student” mishnah at Avot 5:15.

The obvious line of protection against forgetting one’s Torah is the principle of “let’s hang on to what we got”, this being the practice of regularly revising what we have learned. Curiously, this important learning technique is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the tractate of Avot—though there is something of a tradition that incorporates it. We learn Avot from Pesach to Shavuot, the period of sefirat ha’omer (this being 49 days), but only 48 elements of acquiring Torah are listed in the baraita of Avot 6:6. Each day of the sefirat ha’omer corresponds to one of those 48 elements, leaving the 49^th and final day for chazarah (“revision”). I heard this from Rabbi Eli Brunner zt’l, who heard it from Rabbi Elya Lopian. If anyone has an authentic source drawn from our earlier Sages, can they please let me know.

I don’t suppose that many, and perhaps any, serious and sincere contemporary Torah scholars would ever go about deliberately forgetting any part of their Torah learning except possibly where they had mis-learned it in the first place and had to put it right out of their minds before seeking to re-learn it properly. But there may be another form of forgetting that is more than merely accidental but certainly not malicious. An argument in Jewish law may be complex, built on the interrelationship of several different propositions—and sometimes when we apply layers of halachic propositions one after another we reach a result that is so absurd or self-evidently wrong that we deliberately reject it and start again. It may be that, in this process of rejection, a valid Torah proposition is set aside too and is subsequently forgotten. I like to think that our God, being all-knowing and merciful, would not condemn this form of forgetfulness.

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TALKIN’ ABOUT OUR GENERATIONS…

There is a pair of mishnayot in Avot that look totally out of place in a tractate that is concerned with the criteria that our Sages lay down for good behaviour. They read like this (Avot 5:2-3):

עֲשָׂרָה דוֹרוֹת מֵאָדָם וְעַד נֹֽחַ, לְהוֹדִֽיעַ כַּמָּה אֶֽרֶךְ אַפַּֽיִם לְפָנָיו, שֶׁכָּל הַדּוֹרוֹת הָיוּ מַכְעִיסִין וּבָאִין, עַד שֶׁהֵבִיא עֲלֵיהֶם אֶת מֵי הַמַּבּוּל

עֲשָׂרָה דוֹרוֹת מִנֹּֽחַ וְעַד אַבְרָהָם, לְהוֹדִֽיעַ כַּמָּה אֶֽרֶךְ אַפַּֽיִם לְפָנָיו, שֶׁכָּל הַדּוֹרוֹת הָיוּ מַכְעִיסִין וּבָאִין, עַד שֶׁבָּא אַבְרָהָם אָבִֽינוּ וְקִבֵּל שְׂכַר כֻּלָּם

There were ten generations from Adam to Noah. This is to teach us the extent of God's tolerance; for all these generations angered Him, until He brought upon them the waters of the Flood.

There were ten generations from Noah to Abraham. This is to teach us the extent of God's tolerance; for all these generations angered Him, until Abraham came and reaped the reward for them all.

Since the Mishnah is not a work of history, it is implicit that there is more to these teachings than the transgenerational narrative suggests.  Much attention is paid to important philosophical issues such as the withholding of punishment from generations that were deserving it or the fairness of giving Abraham the reward for meritorious acts of others, as well as theological issues relating to the imputation of human qualities such as forbearance and anger to an inscrutable Deity whose characteristics are beyond human comprehension. But there is one topic that is generally ignored: the counting of generations.

The problem these mishnayot raise is this. Counting Adam as 1 and Abraham as 20, as the genealogical chronology of the Torah suggests, there are only 19 generations (you can try this yourself with a box of matches: if you lay out 20 in a row, the number of gaps, representing the generations, will only total 19).

Paul Forchheimer (Maimonides’ Commentary on Pirkey Avoth) asserts that Noah belongs only to the first mishnah. He brings no support for this assertion, but Tosafot Yom Tov, the Maharal in his Derech Chaim and the Anaf Yosef see provide it for him. The Torah itself challenges this view, though since, though the first mishnah ends with God bringing his punishing Flood, we discover at Bereshit 9:28 that Noah lived for another 350 presumably quite unrewarding years—thus taking him well beyond that cataclysmic event and placing him firmly in the second mishnah.  Another reason for including him in the second grouping is that, at the end of this period, God is not in punishment mode but is distributing rewards. Noah, whom the Torah describes as a tzaddik and who is the instrument through which God saves humanity, would appear to belong more to the generations that earned rewards—even if they were withheld—than the generations that deserved to be wiped out.

Ultimately the question that should concern us is not which mishnah or mishnayot contains Noah but, rather, what the anonymous author of these teachings is trying to teach us. This should not be hard to establish. The main actor in each mishnah is God. It is an oft-repeated axiom that we are supposed to emulate His ways. Just as He is merciful, so too should we be merciful, and so on (Shabbat 133b). Transposing this axiom to our pair of mishnayot, the lesson is clear: just as He is patient and tolerant, we too should be patient and tolerant; and just as He is not hasty to hand out rewards to those who are not fit to receive them, so too should we exercise the same caution.

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BEFORE YOU OPEN THAT GEMARA, GET YOURSELF AN ATTRACTIVE WIFE

Sitting quietly in the middle of a string of more apparently profound or provocative teachings of our Sages in Avot is that of Rabbi Yose at Avot 2:17:

הַתְקֵן עַצְמָךְ לִלְמוֹד תּוֹרָה, שֶׁאֵינָהּ יְרֻשָּׁה לָךְ

Prepare yourself to study Torah, since it is not an inheritance for you.

This is scarcely rocket science. Preparation is so often a prerequisite for what we do that the advice to prepare oneself seems quite unnecessary. Preparing oneself is what we do when we are planning to go out in the rain, play a game of tennis, embark upon a shopping expedition or go to bed. Why should learning Torah be anything else?

Over the years, commentators such as the Bartenura and ‘Rashi’ have focused less on the need to prepare than on the tail-end of this teaching—that Torah is not our inheritance. From our earliest youth we learn by rote that Torah is the inheritance of the Jewish people as a whole (Devarim 33:4). Be that as it may, it still has to be learned, and this is an instruction for us as individuals, for it is we who are individually tasked with the responsibility to learn, absorb, understand, comply with its guidance and ultimately transmit it (Midrash Shmuel; Rabbi Marcus Lehmann).

Rabbenu Yonah takes a strict view of the preparation one must undergo in order to learn Torah. This involves the diminution of one’s physical pleasures as well as some serious perfection of one’s character, with a special emphasis on humility. The Maharal cites humility as the prime preparation for learning Torah in his Netivot Olam and this middah also makes the list of 48 activities and attributes that make a person a Talmid Chacham at Avot 6:6.

In Berachot 57b is a statement that seems to support Rabbenu Yonah. There the Gemara states:

“Three things are marchivin a man’s mind. This is what they are: an attractive home, an attractive wife, and attractive kelim [clothing and utensils]”.

Morris Simon’s translation in the Soncino Talmud renders marchivin in this context as “increases a man’s self-esteem”. The Maharsha takes a stern view of this Gemara. Linking the word marchivin to the nefesh rechavah of Balaam’s disciples which takes them from the world (Avot 5:22), he cautions us that these three things are symbols of worldly pleasure. If we possess them for our personal gratification, we are lost.  

Surprisingly, contrary and far less austere view is expressed by Rabbi Yaakov Hillel in his generally ascetic and often acerbic commentary, Eternal Ethics from Sinai. There he observes:

“At first glance we would not imagine that factors such as these would contribute to our development as Torah scholars. And yet, would the Sages provide advice like this as a tip for success in business or… for deriving maximum enjoyment out of life in this world? It can only mean that these circumstances will help us grow in Torah.

If we use these gifts for the sake of Heaven, as a means to spiritual growth, they are positive and beneficial, and they will give us the peace of mind we need to learn Torah”.

This view is favourable for those of us with hedonistic tendencies, though it is hard to reconcile it with Avot 6:4, where an anonymous mishnah opts for a hair-shirt approach:

כַּךְ הִיא דַּרְכָּהּ שֶׁל תּוֹרָה: פַּת בְּמֶֽלַח תֹּאכֵל, וּמַֽיִם בִּמְשׂוּרָה תִּשְׁתֶּה, וְעַל הָאָֽרֶץ תִּישָׁן, וְחַיֵּי צַֽעַר תִּחְיֶה, וּבַתּוֹרָה אַתָּה עָמֵל, אִם אַתָּה עֽוֹשֶׂה כֵּן, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ וְטוֹב לָךְ, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה, וְטוֹב לָךְ לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא

Such is the way of Torah: Bread with salt you shall eat, water in small measure you shall drink, and upon the ground you shall sleep; live a life of deprivation and toil in Torah. If you do so, "you are fortunate and it is good is to you" (Tehillim 128:2): fortunate in this world, and it is good to you in the World To Come.

Rather than grumble about mixed messages and inconsistency, I think it is preferable to conclude that the various views reflected in these teachings are inconsistent only because they are addressing different personality types and people who are at different stages of their lives. Our task is then to work out which of these competing messages is the one for each of us.

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LIVING IN A WORLD TURNED UPSIDE-DOWN

Among the values that Pirkei Avot promotes, none Is hammered home more powerfully than truth. At Avot 1:18 Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel classes it with peace and justice as one of the three values upon which life on Earth depends. Acceptance of the truth is one of the signs of someone who is not a golem (Avot 5:9), and acknowledging the truth is listed as one of the 48 qualities demanded of anyone who wishes to acquire Torah (Avot 6:6).

Why should we need to emphasize the value of truth? In an ideal world this exercise should be unnecessary.  Any group of humans that depends upon cooperation also depends on trust, and the establishment of trust itself depends on reciprocity. If there is no mutuality of trust, there is no basis on which to opt for collective behaviour and the division of responsibility within that group.  However, we know that—at least on a short-term basis—in any group where truth is respected and mutual trust is established, an individual can obtain an advantage through not respecting the truth.  This is the business model for fraudsters, confidence tricksters, cheating spouses and others. And it is this sort of deviation from the truth that Avot 1:18 in particular seems to be addressing.

Now, however, there is another threat to the universality of the acceptance of the value of truth: this comes in the form of the creation of so-called alternative narratives and conspiracy theories that are not based on the provability of facts but on the plausibility or attractiveness of the narrative itself.  If anyone has yet to be persuaded of the power of these creations, they should read Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, a contemporary account of how political and social pressure can be conjured almost out of nowhere by the persuasive power of an appealing alternative narrative.

It struck me this week that our perplexed reaction on confronting these “alternative realities” and our struggle to live in a society based upon a palpable fiction has been described in almost prophetic detail by Charles Dodgson (alias Lewis Carroll) in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. In these two remarkable works we find the protagonist, Alice, grappling with Humpty Dumpty's proposition:

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less".

This places the meaning of all vocabulary—the tool of communication—in the realm of the entirely subjective and deprives well-accepted terms of their shared meaning. Where is no shared understanding of meaning, there can be no meaningful debate.

Elsewhere in Carroll’s stories Alice’s perceptions of justice and fairness, authority and status, law and order are so firmly contradicted that she struggles to maintain them. She is forced to question her own identity—and even her own existence. This is pretty well how we live in today’s world, where basic human values and assumptions have ceased to be normative.

So far as Pirkei Avot is concerned, truth is a key value—and the essence of truth is that it establishes what is real and what is not. But there is no teaching in Avot that the concept of “reality”. There isn’t even a word in Mishnaic Hebrew that accurately describes the term as we understand it today. Does any mishnah or baraita in Avot talk about how we are to accept the reality as it is, particularly when our Sages themselves question the concept?  The Gemara (Pesachim 50a) suggests that the world we see before our very eyes, our perceived reality, is just an upside-down version of the real reality. Where does this lead us? Any

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SMALL DUTY, BIG REWARD?

One of the most popular topics for discussion in Avot is the designation of mitzvot: which commandments are big, as it were, and which are not? The first place where this issue arises is at Avot 2:1, where Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi teaches us to treat all mitzvot with care since we can’t know which carry a large reward (or punishment) and which do not. In his own words:

הֱוֵי זָהִיר בְּמִצְוָה קַלָּה כְּבַחֲמוּרָה, שֶׁאֵין אַתָּה יוֹדֵֽעַ מַתַּן שְׂכָרָן שֶׁל מִצְוֹת, וֶהֱוֵי מְחַשֵּׁב הֶפְסֵד מִצְוָה כְּנֶֽגֶד שְׂכָרָהּ, וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה כְּנֶֽגֶד הֶפְסֵדָהּ

Be as careful with a minor mitzvah as with a major one, for you do not know the rewards of the mitzvot. Consider the cost of a mitzvah against its rewards, and the rewards of a transgression against its cost.

This is not like saying “Be as careful with a small dog as a big one, since you don’t know how badly it bites”. The response of a dog can be ascertained empirically, but the response of God cannot. Even when we receive a reward, we can’t be sure which mitzvah it’s for, or whether that mitzvah—even if we could identify it—was a major one or not.

There are various ways in which we can categorize mitzvot and then list them. For example:

Mitzvot may be owed towards God, other people or ourselves

They may be derived from the Torah, from the Oral Law, or from custom

Importance may depend on the immediate circumstances and not on their inherent value (thus a mitzvah that one is in the middle of performing will normally take precedence over any other mitzvot, and pikuach nefesh—the saving of a life—overrides positive and negative commandments).

In this context I was interested to read the following passage by Rabbi Hershel Schachter (Rav Schachter on Pirkei Avos), one of the few in which he does not cite his esteemed Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Solveitchik:

“[Historically, some mitzvos may take on greater significance, even they may be deemed objectively less valuable”.

Then, after summarizing the classic midrashim that argue against the rescue of the Jewish People from slavery in Egypt on the basis that we were just as much idolators as the Egyptians who enslaved us, he continues:

“The Midrashim …tell us that Bnei Yisroel did not change their names, their language, or their dress. In other words, by retaining their Jewish names, speaking Loshon HaKodesh, and dressing differently than the Mitzrim, the Jewish People remained distinctive.

Interestingly, the Rambam writes (Peirush HaMishnayos) that speaking Loshon HaKodesh is an example of what our Mishnah labels a mitzvah kalah, which should nevertheless be scrupulously performed. … Thus it turns out that the Jewish People merited geulah from Mitzrayim on the strength of mitzvos that we would consider among the less important ones!”

Rav Schachter draws further support for the notion that what is considered an important mitzvah may depend on the time and place from the suggestion of the Meshech Chochmah (Vayikra 26:44) that, when the Jewish people are in exile, “nationalistic” mitzvot are important than purely religious ones. In contrast, when we are in Israel, religious mitzvot increase in importance as against the rest.  Rav Schachter’s example of the Jews earning their right to redemption from Egypt by clinging to three mitzvot that help shape national identity bears this out.

Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi is right. We cannot second-guess the relative value of mitzvot—not in absolute terms and not in relative terms either, since circumstances change and, with them, our duties towards God, other people and ourselves. We must recognize the value of all mitzvot but at the same time concede that we cannot establish for ourselves which are the major, which the minor.

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WHAT IT MEANS TO BE LOVED—AND WHY

Being loved is not just something to which we aspire—and which we enjoy when it happens to us. It’s also a prerequisite for being a “Pirkei Avot person”, someone who seeks to improve their middot and live a life that balances their responsibilities towards God, to other people, and to themselves.

Twice in the baraitot in the sixth and final perek does the quality of being אָהוּב (“loved”) get a mention. First, at Avot 6:1, it appears as a reward rather than an aspiration when Rabbi Meir lists it among the 29 merits that attach to anyone to studies Torah for its own sake and not for any ulterior motive. The baraita at Avot 6:6 goes further: it is listed among the 48 things that form the package of personal attributes one needs in order to master one’s Torah studies.

Two questions beg to be asked.

First, why does being loved feature so importantly in a tractate on the perfection of human behaviour when it is an attribute that generally lies beyond any of us to achieve by ourselves? Secondly, is there a yardstick by which one can measure whether a person is loved or not?

On the first question, one can speculate that an element of pre-Kantian reciprocity was in the minds of our Sages: ask yourself what qualities in other people causes you to love others, then seek to emulate them in the way you deal with others in turn. While subjective considerations will always be important (one person’s endearing quality is another’s pet aversion), reciprocity works quite well as a rough-and-ready reckoner of the path in life one should take.

As for the second question, empirical evidence suggests that it is quite hard to be entirely unloved. We have all seen how many villains have loving mothers and loyal spouses. But if practically everyone is certain of being loved by at least one other person, the threshold for being אָהוּב is extremely low and would completely devalue the teachings in Avot.

The classic commentators do not greatly help us to answer either question, and most later and contemporary commentators have followed their example. When being loved is found in lists of 29 and 48 attributes respectively, and there is so much to say about many of the others, passing over the need to be אָהוּב is unsurprising.

So what can we glean from our rabbis? The Rambam and Bartenura offer no discussion of baraitot of the sixth perek. For Rabbenu Yonah it is self-evident that all the world loves a Torah scholar; if this was ever true, it is manifestly not the case today. For Rabbi  Chaim Volozhiner (Ru’ach Chaim), אָהוּבmeans being loved by God. However, since it is axiomatic that God loves all His creatures, this is a box that every Jew cannot help but tick. A less inclusive way for many people to tick the same box is by simply loving God: as Proverbs teaches: “I love those who love Me” (Mishlei 8:17). Rabbis Nachman and Natan of Breslov offer an easy alternative: אָהוּב means “being loved by oneself”, something that most of us can accomplish with little effort.

Some explain these baraitot by giving “beloved” a tweak. So for Rabbi Yitzchak Magriso (Me’am Lo’ez) the word really means “lovable”: if you are the sort of person that people love, you will attract more people who wish to teach you Torah.

Among modern psychologists too there is little to help us. Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of the Fathers) tells us that one who loves others is beloved but offers neither example nor precedent. Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka (Chapters of the Fathers) is silent.  

All of this is both perplexing and disappointing. One can justify being loved by others as a desirable consequence of learning Torah for its own sake, as Avot 6:1 states, but I feel that a good argument for including in the budding Torah student’s must-have list remains to be made.

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PAIN, JOY AND "MARKING THE GOOD"

I recently came across this paragraph from The Commentator ("The Independent Student Newspaper of Yeshiva University"):

[Rabbi Avi] Berman, who had just landed from Israel, spoke about the University’s two-year efforts in advocating and praying for the return of the hostages held in Gaza. The return of all of the living hostages to Israel happened while Berman was in Israel, so he took a moment to reflect and thank Hashem. In discussing the halachic implications of making a bracha on the return of the living hostages while there are still Jewish bodies held in Gaza and much uncertainty on the stability of the peace plan in Israel, Berman looked to Pirkei Avot. He explained that “even when there is pain mixed with joy we still have an obligation to mark the good.” 

I have no idea which mishnah was in Rabbi Berman's mind when he was quoted here. Can anyone help me?

You can check out the full text of this article here.

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NOT IN OUR HANDS

Rabbi Yannai is one of the lesser known Tannaim of Masechet Avot. From him we learn a single, somewhat perplexing lesson that is framed not as an instruction for good behaviour but as a general statement regarding the human condition. He states (at Avot 4:19):

אֵין בְּיָדֵֽינוּ לֹא מִשַּׁלְוַת הָרְשָׁעִים, וְאַף לֹא מִיִּסּוֹרֵי הַצַּדִּיקִים

The tranquillity of the wicked and also the suffering of the righteous—they are not in our hands.

Taken at face value, the plain meaning of Rabbi Yannai’s words does not look like a valuable lesson for life. Yes, many wicked people live enjoyable and fulfilling lives, and many fine and upstanding individuals find each day a painful and exacting struggle. We may not (and, if we are honest with ourselves, do not) know why.  The Gemara itself (Berachot 5a) posits that a person’s pain and suffering may be a sign not only of God’s displeasure but of quite the opposite: His wish may be to ensure that the ‘victim’ receive all his suffering in this world in order to provide him with a perfect and pain-free World to Come.

One practical use to which we might think of putting this teaching is in the implementation of Nittai haArbeli’s teaching at Avot 1:7 that we should keep well away from a bad neighbour and not team up with someone who is wicked.  But Rabbi Yannai has only described facts on the ground. He has not provided us with a litmus test by which to distinguish the virtuous from the vile; we cannot avoid calm and happy people who have peace of mind on the assumption that they must be wicked, nor can we seek out people who are tormented by pain and misfortune on the basis that they must be full of virtue.

Avot warns us of the dangers of living on credit. Thus Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel (Avot 2:14) cautions against borrowing but not repaying, whether our debt is owed to other people or to God. The person who does this is described by Rabbi Yaakov Hillel in Eternal Ethics From Sinai as living off the bounty of others, and he may do so with complete equanimity if he feels entitled to do so. Perhaps he is the wicked person that Rabbi Yannai has in mind. However, Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel neither mentions nor alludes to the corresponding personality of one who does not borrow—or borrows and repays—while living a life of suffering. Such a person may be a tzaddik, or not. Another mishnah with a credit warning is that of Rabbi Akiva at Avot 3:20. This teaching is however only about the fact that whatever you owe God is paid up one way or another, and is clearly remote from Rabbi Yannai’s scenario.

Perhaps the key to Rabbi Yannai’s mishnah is in the words that attract the least attention: אֵין בְּיָדֵֽינוּ (literally “not in our hands”). Arguably he is not telling us that these contrasting propositions relating to the happy scoundrel and the saintly sufferer are beyond our comprehension, our intellectual “grasp”. We know that. He is instead letting us know that we cannot realistically choose to be either of those persons.  Possession of a tranquil mind is not an automatic consequence of our having affluence, power and other tangible and intangible assets that are so often craved—and the more we seek to manipulate and harm others, the more our conscience is likely to trouble us, however reluctant we are to pay attention to it. Likewise, a person who is truly righteous in his dealings with others and his relationship with God may find it increasingly hard to wallow in his misery when he is so fully aware of the goodness of the path he has chosen in life and the rewards that will await him thereafter.  In other words, Rabbi Yannai is subtly teaching us that neither we nor those we know can be found at the polar extremes he describes. Rather, we are all to be found somewhere on the spectrum that spans them.

There is another “not at the extremes” explanation with which we leave this topic. It may not fit neatly with the words of the mishnah, but it carries a message that addressed to us all. According to the Kozhnitzer Maggid, as rendered by Rabbi Tal Mosher Zwecker, Ma’asei Avos:

“[W]e do not have the luxury of peace as the wicked do, as the wicked think they have no reason to repent for they have done nothing wrong. Neither do we have the suffering of the righteous, as their consciences bother them continuously, always pointing out their every shortcoming and sin. Rather, we must realize that while we always have hope, there are always things to work on and rectify. The middle road is best, balanced between both extremes”.

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DOES IT MATTER IF WE QUOTE OUR SOURCES?

 At Avot 6:6 the 48^th and final element in the list of things one should acquire or practise in order to maximize one’s claim to be a true ben Torah is the habit of quoting the source of anything you say that does not originate from you but from some earlier source:

הָאוֹמֵר דָּבָר בְּשֵׁם אוֹמְרוֹ

One who says a thing in the name of the person who says it.

This practice is said to bring the ultimate redemption:

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

That’s what you 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” (Esther 2:22).

Why should a person quote his sources? Within Avot one can advance several reasons. For example:

·       The world is sustained by three things—truth, justice and peace (Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, Avot 1:18). Suppressing the identity of the person who first articulated one’s words can be viewed as concealing the truth, or at least as being highly economical with it, by creating the misleading impression that the words spoken were one’s own.  

·       Masquerading as the originator of a teaching is a form of self-promotion. Hillel warns at Avot 1:13 that a name made great is a name destroyed.

·       Rebbi, at Avot 2:1, asks what is the path that a person should choose for himself and answers his own question: it is the path that reflects creditably on himself and in the eyes of others. Holding oneself out as the author of another’s words does not comply with that proposition.

Even aside from these mishnayot, there are reasons for quoting one’s sources. Thus

“…the Rambam understood that the purpose of the directive of הָאוֹמֵר דָּבָר בְּשֵׁם אוֹמְרוֹ is not in order to prevent a person from falsely taking credit for someone else’s statement, but rather to demonstrate the authenticity of a particular halachah” (Rabbi Hershel Schachter, Rav Schachter on Pirkei Avos).

Frustratingly, Rav Schachter does not cite a source for this proposition. It cannot have been from Rambam’s commentary on Avot, since הָאוֹמֵר דָּבָר בְּשֵׁם אוֹמְרוֹ  is in the sixth perek of Avot; this consists entirely of baraitot and was not therefore part of his commentary on the Mishnah.

Rambam himself is no great champion of the principle of citation of teachings in the names of those who teach them. In his monumental Mishneh Torah he generally makes no mention of sources at all, and towards the beginning of the  Shemonah Perakim—ostensibly Rambam’s introduction to Pirkei Avot—he actually refuses to credit his sources:

“Take note—the concepts stated in this chapters and the forthcoming explanations are not new concepts that I have invented/ They are, rather, an anthology of the words of our Sages …, the works of philosophers of the early and late generations, and many other texts. Accept the truth [regardless of] the person who said it”

So, having denied any sort of original input, Rambam might be expected to produce a text that is literally bristling with sources. But he does not:

“[I have chosen not to mention my sources for two reasons:] a) because this prolongs the text without any advantage. b) By mentioning the name of an author of whom a particular person might not approve. I might cause him [to reject the concept, thinking] that it is harmful and that it contains an undesirable intent. For this reason I have chosen to omit the name of the author... ”.

Both of these propositions are debatable.

As for the first, how might any author know that there is no advantage to be gained by not giving a source? Subsequent events have shown rather the opposite: there has been something of a cottage industry in trying to find the very sources that Rambam concealed, generally because of the advantage that can be derived from gaining that information. 

As for the second, Rambam has already told his readers that they should accept the truth without regard for who said it. It seems inconsistent then to withhold the identities of his sources in case his readers do not follow his injunction.

If anyone can find a source for Rabbi Schachter’s proposition that Rambam supported citation of sources in order to demonstrate the authenticity of anything, can they please share it?

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