Using a mishnah as a springboard

Traditional commentaries on Avot, however greatly they differed from one another, were directed towards a common goal: explaining the meaning of the mishnayot and baraitot and, in consequence, giving us an insight into what their authors were trying to teach us. Nowadays that approach is probably the exception rather than the rule, as commentators increasingly focus on adding value to Avot’s teachings by relating them to contemporary social, cultural and political trends and developments.

Following the advent of chassidut we find a further way of treating Avot. Rather than looking for the initial meaning of a teaching or examining its scope of application, its content may also be treated as a springboard from which to reach or enrich a further and unrelated point, in much the same way as aggadic teachings may be founded on a verse from Tanach that has nothing at all to do with them.

Here are two examples from the Avodat Yisrael of the Kozhnitzer Maggid (1740-1814).

In Avot 4:1 Ben Azzai says:

אַל תְּהִי בָז לְכָל אָדָם וְאַל תְּהִי מַפְלִיג לְכָל דָּבָר, שֶׁאֵין לָךְ אָדָם שֶׁאֵין לוֹ שָׁעָה, וְאֵין לָךְ דָּבָר שֶׁאֵין לוֹ מָקוֹם

Do not scorn any person, and do not discount anything. For there is no person who has not his hour, and nothing that has not its place.

The Avodat Yisrael picks up on the word שָׁעָה, “hour”, and comments that there is no-one so low, so ignorant or so wicked that he does not have his moment before God, when he can pray before Him and even serve Him. Also, using the letters of the word שָׁעָה, he cites a verse from the story of Cain and Abel:

וְאֶל-קַיִן וְאֶל-מִנְחָתוֹ לֹא שָׁעָה

But to Cain and to his offering He [i.e. God] did not turn.

From this, the Avodat Yisrael infers that every person has the opportunity and the free will to repent because the Holy Spirit rests upon them.

In both these teachings, the Maggid reframes the mishnah by taking it from the context of interpersonal relationships and placing it in the context of man-and-God. It is improbable that Ben Azzai intended this. After all, why would anyone scorn or despise a fellow human being for having the chance to pray to God and repent?

On the one hand, a purist may object that this sort of use of Avot is a distortion of its original intent. Against that, it adds extra force to these teachings and makes them more memorable. I believe that, on balance, we have much to gain by using Avot in this way, so long as we never lose sight of the foundational meaning.

What do you think?

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Right content, wrong focus? Creation of the World revisited

The first mishnah in perek 5 of Avot is a puzzling one. In English it reads:

The world was created with ten statements. What does this come to teach us? Could it not have been created with just a single statement? But this is in order to punish the wicked for destroying a world that was created with ten statements, and to reward the righteous for sustaining a world that was created with ten statements.

A small puzzle lies in the connection between the world being created with ten statements and God's policy of punishing those who would destroy it and rewarding those who keep it running smoothly. Would God not do the same if the world had been created with one, three or five statements?

But there is a bigger puzzle: why do so many of the commentators on this mishnah spend so much time and effort counting out the ten statements? It is well established that, in its account of the Creation, the Torah states nine times "And God said ...", and that each time these words are spoken they relate to something that He creates. The words "In the beginning", being taken as a statement of creation, make up the total of 10.  In contrast, the commentators spend rather less time and focus on the real message of this mishnah, which relates to God's policy on reward and punishment.

There is nothing wrong in explaining which were the 10 statements, of course -- but the function of the Oral Torah is not to summarise or repeat what anyone can read in the Written Torah. It is to lead in other directions, which is what almost all Pirkei Avot does.

To give a secular example of the popular approach, take a popular proverb, "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise". The point of this proverb is that a person will benefit from keeping sensible sleeping hours and this is what we would expect the commentators to discuss. We would not expect them to expend time and effort explaining what is meant by "early" and what precisely constitutes a "bed".

Narrow focus

A good many of the mishnayot in Avot -- particularly later in the tractate -- offer propositions that are supported by proof verses from the Tanach.  This is an interesting practice, in that the proposition contained in the mishnah must be taken to say something that the cited proof verse does not say, otherwise the Tanna in Avot would only be teaching as Oral Torah something that was already known from the Written Torah, which would be contrary to standard Tannaitic practice. We can conclude from this that, since a mishnah will not repeat a teaching that is clearly stated in Tanach, the proof verse can never 100% support the proposition contained in the mishnah.

I was looking at some of these supporting verses the other day in my Mikraot Gedolot Tanach, which contains the valuable commentaries of Radak, Ralbag, the Metzudot and Malbim, among others. It occurred to me that, in elucidating the verses I was checking out, none of these scholars made any references to the mishnayot of Avot or to those who had commented on them. This set me wondering: is this merely the hand of coincidence at work -- or is there any principle whereby those who explain the meaning of verses in Tanach do not look to Avot as a means of explaining or discussing them?