Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov (Avot 4:13) makes it worthwhile for us to perform Torah commandments, and definitely detrimental to our wellbeing to transgress any of its prohibitions. He teaches:
הָעוֹשֶׂה
מִצְוָה אַחַת, קֽוֹנֶה לּוֹ פְּרַקְלִיט אֶחָד, וְהָעוֹבֵר עֲבֵרָה אַחַת,
קֽוֹנֶה לּוֹ קַטֵּגוֹר אֶחָד, תְּשׁוּבָה וּמַעֲשִׂים טוֹבִים כִּתְרִיס בִּפְנֵי
הַפּוּרְעָנוּת
Whoever fulfils one mitzvah
acquires for himself one advocate, but whoever commits commits one
transgression acquires against himself one accuser. Repentance and good deeds
are as a shield against retribution.
Who are these advocates and accusers? In a rare and
welcoming display of unanimity, our major commentators agree that the mishnah
does not refer to members of the legal profession but to angels.
Back in the day, the proposition that angels would become
involved in the process of judging individuals was not controversial. Our sages
were frankly not too exercised by the topic. Rambam in his Pirush Mishnayot
might have appeared to suggest that the two advocates are human, though Rabbi
Chaim Drukman (Avot leBanim) makes it plain that this is not what Rambam
means.
If our commentators were interested, they too could have involved
themselves in what sort of angels these ones were and, if they were created
only for the sake of pleading for or against us, what happened to them after
the divine decision was reached? Did they simply cease to exist, or were they
repurposed for other angelic duties, or did they perhaps ‘specialize’ in
advocating in relation to specific commandments and offences? But they were not
interested in these lines of investigation, and this itself is instructive.
Why is this so? Because, if the function of the tractate of
Avot is to enable its students to improve themselves, we must study this
mishnah in the light of that objective and ask: “how is Rabbi Eliezer ben
Yaakov actually telling us to behave?”
Rabbi Yitzchak Magriso (Me’Am Lo’ez) goes for the
moral point immediately. The lesson here is that you can’t bribe God with a
mitzvah in order to cancel out or “buy” an aveirah. Presumably, the bigger the
mitzvah you perform in order to gain the right, as it were, to commit a
transgression, the bigger and more powerful is the kategor who will
challenge you in the World to Come.
We can also start from the perspective of a hypothetical Jew;
let’s call him Yossi. This Yossi is an
ordinary fellow. He is not a rabbi or a scholar, a mystic or a visionary. He
goes to shul on Shabbat and a few times a week when it’s convenient. He has a
stable job, a wife and 2.4 children. He could be anyone.
One day Yossi finds a wallet in the street. It contains a
handsome sum of money, as well as a little card on which is printed the name
and contact details of its owner. He is
conflicted. If he takes the wallet and keeps the cash, he can take his family to
Disneyland—but that is theft. Alternatively, he can forgo the fun of the fair,
return the wallet with its contents: much less pleasurable, but this is a
mitzvah. What to do?
This is where Pirkei Avot comes in. Happily, Yossi remembers
this mishnah. He can’t see any angels. He can’t hear them either. In fact, he
is not even sure that he believes in them at all. But he does believe in God
and he accepts that one day he, like the rest of us, will be called to account
for what he has done in his lifetime. So he closes his eyes for a moment and
tries to imagine that he is standing by himself in the Celestial Court of
Appeal. What sort of defence could he raise against the accusation of theft,
and what sort of praise might he receive if he took the painful step of being
honest and handing back the cash? Who might speak up for him, and who might be
against? What might they say, and how might they say it? At this point, Yossi—particularly
if he has a vivid imagination—may feel that returning the wallet might be the
preferable course of action.
A further, non-angelic point to ponder in our mishnah is
that it is repentance and good deeds—not Torah—that provide a shield against
punishment. Why might this be? Torah learning is actually implicit in the teshuvah
process, according to the fifth blessing in the weekday Amidah prayer:
הֲשִׁיבֵֽנוּ אָבִֽינוּ
לְתוֹרָתֶֽךָ וְקָרְ֒בֵֽנוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ לַעֲבוֹדָתֶֽךָ וְהַחֲזִירֵֽנוּ
בִּתְשׁוּבָה שְׁלֵמָה לְפָנֶֽיךָ: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה הָרוֹצֶה בִּתְשׁוּבָ
Bring us back, our Father, to
your Torah, and bring us close, our King, to your service, and return us to You
in complete repentance. You are blessed, God who wants repentance.
This shows that Torah learning is already incorporated into the
mechanism for achieving repentance.
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