SUMMONING UP ASSISTANCE FROM THE PAST

After advocating the virtues of combining Torah study with some sort of trade or occupation, Rabban Gamliel ben Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi addresses the position of those who work for the community. He teaches this:

וְכָל הָעוֹסְקִים עִם הַצִּבּוּר יִהְיוּ עוֹסְקִים עִמָּהֶם לְשֵׁם שָׁמָֽיִם, שֶׁזְּכוּת אֲבוֹתָם מְסַיַּעְתָּם, וְצִדְקָתָם עוֹמֶֽדֶת לָעַד, וְאַתֶּם, מַעֲלֶה אֲנִי עֲלֵיכֶם שָׂכָר הַרְבֵּה כְּאִלּוּ עֲשִׂיתֶם

Those who work for the community—let them do so for the sake of Heaven; for the merit of their ancestors shall aid them, and their righteousness shall endure forever. And as for you [says God]. I shall credit you with great reward as if you have done [it].

The obvious meaning of this teaching is that it’s a tough task to work on behalf of any community, and certainly a Jewish one—which is probably what Rabban Gamliel had in mind. Community service takes a person away from the comfort zone of learning and plunges one into a routine that is often unpredictable and uncontrollable, and invariably unending. One needs to summon up the skills of a diplomat plus a good deal of patience and foresight if any community’s interests can be truly advanced—and the more diverse the community, the greater the number of stress lines that divide it.  If God sees you doing your best, He will, as it were, let you cash in on the merits of your ancestors. This is presumably on the basis that one’s ancestors were meritorious.

Jewish ancestry is a treasure trove of real and also possibly imagined merits. The three Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were so renowned for theirs that we invoke them in the latter part of birkat hamazon (grace after meals). Closer to our own time, many of us may have had pious and saintly grandparents or great grandparents who, we are confident, must have clocked up a multitude of merits on account of their persistence and adherence to the faith in the face of persecution, material deprivation, financial hardship and assimilation. So, while we toil on behalf of the community, we seek to draw upon the righteousness and the good deeds of our forebears and hope that this will give us that extra resource to pull us through.

Assuming that we are able to draw on the merits of our forebears—whether we know what those merits might be or not—we can then extract a limmud mussar from the mishnah: if we succeed in our efforts on behalf of the community, as the Me’iri suggests, we should not go into self-congratulatory mode and imagine that success is simply the product of our efforts. Rather, we should appreciate that our achievements at the present time are also a product of the past, through the tradition of education and performance of God’s will that have forged the capable leaders that we are today.

But are these the merits that Rabban Gamliel has in mind? His words do not specify whose merits are meant and Rabbeinu Yonah suggests that this mishnah is actually referring to the merits of the elders and ancestors of the community itself. If the community is deserving, then its leaders and askanim, the individuals who take responsibility for getting everything done, will succeed. In other words, Rabbeinu Yonah implies that each community gets the leaders it deserves.

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THE DANGER OF WORDS, THE PROBLEM OF EXILE

Few areas of Jewish law and practice are as extensively addressed—and, it seems, as frequently breached—as those that relate to the abuse of words, whether written or spoken. In addition to the Torah’s many prohibitions against false, damaging and inappropriate speech, Pirkei Avot carries many warnings concerning the misuse of words, and indeed praises the quality of silence. One of the lengthier warnings in Avot concerns the teacher’s use of careless words and the risk that they will lead one’s talmidim (pupils) astray.  At Avot 1:11 Avtalyon says:

חֲכָמִים, הִזָּהֲרוּ בְדִבְרֵיכֶם, שֶׁמָּא תָחֽוֹבוּ חוֹבַת גָּלוּת וְתִגְלוּ לִמְקוֹם מַֽיִם הָרָעִים, וְיִשְׁתּוּ הַתַּלְמִידִים הַבָּאִים אַחֲרֵיכֶם וְיָמֽוּתוּ, וְנִמְצָא שֵׁם שָׁמַֽיִם מִתְחַלֵּל

Scholars, be careful with your words since you may liable to be exiled and be exiled to a place of bad water. The disciples who come after you will then drink of these bad waters and be killed, and the Name of Heaven will be desecrated.

Most traditional commentators link these words to the sad episode in which Zadok and Boethus, the talmidim of Antigonus of Socho, either misunderstood or deliberately misapplied his words and eventually led schismatic sects of their own. But, while this explanation is sound, it does not assist us in tackling the key question: how do we know that the words of any given sage are “bad water”, doctrinally unsound and dangerous to Judaism as we understand it, and not a brilliant, possibly counterintuitive innovation or insight?

Rabbis must have asked themselves this question ever since they resolved that Torah was not in Heaven and took upon themselves the task of applying, developing and elucidating the laws contained in the written Torah. How could they discern, for example, whether Hillel’s introduction of the prozbul as a means of circumventing the cancellation of loan debts in the Sabbatical year was a stroke of rabbinical genius and not a barefaced evasion of an explicit Torah law?

Rabbi Yisrael Miller (The Wisdom of Avos) recognizes this problem. He writes:

“Among great Torah thinkers and teachers, there are always some who are outside the mainstream (this is not a criticism). Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, Rav Yisrael Salanter, the Satmar Rebbe Rav Yoel Teitelbaum, and the Rambam in an earlier generation, all held and taught certain views that differed from those of the majority of their contemporaries, and their teachings are important contributions to Torah thought. But when a teacher is outside the mainstream, a student’s misunderstanding will likely not be corrected by what we might call ‘peer review’”.

In other words, the real danger alluded to in our mishnah is not that a teacher endorses doctrine that is erroneous—something that is likely to be spotted and challenged pretty swiftly by his peers—but that a talmid will fail to grasp the proper meaning of an apparently unorthodox teaching and will not be pulled back into the fold by his peers. But, while trying to find the right words with which to avoid giving offence, Rabbi Miller gets to his point:

“…[I]f the rebbi and his yeshiva are considered ‘different’ (by others) or ‘unique’ (by his own talmidim, then the opinions and arguments of ‘outsiders’ carry little weight. We see this among Breslover and Lubavitcher Chassidim, and also in some non-Chassidic yeshivas, especially in some smaller ones where there is only one rebbi whose talmidim are devoted to him). In such cases a talmid who misunderstands will not revise his thinking based on what ‘outsiders’ might say, and may remain with a serious error in hashkafah or practical halachah”.

Rav Miller does concede that to study under giants like Rabbi Yisrael Salander or the Satmar Rebbe would be “a ben Torah’s dream”. But the point has been made. Rav Miller concludes:

“Based on this, the ‘exile’ means to end up alone (“exiled”) from the mainstream. ‘Harmful waters’ are teachings that are dangerous if misunderstood (which of course pose no danger to the teacher who ’drinks’, because he knows what he means). But such Sages must choose their words with extra care, lest the students make a serious error that cannot be corrected, and the name of Heaven desecrated”.

The teacher whose words enable talmidim to go astray is clearly not about to do so himself. Avtalyon addresses this mishnah to “Chachamim”, a title that he would surely not confer upon peddlers of false truths and fake Torah.

Rabbi Miller’s explanation does not address the literal meaning of Avtalyon’s mishnah in one respect, since he offers no meaning for the part of the mishnah that stipulates that the teacher is liable to be exiled.  What does “exile” have to do with his message? Here another mishnah from Avot comes into play. At Avot 4:18  Rabbi Nehorai addresses exile full-on:

הֱוֵי גוֹלֶה לִמְקוֹם תּוֹרָה, וְאַל תֹּאמַר שֶׁהִיא תָבוֹא אַחֲרֶֽיךָ, שֶׁחֲבֵרֶֽיךָ יְקַיְּמֽוּהָ בְיָדֶֽךָ, וְאֶל בִּינָתְךָ אַל תִּשָּׁעֵן

Exile yourself to a place of Torah; do not say that it will come after you, that your colleagues will help you retain it—and don’t rely on your own understanding.

There is discussion in the Gemara as to the identity of Rabbi Nehorai. One opinion is that he is really Rabbi Elazar ben Arach, a talmid of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai who is speaking here from experience. He followed his wife to Diomsis (aka Emmaus), a place known for its waters. His colleagues did not follow him and he forgot his Torah. Although Rabbi Elazar ben Arach lived generations after Avtalyon, we might speculate that the idea of deserting the Beit Midrash for a spa resort was one that appealed to Chachamim of other generations too.

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WHO, OR WHAT, IS THE ONE AND ONLY?

Rabbi Yishmael ben Yose has some strong opinions about judges and judging. After effectively accusing anyone who wants to be a judge of being a pompous idiot (Avot 4:9), he continues (at Avot 4:10):

אַל תְּהִי דָן יְחִידִי, שֶׁאֵין דָּן יְחִידִי אֶלָּא אֶחָד

Do not judge on your own, for no-one is qualified to judge alone except the One.

Taken at face value, the "One" is God. But Avot is supposed to teach us mussar and middot--how to behave. While we seek to emulate God when and where we can, our sphere of operation is the sphere of the mundane. So what message can we learn from this mishnah that will apply specifically to us?

Most Jewish courts deal with ordinary civil disputes involving loans, debts, breach of contract and the like, aa well as supervising Jewish divorces, and these courts generally consist of three dayanim. It is permitted for a dayan to judge by himself (Sanhedrin 3a), but the practice is not generally encouraged. The circumstance in which this happens is likely to be where the judge has a particular legal expertise and where both parties to a dispute request it. This being so, one may ask why Rabbi Yishmael ben Yose is so dead set against it. The mishnah calls for an explanation.

One approach, taken by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Pirkei Avot im Sha’are Avot) is to remove the mishnah from the context of litigation and direct it towards the individual. When we judge ourselves, we must be aware that we are not impartial, since no man is a rasha in his own eyes. We cultivate our own biases and may not even recognize them. When judged by God, however, our thoughts and actions can be objectively scrutinized. While this is an important lesson, one might ask whether Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, who redacted the Mishnah, or the Tanna who taught it, intended it to be removed from the sphere of civil dispute resolution, given that it is both preceded and followed by court-specific statements.

An attempt to widen the scope of the mishnah without removing it from a judicial context can be found in Rabbi Shlomo P. Toperoff’s Lev Avot. There, he focuses on the methodology of the judicial process in terms the standards we use both in court and out of it for judging others.

Rabbi Toperoff takes the words אַל תְּהִי דָן יְחִידִי  (al tehi dan yechidi, “do not judge on your own”) and effectively renders them as “do not do strict justice alone” since the root of the word דָן (dan, “a judge”) share a common root with din, “strict justice”. He argues that the Jewish way is to judge simultaneously in accordance with two standards: din, strict justice and rachamim, justice tempered by mercy.

This advice is admirable. We see it implemented in every judicial system in which a court’s decision on liability is based on strict justice but its resulting order takes into account factors that mitigate or aggravate the decision itself. However, Rabbi Toperoff then proceeds to give an example that detracts from the principle he advocates.

On the basis that mishpat (justice) is the equivalent to din and that tzedakah (charity) is the equivalent of rachamim, Rabbi Toperoff cites 2 Samuel 8:15 (וְדָוִד֙ עֹשֶׂ֣ה מִשְׁפָּ֔ט וּצְדָקָ֖ה לְכׇל־עַמּֽוֹ , “And David executed mishpat and tzedakah towards all his people”), he continues:

How did David execute both at the same time? One rabbi interpreted the verse literally as meaning that when David realised that the condemned man was poor, he himself undertook to pay the fine. In this manner, David dispensed justice with charity.

The rabbi concerned was undoubtedly well-meaning. However, no serious judge or dayan would find it helpful guidance in dealing with a case before him today. It would be hard to find judges prepared to hear cases if they were expected to finance fines and damages out of their own pockets and, if a judge was to be required to indemnify the guilty or liable party, any deterrent effect of the court’s award would be diminished or entirely eliminated. A poor person would then be at liberty to plough his car through a crowd of pedestrians in the knowledge that the unfortunate judge would be expected to pick up the bill. In short, this sort of explanation does nothing to promote the real-world value of Pirkei Avot as a guide to good and ethical behaviour.

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MIDDOT IN ONE’S DNA—AGAIN

Last month I posted a piece that expressed some dismay at the proposition, espoused by Rabbi Yaakov Hillel (Eternal Ethics from Sinai, on Avot 2:11), that good middot—behavioural qualities—are hereditary. I had assumed that this was a lone opinion, but I am wrong. The same notion is also expressed in another contemporary commentary on Avot, Rav Schachter on Pirkei Avos, based on the thoughts and shiurim of Rav Hershel Schachter as adopted by Dr Allan Weissman. This work comments on Avot 5:3, an anonymous mishnah in praise of Avraham:

עֲשָׂרָה נִסְיוֹנוֹת נִתְנַסָּה אַבְרָהָם אָבִֽינוּ, וְעָמַד בְּכֻלָּם, לְהוֹדִֽיעַ כַּמָּה חִבָּתוֹ שֶׁל אַבְרָהָם אָבִֽינוּ

With ten tests our father Abraham was tested and he withstood them all—in order to make known how great was our father Abraham's love.

Rav Schachter on Avos comments thus:

“Avraham Avinu’s success in passing the ten nisyonos indicated that his level of yiras Shamayim became part of his DNA makeup, and this could then be transmitted genetically to future generations. Thus, Avraham paved the way for his descendants, who have since stirred themselves to make aliyah, for example, and to accept difficulties in life with emunah and without question”.

I wonder if has ever occurred to the author that the vast majority of Avraham’s descendants are from Yishmael and not from Yitzchak. Moreover, a very large proportion of our ‘minority’ branch consists of people who have not made aliyah and appear to have little wish or intention to do so. The descendants of Yishmael, however, seem to be quite eager to occupy the whole of the land of Israel.

It's apposite to note that DNA in the context of our mishnah cannot be taken literally. It is suggested that it was only once Avraham had passed the ten tests that his DNA was perfected. Both Yishmael and Yitzchak were of course already born before then.

I remain uncomfortable with the notion that our behavioural choices in life are somehow conditioned by our genetic composition, especially in the absence of any evidence to that effect and when there does seem to be at least circumstantial evidence to the contrary.

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FIRST TO GREET? IT AIN’T NECESSARILY SO

Only one mishnah in the name of Rabbi Matya ben Chorosh (Avot 4:20) is included in the version of Avot we learn today:

הֱוֵי מַקְדִּים בִּשְׁלוֹם כָּל אָדָם, וֶהֱוֵי זָנָב לָאֲרָיוֹת, וְאַל תְּהִי רֹאשׁ לַשֻּׁעָלִים

Rabbi Matya the son of Charash would say: Be first to greet everyone. Be a tail to lions, rather than a head to foxes.

Is this mishnah a pair of quite unrelated teachings, or are they connected? Questions of this nature persist throughout the tractate and they turn on the same meta-question: did Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, in redacting Avot, group more than one teaching by the same rabbi because:

• it was easier to remember the two independent teachings by the same rabbi if they were bracketed together in the same mishnah,
• they constituted only a single teaching which was segmented, or
• they were two separate teachings but the meaning of the second part was conditioned by the first?

Commentators at different times have taken different approaches. One rabbi who worked hard to establish a sequential link wherever possible in Avot is Rabbi Ovadiyah Hedayah, whose commentary on Avot (Seh leBet Avot) sometimes seems to push this methodology to its limits, if not beyond.  But the Seh leBet Avot has its surprises.

 The quality of being the first to greet people—the middah urged upon us by the Tanna—is praised for many reasons. It is a display of friendship, a recognition of the essential humanity shared by the greeter and the person greeted. It is also a sign of humility, since no-one is deemed so unimportant as to be snubbed in the street. Examples of great rabbis and personalities who do this are given. It is not a complex matter for the student of Avot to grasp.

The Seh leBet Avot has to find some link between this teaching and that which precedes it, an apparently harsh and fatalistic statement of Rabbi Yannai (Avot 4:19):

אֵין בְּיָדֵֽינוּ לֹא מִשַּׁלְוַת הָרְשָׁעִים, וְאַף לֹא מִיִּסּוֹרֵי הַצַּדִּיקִים

Neither the tranquillity of the wicked, nor the suffering of the righteous, are within our grasp.

There is no obvious connection between the words of Rabbi Yannai and those of Rabbi Matya ben Chorosh. Yet they are juxtaposed and, in many editions of Avot that are not numbered in the same manner as the versions found in modern siddurim, the two are even included in the same mishnah.

Rabbi Hedayah finds a link.  The teaching of Rabbi Yannai is about the inscrutability of divine justice. This is contrasted with that of Rabbi Matya, who speaks of justice made by man.

The words הֱוֵי מַקְדִּים בִּשְׁלוֹם can and do mean “be first to greet”, but the word שְׁלוֹם literally means “peace”. The teaching is therefore that one should be first to make peace. This applies in the context of litigation, where the disputants are facing off against other with anger and hostility. Our job is to get in first, ideally by identifying a pesharah, a compromise solution that will make both parties happy, or at minimise their sadness. The best form of peace is that which arises from the resolution of a dispute—and if both parties agree to it, the discomforts and frustrations of divine justice will simply not apply.

Up to this point, all is well—but what happens if a pesharah cannot be established and the dispute must be heard? Here the fox-and-lions part of the teaching comes into play. When judging a case, don’t hasten to convene a poor and unworthy Beit Din of which you are the head; for the sake of shalom, of real peace, it is better to be the most junior member of the tribunal so that the parties will benefit from it and you will learn from it too.

Yes, this explanation does seem somewhat contrived and is very much at odds with the way most people read Rabbi Matya’s mishnah—but it does remind us that we should be ever alert to new ways of reading the mishnayot in Avot. We may reject the result of what we learn, but we may gain from it too. I for one had forgotten that his mishnah might have anything to do with peace, notwithstanding the presence of שְׁלוֹם at the very heart of it.

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