WHERE EAGLES DARE TO LEARN

Rabbi Yishmael’s teaching at Avot 3:16 has been transmitted through the generations for a couple of millennia without attracting anything that might be described as consensus as to what it means. It’s a three-part mishnah and the final segment is quite intelligible. The problem lies with the two bits that appear ahead of it.

The mishnah goes like this:

הֱוֵי קַל לְרֹאשׁ, וְנֽוֹחַ לְתִשְׁחֽוֹרֶת, וֶהֱוֵי מְקַבֵּל אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם בְּשִׂמְחָה

A rough idea of what it might mean in full can be obtained by reading two contemporary translations by organizations dedicated to spreading the word, as it were: Chabad and ArtScroll:

Be yielding to a leader, affable to the black-haired, and receive every man with joy (Chabad).

Be yielding to a superior, pleasant to the young, and receive everyone cheerfully (ArtScroll).

Some idea of the other translations and meanings that have been ascribed to it can be found in an earlier blogpost, “Playing With Power”, here.

One thing that almost all the diverse explanations on this mishnah have in common is that they relate them to how we get on with, or deal with, other people. But, given the diverse and imaginative manner in which mishnayot in Avot are understood, it’s odds-on that an exception will appear somewhere or other—and I’ve just found one.

The commentator in question is Rabbi Shalom Hedaya, whose Seh leBet Avot was extracted by his son Rabbi Ovadyah Hedaya from his VaYikach Ovadyah and published in 1971.  Seh leBet Avot is notable for two things. One is its question-and-answer format; the questions are set out in the inside column of each page and the answers he gives appear next to the outer margin, giving the reader a chance to read the questions and have a stab at answering them himself before reading the suggested solution.  The other is the author’s passion for relating each mishnah in Avot to another one—very often the one preceding it. This sometimes leads to explanations that seem somewhat contrived, but it also leads to some unexpected connections between teachings that might otherwise be missed, as well as coming up with something completely different—as happens here..

How does Reb Shalom tackle Rabbi Yishmael’s teaching? He fastens on to the word קַל (kal, meaning “light”) and instantly senses a tie-in with the only other occasion קַל appears in Avot, at 5:23 where Yehudah ben Teyma teaches:

הֱוֵי עַז כַּנָּמֵר, וְקַל כַּנֶּֽשֶׁר, רָץ כַּצְּבִי, וְגִבּוֹר כָּאֲרִי, לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹן אָבִֽיךָ שֶׁבַּשָּׁמָֽיִם

Be bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer and mighty as a lion to do the will of your Father in Heaven. 

For Reb Shalom, this is a clue that Rabbi Yishmael is not talking about interpersonal relations; he is talking about learning Torah. Just as the eagle is קַל, soaring into the sky, so too should the serious talmid chacham be קַל with regard to his head (לְרֹאשׁ), letting his thoughts ascend to the lofty heights. Not only that; he will be וְנֽוֹחַ לְתִשְׁחֽוֹרֶת (no’ach letishchoret), able to plumb the darkest recesses of Torah wisdom, the root of being שְׁחֽוֹרֶ, dark, which also suggests the early morning before daybreak).  Once he has reached the heights of Torah study and mined its profundities, he is ready to greet all others with simchah, true happiness, knowing that he is fully equipped to learn from each person he meets—this being the message of Ben Zoma at Avot 4:1.

I wonder how Rabbi Yishmael would have viewed this line of thinking.

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Light as an eagle? Surely not

Avot 5:23 reads as follows: 

Yehudah ben Tema says: “Be as bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer and strong as a lion to do the will of your Father in Heaven”.

What's the relevance of the eagle? 

Seven species of eagle are found in Israel today and it is probable that not only the Tannaim but also anyone who kept the sheep, goats or poultry on which they feed would have been highly familiar with them.  However, the simile here is puzzling. “Be light as an eagle” has an almost poetical quality to it, but something is wrong. Eagles are amongst the very heaviest birds that fly; by avian standards they are anything but light. One may as well say “Be light as a hippopotamus”. What, then, is our Tanna trying to tell us?

Fortunately there is a plausible explanation, though not one that is obvious to modern thinkers because it requires getting into the mindset of Sages and philosophers in the era of the Tannaim, some two millennia back. 

Imagine a world that is composed of four elements: earth, air (or wind), fire and water.  Not just the planet Earth but everything in it is comprised of anything between one and four of these elements which, combined in different proportions, have different characteristics. Thus, for example, a tomato has a higher ratio of water to earth while a potato is quite the opposite. A chilli pepper has a higher ratio of fire to air, while a meringue has a higher ratio of air to fire, and so on.  Man is also composed of these four elements. All humans differ in their composition and that explains their character: some are fiery, others sanguine; some live on a lofty spiritual plain while others appear to have no aspirations that rise above the fulfilment of their basic bodily functions.

Taking these four elements further, it is accepted that all the problems faced by mankind are caused by an imbalance between them. Fire leads to anger and arrogance; air leads to vacuity and idle chatter; water leads to wealth, jealousy, pleasures of the flesh and to indulgence in the material world; earth, the heaviest element of all, leads to depression, indolence and hopelessness. The very largest and heaviest birds—for example the ostrich, the emu and the cassowary—do not fly. They are literally earthbound. Of birds that fly, the eagle with its heavy body has to make a far greater effort than do smaller birds to overcome the pull of its own “earthiness” in order to generate flight.

Returning to our metaphor, we are told to be “light as the eagle”. Just as the eagle has to make so great an effort to overcome its “earthiness”, so too should we make a great effort, when doing God’s will, of overcoming our own “earthiness” and the feelings of depression, indolence and hopelessness that accompany it.

Finally, while it is possible that this four-element theory, despite its apparently non-Jewish origin, would have been known to a Torah scholar, it is also possible that it actually originates from a Jewish source. An anonymous author on the Daat Emet website writes:

… Josephus (who lived in the first century CE and was commander of the Galilean forces during the Great Revolt — History of the wars of the Jews and the Romans, book 5, chapter 5:4) explains why the covering which divided the sanctuary from the Holy of Holies in the Temple was made of four threads of color: blue, purple, scarlet, and white. He claimed that the four colors represented the four elements in order to show a model of the world. Blue, the color of the skies, represents air, scarlet represents fire, purple is produced from a mollusk and represents the water from which it came, and white linen comes from the earth and represents it.