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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