Fixing one's Torah

At Avot 1:15 Shammai teaches:

עֲשֵׂה תוֹרָתְךָ קְבַע, אֱמוֹר מְעַט וַעֲשֵׂה הַרְבֵּה, וֶהֱוֵי מְקַבֵּל אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם בְּסֵֽבֶר פָּנִים יָפוֹת

Make your Torah fixed; say little and do much—and receive everyone with a pleasant countenance.

It’s easy to understand the bits about “say little and do much” and “receive everyone with a pleasant countenance”, even if we don’t always live up to those lofty ideals. But what does Shammai mean by “make your Torah fixed”?

Classical commentaries know that Shammai, as a Tanna and a man who was steeped in Torah learning himself, is concerned to buttress this learning against any outside threats and temptations as possible. Let us examine some of them.

The Bartenura tells us that Shammai intends us to make Torah learning the main fixture of our days and our nights. Only when we are too tired to carry on learning should we take a break and do some work. From what we know of the Bartenura, he spent some time as a banker and would appear to have enjoyed the benefit of independent means, so he may not have needed to trouble himself about working for a living. Even so, one wonders what sort of remunerative work a man might find only when he was worn out from Torah study.  Rambam and the Meiri also go for a ‘minimum work’ option: just keep learning Torah and wait to see if any work opportunities arise.

Fortunately the Bartenura offers an additional explanation of Shammai’s teaching that is within everyone’s grasp: “fixing” one’s Torah means being consistent when applying it. In other words, don’t be strict with yourself but lenient with others, or vice versa. Another sort of consistency is advocated by R’ Rafael Emanuel Chai Riki (Hon Ashir), who argues that what needs to be fixed is one’s own chiddushim, novel interpretations, so that they are properly thought-out and don’t contradict each other.

The commentary ascribed to Rashi also offers two explanations, but they contradict one another. First, one should not fix specific times each day for learning Torah but should fix the whole day for doing so. Secondly, one should fix specific times so that one can be sure to learn four or five chapters daily.

R’ Avraham Azulai (Ahavah beTa’anugim) adheres to the “fixed times in the day” principle, but with the proviso that, during those times, one is absolutely disturbance-proof, regardless of any reasons that might justify a breach of those times.

Modern commentators, living in a world where most sorts of work are not casual but demand commitment, regular hours and often lengthy training, tend to be more relaxed about the thing which is fixed, though not about the “fixing” requirement. How so?

R’ Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of the Fathers) regards fixing as a process of absorbing the notion of Torah as the priority in one’s life to the point that, as he puts it:

A person may do a full day’s work, yet be absorbed in Torah, looking for opportunities when he can seize a few moments to study a mishnah or two.

This might strike the Torah scholar as a somewhat minimalistic approach, but it is well in line with the exigences of modern life.

R’ Yisroel Miller (The Wisdom of Avot) ties “fixing” to the second part of the mishnah, about saying a little but doing a lot”: it’s better to fix for oneself as little as even two hours a day for learning than to say “I will learn as much as I can” since, human nature being what it is, identifying a manageable target and sticking to it is more likely to succeed than stating an open-ended objective, how laudable it may have sounded. Following the lead of R’ Shimshon Rephael Hirsch, Gila Ross (Living Beautifully) puts it differently, expressing herself in terms of the value of routine: for Torah and spiritual values to be firmly established in our personalities and become our life choices, they have to be a regular part of our routine. Still with routine, R’ Yitz Greenberg (Sage Advice) comments that “regular study add[s] up to a knowledgeable person whose life is guided by Torah”. He then quotes R’ Israel Salanter as coming out firmly in favour of a minimalist definition of a talmid chacham:

A Torah scholar … is not one who studies everything, but one who studies every day.

The Maharal’s approach (Derech Chaim) is to view “fixing” as a metaphor for truly internalising the Torah one learns so that one completely acquires it. Following the same line, one of the explanations offered by R’ Yaakov Hillel (Eternal Ethics from Sinai, vol.1) is that “we may have studied vast amounts of Torah, and yet we have not truly acquired it—it is not ours”. He then refers to the 48 ways of acquiring Torah listed in Avot 6:6. For him, that is what fixing one’s Torah means.

 So where does this leave us? We live in a world in which we are increasingly torn from our Torah studies by the demands of feeding and clothing our families, keeping a roof over our heads, paying our school bills and other regular overheads and generally worrying about a wide range of things that don’t look like learning in the traditional Jewish sense. But the rabbis have recognised that, if we can’t leave the real world to enter the world of Torah and stay there, we can at least bring the Torah into our daily world and live it to the best of our abilities.

For comments and discussion of this post on Facebook click here.

Slipping into holiday mode: what would Shammai say?

It's the height of summer and many Jewish families are either on holiday or actively preparing to go way. Does Pirkei Avot have a message for them?

At Avot 1:15, we have a mishnah that teaches:

שַׁמַּאי אוֹמֵר: עֲשֵׂה תוֹרָתְךָ קְבַע, אֱמוֹר מְעַט וַעֲשֵׂה הַרְבֵּה, וֶהֱוֵי מְקַבֵּל אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם בְּסֵֽבֶר פָּנִים יָפוֹת.

Shammai used to say: “Make your Torah fixed; say little but do a lot, and receive every man with a cheerful face”.

Most commentators assume, not without reason, that when Shammai says “Make your Torah fixed”, he means “Make your Torah learning fixed”. This can be taken in various ways. For example it can mean

• making the Torah the fixed point around which your life revolves (Rambam, Bartenura),
• fixing a regular time to learn (Rabbi Avraham Azulai, Ahavah BeTa’anugim),
• learning it from one teacher alone, to avoid uncertainty and confusion (Rabbi Shmuel de Uceda, Midrash Shmuel),
• fixing one’s good inclination so that it is in place at all times and can combat the evil inclination that encourages you to stop learning Torah and do other things (Rabbi Tzevi Hirsch Ferber, Hegionei Avot),
• fixing a regular routine for what you learn or fixing in your memory and in your heart the Torah that you are learning.

Shammai himself was a great Torah scholar and his commitment to learning Torah is unquestionable. However, the words of his Mishnah suggest that maybe something else remains to be learned here. This is because, though the word “Torah” may imply “learning”, Shammai does not explicitly mention that word.

Taking a wider view, we can see that Shammai’s teaching may mean that one can also fix the manner in which one observes the Torah’s laws. In simplest terms this can be practising what one preaches rather than laying down one course of conduct but behaving in a way that contradicts this course (Avot deRabbi Natan 13:2).

In terms of setting standards, this can mean demanding of a rabbi that he will not apply the halachah strictly upon himself and leniently for others, or vice versa (According to Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Rav Lau on Pirkei Avos, the text of this Mishnah that was before Rabbi Shimon ben Tzemach Duran states explicitly “so that you will not be lenient with yourself and strict with others or vice versa ….”).

If the achievement of a level of consistency is what this Mishnah is about, it can also point a finger at practising Jews who maintain two levels of practice—one for home, the other for holidays. How careful are we to fix the same standards of kashrut when on vacation, in a resort where there may be no convenient kosher stores at hand? Are we as careful then as we are when we are back home, where supplies of religiously approved foods are readily available? The same applies to the clothes we wear and the way we behave.

Kashrut on holiday is just one aspect of a larger issue: the social dimension to fixing one’s observance of the Torah’s laws. This is an important matter that cannot be overlooked because it reflects a three-way tension between the demands of God, the power of peer pressure and the insidious effect of the yetzer hara (usually translated as the “evil Inclination” but sometimes just a manifestation of the forces of lethargy and indifference).

The clash of Torah and social priorities exists in two forms. In one, a person who is scrupulously observant of Torah mitzvot in the company of friends and family may simply not bother to keep those same mitzvot when he is alone and there is no-one else around to see what he is doing. In the other, a person who is scrupulously observant of Torah mitzvot, even when he is on his own, cannot face the prospect of performing them in the company of strangers or of people he knows but who, being non-Jewish or unobservant, might laugh at him or ask him awkward questions.

In the first of these cases, peer pressure works to encourage and maybe even enforce observance; in the second case it works in quite the opposite direction. Either way, Shammai’s advice is to make one’s Torah practice fixed: be consistent and, when seeking to establish the level at which this consistency should be maintained, remember that the real audience is not one’s peers or family, but an omniscient, all-seeing God.