Where have all the scholars gone?

It sometimes happens, particularly with modern commentaries on Avot, that their most interesting and provocative content lies not in the commentary itself but in the casual, throwaway lines of the commentators that shed more light on their view of the world than on the meaning of the mishnah. A good example can be found in Rav Asher Weiss on Avos. Almost all of this two-volume work could have been written a hundred years ago without any changes, since Rav Weiss—a popular and highly learned teacher with a large personal following—is a dedicated Torah scholar who seeks to explain what the mishnayot in Avot must have meant at the time of the Talmud, from which he quote liberally when elucidating and developing the thoughts expressed in Avot. However, we occasionally find a comment from Rav Weiss that is aimed at contemporary Jewish society.

At Avot 1:10 we find a teaching by Shemayah:

אֱהוֹב אֶת הַמְּלָאכָה וּשְׂנָא אֶת הָרַבָּנוּת, וְאַל תִּתְוַדַּע לָרָשׁוּת

Love work, hate mastery over others, and do not make yourself known to the government.

After making reference to a gemara (Berachot 35b) in which Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and Rabbi Yishmael debate as to whether it is better to learn Torah exclusively or combine it with the pursuit of a livelihood, Rav Weiss comments:

“In our times … it is uncommon to find those who pursue a livelihood but who nevertheless achieve greatness in Torah. It would seem that with the steady decline of the generations, Torah no longer endures except in those who dedicate their entire lives to it, day and night, and do not turn their attention to any other matters”.

This statement stopped me in my tracks since it raises so many issues. How does one measure “greatness in Torah”? Is “greatness in Torah” a constant, or do the criteria change through time? How relevant is it that even the sages of the gemara could not agree as to whether being able to absorb Torah data was greater than being able to innovate and establish new learning through Torah exegesis? How does this proposition fit with Rabbi Gamliel’s mishnaic claims (Avot 2:2) that Torah, when combined with a livelihood, was beautiful but, without a livelihood, leads to sin?

Beyond that, there are wider questions. As the rate at which human knowledge and artificial intelligence appear to be growing exponentially, does God demand of us that we focus more strongly on our traditional core studies of Tanach, Mishnah, Gemara and the classical commentators, or that we embrace and study new sciences, technologies and social trends in order to bring our Torah understanding to them and “tame” them by framing them within the superstructure of Jewish values?

Rav Weiss has given us an opening for a keen debate, but we have to accept that there are no easy answers to our questions—and perhaps each question has more than a single valid answer.  We have to acknowledge the learning of a talmid who has locked himself away in the Beit Midrash day and night to learn the whole of tractate Chullin, a long and complex tractate that addresses the kashrut of animals and birds. But we also have to acknowledge the learning of the person who has only learned the practical laws of ritual slaughter but can actually identify the spleen or gall bladder that his more learned counterpart has never seen.

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Dealing with heretics

The brilliant, mercurial Rabbi Elazar ben Arach offers us three pieces of advice at Avot 2:19, one of which is this:

דַע מַה שֶּׁתָּשִׁיב לְאֶפִּיקוּרוּס

Know what to answer a heretic.

How relevant is this teaching to us today? At a time when religious observance was the norm and the notion of God’s existence was generally beyond question, the apikoros (heretic) could be expected to be well-informed and thoroughly versed in religious matters, and capable of arguing the case against Judaism (or, for that matter, any other religion). To take on an apikoros was no easy task: one needed mastery of the Torah and of our extensive and complex prophetic literature as an absolute minimum. Nowadays, as Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks once observed, the apikoros is most likely to be someone who has neither knowledge nor interest in the existence of God and the truth of the Torah. Cynical and likely to be hostile to religion, he has no doubts to call his own, but to argue with him is to risk generating doubts in oneself.

Many rabbis, including most recently R’ Yisroel Miller (The Wisdom of Avos) have pointed out that Rabbi Elazar ben Arach is not urging anyone to debate an apikoros. All he says is that one should know how to counter one. If we have the answers, this should secure us against our own doubts. To argue with an apikoros is to risk losing one’s own faith, so we should avoid doing so (Rabbi Yitzchak Magriso, Me’am Lo’ez). The Me’iri’s view is however quite the opposite: we should argue with the apikoros in order to refute his arguments and demonstrate the force of reason that underpins our own.

Rabbi Norman Lamm (Foundation of Faith, ed. Rabbi Mark Dratch) uses this mishnah as the basis of an idea of his own—that, in our portrayal of Judaism in contemporary society, we should be careful not to create heretics. He writes:

“[W]e Jews ought to be so very concerned not only by the impression we make upon outsiders, but by how we appear to our fellow Jews who have become estranged from our sacred tradition. We have labored long and hard and diligently to secure an image of Judaism which does not do violence to Western standards of culture and modernity. But at times the image becomes frayed and another, less attractive image is revealed… Sometimes we have made it appear that we are barely emerging from the cocoon of medievalism”.

This is a difficult line to take. Yes, we do try to portray our Judaism as being compatible with the norms of contemporary society—but this is not easy when that society is not hospitable to most forms of religious practice and is quite sceptical regarding religious belief.  We can’t pretend that the Torah only teaches things that are woke or politically correct when we know it doesn’t. That’s why two recent English-language books have proved so important. In Shmuel Phillips’s Judaism Reclaimed (Mosaica, 2019) and Raphael Zarum’s Questioning Belief (Maggid, 2023), the authors are conscious of the need to address uncomfortable questions in a lucid and respectful manner, seeking to explain the deeper meanings contained in the Torah rather than rely on soundbites and rhetoric. 

Rabbi Lamm continues:

“If we are to be witnesses to Torah, then we Jews must have a more impressive means of communicating with the non-observant segments of our people. Saadia Gaon pointed out a thousand years ago that the best way to make a heretic, an apikoros, is to present an argument for Judaism that is ludicrous and unbecoming. We cannot afford to have sloppy newspapers, second-rate schools, noisy synagogues, or unaesthetic and repelling services. When you testify for God and for Torah, every word must be counted and polished!”

Does Rabbi Lamm go too far here?  His citation of Saadia Gaon’s point is apt, but how does he get from that to his conclusion? Do “noisy synagogues and repelling services” create heretics—or merely people who are indifferent to organised Judaism and its traditional rituals?

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Drinking with thirst

In one of the earliest mishnayot of Avot (1:4), we have a vividly-expressed piece lf advice from Yose ben Yo’ezer Ish Tzereidah:

יְהִי בֵיתְךָ בֵּית וַֽעַד לַחֲכָמִים, וֶהֱוֵי מִתְאַבֵּק בַּעֲפַר רַגְלֵיהֶם, וֶהֱוֵי שׁוֹתֶה בַצָּמָא אֶת דִּבְרֵיהֶם

Let your home be a meeting place for the wise; sit in the dust of their feet, and drink thirstily of their words.

Much of the attention that this teaching receives relates to the “dust of their feet” bit, since it is understood by the traditional commentators in so many different ways. There is no consensus among translators either. I’ve used the ArtScroll translation here, but variations include “dust yourself in the soil of their feet” (Chabad.com) or my own preferred translation, “be wrestling in the dust of their feet”

In contrast, one might expect far greater consensus regarding the final part of the mishnah. There are no problems of vocabulary or idiom and the metaphor of drinking someone’s words thirstily is easily understood, whether used in a Torah context or in everyday speech. But here too the commentators have something to add to the plain meaning of the words.

A possible trigger for elaboration of this mishnah is the implication that “drinking” suggests water. Even though Yose ben Yo’ezer makes no mention of water here, the association of water with Torah, and of thirsting for Torah, is deeply rooted in the psyche of our commentators.  

According to two commentators, the thirst to which our mishnah refers is no ordinary thirst: it is the thirst that is generated by drinking salty water. This activity itself generates further thirst, which is compounded when the person seeking to slake his thirst merely drinks more of it. That. It is suggested, is how consumption of the Torah should be: the more one tastes it, the more of it one wants of it (Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner, Ruach Chaim; Rabbi Yitzchak Volozhiner, Milei de’Avot). The opposite view is also however taken, that the water—because it is a metaphor for Torah—should always be sweet to one’s palate, to encourage its steady consumption (Rabbi Yosef Yavetz, quoting Rabbenu Yosef ben Shushan).

The Chida, quoted in MiMa’ayanot HaNetzach, focuses on the realities of the metaphor, taking a practical view of drinking in one’s Torah. If one drinks too much at a time, it can be harmful. A perfect case in point is that of the baby at the mother’s breast. The baby cannot sustain itself without the life-giving force of the mother’s milk, but will nonetheless stop drinking once the necessary quantity of milk has been consumed. The slowly-slowly approach, in preference to going for a sudden, massive intake is also endorsed by Maharam Shik in one of his later comments on Avot 6:6.

So far as imbibing the wisdom of Torah is concerned, both approaches can be justified. In general, our education is governed by the speed at which we can absorb what we learn. But if someone special walks into our lives, we should at least make an effort to maximise the amount we can learn from that person—even if we do not understand fully at the moment we imbibe it.

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When one word can make all the difference

Most students of Pirkei Avot, when pressed, will admit to having a favourite mishnah. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some teachings of the Tannaim speak directly to us. Others seem somewhat threatening, particularly those that touch upon our continued existence as human beings. An example is the fairly unpopular and apparently quite menacing, mishnah at Avot 3:10:

רַבִּי דוֹסְתָּאִי בְּרַבִּי יַנַּאי מִשּׁוּם רַבִּי מֵאִיר אוֹמֵר: כָּל הַשּׁוֹכֵֽחַ דָּבָר אֶחָד מִמִּשְׁנָתוֹ, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: רַק הִשָּֽׁמֶר לְךָ וּשְׁמֹר נַפְשְׁךָ מְאֹד פֶּן תִּשְׁכַּח אֶת הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר רָאוּ עֵינֶֽיךָ. יָכוֹל אֲפִילוּ תָּקְפָה עָלָיו מִשְׁנָתוֹ, תַּלְמוּד לוֹמַר: וּפֶן יָסֽוּרוּ מִלְּבָבְךָ כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּֽיךָ, הָא אֵינוֹ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ עַד שֶׁיֵּשֵׁב וִיסִירֵם מִלִּבּוֹ

Rabbi Dostai b’Rabbi  Yannai used to say in the name of Rabbi Meir: Anyone who forgets even a single word of this learning, the Torah considers it as if he had forfeited his life, as it states: "Just be careful, and closely guard your soul, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen" (Devarim 4:9). One might think that this applies even to one who [has forgotten because] his studies proved too difficult for him; but the verse goes on to tell us: "and lest they be removed from your heart, throughout the days of your life." Thus one does not forfeit his life unless he deliberately removes them from his heart.

We all forget things we’ve learned and none of us is in a position to deny the fact. Sometimes we are annoyed and frustrated at not being able to recall something we struggled hard to learn but now eludes us. On other occasions we forget because we were not paying sufficient attention to the subject of study. Perhaps it didn’t seem relevant at the time, or we planned to revisit it and learn it properly at a later stage—but never did.

Fortunately, the end of this mishnah softens the blow: it is only when we are learning Torah and deliberately seek to unlearn something that our lives are actually or metaphorically forfeit. We can also be at risk of forgetting our learning if we don’t understand its meaning or significance in the first place. Thus, while the Talmud (Sukkah 42a) tells us that, as soon as a child can speak, his father should teach him the Shema, a foundational declaration of God’s unity and His relationship to us, most children have little understanding of these concepts and simply chant the words parrot-fashion. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Rabbi Shlomo Toperoff answers this question by unexpectedly turning this mishnah on its head. If forgetting even one thing can destroy life, he suggests, even accidentally remembering even one thing can preserve or revive it. He writes, in Lev Avot:

“During World War II, many Jewish children were rescued from the Holocaust and placed in Christian hostels and homes. After the war, Dayan Grunfeld visited the evacuation camps that housed many of these young people. He was puzzled to know which children were Jewish and was suddenly inspired to mingle amongst them and repeat several times the words Shema Yisrael. A number of the children who had suffered from spiritual amnesia heard this plaintive cry from the distant past and they seemed to become aroused through the latent feelings embedded deep down in the recesses of their hearts, and they spontaneously responded by presenting themselves to the Rabbi”.

Rabbi Toperoff then presses home his point:

“The Mishnah records that if a person forgets one word of his learning he may forfeit his spiritual life, but the reverse is equally true. The solitary word Shema may reactivate the spiritual links which lie dormant in the subconscious mind and may trigger off a chain of events which would recover the loss of memory. So powerful is the potential quality of the one word of learning that, whilst the loss of it can have disastrous results, the vocal image of one word of the spiritual vocabulary of Judaism can produce miraculous results”.

It seems incredible that Dayan Grunfeld could have done such a thing—but we have a fuller account of his rescue activities from his son Raphael, writing in the Jewish Press (12 September 2012):

“When my father inquired whether the religious needs of the Jewish children in the camp were in fact being attended to, the reply was that there was not a single Jewish child in the camp. My father was skeptical. He knew that Jewish children had survived the war by hiding in the houses of gentiles who had risked their lives to save them, and he dared to hope that at least a few Jewish children were among the thousand.

As my father walked through the camp he began to recite aloud “Shema Yisrael” and “Hamalach Hagoel.” All at once he was surrounded by hordes of little children. “Mama, Mama,” they cried. “Take us home to Mama.”

It was this experience that underlined for him the magnitude of the problem and so he went on to establish the Jewish War Orphans Commission, which led to an unrelenting campaign before the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations for the rescue of Jewish war orphans and their return to Jewry”.

May we all be protected by the merit of our learning—be it much or little—and of those things we never forget.

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Out of this world?

Three mishnayot in Avot describe different types of undesirable conduct as having the same curious and somewhat menacing outcome:

רַבִּי יְהוֹשֻֽׁעַ אוֹמֵר: עַֽיִן הָרָע, וְיֵֽצֶר הָרָע, וְשִׂנְאַת הַבְּרִיּוֹת, מוֹצִיאִין אֶת הָאָדָם מִן הָעוֹלָם

Rabbi Yehoshua used to say: An evil eye, the evil inclination, and the hatred of one's fellows drive a person from the world (Avot 2:16).

רַבִּי דוֹסָא בֶּן הָרְכִּינַס אוֹמֵר: שֵׁנָה שֶׁל שַׁחֲרִית, וְיַֽיִן שֶׁל צָהֳרָֽיִם, וְשִׂיחַת הַיְלָדִים, וִישִׁיבַת בָּתֵּי כְנֵסִיּוֹת שֶׁל עַמֵּי הָאָֽרֶץ, מוֹצִיאִין אֶת הָאָדָם מִן הָעוֹלָם

Rabbi Dosa ben Harkinas used to say: Morning sleep, mid-day wine, children's talk and sitting at the meeting places of the ignoramus drive a person from the world (Avot 3:14).

רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר הַקַּפָּר אוֹמֵר: הַקִּנְאָה וְהַתַּאֲוָה וְהַכָּבוֹד, מוֹצִיאִין אֶת הָאָדָם מִן הָעוֹלָם

Rabbi Elazar HaKappar used to say: Envy, lust and [the desire for] honour drive a man from the world (Avot 4:28).

I’ve quoted the Chabad.org translation here; the ArtScroll translation is remove a man from the world. They mean practically the same thing and are much in accord with modern English translations. But what does it mean, to drive or remove a person from the world? The implication is that the world from which a person is being removed is this world, olam hazeh, rather than the world to come, olam haba, since every public recitation of a chapter of Avot traditionally opens with a declaration that every Jew has a portion in olam haba. In any event, Rabbi Yisroel Miller observes (The Wisdom of Avos), our mishnayot should have referred to not gaining admittance to the world rather than being taken out of it.

But what does this mean in practice?

Ancient commentators offer some suggestions, but they do not go into granular detail—possibly because they have an understanding of the term which they believe they share with others. Neither the Bartenura nor the commentary ascribed to Rashi offer any explanation at all for the words “drive a man from the world” (מוֹצִיאִין אֶת הָאָדָם מִן הָעוֹלָם). Rambam makes no comment the first two occasions when this phrase appears. On the third time around, in relation to envy, lust and honour, he adds that these bad middot “cause a person to lose his faith and prevent him from attaining intellectual and ethical virtue” (tr. R’ Eliyahu Touger)—though it is not clear whether this is an explanation of מוֹצִיאִין אֶת הָאָדָם מִן הָעוֹלָם or simply a comment on the harmful effects of envy, lust and honour. Rabbenu Yonah (at Avot 2:16) however takes a robust approach to the meaning of this phrase: “you sear your own internal organs by desiring what is not yours … your jealous thoughts will destroy your body, making you short-tempered and removing you from the world” (tr. Rabbi David Sedley).

Later commentators are generally less cautious in expressing their opinions. Thus at Avot 2:16 Rabbi Yitzchak Magriso (Me’am Lo’ez), citing a gemara at Bava Metzia 107a, asserts that the evil eye which Rabbi Yehoshua mentions in that mishnah is the cause of death of 99% of the people buried in a cemetery visited by Rav. At Avot 3:14 R’ Magriso offers a different explanation: being driven from the world simply means wasting time and losing out on one’s mission in the world.  

For Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of the Fathers, Avot 2:16), the whole point of Rabbi Yehoshua’s teaching is its punchline. With the assistance of the Ramchal’s Derech Hashem he argues that any person who does good is effectively partnering God in the continued act of Creation. Conversely, one who does evil is undoing the purpose of Creation. Such a person is “removed from the world”. This explanation is attractively simple but still leaves open the question why three separate Tannaim, in authoring their Mishnah, should have rendered the Ramchal’s idea in such a strange manner.

The most brutal modern explanation of being removed from the world may be that of Gila Ross (Living Beautifully, at Avot 2:16): for her, Rabbi Yehoshua is teaching about things that are “so harmful they can actually destroy a person”. More than that, they can “cause us anxiety, … ruin our health .... and distance us from the World to Come by derailing us…”

Of all the recent explanations, the one that appeals to me most is that of Rabbi Norman Lamm (Foundation of Faith, ed. Rabbi Mark Dratch). At Avot 2:16 he writes as follows:

“The blacks and the whites of life are not what make up the ‘world’ which is for the greatest part comprised of shades of gray. It is rare that in crisis we have clear-cut options with which we are confronted: good and evil, right and wrong. Normally we have to make subtle distinctions; we are faced with paradoxes and ambivalences and are forced to choose out of uncertainty and confusion.

The confusion and ambivalence is most oppressive when we deal with ideas and qualities which can serve both the ends of good and evil, of the right and of the wrong. At such times not only is there an element of uncertainty as to whether we are using or abusing a certain quality, but there is a tendency for us to submit to rationalization—to abuse a quality and to assume that we are doing the right thing. Since the world is constituted mostly of such uncertainties and such qualities of double nature, when we confound their right use and wrong use, when we allow ourselves to rationalize away our own self-interest, then we lose contact with ‘the world’ and we are removed from it …”.

In other words, simpler words, Rabbi Lamm is saying this: the ‘world’ from which we are being removed is the world of our own objectively-viewed reality. We effectively remove ourselves from being able to think logically and along the lines of Jewish law and tradition to which we subscribe.

Being removed from the world of reality is not necessarily a punishment. Most of us feel it at one time or another. for example when a person is first in love. In former times such a person might be described as "looking at the world through rose-tinted spectacles"; I'm sure that there are modern equivalents. The main point is that, for good or not so good, our view of reality is distorted.

May our distorted view of the world only be the product of good and happy things!

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Being careful: theory and practice

Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi teaches (Avot 2:1) a much-discussed principle—that one should take as much care when fulfilling a light or minor commandment as when performing a heavy or major one. In his own words:

וֶהֱוֵי זָהִיר בְּמִצְוָה קַלָּה כְּבַחֲמוּרָה, שֶׁאֵין אַתָּה יוֹדֵֽעַ מַתַּן שְׂכָרָן שֶׁל מִצְוֹת, וֶהֱוֵי מְחַשֵּׁב הֶפְסֵד מִצְוָה כְּנֶֽגֶד שְׂכָרָהּ, וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה כְּנֶֽגֶד הֶפְסֵדָהּ

Be as careful with a minor mitzvah as with a major one, for you do not know the rewards of the mitzvot. Consider the cost of a mitzvah against its rewards, and the rewards of a transgression against its cost.

We normally take this mishnah as a single lesson in how to handle God’s commandments and then go off into lengthy discussions of how you can tell the mitzvot apart in terms of their weightiness. But in reality there are two separate issues here. The first, as the Sefat Emet points out, is to take care when performing every mitzvah, regardless of its apparent magnitude or importance. The second is that it is not for us to assess the significance of any mitzvah, or the insignificance of any transgression, whatever our personal feelings on the subject. We simply do not have the data that enables us to do this.

The Sefat Emet adds that it is the zehirut—the care taken in performing a mitzvah—that determines the reward for its performance, along with the effort involved in performing it (here he cites Ben Heh Heh at Avot 5: 26: “According to the effort, so is the reward”).

We are just ordinary mortals seeking to carry out God’s will. Our problem is that what constitutes zehirut is not the same for every mitzvah. In the case of circumcision, the berit milah, standards of care are set at a professionally high level, which is why most parents who are bound by this commandment will assign its performance to a person who has been trained to display the requisite level of care and expertise. Other mitzvot are more problematic because there is no objective standard of “being careful”. A good example is that of nichum avelim, comforting mourners during the days that follow a close relative’s funeral. How many times have people caused more upset than comfort with well-meaning (and often true) statements such as “it must be a great relief for you now that s/he is out of their misery at last”, “at least you have three other children” or attempts to distract a mourner with irrelevancies such as “how long have you lived in this house?”

But every situation in which a person visits a mourner is the same, and taking care means tuning in to the needs of the person one is seeking to comfort. Let me cite a couple of situations where the bounds of zehirut were not immediately clear, and where they turned out to be quite different.

In the first case I was visiting the late Dayan Isaac Lerner of the London Beth Din, who was sitting shiva for a sibling. It was a mid-day visit and, when I arrived, I found that the Dayan, whom I did not know well, was quite alone, apart from a family member who was preparing food in the kitchen. I could hardly leave and return later when there were more people present so I sat down opposite him. I felt quite uncomfortable, but the Dayan clearly sensed my anxiety and put me at my ease by saying he welcomed the company. We talked for an hour or so and the time seemed to pass quickly; the Dayan steered the conversation towards a subject that deeply interested him: the role of prophecy in the Book of Malachi which I had recently learned and which, I discovered, he knew by heart. I soon realised that my role in the nichum avelim, my zehirut, was to concentrate on following his leads, to show I was following his train of thought and to let him guide the conversation towards his own lofty ideas on peace between generations and the end of days.

In the second case I was visiting the late Marcus Witztum, an exuberant, colourful character and restaurateur in North West London. Again it was a mid-day visit and the avel, who was not well known to me, was alone. Here the zehirut was quite different. Marcus did not want someone to talk with; he wanted someone to talk to. In short, he was lonely and needed an audience rather than words of comfort. Apart from the occasional nod, smile or gesture, there was really nothing else I could do—but that was all that was required of me. When I left, Marcus thanked me warmly for being with him, through I felt I had done nothing.

So, what does zehirut mean in practice? I guess it take a lifetime to learn.

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The desire for power

In The Wisdom of Avos, Rabbi Yisroel Miller makes a striking observation:

“Sefarim and teachers of mussar speak extensively of the pitfalls of kavod (honor) and status-seeking, but for some reason they do not warn us so much about the natural desire for power—to be the person who gives orders and not the person who must take orders from others”.

According to Rabbi Miller, the mishnah at Avot 1:10 addresses this issue, where Shemayah teaches:

שְׁמַעְיָה אוֹמֵר: אֱהוֹב אֶת הַמְּלָאכָה וּשְׂנָא אֶת הָרַבָּנוּת, וְאַל תִּתְוַדַּע לָרָשׁוּת

Shemayah would say: Love work, hate mastery over others, and avoid intimacy with the government.

With respect, this is not what most people would regard as a warning about “the natural desire for power”—and I wonder whether this concept is an anachronism: “Natural desire for power” very much like a 19^th century concept: “The will to power”. The will to power is a concept popularized by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900); it is a shorthand term what Nietzsche believed to be the main driving force in humans.

The Tannaim in Avot do sometimes speak of power relationships. Apart from Shemayah’s teaching, we find Rabban Gamliel ben Rebbi’s caution about avoiding those in authority (Avot 2:3). There is also the tantalizingly unclear teaching of Rabbi Yishmael at Avot 3:16, which speaks (according to some commentators) of one’s dealings with those who hold more or less power than oneself. But there is no obvious recognition in Avot of the “will to power” and how to resist it.

On the positive side, Avot is full of encouragement to be truly humble—a highly-valued human quality that is incompatible with man’s quest for power. Perhaps the message of “do be humble” is more acceptable to Torah students than “don’t lust after power”.

One final reflection: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks frequently emphasised the difference between influence and authority. Authority is the prerogative of Friedrich Nietzsche the office-holder to make decrees and enforce decisions—but influence, often without the accoutrements of formal office, can be where the real power lies. Examples include that of the Vilna Gaon, whose influence throughout Eastern European Jewry was immense even though he held no formal rabbinical post, and the Ba’al Shem Tov, inspired what evolved into modern chassidut.

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Kissers and clingers

 Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai and his five famous talmidim are a topic to which we have turned often in recent times. Indeed, they seem to provide an inexhaustible supply of discussion points for those keen on finding a fresh element of mussar, Jewish ethical teaching, that may have lain quietly concealed for centuries—or longer.

So let’s return to Avot 2:13. I’m starting here not, as I usually do, with the Hebrew text, but with the popular Chabad online translation which reads:

[Rabbi Yochanan] said to them: Go and see which is the best trait for a person to acquire. Said Rabbi Eliezer: A good eye. Said Rabbi Joshua: A good friend. Said Rabbi Yossei: A good neighbor. Said Rabbi Shimon: To see what is born [out of ones actions]. Said Rabbi Elazar: A good heart. Said He to them: I prefer the words of Elazar the son of Arach to yours, for his words include all of yours.

The term “the best trait for a person to acquire”, also used by Gila Ross (Living Beautifully), may seem a bit bland but otherwise unexceptionable, but it is not wrong in terms of our need to find good guidance in life and then stick to it. There are other ways to express the same notion. For example:

·       “the straight path to which a person should adhere” (Rabbi David Sedley, Rabbeinu Yonah, Rodin edition);

·       “the upright path to which a person should cleave” (Rav Asher Weiss on Avos) and “the good way to which a man should cleave” (R’ Shlomo Toperoff, Lev Avot);

·       “the best path for a person to attach himself to” (R’ Tal Moshe Zwecker, Ma’asei Avos), “attach himself” also being used by Rabbi Yisroel Miller, The Wisdom of Avos;

·       “the proper path to which a man should cling” (Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, Visions of the Fathers)—the word “cling” also being favoured by Chanoch Levi’s translation of the Ru’ach Chayim, by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.

Now let’s look at the original Hebrew. Our Tanna uses the word שֶׁיִּדְבַּק sheyidbak:

אָמַר לָהֶם: צְאוּ וּרְאוּ אֵיזוֹ הִיא דֶּֽרֶךְ טוֹבָה שֶׁיִּדְבַּק בָּהּ הָאָדָם

This word suggests a degree of devekut, an attachment of a powerful nature, or even bonding (in modern Hebrew the same root gives us devek, “glue”). But does it really matter which English word is chosen, and why? I think it can.

Rabbi Norman Lamm (Foundation of Faith, edited by Rabbi Mark Dratch) picks up on the force of the word sheyidbak when he explains our mishnah in Avot. Going for the cling option, he unexpectedly points to a passage from the Book of Ruth (1:14):

וַתִּשֶּׂנָה קוֹלָן, וַתִּבְכֶּינָה עוֹד; וַתִּשַּׁק עָרְפָּה לַחֲמוֹתָהּ, וְרוּת דָּבְקָה בָּהּ

And they [i.e. Naomi’s daughers-in-law Ruth and Orpah] lifted up their voice, and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.

On this Rabbi Lamm writes:

“And Orpah kissed (n-sh-k) her mother-in-law, whereas Ruth clung (d-v-k) to her”. Their descendants, David and Goliath, are referred to in the Talmud as “the sons of devukah who vanquished the sons of neshukah”.

Now here comes the crunch point, the powerful mussar concealed within an apparently innocent word in the English translation:

“There are two universal types: clingers and kissers—those who are authentically loyal and those who merely blow kisses. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai challenges his students to discover the trait to which a person should cling, not to which he might merely pay lip service”.

What a remarkable way to wring a sharp point of mussar out of what appears to be a mere side-issue in the mishnah as a whole.

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