Care in teaching: the need for quality control

 An Avot Mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Shofetim)

This week’s pre-Shabbat post returns to Perek 1.

At Avot 1:11 Avtalyon gives us the first of only three teachings in Avot that are couched in the form of a narrative:

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. For perhaps you will be exiled to a place of bad water. The students who follow you might drink the bad water and die, and the Name of Heaven will be desecrated.

Once it is appreciated that ‘water’ is a metaphor for Torah and that ‘bad water’ is bad Torah teaching, the meaning of this parable is plain: if you, the chacham, are careless in the way you impart Torah to your students, they may misconstrue or misunderstand God’s message. They will then damage the Torah further when in turn they teach it erroneously to students of their own. Having done so, they are liable to be punished—and this will be a chillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name.

R' Ovadyah Hedayah (Seh LaBet Avot) points out the irony that is buried within this tale. Here we have talmidim of a rabbi who follow him and, who despite their learning from him in good faith, are guilty of a chillul Hashem. If one of those talmidim should through his inadvertence or negligence unwittingly bring about the death of another person, in Torah times he would have had been exiled to one of the orei miklat (“cities of refuge”) and—because his Torah education was understood to be a priority—his rabbi had to go into exile with him.

Our tradition of Pirkei Avot learning is never so narrow as to admit only one meaning per mishnah, and sometimes we find explanations that are quite surprising. According to the Chida (Chasdei Avot) the chillul Hashem is not the fault of the chacham but of his talmidim: it is they who cause death and destruction through their impaired capacity to absorb Torah. The moral of the mishnah would thus be that the chacham should be ultra-cautious in choosing his words and, it seems to me, in conducting regular quality control tests by examining his talmidim regularly to seek out signs of error or deviation from true Torah teaching. This process should ideally start at the moment that talmidim are selected, to weed out those who lack the ability to understand what is being taught and the maturity to handle it (per R’ Eliezer Papo, Ya’alzu Chasidim).

Like the words of the written Torah, the guidance of tractate Avot is intended to speak to us at all times and in every generation. We can thus take away from Avtalyon’s teaching a message that applies to parents, medical practitioners, accountants, lawyers and indeed anyone whose words will be given the weight of authority and which may cause havoc if distorted or taken out of context.

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