Out of one's depth

Hillel warns us (at Avot 1:13) that anyone who exploits the crown of Torah shall fade away. Or, to put it another way, in the sage’s inimitably succinct Aramaic: דְאִשְׁתַּמֵּשׁ בְּתַגָּא חֳלָף. This teaching has the distinction of being the only one in the whole of the tractate to be quoted together with a name check, by another Tanna, when Rabbi Tzadok (at 4:7) warms to Hillel’s theme:

אַל תַּעֲשֶֽׂהָ עֲטָרָה לְהִתְגַּדֶּל בָּהּ, וְלֹא קַרְדּוּם לַחְתָּךְ בָּהּ, וְכַךְ הָיָה הִלֵּל אוֹמֵר: וּדְאִשְׁתַּמֵּשׁ בְּתַגָּא חֲלָף, הָא לָמַֽדְתָּ, כָּל הַנֶּהֱנֶה מִדִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה, נוֹטֵל חַיָּיו מִן הָעוֹלָם

Do not make the Torah a crown to magnify yourself with, or a spade with which to dig. That’s what Hillel used to say: “Anyone who makes personal use of the crown of Torah will fade away”. So we learn this, that anyone who benefits from the words of Torah removes his life from the world.

While the main commentators on Avot often add supplementary explanations of their own, they generally agree with what Hillel teaches: one should not exploit one’s Torah knowledge, or any position secured through having acquired it, for personal gain or financial advantage.  

Curiously, the two earliest extant references that we find for Hillel’s teaching treat it quite differently. The first of these is the Babylonian Talmud, compiled around the middle of the fifth century of the common era, we find the following passage:

Observe now the difference between the rigorous scholars of the Land of Israel and the saints of Babylon. We have learnt in another place: “Whoever makes use of a crown fades away [from the world]” and Resh Lakish commented: “This applies to anyone who accepts service from a person who can repeat halachot [i.e. Jewish laws] , and Ulla said: “A man may accept service from one who can repeat the four [orders of the Mishnah] but not from one who can [also] teach them”.

This is illustrated by the following story of Resh Lakish, who was once traveling along a road. When he came to a pool of water, a man came up and put him on his shoulders and began taking him across. He said to the man: “Can you read the Scriptures?” The man answered, “I can”. “Can you repeat the Mishnah?” [He replied] “I can repeat four orders of the Mishnah”. Resh Lakish then said: “You have hewn four rocks, and you carry Resh Lakish on your shoulder?” (Megillah 28b, based on the Soncino translation).

In other words, once Resh Lakish estimated that the person who was carrying him knew enough Torah to be able to read the Tanach and repeat, presumably by heart, the first four orders of the Mishnah, he felt that he was deriving personal advantage from the Torah, which was personified by the man on whose shoulders he sat. Accordingly he wanted to be let down. A parallel tale (Nedarim 62b) relates how R’ Tarfon escaped an undeserved thrashing by revealing his identity to his assailant. The great teacher spent the rest of his life wrapped in remorse for having derived advantage from his reputation as a Torah scholar.

It is hard to reconcile these applications of Hillel’s teaching with the modern consensus. Resh Lakish was taking advantage of neither the man’s Torah knowledge nor his own, and R’ Tarfon could well be said to have let slip his identity in order to prevent the perpetration of a great injustice by a fellow Jew and thereby spare the latter punishment for his wrongful assault.

The second early reference to Hillel’s teaching is found in the Avot deRabbi Natan, reckoned to have been compiled during the Gaonic period, probably between 700-900 CE.  There (at ADRN 12:13) Hillel is taken to refer to the improper use of God’s ineffable name for personal benefit. Among modern commentators the kabbalist R’ Yaakov Hillel remains faithful to this explanation.

Both of these early explanations are adopted by the Meiri in his Beit HaBechirah, together with the modern consensus view—but he then states explicitly that the warning against accepting the service of a Torah scholar is the primary meaning.

The Maharal (Derech Chaim) opens his commentary on this mishnah by citing the episode with Resh Lakish, but expands it: the problem, he explains, is that a degree of kedushah, holiness, attaches to anything that is subject to the shem Shamayim, the Name of Heaven. This applies both to the Torah itself and to things that are touched by Torah, such as a person who has learned it. In Megillah 28b we therefore find the corporeality of Resh Lakish benefiting from that which is eliyon, supernal and above the level of mere corporeality—and this is why he opts to be put down in the middle of the river. How many of us, I wonder, are so sensitive to this type of kedushah?

What does Hillel’s teaching mean to us today? It is now well accepted that a person can teach Torah for financial reward. There is a large literature on why this should be so, since we do not expect our teachers and our communal rabbis to starve. There is also a large literature on whether and, if so, to what extent, we should pay to support people who dedicate their entire lives and careers to learning Torah—and this too has become an established part of Jewish life. So we can conclude that neither teaching nor learning are now regarded as “crowns” that one exploits for personal advantage or pecuniary gain.  

This being so, and since we neither use God’s ineffable name nor ask Torah scholars to carry us on their backs, we must ask: do we need to recalibrate this part of the Mishnah and focus it on specific issues and examples drawn from contemporary life?

Suggestions, anyone?