Is a bur a boor, or something more?

This is the second of two posts with a common theme, based on the Tiferet Tzion commentary of Rabbi Yitzchak Ze'ev Yadler.

Hillel teaches (in the first part of Avot 2:6):

אֵין בּוּר יְרֵא חֵטְא

In English: “A boor cannot be a sin-fearing person”.

This apparently abrupt and dogmatic generalisation has invited much discussion over the years. This discussion can be conveniently divided into the consideration of three questions: (i) what actually is a “boor” in this context? (ii) what is meant by “a sin-fearing person” and (iii) why should the fact that a person is a boor deprive him of the ability to fear sin? These three questions are clearly related, inasmuch as the answer to question (iii) is contingent upon the way we understand that is meant by “boor” and how we view “sin-fearing”.

In Hillel’s mishnah the boor is one of five defective character-types, the other four being the am ha’aretz (variously understood as someone who, in Torah terms, is uneducated or uncultured), the bayashan (being timid, this person is afraid to ask questions and will not therefore learn well), the kapadan (irritable or irascible and therefore unsuited to teaching) and the marbeh vischorah (who is too greatly engaged in business and commerce to impart Torah to others). Since the boor and the am ha’aretz are adjacent and potentially overlapping concepts, discussion tends to focus on how the boor and the am ha’aretz differ and, if one reads all the commentaries on this issue, one could be forgiven for thinking that there is really very little difference between them at all.

Rabbi Yitzchak Ze’ev Yadler takes a different approach in his Tiferet Tzion. His starting point is an earlier mishnah in the same chapter (Avot 2:2) in which Rebbi’s son Rabban Gamliel teaches that it is a beautiful thing for a person to combine Torah study with a regular occupation since the exertion that is demanded of someone who combines Torah study with a day job will remove sin from that person’s consciousness.

The word בּוּר (bur) indicates something (or in this case, someone) that is empty. It is the capacity to pursue Torah and a worldly occupation that distinguishes humans from members of the animal kingdom. When engaged in both or possibly either of these activities there will be no room to contemplate sin. But if both are emptied out, a person becomes a bur and, like the animal, has no awareness of sin and therefore no capacity to fear it or its consequences.

It is possible that, while the mishnah refers specifically to learning Torah, it may be equally applicable to the learning of any system of morality that points to considerations of rewards for good behaviour and punishments for sins, thus embracing the moral basis of all three Abrahamic religions.