Where have all the scholars gone?

It sometimes happens, particularly with modern commentaries on Avot, that their most interesting and provocative content lies not in the commentary itself but in the casual, throwaway lines of the commentators that shed more light on their view of the world than on the meaning of the mishnah. A good example can be found in Rav Asher Weiss on Avos. Almost all of this two-volume work could have been written a hundred years ago without any changes, since Rav Weiss—a popular and highly learned teacher with a large personal following—is a dedicated Torah scholar who seeks to explain what the mishnayot in Avot must have meant at the time of the Talmud, from which he quote liberally when elucidating and developing the thoughts expressed in Avot. However, we occasionally find a comment from Rav Weiss that is aimed at contemporary Jewish society.

At Avot 1:10 we find a teaching by Shemayah:

אֱהוֹב אֶת הַמְּלָאכָה וּשְׂנָא אֶת הָרַבָּנוּת, וְאַל תִּתְוַדַּע לָרָשׁוּת

Love work, hate mastery over others, and do not make yourself known to the government.

After making reference to a gemara (Berachot 35b) in which Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and Rabbi Yishmael debate as to whether it is better to learn Torah exclusively or combine it with the pursuit of a livelihood, Rav Weiss comments:

“In our times … it is uncommon to find those who pursue a livelihood but who nevertheless achieve greatness in Torah. It would seem that with the steady decline of the generations, Torah no longer endures except in those who dedicate their entire lives to it, day and night, and do not turn their attention to any other matters”.

This statement stopped me in my tracks since it raises so many issues. How does one measure “greatness in Torah”? Is “greatness in Torah” a constant, or do the criteria change through time? How relevant is it that even the sages of the gemara could not agree as to whether being able to absorb Torah data was greater than being able to innovate and establish new learning through Torah exegesis? How does this proposition fit with Rabbi Gamliel’s mishnaic claims (Avot 2:2) that Torah, when combined with a livelihood, was beautiful but, without a livelihood, leads to sin?

Beyond that, there are wider questions. As the rate at which human knowledge and artificial intelligence appear to be growing exponentially, does God demand of us that we focus more strongly on our traditional core studies of Tanach, Mishnah, Gemara and the classical commentators, or that we embrace and study new sciences, technologies and social trends in order to bring our Torah understanding to them and “tame” them by framing them within the superstructure of Jewish values?

Rav Weiss has given us an opening for a keen debate, but we have to accept that there are no easy answers to our questions—and perhaps each question has more than a single valid answer.  We have to acknowledge the learning of a talmid who has locked himself away in the Beit Midrash day and night to learn the whole of tractate Chullin, a long and complex tractate that addresses the kashrut of animals and birds. But we also have to acknowledge the learning of the person who has only learned the practical laws of ritual slaughter but can actually identify the spleen or gall bladder that his more learned counterpart has never seen.

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Love work -- seriously?

Love, according to the famous lyric, is a many-splendored thing. We spend much of our waking time giving it, receiving it from others, seeking it and feeling miserable or even depressed when we can’t find it. Love is also a much over-used word. Objects of love, in colloquial terms, include sports teams, TV and movie stars, musicians, chocolate cake and a refreshing shower at the end of a long, hard day. For the committed Jew, one’s finest and most powerful love is reserved for God, wherever one might find or relate to Him.

In the first part of a three-part mishnah, Shemayah teaches us אֱהוֹב אֶת הַמְּלָאכָה, “Love work!” What does this mean? The more one thinks about this question, the less easy it is to answer. Many people gain enjoyment from their gainful occupation. Sometimes it is the work they do, sometimes the money they earn, or it may be the facilities or one’s the colleagues that provide the greatest degree of pleasure—but is this “love” in any meaningful sense of the word?

The classical commentators explain how important it is to work. According to Rabbenu Yonah and the Bartenura, one should work even if there is no compelling need to do so, since it keeps one occupied and staves off boredom. The commentary ascribed to Rashi adds that one should certainly work when one needs to do so, rather than sit on one’s hands and expect others to provide support on account of one’s feeling of self-importance.

Later commentators add further perspectives to these views. Thus Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner adds that it is better to earn one’s keep and be a follower than to be a communal leader who is funded by others, an explanation that links to the next part of the Mishnah that urges one to hate leadership. Maharam Shik focuses on the idea of the work being the study of Torah while Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski looks at the work performed by those who wield authority. Irving M. Bunim highlights the fact that the word Shemayah uses for “work” is melachah, indicating a craft or skill, rather than manual labour. But even so, it is not self-evident why one should love work, or even why Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi should include this teaching in Avot at all, when Ben Zoma’s teaching at Avot 4:1 cites a parallel verse from Tehillim 128:2 יְגִֽיעַ כַּפֶּֽיךָ כִּי תֹאכֵל, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ וְטוֹב לָךְ (“If you eat of toil of your hands, you are fortunate are you and it is good for you”).

This passage from Rabbi Yaakov Hillel, Eternal Ethics from Sinai, set me thinking. Citing Rabbi Shlomo Eliyahu’s Kerem Shlomo, he writes:

“A merchant buys flax in America, and ships it to China to be spun into threat. From there, it goes to Europe to be woven into fabric. The fabric is sent to Eretz Yisrael where it is cut and sewn into garments worn in honor of Shabbat. Its use for a mitzvah elevates the holy sparks invested in all of the many components of the finished product. This is the real reason why we should love work—because of the spiritual elevation of the nitzotzot [sparks] that it brings about”.

Regardless of one’s view of Kabbalah, what shines through here is the notion that the work one loves need not be one’s own work at all, but work that is done by others for positive purposes, whether related to a mitzvah or simply to the benefit of others. One’s love in such a situation is therefore a deep feeling of gratitude and appreciation of the work that is done for one’s benefit, whether one has any connection with those who do the work or not.

Back to work --- but do you love it?

The extended Jewish holiday period that characterises the month of Tishrei is now over. For some people -- those with jobs and who are not self-employed -- this is a bit of a relief. For the religiously observant, a succession of days off have to be sought, work arrangements must be amended, colleagues persuaded to provide cover, and so on. This leads me to ponder on an incidental work-related issue: are we supposed to love our work?

Pirkei Avot seems to suggest so. In Avot 1:10 Shemaya teaches:

"love work, hate mastery over others, and avoid intimacy with the government".

This is a broad statement, which invites us to ask questions. For example:

What sort of work should a person love?

In this mishnah the Hebrew word מלאכה (melachah) is used. It literally means “work”—and that is also the word used in the Torah to describe a large range of activities that are forbidden on the Sabbath, a holy day of rest. However, the word has overtones. While other words also mean “work,” melachah shares the same four-letter root as the word malach, an angel or emissary of God. The mishnah can therefore be suggesting that the sort of work a person should love is that through which he serves as an agent of God, in effect doing His work. This overtone is consciously deployed in a later mishnah (Avot 2:20, per Rabbi Tarfon).

Not all translators and commentators regard melachah as carrying such exalted implications. One takes the Tanna to be urging people to love “handicraft,” which conjures up slightly comical images of the Sages weaving baskets, sewing garments and crocheting kippot while they sit and learn in their houses of study. It is hard to conceive of any reason why Shemayah would wish to urge people to take up any handicraft, particularly in an era in which everything was made by hand and the skills relating to the production of clothes, shoes and household artefacts would have been far more widespread than they are today—unless he implanted into his advice some deeply encoded meaning which has since been lost.

Why should anyone love work?

A simple yet practical explanation is that work keeps a person occupied: it is a good idea to work even if you can afford not to, since work staves off boredom (per Bartenura, citing Ketubot 5:5). This explanation accepts that not everyone is cut out to spend their days learning Torah (or indeed anything else), since a person who can learn Torah and has the time in which to do so need never feel bored. However, this does not explain why a person should actually love work, rather than simply do it—and doing a job that one does not enjoy can be as effective a means of avoiding boredom as doing work that one really loves.

There is another aspect of involvement in one’s efforts to secure a living: the degree of self-respect that an individual is able to generate when he or she takes pride in their work, knowing that it has been done to the best of one's ability. This in turn can generate a kiddush Hashem (“sanctification of God’s name”) when clients or customers associate the conscientious execution of employment duties with the fact that the person performing them is a practising Jew. From the sheer brevity of Shemayah’s words we cannot deduce whether this aspect too was within his contemplation, though he certainly does not preclude this possibility.

Whose work should one love?

It is only a short distance from the Torah’s narrative of the Creation to the first mention of Man being placed in the Garden of Eden “to work it and to guard it.” From this we see that some form of useful human activity was written into God’s plan for the World. In the Torah this comes even before man’s obligation to toil on the soil (which was spelled out in consequence of the Fall of Man—as both a punishment and an absolute necessity for survival).

Shemaya does not specify whether the work which is to be loved is one's own, or whether it is that of others. Each of these positions can be justified—one’s own work, because it helps cause sin to be forgotten (Avot 2:2, per Rabban Gamliel ben Rebbi) and the work of others, because one recognizes with gratitude that one is ever dependent on the efforts of others.

As an aside, we should also recognize that loving one’s own work and doing it to the best of one’s ability has an impact on one’s ability to appreciate the quality of other people’s work—or at least to give recognition to the effort and dedication that has gone into it. An example of this effect in the Torah world is where only a person who regularly prepares teaching material is well equipped to see how much trouble a colleague has taken over the same activity; the same applies in the world of secular work where, for example, the preparation of food or the performance of music depend on experience, skill and practice that may be apparent only to the most discerning and knowledgeable diner or audience member.