When one word can make all the difference

Most students of Pirkei Avot, when pressed, will admit to having a favourite mishnah. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some teachings of the Tannaim speak directly to us. Others seem somewhat threatening, particularly those that touch upon our continued existence as human beings. An example is the fairly unpopular and apparently quite menacing, mishnah at Avot 3:10:

רַבִּי דוֹסְתָּאִי בְּרַבִּי יַנַּאי מִשּׁוּם רַבִּי מֵאִיר אוֹמֵר: כָּל הַשּׁוֹכֵֽחַ דָּבָר אֶחָד מִמִּשְׁנָתוֹ, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: רַק הִשָּֽׁמֶר לְךָ וּשְׁמֹר נַפְשְׁךָ מְאֹד פֶּן תִּשְׁכַּח אֶת הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר רָאוּ עֵינֶֽיךָ. יָכוֹל אֲפִילוּ תָּקְפָה עָלָיו מִשְׁנָתוֹ, תַּלְמוּד לוֹמַר: וּפֶן יָסֽוּרוּ מִלְּבָבְךָ כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּֽיךָ, הָא אֵינוֹ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ עַד שֶׁיֵּשֵׁב וִיסִירֵם מִלִּבּוֹ

Rabbi Dostai b’Rabbi  Yannai used to say in the name of Rabbi Meir: Anyone who forgets even a single word of this learning, the Torah considers it as if he had forfeited his life, as it states: "Just be careful, and closely guard your soul, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen" (Devarim 4:9). One might think that this applies even to one who [has forgotten because] his studies proved too difficult for him; but the verse goes on to tell us: "and lest they be removed from your heart, throughout the days of your life." Thus one does not forfeit his life unless he deliberately removes them from his heart.

We all forget things we’ve learned and none of us is in a position to deny the fact. Sometimes we are annoyed and frustrated at not being able to recall something we struggled hard to learn but now eludes us. On other occasions we forget because we were not paying sufficient attention to the subject of study. Perhaps it didn’t seem relevant at the time, or we planned to revisit it and learn it properly at a later stage—but never did.

Fortunately, the end of this mishnah softens the blow: it is only when we are learning Torah and deliberately seek to unlearn something that our lives are actually or metaphorically forfeit. We can also be at risk of forgetting our learning if we don’t understand its meaning or significance in the first place. Thus, while the Talmud (Sukkah 42a) tells us that, as soon as a child can speak, his father should teach him the Shema, a foundational declaration of God’s unity and His relationship to us, most children have little understanding of these concepts and simply chant the words parrot-fashion. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Rabbi Shlomo Toperoff answers this question by unexpectedly turning this mishnah on its head. If forgetting even one thing can destroy life, he suggests, even accidentally remembering even one thing can preserve or revive it. He writes, in Lev Avot:

“During World War II, many Jewish children were rescued from the Holocaust and placed in Christian hostels and homes. After the war, Dayan Grunfeld visited the evacuation camps that housed many of these young people. He was puzzled to know which children were Jewish and was suddenly inspired to mingle amongst them and repeat several times the words Shema Yisrael. A number of the children who had suffered from spiritual amnesia heard this plaintive cry from the distant past and they seemed to become aroused through the latent feelings embedded deep down in the recesses of their hearts, and they spontaneously responded by presenting themselves to the Rabbi”.

Rabbi Toperoff then presses home his point:

“The Mishnah records that if a person forgets one word of his learning he may forfeit his spiritual life, but the reverse is equally true. The solitary word Shema may reactivate the spiritual links which lie dormant in the subconscious mind and may trigger off a chain of events which would recover the loss of memory. So powerful is the potential quality of the one word of learning that, whilst the loss of it can have disastrous results, the vocal image of one word of the spiritual vocabulary of Judaism can produce miraculous results”.

It seems incredible that Dayan Grunfeld could have done such a thing—but we have a fuller account of his rescue activities from his son Raphael, writing in the Jewish Press (12 September 2012):

“When my father inquired whether the religious needs of the Jewish children in the camp were in fact being attended to, the reply was that there was not a single Jewish child in the camp. My father was skeptical. He knew that Jewish children had survived the war by hiding in the houses of gentiles who had risked their lives to save them, and he dared to hope that at least a few Jewish children were among the thousand.

As my father walked through the camp he began to recite aloud “Shema Yisrael” and “Hamalach Hagoel.” All at once he was surrounded by hordes of little children. “Mama, Mama,” they cried. “Take us home to Mama.”

It was this experience that underlined for him the magnitude of the problem and so he went on to establish the Jewish War Orphans Commission, which led to an unrelenting campaign before the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations for the rescue of Jewish war orphans and their return to Jewry”.

May we all be protected by the merit of our learning—be it much or little—and of those things we never forget.

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