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.
