When Perek meets Pardes

How far dare one go when extracting a meaning from a teaching in Avot—or when injecting a meaning into it?

The main task of Avot Today is to look at ways of applying the precepts of Pirkei Avot in the context of our own 21^st century lives. Why? Because we learn from the Bartenura’s comment at Avot 1:1 that this tractate is devoted to mussar and middot—moral and ethical guidance in creating and maintaining a Torah-compatible lifestyle.

It is not always easy to work out what the teachings in Avot actually teach. This is because they can be divided into two approximate categories. In the first are teachings with meanings that are obvious on the face of things, but which we still have to analyse when we work out how to apply them today. Examples of such teachings include judging other people favourably (Avot 1:6), being extremely humble (Avot 4:3, 4:12), respecting other people’s personal space and need for privacy at times of crisis (Avot 3:15) and keeping one’s distance from a bad neighbour (Avot 1:7).  

The second category consists of teachings that have no obvious meaning or mode of application to our daily lives. These include maxims such as “one who does not increase will decrease” (Avot 1:13) and “everything is judged in accordance with the majority of the action” (Avot 3:19) and brief statements of biblical or midrashic narrative such as the recitation of the number of miracles wrought for our forefathers or plagues inflicted on the Egyptians (Avot 5:5) and the list of objects created on the eve of the first Shabbat (Avot 5:8). Regarding these teachings, it is up to us to mine them for mussar and middot-related content if we are to validate the Bartenura’s statement and also make them relevant to our own lives.

While this dichotomy can be useful when we want to know how to learn a mishnah or baraita in Avot, it is by no means a cast-iron rule, as the following example shows.

Ben Azzai (Avot 4:3) teaches as follows:

“Do not scorn any man, and do not discount the worth of any thing [or ‘word’], for there is no man who does not have his hour, and no thing [or ‘word’] that does not have its place”.

This is a simple, uncontentious category one mishnah with a plain meaning. Its advice, which is sage and prudent, is supported by texts from the written Torah. From the traditional commentators we learn that humans, things and words—however small or trivial they may appear to us—should always be reckoned as having some significance since they may have the capacity to help or harm us.

But we are in for a surprise. Neither simple nor uncontentious is a remarkable extended essay by the Malbim on the deeper significance of the service of the parah adumah, the red heifer that has the paradoxical effect of conferring taharah (a state of ritual purity) on those who are impure and tumah (a state of ritual impurity) on those who are pure. This essay, which appears in some printed editions of the Malbim at the beginning of parashat Chukkat under the title “Ner Mitzvah”, is impossible to describe in brief. Suffice it to say that it embraces a good deal of aggadic and kabbalistic material concerning the separation of the soul from the body, the nature of Torah as studied in this world and other worlds and the relationship between the generally normative halachic rulings of Bet Hillel and those of Bet Shammai.

In the course of his “Ner Mitzvah”, the Malbim cites the teaching of Ben Azzai that we quote above. He explains it thus:

“If you see that the halachah is not like Bet Shammai and Rabbi Shimon [bar Yochai], do not scorn them, and do not discount any words that are spoken in their names. This is because there is no man who does not have his hour since in future the halachah will be like them—and don’t say that, if this is so, the halachot of the Torah change. On this [Ben Azzai] answers that there is no word that doesn’t have its place, because there is a place] in the Supernal World for these halachot, which are spoken in accordance with a secret ruchaniut [spiritual nature]—and they will be said over in the future just as they are said now in the world of ruchaniut”.

This is a remarkable example of a category one mishnah being treated as a category two type. Plain and easy-to-apply meanings of Ben Azzai’s teaching are not actually rejected, but a further interpretation is found which has no real-world application at all.

What would Ben Azzai have made of the Malbim’s understanding of his teaching in Avot? While we are unlikely to know, Jewish aggadic tradition lists Ben Azzai as one of only four rabbis who entered the Pardes—a conceptual zone of esoteric Torah knowledge that transcended normal human perceptions of reality. The Malbim’s explanation of what Ben Azzai meant may be well removed from the sphere of mussar and middot, but it would not be inappropriate for a man with Ben Azzai’s kabbalistic leanings.