"If I Am Not For Me": the Possible and the Plausible

Students of the Written Torah are often confronted by “documentary” approaches to their texts. They are not alone. Those who study the Torah sheb’al peh (the so-called Oral Torah) face them too. This is because, though in Jewish tradition the Torah sheb’al peh was passed through the generations—in some cases from the Giving of the Law at Sinai itself—our only evidence of it today consists of recorded versions in manuscript or print format. Though we learn that some Tannaim kept their own written notes on the Oral Law, none are extant and even the earliest written versions of the oral tradition were made many centuries after the redaction of the Mishnah in around 180-200 CE.

The first perek of Tractate Avot features a case in point.  Hillel the Elder famously teaches (in Avot 1:14) “If I am not for myself, who is for me?” While there is no consensus as to what Hillel actually meant by these words, until the last century there was no doubt that this was what he taught. This consensus was breached in 1940 by Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein in the commentary on Avot contained in his Baruch She’Amar. 

Rabbi Epstein was troubled by the word “I”, since Hillel uses the same word in a troublesome context in Tractate Sukkah (53a) where he teaches, in the context of the Simchat Bet HaSho’evah celebration, “If I am here, everyone is here, but if I am not here, who is here?” Taken literally, these words seem surprisingly conceited when spoken by the humble Hillel, and it is difficult to extract from them any sort of take-home message for the Talmud student.

The solution, suggests Rabbi Epstein, lies in the Hebrew letters aleph-nun-yud that constitute the word ani (“I”).  Within the technique of writing Hebrew texts, it has long been usual to abbreviate words by leaving out one or more letters. After giving several examples of words that were sometimes foreshortened, Rabbi Epstein explains that ani is actually a short form of a name of God (aleph-dalet-nun-yud). Accordingly, what Hillel is really saying is not “If I am not for me, who will be for me?” but “If God is not for me, who will be for me?”  This explanation also removes the need for a literal understanding Hillel’s quote from Sukkah and even ennobles it: “If God is here, everyone is here, but if God is not here, who is here?”

Even though none of the examples cited by Rabbi Epstein concern the name aleph-daled-nun-yud, his explanation of the mishnah in Avot is an appealing one and has been endorsed in Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau’s Yachel Yisrael. Are we however obliged to accept it?

If Hillel’s ani was originally God’s name, the scribes would have known that this was so. They would all have had to make the same conscious decision to abbreviate aleph-dalet-nun-yud as aleph-nun-yud. Then, even though this teaching is part of the Oral Law, transmitted through the generations by word of mouth, Hillel’s original teaching would have had to be lost or forgotten by entire generation of Torah scholars. Eventually, someone would have found this teaching and, having never heard it recited orally, would have had to forget that God’s name was sometimes abbreviated by leaving out the letter dalet. When compiling the tractate of Avot, Hillel’s direct descendant Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi—who seems otherwise to have a large degree of familiarity with his famous ancestor’s teachings—would then have had to accept the new teaching at face value, incorporating it into Avot with ani and not the name of God, and presumably not even suspecting that Hillel might have been referring to the deity.

This chain of events is possible. We must however decide for ourselves if it is also plausible.