Age
|
Significance
|
5
|
Learn Written Torah
|
10
|
Learn Oral Torah
|
13
|
Bar mitzvah
|
15
|
Learn Gemara
|
18
|
Get married
|
20
|
Go out to work
|
30
|
Be in full vigour
|
40
|
Gain understanding
|
50
|
Give advice
|
60
|
Reach old age
|
70
|
Reach vintage old age
|
80
|
Achieve spiritual strength
|
90
|
Lose one’s powers
|
100
|
Cease to be of account
|
Naturally, not all these ages are carved in stone. While 13 is an arbitrary age for males, not subject to choice or negotiation, other figures listed above are bound to vary as between individuals: there are precocious youngsters and late developers, people who are swiftly focused on their life challenges and those who drift for many years before they find their vocation. Also, not all of the listed activities are within a person's grasp at any given time: for example, one cannot get married in a vacuum but must find another person -- ideally the right person -- who is prepared to commit.
Many parents of children in Jewish schools will be aware that the 5-10-15 sequence for learning Tanach, Mishnayot and Gemara is not reflected in the syllabus. Schools often pride themselves on the fact that they introduce teaching of Torah sheb'al peh much earlier than that. Despite Yehudah ben Tema's teaching on the subject, they do so without apology and generally with the consent and encouragement of parents.
Whether the numbers themselves are still current or not, the sequence of these ages remains important. For example, while everyone seems eager both to give advice and to have others accept it, it makes sense to acquire understanding first since advice which is based on understanding is inherently more likely to be of value than that which is based on enthusiastic or inspired guesswork. Getting married before going out to work would seem to be the wrong way round (as Rambam observes in Mishneh Torah: it is more prudent to create an income stream before rather than after clocking up financial burdens) -- but the scenario envisioned here is that bride and groom will spend a couple of years living at the expense of the bride's father while the young couple get to know one another. This ideal is not often put into practice in today's economic and social conditions.
We can ask: if our sages today were to create their own Ages of Man table and did not have Yehudah ben Tema's table as a precedent, what might their list look like?
