There are many different ways to learn Avot, but they can all be divided, broadly speaking, into two camps. The first involves digging deeply into two things: text, which lies on the surface, as it were, and context, which is not visible on the face of each teaching but can be accessed by looking beyond it. The second does neither of those things. Rather, it seeks to identify a moral principle that underlies the teaching or that is reflected by it.
In the first approach, we might ask questions like “what
precisely does this word mean?” or “why was this word chosen when another might
have been?” We might also seek to frame the teaching by asking if it was
addressed to oneself, to one’s students, to one’s colleagues or to the
population at large. We might also investigate the immediate economic and
political circumstances in which the speaker lived, and then contrast his words
with other sayings learned in his name and which are brought in the Talmud or
midrashic literature.
In the second approach, we start with the premise that the
teaching before us has been included in Avot because it has a moral or ethical
content that is of lasting value, or because it can be read in a way that does
so. We then match this moral content against the political, economic and social
circumstances of our own lives, in our own generations.
The basic difference between the two approaches is that the
first enables us the better to discover what the Tanna who authored the
teaching actually had in mind when he was articulating it—in other words, what
the teaching meant to him. In the second, we seek to find out what the
teaching means to us.
Neither approach is “right” or “wrong” and there is no
reason why we should not systematically employ both. I have often done this
myself, usually starting with text-and-context and then moving on to the second
approach. The advantage of the first approach is that it brings us closer to
the mindset of some of our earliest and most brilliant rabbinical scholars.
However, the more closely we pinpoint the precise meaning of a saying in Avot
and tie it down to its immediate context, the greater the distance we create
between that saying and our own very different lifestyles and circumstances.
The advantage of the latter approach is that it will enable
us to extract a takeaway message from every mishnah and baraita in Pirkei Avot.
We have to accept, however, that we may face the accusation that we are putting
meanings into the mouths of rabbis who clearly had something else in mind at
the time they were speaking.
Why have I written this? Because I recently came across a
troubling passage in When a Jew seeks wisdom: The Sayings of the Fathers. There
Seymour Rossel has this to say of Pirkei Avot:
“Its sayings and advice are still
fresh and useful today. If anything, they have grown more important, for as we
read them we can see in them the mark of eternal truths”.
Had he stopped there, that would have been fine. But after
this positive endorsement of the tractate’s content he adds:
“True, some [of the sayings] are
so outdated as to be beyond repair, others the product of ancient
superstitions, and still others merely folklore inserted as if by accident”.
I was profoundly disturbed by this. In the first place I
struggle to identify any sayings in Avot that can be designated “the product of
ancient superstitions” or “merely folklore inserted as if by accident”. Secondly,
I cannot agree that any of the sayings in Avot are “so outdated as to be beyond
repair”. Many modern English commentaries
on Avot have breathed fresh life into it without ever extinguishing the old.
Foremost among these are R’ Abraham J. Twerski’s Visions of the Fathers, Irving
M. Bunim’s Ethics from Sinai, R’ Yaakov Hillel’s Eternal Ethics from
Sinai, R’ Reuven P. Bulka’s Chapters of the Sages, R’ Marc D.
Angel’s The Koren Pirkei Avot and (I’m mentioning this only for the sake
of completeness) my own Pirkei Avot: a Users’ Manual.
While Seymour Rossel’s book does not state this explicitly,
it is apparent from the format, illustrations and gently didactic style of the
text that it has been written specifically with children in mind. I would guess
that the target audience is readers who range from the age of bar- or
batmitzvah to the mid-teens. At this age, while they may feel that they are old
enough to make up their own minds as to the status and worth of the teachings
in Pirkei Avot, they are just as vulnerable as the rest of us to subliminal
messages regarding the tractate’s pedigree—and, in a book such as Rossel’s
which is written in a warm and accessible style, they may feel dismissive of
its origins if they associate Avot with superstitions and random folklore.
You have to read about a quarter of the way into Rossel’s
book before you find what he calls “an example of superstitious fact-gathering”.
There he cites Avot 5:12:
בְּאַרְבָּעָה פְרָקִים הַדֶּֽבֶר מִתְרַבֶּה, בָּרְבִיעִית,
וּבַשְּׁבִיעִית, וּבְמוֹצָאֵי שְׁבִיעִית, וּבְמוֹצָאֵי הַחַג שֶׁבְּכָל שָׁנָה וְשָׁנָה.
בָּרְבִיעִית, מִפְּנֵי מַעֲשֵׂר עָנִי שֶׁבַּשְּׁלִישִׁית. בַּשְּׁבִיעִית, מִפְּנֵי
מַעֲשֵׂר עָנִי שֶׁבַּשִּׁשִּׁית. בְּמוֹצָאֵי שְׁבִיעִית, מִפְּנֵי פֵּרוֹת שְׁבִיעִית.
בְּמוֹצָאֵי הַחַג שֶׁבְּכָל שָׁנָה וְשָׁנָה, מִפְּנֵי גֵֽזֶל מַתְּנוֹת עֲנִיִּים
There are four periods when
plague increases: in the fourth and seventh years [of the sabbatical cycle], in
the year following the seventh, and following the Chag [i.e. Sukkot] each year.
On the fourth year, because of [the neglect of] the tithe to the poor that must
be given on the third year; on the seventh, because of the tithe to the poor
that must be given on the sixth; on the year after the seventh, because of the
produce of the sabbatical year; and following each Chag, because of the robbing
of the poor of the gifts due to them.
On this mishnah he writes:
…superstition such as this is not
so reliable as beliefs based on actual data. It can get in the way of making
truly intelligent decisions in regard to important problems. So Judaism no
longer relies on superstition to any significant extent”.
I personally haven’t found anything amusing to smile about
in this mishnah. If a reader wishes to take it in a literal physical sense, they
may quite reasonably do so. Hunger, particularly when it is so severe as to
cause malnutrition, can lower one’s resistance to illness and, among the poor
who tend to live in more crowded and sometimes insanitary conditions, disease
can spread rapidly. A reader can take this mishnah in a more abstract,
principled manner too: rather than teaching of the importance of good nutrition,
it is a lesson in being sensitive to the needs and feelings of others and of
assuming some responsibility for the well-being of those less well off than
ourselves, even if we may not happen to be personally acquainted with them.
Incidentally, there is no harm in reading the provisions of
Avot critically, especially since some of its teachings appear to challenge or
even contradict other ones. Rabbis have done this for centuries and it is part
of our tradition. Avot is robust enough to withstand even tough and sometimes unsympathetic
criticism (see e.g. Joseph G. Rosenstein’s Reflections on Pirkei Avot).
The mishnayot and baraitot of Avot, treated as nothing more than slick slogans and soundbites, may seem outdated and irreparable, but I believe that it is disrespectful of the Tannaim to dismiss their words without examining them carefully. It is also wasteful because, in dismissing them, we also discard the opportunity to measure our own thoughts, feelings, aspirations and prejudices against yardsticks for conduct that have shaped who we are, as Jews today.
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