Setting free the menagerie: wild beasts and chillul Hashem

For the unwary student of mussar and middot, Pirkei Avot is full of surprises. One such surprise comes when the reader, reaching the fifth perek, suddenly finds that the constant stream of earnest Tannaic guidance on how to behave appears to have been dammed up, replaced by a sequence of apparently misplaced messages about God’s role as Creator, His remarkable patience with His annoyingly disobedient people and some salutary information as to what happens when that patience expires. Where did the mussar and middot go?

The answer is that the stream of behavioural advice is not dammed up but continues underground, as it were, hidden from sight but none the less influential.

By way of example, take this verse from parashat Emor (Vayikra 22:32):

וְלֹא תְחַלְּלוּ, אֶת-שֵׁם קָדְשִׁי, וְנִקְדַּשְׁתִּי, בְּתוֹךְ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל:  אֲנִי יְהוָה, מְקַדִּשְׁכֶם

In translation: “And you shall not profane My holy name; but I will be made holy among the children of Israel: I am the Lord who makes you holy”.

This verse lies in the middle of a lengthy sequence of instructions regarding sacrificial offerings, falling between a review of animals that may or may not be sacrificed and a list of offerings required for each Jewish festival. It accounts for two of the 613 Torah mitzvot: chillul Hashem and kiddush Hashem (respectively, desecration and sanctification of God’s name). The context suggests that these obligations relate solely to the right and wrong ways of offering up animals and other items, but both are of very much wider practical application and effectively govern speech and action that either enhances or diminishes the sanctity of God’s name.

Chillul Hashem also features in Pirkei Avot on several occasions, one of which is quite puzzling. At the beginning of Avot 5:11, a mishnah describes the consequence of dragging God’s name down:

חַיָּה רָעָה בָּאָה לְעוֹלָם עַל שְׁבוּעַת שָׁוְא וְעַל חִלּוּל הַשֵּׁם

In translation: “Wild beasts [chayah ra’ah, literally “a wicked beast”] come[s] to the world for false oaths and the desecration of God's name”.

The prohibition of chillul Hashem in parashat Emor is expressed in the plural; the mishnah in Avot balances this by specifying a collective punishment, but the match is not exact: chillul Hashem can be committed by an individual, but both the wording and the context of the mishnah suggest that the punishment occurs only where the offence is spread through Jewish society at large. In both cases chillul Hashem is paired with something else: in Emor it is tied to its opposite, kiddush Hashem, while in Avot it is bound in with the making of a false oath, an offence that is similar to chillul Hashem in that it also involves an abuse of God’s name and reputation.

What is the function of this reference to chillul Hashem in Avot 5:11? Why is it there at all? Is it simply to remind the reader of the severity of the offence? Is it there to specify a punishment where the Torah was silent? And what is the mention of chayah ra’ah doing there in the absence of any accompanying mussar or middot material?

Do these questions even need to be answered at all? Some commentators have nothing to say on this aspect of Avot 5:11, among them Rambam, Rabbenu Yonah, the Bartenura, the Alshich, Tosafot Yom Tov, Rabbi Ya’akov Emden and Rabbi Chaim Volozhin. But others are intrigued by the chayah ra’ah and some find mussar in the mention of them.

While “chayah ra’ah” traditionally conjures up images of large, wild creatures. Rabbi Eliezer Liepmann Prins observes that this Hebrew term specifies no size. A virus or bacterium is as much a chayah ra’ah as is an elephant. By setting minute, invisible life forms against those who profane His name, God demonstrates that, wherever one finds His greatness, that is where one also finds His humility” (per Rabbi Yochanan, Megillah 31a). Rabbi Prins adds that “wild beasts” need not be construed as a punishment at all. He ingeniously explains how, when humans degrade themselves to a state of bestiality by profaning sacred things on Earth, it is they who become like wild beasts. This view accounts for the fact that regular wild beasts—lions, tigers and the like--are already in the world even before people break their oaths or desecrate God’s name so they cannot be said to “come to the world” when people do such things.

The Me’iri’s Bet HaBechirah sees the mishnah’s teaching as an exercise in middah keneged middah (“measure for measure”). In the great scheme of things, God’s superiority to man is paralleled by the man’s superiority to the animal. If man plays the animal by desecrating God’s name, God provokes man by attacking him with animals. The Midrash Shmuel frames the same principle differently: if humans lose their fear of God, He will remove from animals the fear of them which He promised Noah and his descendants (Bereshit 9:2). Rabbis Avraham Azulai (Ahavah BeTa’anugim) and S. R. Hirsch share this view.

The Sforno’s take on middah keneged middah is founded on awareness and knowledge. Both false oath-taking and chillul Hashem are the result of a person’s diminished state of understanding and awareness of God’s greatness. The corresponding punishment is visitation by wild beasts, creatures who lack any degree of understanding. Likewise, the Chida’s Chasdei Avot points out that humans are created in God’s image. When they desecrate God’s name, they shed this image and appear like animals. For the Maharam Shik, the issue is that mankind is created with the ability to speak, while animals are not. When a false oath of chillul Hashem are committed through speech, it is through the medium of creatures that do not speak that man is punished.

Not all accounts of “wild beasts” are tied to middah keneged middah and some commentators read this mishnah in socio-political terms. Thus, in his Derech Chaim, the Maharal takes the term to be an allusion to the oppression we experience at the hands of other nations, an explanation that Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, himself a Holocaust survivor, favours in his Yachel Yisrael. While both the force of this explanation and the reason for it can be appreciated, if we accept it we must then ask what practical lesson we can extract from it—and that is not so easy.

Numerous allusions to verses from Tanach, as well as entire pasukim, appear in the latter part of Pirkei Avot, and they are not there for mere padding or decoration. Like the reference to chillul Hashem here, they invite serious investigation of a mussar message, since that is the reason for Pirkei Avot’s existence.