Crowns in Avot: putting the record straight

There's a fascinating post on Aish.com by Dr Norman Goldwasser, "Lessons from My Father and Childhood in the Segregated South", which is well worth a read. It also contains a brief reference to Pirkei Avot that calls for a gentle tweak. The relevant paragraph reads:

One distinct memory of those encounters was with a man who I think was named Mr. Jones. As he was waiting patiently in our living room, he looked up at me, and for no apparent reason other than to make sure that I knew the obvious, he said to me, “You know your daddy’s a good man.” As is said in Ethics of the Fathers, “A good name is greater than a gold crown". My father indeed had a good name, that stood for kindness – and justice. He always seemed to know what was the right thing to do.

The sentiment expressed by the words "“A good name is greater than a gold crown" is certainly found in Avot, but in a rather different form:

Rabbi Shimon used to say: "There are three crowns: the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood and the crown of sovereignty—but the crown of good name surmounts them all" (Avot 4:17).

Text and tradition: their place in "acquisition of the Torah"

The huge baraita in the sixth chapter of Pirkei Avot (6:6) lists no fewer than 48 elements that, in aggregate, are said to represent kinyan HaTorah ("acquisition of the Torah"). The list is an impressive one and, if we are honest, most of us are doing pretty well if we even manage half of them in today's world. Still, they represent an ideal -- and a challenge for us too, even if it is quite daunting.

Some of the items on the list are a little puzzling, since they seem obvious. Two that stand out in particular are Mikra (the text of the Torah and indeed the prophets and writings that comprise the rest of the Tanach) and Mishnah (the tractates that comprise the Six Orders of Mishnah and their accompanying Talmud). Why single these items out for special mention in this list? After all, they together add up to the content of our Torah learning -- and it is not possible to learn Torah without learning Torah (there is a small exception in Eruvin 100b, that one can learn Torah from animals such as cats, ants and cockerels, but the amount that can be learned from them is strictly limited). 

Perhaps the intention of the author of the baraita, when including Mikra and Mishnah, is to stress that it is only the text of Mikra and only the tradition of Mishnah that lead to acquisition of Torah learning.  They are listed in our baraita only to exclude writings that are not part of the canon of Tanach (works of apocrypha and pseudepigrapha and those which fell out of favour such as Ben Sira/Ecclesiasticus) as well as extraneous writings such as ancient Jewish fiction.

Exclusion of anything that falls outside the scope of the Tanach and the Six Orders of the Mishnah and their derivatives still leaves one question open: how does one categorise midrashic literature? While this falls outside the narrow interpretation of Mikra and Mishnah, in general it provides explanations and discussions based upon them. The author of the baraita, being a Tanna, would have been familiar with Midrash and may even have authored midrashim himself so I would like to assume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that the term Mishnah embraces Midrash too.

Can we really be altruistic when we know there's a reward coming up?

The first Baraita in the sixth chapter of Avot praises the person who learns Torah for its own sake and not for any personal advantage or ulterior motive. After saying in general terms that, for such a person, the world is his oyster, it lists some 29 praises, virtues and attributes with which this good soul is garlanded: these include wisdom, power, glory, integrity and (this is handy in today's difficult world) an ability to forgive insults. 

It may seem strange that all the wonderful virtues and praises listed in this Baraita come only to someone who does not learn the Torah in order to acquire them even though, as a student of the Torah, he knows that they will inevitably come to him. This conundrum is similar to the conceptual basis for one of the earliest mishnayot in Avot (1:3), which teaches that we should not serve God in order to obtain a reward — even though we know full well that a reward automatically follows our service. 

In our lives we all face this situation in one form or another when we have the opportunity to do things that benefit us but we nonetheless do them for the sake of another. A typical situation in which this may happen is where a parent seeks to calm a screaming baby at three o’clock in the morning: while the parent knows that he or she will not be able to return to bed until the baby is placated, parental feelings of love, concern and empathy for the baby’s unarticulated anguish may completely swamp any selfish feelings of self-interest. This is the altruistic basis upon which we should seek to serve God and — as this Baraita indicates — the way we should seek to learn Torah. 

Judging others: a practical exercise

The mishnah in which Yehoshua ben Perachyah teaches us to judge others favorably (to be don lekaf zechut: Avot 1:6) is a popular one. It is short, memorable, easy to understand and has even launched entire books (Rabbi Hanoch Teller's Courtrooms of the Mind springs to mind, with its narration of examples drawn from real life).

A real-life situation confronted me this morning, when I was taking a pre-lockdown walk through the streets of Jerusalem. Coming towards me was a popular and respected rabbi of my acquaintance, together with his rebbetzin. We acknowledged each other as we crossed with seasonally appropriate words and then continued walking in our respective directions. 

Something troubled me about this apparently innocent encounter, but it took me a good few moments to work out what it was. The rabbi was not wearing a mask, despite all the stern injunctions and encouragements to do so, and in disregard of epidemiological and healthcare advice.

To my knowledge there was no reason why the rabbi should not be wearing a mask -- but there was every reason why he should. As a respected and influential member of the local community, he could certainly be described as a role model. But here he was demonstrating a literally barefaced defiance of the current norm. 

After recovering from the initial surprise, my thoughts turned to Avot 1:6 and being don lekaf zechut. The best I could manage was rather feeble: that perhaps the rabbi and his wife were so deeply engrossed in discussion on an important Torah matter that the rabbi quite forgot to put his mask on. This in turn caused me to wonder whether I should have chased back to see if I could find him and gently mention to him that he appeared to have forgotten something -- or maybe administer a tactful rebuke. But by then the opportunity had passed for everything except wondering what I should have done. 

Nice things for the righteous: a privilege or a responsibility

Towards the end of Avot (at 6:8) there is a Baraita that calls for a bit of attention. It starts off like this:

Rabbi Shimon ben Yehudah used to say in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, “Beauty, strength, wealth, honour, wisdom, old age, venerable old age and children are fitting for the righteous and fitting for the world”. 

It then breaks off into a string of proof verses that either do or don't prove the point of the Baraita, whatever that might be.  The usual reading of this teaching is that the eight things listed in it are, well, fitting for the righteous (a class of people who are sometimes assumed to be rabbis).

Looking againat this Baraita, I wondered whether it might actually convey quite the opposite meaning to the normal one.  This would be the case if the eight things listed are not rewards or privileges, but instead impositions for anyone who posssesses them. In other words, this is a list of burdens that place responsibility on whoever is burdened with them.  How does this work? Let us take each term in order:

·     Beauty: a person’s physical beauty is a snare and a delusion, an external asset that deteriorates over time. An earlier Mishnah (4:27) has already warned us of the danger of taking people at face value, and the Book of Proverbs (31:30) emphasizes that it is a false value (“Favor is false and beauty is vanity”). Only a person with a strong moral backbone can be sure to cope with the pressures and expectations placed upon them by the perception of others that they are beautiful.

·     Strength: As Ben Zoma explains above (4:1), strength is defined in terms of the ability to exercise self-discipline in controlling oneself.  Given the powerful pull of a person’s evil inclination, having the strength to overcome it would seem to be an essential and ever-present weapon in the tzaddik’s armory of middot. The sad lot of the tzaddik is that his evil inclination is stronger than that of others, so he has need of greater strength to combat it (Sukkah 52a).

·     Wealth: Hillel the Elder has already taught (2:8), “the more the wealth, the more the worry”. Again, strength of character and moral rectitude are required if a person is to pass the test of affluence.  While we can all be rich—since the one who is truly rich is the person who is content with his portion (4:1)—this is something that applies to everyone, whether they are tzaddikim or otherwise.

·     Honour: of the eight items listed in this Baraita, none is as potentially toxic as honour: it is the only one that has the potential to kill a man spiritually stone dead (4:28). An ordinary individual runs the risk of chasing honor when it is as yet unearned, and of letting it get to his head even if it has been fairly earned. A tzaddik will however be able to handle its toxicity and treat it in the way Avot prescribes, by giving it to others (4:1 again) and by according it to the Torah (4:8)

·      Wisdom: like honor, wisdom can be dangerous in the hands of someone who lacks the requisite moral framework within which to utilize it. Pharaoh invoked wisdom when deciding to deal with his “Jewish Problem” (Exodus 1:10: "Come, let us deal wisely with them..."): this misdirected wisdom could have resulted in the extinction of the Children of Israel but instead caused Pharaoh’s personal humiliation and the destruction of his own fighting force. Balaam’s attempts at prophecy could not harm Israel but his wise counsel did, when he advised Balak on how to break the desert nation’s commitment to God (Numbers 31:16).  Few men of their generation were as wise as King David’s counsellor Achitophel (Chagigah 15b; Bemidbar Rabbah 22) and King Saul’s chief herdsman Doeg (Chagigah 15b; Tehillim Rabbah 52:4), yet their intellectual prowess was ill matched with their scheming politics. The harsh reality is that wisdom is only safe in the hands of someone who can be trusted—and that is a massive responsibility, as Moses discovered when he was the only person who possessed the necessary wisdom to resolve his people’s disputes (Exodus18:13-26).

·     Early old age: 60 or thereabouts is the time when a person becomes conscious of the fact that, while he may feel no different on the inside, he is starting to look old. Without a firm moral basis that supports a tzaddik, the drive to “have a final fling” or to yield to what is euphemistically called a “midlife crisis” can be overwhelming.

·     Venerable old age: the Talmud (Shabbat 152a) reports the words of Barzillai the Gileadite (2 Samuel 19:35) to the effect that, on reaching the ripe old age of 80, there was no longer much pleasure to be derived from life in the King’s court.  The diminution of one’s senses of sight, taste and hearing can weigh heavily on someone whose pleasures depend on them, but a tzaddik will not complain to God about his sad and feeble state. Rather, he should be well equipped to be able to take the disappointments and the tribulations of advanced old age as a time to recall with gratitude his earlier days and the opportunities he once had to serve others. Now is the time to reflect on the opportunities that he can give others to do acts of kindness for him.

·     Children: one does not need a Torah source to support the proposition, evidenced by life itself, that bringing up children can take its toll on even a loving parent. The price one pays for parenting can be steep in terms of time, effort, frustration, sleep deprivation, temper control and general inconvenience. Nor is there any point at which one can predict that the responsibility for raising one’s children will end. For a true tzaddik none of this is a burden.

According to the effort ... a word about mitzvot and their rewards

Coming up to Rosh Hashanah, we are encouraged to think about the balance between the mitzvot we have performed over the past year and, in the event that there should be any, the averot that we should not have done -- but did. Ideally we should be in positive territory, with more mitzvot to our credit than averot, but we are not the best judges of our own performance. 

On the subject of mitzvot, here is a thought for those of us who sometimes struggle with them. It is based on Pirkei Avot 5:26, in which Ben He He says "According to the effort is the reward".

In general terms we have not the faintest idea of the nature and quality of rewards enjoyed in the World to Come for good deeds done in our lifetimes. We have however received some guidance from our tradition, and this enables us to make better decisions regarding performance of mitzvot and our commitment to Torah observance. One element of this guidance concerns how we should feel towards mitzvot that are hard or troublesome to perform.  How does this work? The problem below provides an illustration.

Two people perform an identical mitzvah — returning a wallet full of money to its rightful owner.  The first is happy to perform this mitzvah since he is wealthy and the wallet’s contents mean little to him. The second, unemployed and racked by poverty, could make great use of the cash and is sorely tempted to do so, but nonetheless returns the wallet. 

It seems only right that the poor man should receive a greater reward since his is the more meritorious act: he has had to overcome both his financial needs and his yetzer hara in order to perform it.   However the return of the wallet is objectively the same act, regardless of who has performed it — and if the rich man is to receive only a trifling reward for this act because he has not found it difficult, would he not be better served by leaving the wallet in the ground on the assumption that someone else was bound to find and return it, giving another person the chance to get a bigger reward for returning it reluctantly. He could then set off instead to perform some other mitzvah that he found more difficult.

A solution to this problem comes from the Maharal's suggestion that there are two rewards for each mitzvah. The first is on a standard tariff and is earned for ‘ticking the box’ by fulfilling a commandment, regardless of the manner in which it has been fulfilled.  The second relates solely to the effort and hardship incurred in the act of fulfilment.  On this basis, in the problem described above, the poor man and the rich would receive identical rewards for the basic act of returning the wallet, while the poor man would receive a greater, personalised reward related to the need to overcome his personal issues, issues that were not relevant to the performance of the same mitzvah by the rich man.

A special message for Rosh Hashanah: there is no special message

I was asked the other day if Pirkei Avot, the mishnaic tractate that touches more than any other on the daily lives of human beings, has any special message for Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year and the momentous time for reflection, self-assessment, repentance and renewal that opens the autumn festive season.

Having given the request due consideration, I decided that the special message from Avot was that there is no special message.  Considerations such as how a person behaves towards his fellow humans, his community, his God and even himself do not depend on the calendar. No one date is more significant than any other. 

The most important day in the life of a Jew, we learn from Avot, is the day he happens to be living.  We learn that a person should not put off till tomorrow that which can be learned today (2:5); the same applies to repentance, since death may come tomorrow (2:15).  Today is the day you can’t stop work, as well as the day you will neither finish it or be paid (2:21).

While Jewish laws and customs vary with the seasons, the advice of Avot does not.  For example most editions of the Rosh Hashanah machzor (prayer book) print the text of special New Year greetings, but for Avot the important things about greeting others never change. Greet each person with a happy face (1:15) and good cheer (3:16). Be the first to greet others (4:20) and always return a greeting, even to a stranger (6:9).

On Rosh Hashanah we remind ourselves that God is the King; He is to judge us on the basis of our performance over the past year and our prospects for the next year. Before Him all things are recorded (2:1). Avot recommends that we remember this constantly if we want to keep out of trouble (3:1) since judgment is only a handful of inevitable events in the cycle of mortal life and death, an event from which there is nowhere to hide (4:29).

To conclude, while Rosh Hashanah and the New Year festivities herald an opportunity to improve and reinvent ourselves, the message of Avot is this: if you are a Pirkei Avot person, you are probably heading in the right direction so, if you can, just carry on like you would any other day with Avot as your moral compass. But do remember to check this compass for the coming year, to make sure it's in good working order.

The folly of fools: in search of Avot with an extra verse

The sixth chapter of Avot contains a Baraita, at 6:8, the following statement:

"Beauty, strength, wealth, honour, wisdom, [early] old age, [late] old age and children are becoming to the righteous and becoming to the world".

This list has generated considerable discussion over the past millennium or thereabouts. Why? Not because there is anything startling or profound in it but because, later in the same Baraita, Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya says that there are seven items on the list. Those who are not arithmetically challenged will see that there are eight.

One of the candidates for exclusion, to get the number back down to seven, is "wisdom" -- not because it is unfitting for the righteous but because the list is supported by a selection of proof verses and none of those verses has anything to do with wisdom.

Maybe 20 or 25 years ago I remember seeing an edition of Avot that contained an extra proof verse which extolled wisdom. The verse comes from the Book of Proverbs (14:24) and reads:

"The crown of the wise is their riches, but the foolishness of fools is folly".

I cannot now recall which edition of Avot had this extra verse in it, and I can't find it in any of my editions.  Does any reader have a copy of Avot with this extra verse? If so, can he or she please let me know!

Beyond comprehension

Today I received, by WhatsApp attachment, the picture that appears above. The confusion over lockdown rules in many countries has led to frustration, anger and doubtless many people either ignoring them completely or employing their own personal means of interpreting them.

Pirkei Avot is quite clear on the matter. Hillel the Elder teaches (2:5) that you should never say something that cannot easily be understood if your intention is that people should understand it.  This applies as much to the written word as to the spoken variety.  A particularly annoying aspect of the current uncertainty concerning Covid-19 regulations is the speed at which they change -- currently more quickly than the rate at which they are absorbed into the understanding of many people who are being required to comply with them. The best approach in general is to express rules in the fewest words one can since, the more words one uses, the greater the prospect of error (1:17).

Of things and people, honour and glory

The very last bit of Pirkei Avot, the baraita that concludes the sixth perek (6:11), is generally translated along the following lines: 

Everything that God created in His world, He only created for His glory, as it is said: "Everything that is called by My name and for My glory, I created it, formed it, I made it too"; it also says: "God shall reign for ever and ever”.

The verse translated as "Everything that is called by My name and for My glory, I created it, formed it, I made it too" is found in from Isaiah 43:7. This appears to be a proof verse relating to the Creation of the World.

When I looked up this verse to check on its context, I was quite surprised to discover several things:

• The verse comes from a prophetic passage which Isaiah recites after King Hezekiah of Judah recovers from illness. Isaiah warns that the Babylonians will drive the inhabitants of Judah into exile and plunder all Hezekiah's treasures. Having painted this gloomy picture of the people’s sufferings, he then speaks of how they will return to God and become a light unto the nations. Eventually there will be an ingathering of the exiles.  This is the point at which verse 43:7 appears.

• The verse really seems to mean "Everyone who bears My name, whom I created for My glory, whom I fashioned and also made" and it refers to people, not to things.

• Commentators on Pirkei Avot all treat the verse as referring to things, while commentators on the Book of Isaiah, with only one exception, treat it as referring to people.

• Commentators on Pirkei Avot appear to pay no attention to the verse's real meaning, while commentators on the Book of Isaiah make no mention of this verse's treatment in Avot.

Since Pirkei Avot is a tractate that deals with human behaviour, the traditional translation at the top of this blogpost looks out of place. If however one opts for the verse's real meaning one gets something like this:

Everyone whom God created in His world, He only created for His glory, as it is said: "Everyone who bears My name, whom I created for My glory, whom I fashioned and also made"; it also says: "God shall reign for ever and ever”.

This makes much better sense in the context of Avot, and not just because it deals specifically with people and not rocks, trees and giant pandas. The bigger reason why it makes sense lies in the word "glory".  This word is a poor and imperfect rending of the Hebrew word kavod, often translated as "glory" but also meaning “honour”, “splendor”, “abundance”, “riches”, “dignity”, "importance", "respect" and “reverence”.  

If that were not enough, the word kavod comes with enough religious and social baggage to fill a container ship. It is both really good and fatally bad; it must not be sought after but has to be given -- and if you give it, it comes back to you.  Most significantly, the word appears in around 9% of the mishnayot and baraitot that comprise the six chapters of Avot. All of this, to my mind, justifies a radical reassessment of the last words of Avot and some fresh learning from them.

Avot in retrospect: a summary of last month's blogposts

In case you missed them, here's a list of items posted on Avot Today in August 2020:

Monday 3 August 2020: Who is wise? A word on relative wisdom. The well-known aphorism of Ben Zoma (Avot 4:1), "Who is wise? The person who learns from all men" can be learned in more than one way, if you look at the verse from Psalms that supports it.

Tuesday, 4 August 2020: Never too early to repent! Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus does not say in Avot that repentance was created before the World. But he does have something to say about early teshuvah at 2:15.

Thursday 6 August  2020: Incomprehensible. In Avot 2:5, Hillel had something to say about not saying things that can't be understood if one means that they should be understood. So why don't people do this?

Friday 7 August 2020: Pirkei Avot: by accident or design? Much can be learned from an appreciation of the idea that Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, when compiling Avot, took some care in deciding where to stick each mishnah.

Sunday 9 August 2020: Right content, wrong focus? Creation of the World revisited.  The mishnah at 5:1 mentions that the World was created with 10 divine utterances. Traditional commentators discuss them at length -- but is this mishnah actually about something completely different?

Tuesday 11 August 2020: Does the person who is being tested know what he is being tested on?  Re Abraham and his 10 tests (Avot 5:4), here's a real live story of a cunning test.

Thursday 13 August 2020: More on tests. Does anyone have a Jewish source, preferably of some antiquity, for the idea that God only sends people the tests that they are capable of passing?

Sunday, 16 August 2020: Is there an 'Evil Eye' in Avot? There are alternative texts for Avot 2:16. Which should be preferred?

Thursday 20 August  2020: Respect for rabbis and teachers: how does this apply today?. Here are some thoughts on why some Jewish communities have a higher level of respect than do others for their rabbis.

Sunday, 23 August  2020: In Search of Abraham's Ten Tests. Avot 5:4 teaches that God set Abraham 10 tests. The trouble is, there seem to be nearly 30 of them

Tuesday 25 August 2020: Igor's not here today  Here we find a watered-down reference to a mishnah in Avot that eviscerates its original meaning and is reminiscent of an old USSR-era joke.

Thursday, 27 August 2020: Protecting the US Postal Service: where does Avot fit in? Appeals to the wisdom of Avot can be found in the strangest of places.

Sunday 30 August 2020: Whatever happened to the mamaloshen?. Commentaries on Pirkei Avot have been written in many languages -- but was there ever one in Yiddish?

Monday, 31 August 2020: Testing God: a national pastime?. Pirkei Avot tells us in Mishnah 5:6 that our forefathers tested God. Now why would they want to do a thing like that?

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You can check Avot Today posts for July here

You can check Avot Today posts for June here
You can check Avot Today posts for May here