Sunday, 14 July 2024

When morality precedes the law

The very first comment the Bartenura makes at Avot 1:1 is that this tractate differs from all the others in that, while they are all founded on mitzvot contained in the Torah, Avot is based on mussar and middot (moral chastisement and principles of good behaviour). The first mishnah in Avot comes to tell us that, while other nations may have the same rules of good conduct, theirs are based on human reasoning while that of Avot was given at Sinai along with the Torah.

But were the principles of Jewish middot and mussar given together with the Torah at Sinai? To put it another way, we can ask which comes first—Torah or the basics of good behaviour?

There is a midrashic teaching that the Torah existed even before the world was created and that it was used as its blueprint. The notion that Torah comes first is buttressed by a verse from Proverbs,

יְהוָה קָנָנִי רֵאשִׁית דַּרְכּוֹ קֶדֶם מִפְעָלָיו מֵאָז

God made me [i.e. Torah] as the beginning of His way, the first of His works of old (Mishlei 8:22),

which is even quoted in a baraita near the end of Avot (at 6:10), but in another context.

The position is different in the context of human conduct. There, middot—the acquisition of good personal qualities and characteristics—arguably precede Torah.

There are several sources for this surprising proposition. In Psalm 94 we read:

אַשְׁרֵי הַגֶּבֶר אֲשֶׁר תְּיַסְּרֶנּוּ יָּהּ וּמִתּוֹרָתְךָ תְלַמְּדֶנּוּ

Happy is the man to whom You inflict mussar, God, and teaches him from Your Torah (Tehillim 94:12).

The mention of mussar—the instruction that leads to the improvement of a person’s middot—comes first, bearing the implication that one must first master oneself before seeking to master the Torah.

 In the Talmud (Berachot 5b) we find Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai listing Torah as one of three things that can only be acquired through prior suffering. The Maharal in the introduction to his Derech Chaim appears to equate this suffering with mussar.

Further, the kabbalist Rabbi Chaim Vital (Sha’arei Kedushah, chelek 1, sha’ar 2) maintains that the Torah is only given to a person once there has been a tikkun hamiddot (‘repair of middot’) since, in its absence, the Torah cannot dwell in him. The Maharal, along similar lines, analogises mussar as the keli (“vessel”) in which a person’s Torah learning may be held. Also, citing a midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 9) that derech eretz (good interpersonal skills) preceded the giving of the Torah by 26 generations, he appears to liken it to the soil in which the roots of the tree of Torah grow deep so that the tree cannot be budged from where it stands.

When God created the world, in His wisdom, and for whatever reason He chose, he did not give the Torah to any of the 20 generations that preceded the Flood. Nor was there a Sinaitic revelation before such outstanding characters in Jewish history as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or Joseph (the midrashic tradition that the Patriarchs kept the Torah raises many difficult questions for those who take it literally, and it is easier to learn from it that they were so sensitive to God’s will that they intuited what God wanted of them and acted accordingly).

Now here’s the big question. So (i) God waited 26 generations before giving the Torah at Sinai, (ii) derech eretz comes before the Torah and (iii) mastery of middot and mussar is a prerequisite for learning Torah. Can we conclude from these propositions that, if the generations before Moses had recognised and acknowledged God for what we understand Him to be, and if they had perfected their behaviour towards one another and the development of their character traits, God would not have needed to give the Torah at all?

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