LEARNING LISHMOR: WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Rabbi Yishmael ben Yose (Avot 4:6) has something to say about why we learn:

הַלּוֹמֵד תּוֹרָה עַל מְנָת לְלַמֵּד, מַסְפִּיקִין בְּיָדוֹ לִלְמוֹד וּלְלַמֵּד, וְהַלּוֹמֵד עַל מְנָת לַעֲשׂוֹת, מַסְפִּיקִין בְּיָדוֹ לִלְמוֹד וּלְלַמֵּד לִשְׁמוֹר וְלַעֲשׂוֹת

One who learns Torah in order to teach is given the opportunity to learn and teach. One who learns in order to do is given the opportunity to learn, teach, guard and do.

This mishnah does not appear to pose too many interpretational problems, but there is one question that leaps off the page at us. What does לִשְׁמוֹר (lishmor) mean in the context of learning Torah? We can learn Torah and we can act it out by performing its commandments—but לִשְׁמוֹר literally means “guard” or “keep”, not something that has an obvious meaning in the context of learning Torah.

Early commentators must have had a clear understanding of what lishmor meant, at least to them, since Rambam, Rabbenu Yonah, the Me’iri, the Bartenura and the commentary ascribed to Rashi make no reference to that word, quite possibly because that they worked from copies of Avot in which it did not appear.

Lishmor does appear in the text of Avot that lay before Rabbi Shmuel di Uceda, since he mentions it in his classic compendium Midrash Shmuel. For him, לִשְׁמוֹר וְלַעֲשׂוֹת (lishmor vela’asot) are to be taken together: lishmor means “to keep the negative mitzvot” while la’asot means “to perform the positive precepts”. This explanation is neat, memorable. And founded on a well-known and long-established distinction between positive and negative mitzvot, which is likely why it was cited by so many subsequent commentators.

Not everyone found the Midrash Shmuel’s explanation palatable. Affirming that the word lishmor should be included in the text, not omitted, Rabbi Yaakov Emden attacks it in his Lechem Shamayim, in terms so immoderate that only a true talmid chacham would dare using them:

“To keep and to perform." Here too the commentators stumbled; their feet slipped from the firm rock of the mishnah's plain meaning, and they wandered on to a crooked path. It is astonishing beyond measure how such a strange notion could ever have occurred to them—that although one's intention was only to perform the commandments, and not to guard oneself from transgressions, this is what the Tanna took the trouble to discuss.

In truth, this seems to me sheer nonsense. With due respect, the one who proposed this interpretation wished to display ingenuity and novelty in every single word, so that none should appear superfluous, but in doing so he produced many distortions. For "anything added is as though taken away." Concerning such a case it was said: "Do not be overly clever." He erred greatly in thinking that this "keeping" (shemirah) alludes to the negative commandments. Nor is the expression "to keep oneself from transgressions" linguistically appropriate, for the essential word is missing.

Rather, this is a very common biblical expression, referring to guarding something in one's heart, as in: "His father kept the matter" (Genesis 37:11); "Keep heed"; "You shall keep to do"; "You shall keep and do"; "To keep and to do"; "You shall keep and do." These are numerous instances of "keeping" that refer to positive action, and there are many more like them. All of them signify remembering, so that one may fulfill and perform the commandments.

Moreover, refraining from transgression is itself included within "doing," for whoever sits idle and does not commit a sin is rewarded as though he had performed a commandment, as we learned at the end of tractate Makkot.

In any case, it is obvious that the "keeping" mentioned here in the Mishnah means exactly what it means in the biblical verses cited above: namely, preserving the commandment in one's thought and memory [במחשבה ובזכרון ], as it is written: "For it is pleasant if you keep them within you" (Proverbs 22:18). There can therefore be no doubt about this.

Heaven forbid, then, that the word "to keep" (lishmor) should be deleted, as appears in the version of the text that came into the hands of the Tosafot Yom Tov. The copyist of that manuscript wrote it defectively—although he derived it from there—and the scribe inadvertently omitted it. But in our case the error belongs to the copyist. Our version was certainly written with precision by an accurate scribe”.

Is Rabbi Emden right? I believe so, but with one caveat. We now have a wider range of concepts in play than existed in his time. He chooses to equate lishmor with “preserving the commandment in one's thought and memory” because there was no more appropriate term at his disposal, and Rabbi Yishmael could have used the regular words for thought and memory if that was what he specifically intended. But, around a century after Rabbi Emden’s birth, the concept of internalization began to gain traction and I believe that, had he been familiar with it, he would likely have employed it to explain lishmor in our mishnah: a person who learns in order to do is given the opportunity not just to learn and to teach but to internalize his learning—to make it part of his very being—and to perform it.

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