Out of order

In the very first mishnah in Avot (1:1), the Anshei Knesset Gedolah (“Men of the Great Assembly”) pronounce on three things that we are urged to do:

הֱווּ מְתוּנִים בַּדִּין, וְהַעֲמִֽידוּ תַּלְמִידִים הַרְבֵּה, וַעֲשׂוּ סְיָג לַתּוֹרָה

Be deliberate in judgement, and raise up many pupils, and make a fence around the Torah.

The Anshei Knesset Gedolah don’t specify which fence they have in mind but the consensus view is that they are encouraging us to adopt chumrot, stringencies, in order to distance ourselves from the transgression of the Torah’s many and sometimes pervasive Torah prohibitions (see for example the commentaries of Rambam, Rabbenu Yonah, Bartenura and Rashi). The Meiri takes a similar line though, in line with the baraita at Avot 6:6. he limits its focus to building fences round our words, to guard against improper speech.

At Avot 3:17—the only other place in Avot that mentions fences—Rabbi Akiva advertises the importance of four fences in particular:

מַסֹּֽרֶת סְיָג לַתּוֹרָה, מַעְשְׂרוֹת סְיָג לָעֹֽשֶׁר, נְדָרִים סְיָג לַפְּרִישׁוּת, סְיָג לַחָכְמָה שְׁתִיקָה

Tradition is a fence to Torah, tithing a fence to wealth, vows a fence for abstinence; a fence for wisdom is silence.

If this teaching illustrates his view of the scope of Avot 1:1, Rabbi Akiva’s understanding of it runs wider than that of the commentators we mentioned above, since his four fences deal with the safeguarding of ‘positives’. This point is picked up by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vizhnitz (quoted in Zwecker, Ma’asei Avos) when he comments on the word order.  The first three fences are presented in the format of “Y is a fence to Z”, while the fourth is “A fence to Z is Y”. Why should this be so?

According to Rabbi Menachem Mendel, in the first three instances, the fence is mentioned ahead of the object that it is guarding because the fence can itself help the thing which is fenced. Thus, if one forgets one’s Torah, the masoret—the transmitted tradition—can be used as an aide-memoire. If one’s wealth is being lost, giving tithes is a path to protecting it, and if one’s resolve to be abstemious is shaken, a vow may be able to buttress it. This is not the case regarding silence and wisdom. Silence by itself is not a means of increasing a person’s wisdom; it does not really ‘fence’ it in at all. In this fourth case, therefore, Rabbi Akiva is teaching about someone who is already wise: his silence can at least preserve the impression of his wisdom by inhibiting him from saying anything he might later regret.

With the seder service still fresh in our minds, it’s worth pointing out that the four fences in this mishnah loosely correspond to the Four Sons in the Haggadah.  Tradition being a fence to the Torah corresponds to the Wise Son, who asks about the festival’s halachic content but receives an answer that is based on tradition, not on any biblical rule.  Vows to fence in abstinence are relevant to the Wicked Son, whose natural inclination tends towards over-indulgence rather than abstinence.  Silence being a fence to wisdom relates to the she’eino yode’a lishol—the son who is silent—the One Who Doesn’t Know How to Ask. We respond to his silence  by opening the subject of Pesach with him and thereby make him wise.  The remaining fence, of tithes being a fence to wealth, is an allusion to the tam, the Perfect (not ‘Simple’) son. What is the relevance of tithes? The tithe is one tenth of one’s produce. This is depicted in the very word tam (תם), in which the letter ם has a numerical value of 40, exactly one-tenth of the value of ת, which is 400.

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