Not such a saint

We are only human and, try as we will to be clinically objective in our analysis of mishnayot in Avot, our opinions, biases, preferences and prejudices inevitably leak out.

At Avot 5:17 an anonymous mishnah teaches:

אַרְבַּע מִדּוֹת בְּהוֹלְכֵי בֵית הַמִּדְרָשׁ: הוֹלֵךְ וְאֵינוֹ עוֹשֶׂה, שְׂכַר הֲלִיכָה בְּיָדוֹ. עוֹשֶׂה וְאֵינוֹ הוֹלֵךְ, שְׂכַר מַעֲשֶׂה בְּיָדוֹ. הוֹלֵךְ וְעוֹשֶׂה, חָסִיד. לֹא הוֹלֵךְ וְלֹא עוֹשֶׂה, רָשָׁע

There are four types among those who attend the study hall. One who goes but does nothing—he has gained the rewards of going. One who does [study] but does not go to the study hall—he has gained the rewards of doing. One who goes and does, he is a chasid. One who neither goes nor does, he is wicked.

It is difficult to retain the flavour of the Mishnaic-era term chasid when translating it into modern English. “One who is pious” is clumsy and misses the mark because words like “pious” and “piety” have attracted in today’s English an aura of sanctimony rather than sincerity.  Left untranslated, the word chasid conjures up images of ultra-religious followers of a rebbe, garbed in black hats and long black coats and sporting sidelocks and beards.

Rabbi Shlomo P. Toperoff (Lev Avot) designates the chasid as a saint. In doing so he has a precedent from the world of philosemitic scholarship: the Reverend Travers Herford employs it in his The Ethics of the Talmud.

The word ‘saint’ carries baggage: it may be deployed as a term of approbation of someone’s righteous and selfless behaviour, often in the face of temptation or with the prospect of suffering an enduring loss; it is also frequently used in a highly sarcastic comment on a person’s far-from-righteous behaviour.  Rabbi Toperoff was a pulpit rabbi in a town which then had two synagogues—one frequented by serious Torah scholars, the other (the “Englische shul”, which was his) being attended by more of the town’s rank-and-file population. The Englische shul was looked down on by some of the members of the frum synagogue who would likely not wish to hear his English sermons, and maybe it was this that was his motivation for writing the following:

“Hasid, saint. The hasid is one who attends and practises. Some authorities question the advisability of referring to the Hasid as a saint: he is performing the normal duties incumbent upon every Jew. However, …[t]here are those who consider themselves intellectually and morally superior to their co-religionists and consequently refrain from mixing freely with the multitude and do not attend the Beth Hamidrash. They do not hear the sermons and lectures of the Rabbis and therefore create divisiveness. More praiseworthy and meritorious is the conduct of the scholar who, in spite of his knowledge presents himself at the House of Study and listens to the discourse of the Rabbi. Such understanding bespeaks humility and meekness, and such a person is worthy of the title Hasid, saint”.

I personally doubt that any of the people who avoided going to Rabbi Toperoff’s synagogue and hearing his sermons would have read these words, but he does raise an interesting point: is there any real value in attending a sermon when you doubt that you will learn anything new from it and are confident that time spent engaged in other forms of learning would reap a greater benefit? Gila Ross (Living Beautifully) may think so. As she observes:

“Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk points out that the very act of pulling himself out of his comfort zone and going to a place of learning is going to help that person focus on his spirituality”.

Pulling oneself out of one’s comfort zone is the key point here. The very act is itself part of an ongoing process of character development. Gila Ross does not quote Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai on this, but in the second perek of Avot we see how, not once but twice, he orders his best talmidim to leave the Beit Midrash and go out and see for themselves how people live, to enable them to learn what best to do and what best to avoid.

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Big brother, or book learning?

For some people the third of Rebbi’s teachings at Avot 2:1 has a slightly menacing flavour:

הִסְתַּכֵּל בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים, וְאֵין אַתָּה בָא לִידֵי עֲבֵרָה, דַּע מַה לְּמַֽעְלָה מִמָּךְ, עַֽיִן רוֹאָה וְאֹֽזֶן שׁוֹמַֽעַת, וְכָל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ בְּסֵֽפֶר נִכְתָּבִים

Contemplate three things and you will not come to the hands of transgression. Know what is above you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds are inscribed in a book.

The fictional nightmare of George Orwell’s 1984, a world of constant surveillance of the actions of individuals, became a reality years ago. We have become quite used to security cameras and to developments in computing and AI that create the uncomfortable impression that there are machines out there that know more about ourselves than we do. Many commentators on Avot, even in earlier generations, were quick to remind us that God sees and hears everything we do—and that nothing is omitted from His database of human actions, words and thoughts.

Rabbi Yaakov Hillel (Eternal Ethics from Sinai) brings a refreshing perspective to the part of the mishnah that mentions how our deeds are written in a book. For most of us the message of Rebbi is a cautionary one: don’t do it or, if you do it, don’t imagine that you can get away with it without being noticed. But Rabbi Hillel finds a positive message in it too.

Many of us are occasionally motivated to raise our game, as it were, and cultivate a more spiritual attitude towards the way we live in this, our physical and materialistic world. But from where can we derive our spiritual inspiration?

The path to one’s spiritual elevation isn’t tangible; it isn’t something that can be seen. We don’t normally experience spiritual visions and, if we started telling people we were having them, they would likely consider us likely candidates for psychiatric care. Likewise, though a baraita at Avot 6:2 mentions a Heavenly voice emanating daily from Mount Horeb (Sinai), our non-prophetic ears are not equipped to pick up celestial soundbites. That leaves only books.

Our Sages old and new have left us with a rich literary heritage in terms of Jewish subject matter: halachah, mussar, midrash, kabbalah, chassidut, philosophy and much more besides. If we find the right books, we can grow from them, enriching our understanding, our commitment and ultimately our closeness to God. So, explains, Rabbi Hillel, when our mishnah states that “all your deeds are inscribed in a book”, we can take this to mean that all our deeds—the deeds which we consciously seek to emulate or implement in our own lives—are already written down in the kodesh books we read. All we have to do is follow the instruction we find in the printed word.

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Are we truly afraid any more?

Fear (יִרְאָה, yirah) is a theme that runs through Pirkei Avot. We meet it first at Avot 1:3, where Antigonos Ish Socho counsels:

וִיהִי מוֹרָא שָׁמַֽיִם עֲלֵיכֶם

And let the fear of Heaven be upon you.

At Avot 2:11 the highest accolade that Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai can give to one of his leading talmidim. Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel, is to describe him as a יְרֵא חֵטְא (“a fearer of sin”). In the baraitot at the end of the tractate, to be בְּיִרְאָה (“in a state of fear”) is one of the 48 modes by which one acquires Torah—and there are other references to fear. But what does the word mean, both inherently and to us now?

Our sages have had much to say about fear. They have taught us to distinguish between fear of punishment, fear of actually doing wrong and the sort of fear one experiences (which we probably equate with awe) when in the presence of something so great that we simply can’t take it in, something that, we intuitively feel, substantiates our belief in God’s role as Creator of the world or His immanent presence. When used by our Sages, the word yirah, in one context or another, seems to span a vast range of human emotions: at one extreme it is a deep sense of terror while, at the other, it is more like a profound form of respect.

What I want to ask here is not what yirah means but whether we really feel it the same way as the early audience of Avot students would have done. This question is sparked off by a comment made by Rabbi Yisroel Miller, The Wisdom of Avos, on Avot 2:1—a mishnah that doesn’t even contain the word yirah. He writes:

“[I] believe without question that on Rosh Hashanah my life hangs in the balance as Hashem decides my fate for the coming year, and yet I do not tremble as much as I did when a policeman once pulled me over for a traffic violation!”

I suspect that this honest personal admission by a respected orthodox rabbi reflects the experiences of many, if not most, of us today. If we truly felt that God was with us and watching us all the time, and genuinely felt that He rewards us for our good deeds and punishes us for our bad ones, our personal experience of fear would no doubt be greatly enhanced.  As it is, in our busy lives we find times to tune in to God’s supervision, for example at times of prayer or when we are preparing to perform a mitzvah, and times when, like a divine App, we do not turn Him off but leave Him running quietly in the background.

This leads to another question: what is the role of fear in our lives today? Is it to be reserved for threats to our physical and economic well-being, leaving us to rely on the censure of our fellow humans and peer pressure instead? And have we really forgotten how to fear?

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The times they are a'changin...or are they?

For the observant practising Jew it is axiomatic that the Torah is eternal and unchanging. It is the blueprint for the creation of the universe (Bereishit Rabbah 1:1) and the words with which God’s will is expressed are eternally valid. Truth being a complex and multifaceted concept, we accept that the Torah has shivim ponim—“seventy faces”—meaning that, while it is an absolute value, the meaning it reveals to us may depend on the place from which we view it. This is the Torah’s strength: it offers both permanence and flexibility. The enduring relevance of the Torah also helps explain the high level of respect given to commentaries throughout the generations: we still study the Targum Onkelos and the explanations of Rashi, Ramban and others because the passage of time has not raised a barrier to their relevance.

Although Pirkei Avot is a major component of the Torah sheb’al peh, the Oral Torah, our sages’ commentaries on this tractate do not command the same level of appreciation or acceptance through the ages. This is unsurprising. Avot addresses the social, political, spiritual and emotional dimensions of our lives—and these in turn are conditioned by factors that are constantly subject to change. But even apparently obsolete comments may have something to teach us.

A good example of this is the commentary of Rabbenu Yonah on Avot 2:3, where a mishnah of Rabban Gamliel the son of Rebbi reads:

הֱווּ זְהִירִין בָּרָשׁוּת, שֶׁאֵין מְקָרְבִין לוֹ לְאָדָם אֶלָּא לְצֹֽרֶךְ עַצְמָן, נִרְאִין כְּאוֹהֲבִין בְּשַֽׁעַת הַנָּאָתָן, וְאֵין עוֹמְדִין לוֹ לְאָדָם בְּשַֽׁעַת דָּחֳקוֹ׃

Be careful with the government, for they befriend a person only for their own needs. They appear to be friends when it is beneficial to them, but they do not stand by a person at the time of his distress.

On this Rabbenu Yonah comments:

“When you have no more money to give them, even if it is because you are really financially pressed, they will have no mercy on a poor man. They will impoverish you and forget the old friendship, because that is all in the past. This is the simple meaning of the mishnah.

However, if this is what it actually meant, it would be a slur against kings, God forbid, and that cannot be. The world continues to exist through sovereigns who dispense law and justice. No one in the world can be as truthful as a king, as he has no need to flatter others or to fear them. There is nothing to prevent a king following the path of justice…” (tr. Rabbi David Sedley).

We do not live in an era of monarchs who wield absolute power over their subjects, and the kings and queens we encounter today are in the main constitutional rulers whose powers, if any, are token. What’s more, the propositions Rabbenu Yonah articulates here seem preposterous. How is it that the continued existence of the world depends on sovereigns? And surely it is unimaginable that no one in the world can be as truthful as a king! So how could Rabbenu Yonah have written what he did?

Rabbi Shimon ben Zemach Duran (the Rashbatz) suggests that Rabbenu Yonah only wrote what he did because he was afraid of the kings of his time. But can this be so? There’s a verse in Proverbs (Mishlei 21:1) that reads:

פַּלְגֵי־מַ֣יִם לֶב־מֶ֭לֶךְ בְּיַד־יְהֹוָ֑ה עַֽל־כׇּל־אֲשֶׁ֖ר יַחְפֹּ֣ץ יַטֶּֽנּוּ׃

The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.

On this, Rabbenu Yonah comments:

“The goal of the hearts should be to fear God and not to fear the anger of a king. A person should ask mercy of God and hope and raise his eyes towards Him, for He tilts the heart to wherever he wants”.

These do not read like the words of a man who quakes with fear at the prospect of incurring a monarch’s anger. So what does his extraordinary explanation of our mishnah in Avot really mean? I think that there is more to it than meets the eye.

The first part of Rabbenu Yonah’s comment tells the mishnah as it really is. Rabban Gamliel warns us that government—whether in the form of kings, counsellors or politicians—is a career in which those who participate in it expect to enrich themselves or at least derive some form of benefit from those whom they purport to serve. It is an early expression of the sentiment that “they’re only in it for what they can get”, a view which, if cynical, is born of our experiences of being governed throughout the ages.

The second part of the comment is entirely tongue-in-cheek and it is really a subtle and pointed piece of mussar (moral chastisement) addressed to absolute rulers: Only if you dispense law and justice does the continued existence of the world depend on you (see Avot 1:18).  So why do you not respect the truth (which also features in Avot 1:18)? If your actions are just, you have nothing to fear from it. And if there is nothing to prevent you, a king, from following the path of justice, why don’t you? It is no accident that Rabbenu Yonah’s commentary on our mishnah ends with the words:

“For even if a king has his own ideas and has the ability to act as he sees fit, in truth he has no power to harm or to help, except by the will of the Living God, the eternal king”.

We have no old-style kings today, but across the world there are many regimes governed by the tyranny of an individual over a terrorised people. For such rulers and those whom they govern, Rabbenu Yonah’s words remain highly relevant.

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Syria after Assad: a question for Avot

At Avot 3:2, Rabbi Chanina segan HaKohanim teaches:

הֱוֵי מִתְפַּלֵּל בִּשְׁלוֹמָהּ שֶׁל מַלְכוּת, שֶׁאִלְמָלֵא מוֹרָאָהּ, אִישׁ אֶת רֵעֵֽהוּ חַיִּים בְּלָעוֹ

Pray for the integrity of the government; for were it not for the fear of its authority, a man would swallow his neighbour alive.

Few readers of Avot Today will have missed the news of the remarkable developments in Syria, where President Assad’s much hated but hitherto unassailable regime has been swept aside. In its place there has emerged a coalition of forces that share some aims but are themselves in conflict over others.

What are the stated objectives of the successful forces? According to an early statement we learn the following:

"After 50 years of oppression under the regime, and 13 years of crime, tyranny and displacement, and after a long struggle and fight and confronting all forms of occupation forces, we announce today on 12-8-2024 the end of this dark era and the beginning of a new era for Syria.

To the displaced all over the world, free Syria awaits you”.

This new Syria is declared to be a place where everyone

."…coexists in peace, justice prevails and rights are established, where every Syrian is honoured and his dignity is preserved, we turn the page on the dark past and open a new horizon for the future."

These are noble aspirations, but is there any prospect that they will be delivered? Success has come through the cooperation between numerous factions which, though united in their determination to force a regime change, are themselves deeply divided along political, religious and ethnic lines.

Though Syria has been technically at war with Israel since 1948, the Assad regime agreed a cease-fire with Israel which, though there have been breaches, has been in the main respected by both sides. At the time of writing this post, the long-term fate of this cease-fire remains uncertain. If the maintenance of the cease-fire depends on the ability of the new regime to prevent potentially lethal border incursions by any of its anti-Israel factions, should we be praying for the welfare of the coalition if Israeli lives depend on it?

There is a further point to consider. The once-thriving Syrian Jewish community effectively vanished in 1992 when the father of the current President permitted the last remaining 4,000 Jews to emigrate on condition that they did not make aliyah. Most settled in the United States. Might they respond to the clarion call of the coalition: “To the displaced all over the world, free Syria awaits you”? In the event that they are tempted to return (and we Jews have returned to many countries that sought to eliminate us), we would need to ask what this means to us. Does this mishnah address only the needs of the country in which we live, or does it speak also to those countries in which our brethren live and in which their welfare and safety depend on enforcement of the rule of law by a government with integrity?

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Learning a compound mishnah: where do we start?

Many times in Pirkei Avot we find a mishnah in which a Tanna says three or more things. A typical example is Avot 1:7, where Nittai HaArbeli says:

הַרְחֵק מִשָּׁכֵן רָע, וְאַל תִּתְחַבֵּר לָרָשָׁע, וְאַל תִּתְיָאֵשׁ מִן הַפּוּרְעָנוּת

(i) Distance yourself from a bad neighbour, (ii) do not stick to a wicked person, and (iii) do not abandon belief in retribution.

Commentators have long discussed the significance of these grouped teachings: are they put together because they are intended to be understood or interpreted in the context of each other? Or are they separate, free-standing teachings that do not in any way demand to be associated with one another, being brought together only for the sake of making them easier to remember? This is the only place in Avot where we find Nittai’s words. Keeping them together in the same mishnah makes them easier to recall than if they had been scattered through different chapters.

We can easily connect these teachings if we so wish, learning that bad neighbours are a greater threat than wicked non-neighbours and that, in either case, if such a person harms us he or she will get their come-uppance even if we don’t see it with our own eyes. Alternatively we can say that Nittai is teaching three unrelated principles, each of which demands to be considered and understood on its own terms.

We can also find examples of mishnayot containing teachings that are more challenging to connect. Thus we see the following from Rabbi Tzadok (Avot 4:7):

אַל תִּפְרוֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר, וְאַל תַּֽעַשׂ עַצְמְךָ כְּעוֹרְכֵי הַדַּיָּנִין, וְאַל תַּעֲשֶֽׂהָ עֲטָרָה לְהִתְגַּדֶּל בָּהּ, וְלֹא קַרְדּוּם לַחְתָּךְ בָּהּ

(i) Do not separate yourself from the community. (ii) Do not make yourself like a lawyer. (iii) Do not make the Torah a crown with which to glorify yourself, or a spade with which to dig …

Here the connections between the three teachings are far less obvious.

Among commentators there are those who strive to find connections wherever possible on the ground that, if there no such connections, the teachings would not have been grouped together in the same mishnah. According to Shimon Abu (Shomanu Avotenu), this principle derives support from Rashi (Betzah 2a, at se’or bekezayit), and scholars such as Rabbi Ovadyah Hedayah (Seh leBet Avot) apply it rigorously.

The problem with this principle is that there are so many mishnayot in which connections are not apparent and attempts to make them seem contrived to the student. For example, in Avot 2:15, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus says four things (officially three) which can be connected but only at the expense of plausibility:

יְהִי כְבוֹד חֲבֵרָךְ חָבִיב עָלֶֽיךָ כְּשֶׁלָּךְ, וְאַל תְּהִי נֽוֹחַ לִכְעוֹס. וְשׁוּב יוֹם אֶחָד לִפְנֵי מִיתָתָךְ. וֶהֱוֵי מִתְחַמֵּם כְּנֶֽגֶד אוֹרָן שֶׁל חֲכָמִים, וֶהֱוֵי זָהִיר בְּגַחֲלָתָן שֶׁלֹּא תִכָּוֶה, שֶׁנְּשִׁיכָתָן נְשִׁיכַת שׁוּעָל, וַעֲקִיצָתָן עֲקִיצַת עַקְרָב, וּלְחִישָׁתָן לְחִישַׁת שָׂרָף, וְכָל דִּבְרֵיהֶם כְּגַחֲלֵי אֵשׁ

(i) Let the honour of your fellow be as precious to you as your own, and (ii) do not be easy to anger. (iii) Repent one day before your death. (iv) Warm yourself by the fire of the sages, but be careful not to get burned by its embers; for their bite is the bite of a fox, their sting is the sting of a scorpion, their hiss is the hiss a serpent, and all their words are like fiery coals.

My feeling is that, when approaching any compound mishnah, one can maximise the scope for learning from it by taking the following route:

• Examine the possibility that two or more teachings in the same mishnah may be connected, or may even constitute a single teaching, but accept that this may not be the case.
• Where there is no apparent connection between distinct teachings, accept the possibility that they were understood to be related when Rebbi compiled the mishnah but that we no longer possess Rebbi’s understanding of what they meant.
• Whether connectivity between teachings in a single mishnah is established or not, examine each one separately and consider its content without reference to the others.
• Where a connection between component parts of a mishnah can only be established by coming up with an explanation that appears awkward or contrived, ask yourself whether—if that is the correct meaning—it is a meaning that Rebbi would have considered valuable enough to transmit through the generations.
• Never let a methodology for learning a mishnah distort or obliterate the plain meaning of the words which the Tanna chose in teaching that mishnah.

I’m sure many readers of this post will have other suggestions, some of which may prove more useful when learning Avot. If you are such a reader, please share your thoughts.

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Too many words

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel (Avot 1:17) teaches:

כָּל יָמַי גָּדַֽלְתִּי בֵּין הַחֲכָמִים, וְלֹא מָצָֽאתִי לְגוּף טוֹב מִשְּׁתִיקָה, וְלֹא הַמִּדְרָשׁ עִקָּר אֶלָּא הַמַּעֲשֶׂה, וְכָל הַמַּרְבֶּה דְבָרִים מֵבִיא חֵטְא

All my life I have been raised among the wise, and I have found nothing better for the body than silence. The essential thing is not study, but action. And anyone who increases words brings sin.

It has sometimes been asked whether, if the most efficacious commodity in a person’s life is silence, it is truly necessary to add that “anyone who increases words brings sin”.  The answer depends on whether “one who increases words brings sin” is simply an explanation as to why silence is so good or whether it is a separate stand-alone teaching.

Until Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi (Rebbi) compiled the oral teachings into the body of law we now call the Mishnah, it seems to be generally understood that oral teachings were taught, explained and passed down the generations by word of mouth. Some Tannaim had their own collections of teachings which may have been written down for their own convenience, but these were not taught as normative text.  However, once Rebbi had compiled the six Orders of the Mishnah, the oral law now had a written text to which both teacher and talmid could refer.

The Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel who is cited as the author of our mishnah lived a century and a half before Rebbi, who was his great grandson. This Rabban Shimon, a contemporary of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, would have been active around the time of the destruction of the Second Temple—a time of great turbulence and uncertainty. With the benefit of hindsight we can ask why it was not in his generation, when continuity of Torah learning must have come under severe stress, that the idea of setting the oral law down in writing was not implemented as a way of preserving it.

Perhaps this issue was indeed debated in the lifetime of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel and the teaching in this mishnah—that “anyone who increases words brings sin”—refers implicitly to his opposition to ‘increasing’ words by writing them down and thus increasing opportunities for transcriptional errors to creep in.

Thoughts, anyone?

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