Hillel’s final mishnah in Avot is quite a catchy one. It opens with five things we should think twice about before desiring them because they’re not as beneficial as one might initially imagine:
מַרְבֶּה
בָשָׂר מַרְבֶּה רִמָּה, מַרְבֶּה נְכָסִים מַרְבֶּה דְאָגָה, מַרְבֶּה נָשִׁים
מַרְבֶּה כְשָׁפִים, מַרְבֶּה שְׁפָחוֹת מַרְבֶּה זִמָּה, מַרְבֶּה עֲבָדִים
מַרְבֶּה גָזֵל
The more flesh, the more worms;
the more possessions, the more worry; the more wives, the more witchcraft; the
more maidservants, the more immorality; the more manservants, the more theft (Avot
2:8).
As for the second of these give items, the basic idea is
that of a proportionality between one’s material wealth and the anxiety that
accompanies it. This concept is beautifully illustrated by a story told by the
Netivot Shalom about a king who suffered from an ailment that could only be
remedied by wearing the coat of a man who was perfectly happy and had no
worries. Eventually the king’s agents tracked down such a man and asked to
borrow his coat so that the king might put it on and be cured. Said the man,
who was blissfully contented with his lot: “But I don’t even have a coat”.
Rabbi Ovadyah from Bartenura adds a little story of his own.
He relates that a chassid—a pious person—once prayed that God should
spare him from pizur hanefesh, a scattering of his soul. This was
because his wealth and material assets were spread across many places and it
was consequently necessary to spread his nefesh, his serious attention,
over all those places in order to pay attention to them.
“If we disperse our energies
heedlessly, wasting them on trivial or mundane pursuits rather than
concentrating them on serving Hashem and perfecting our soul, we have
‘scattered our soul’. The choice is ours. It can be real estate, the stock
market, wardrobes and cruises, or it can be Torah, chesed, mitzvot, and
good mlddot. Will we choose this world, gone before we can even savor
it, or the next world, which lasts forever?”
Rabbi Hillel backs this up by citing Tehillim 90:9 ( כִּי כָל-יָמֵינוּ פָּנוּ בְעֶבְרָתֶךָ; כִּלִּינוּ
שָׁנֵינוּ כְמוֹ-הֶגֶה, “For all our days passed by because of
your fury, we consumed our years like a fleeting thought”) and, referencing the
Chida, adds
“If we scatter our words thoughtlessly,
they are lost forever, along with the energy they consumed”.
This is a powerful notion. We do indeed often use up our physical
resources in vain. But I am certain that this has nothing to do with Hillel’s
teaching in our mishnah and that, if I am wrong and his words did once mean
this, it is hard to imagine how it applies today. It makes sense to speak of anxiety
being induced by material wealth because we see this all around us: it’s not
the poor of this world who fret over share prices, purchase electronic security
devices, bar their windows and keep guard dogs. But most people today expend
their physical energy willingly and happily in the pursuit of social and leisure
activities: going on holidays, working out at the gym, chatting with friends,
and generally killing time in a manner that few find worrying and many find
pleasurable.
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