Quarterly report: Avot in the online media

July to September 2022

This is the third of our quarterly roundups of citations of teachings from Pirkei Avot in articles, news items and reviews posted on the internet. It covers the period 1 July to 30 September 2022 and features references to Avot that I have picked up through Google Alert, discounting any items that have been repeated or syndicated from an earlier source.

So far this year we have found 146 Avot citations. During the third quarter there were only 40 Avot citations, as against the first and second quarters (46 and 60 respectively). Of the 40, no fewer than eight—that’s 20 percent—were to Avot 1:5, where Yehoshua ben Perachyah teaches us to make for ourselves a teacher, acquire a friend and judge other people favourably. Second comes Ben Zoma’s four-fold Mishnah at Avot 4:1 (“who is wise/strong/rich/honoured?”), with five citations. No other mishnah or baraita gets more than two citations.

The year to date

Over the first nine months of 2022, the single most popular teaching in Avot remains Hillel’s at Avot 1:14 (“If I am not for me, who is for me? And if I am only for me, what am I? And if not now, when”), with a total of 14 citations, two up on Ben Zoma (above) who gets 12 and three ahead of Yeshoshua ben Perachyah (above) who receives 11.

The most heavily quoted Tanna is Hillel with 24 citations, spread across four separate mishnayot. Next come two single-entry Tannaim: Yehoshua ben Perachyah’s mishnah receives 19 citations and Ben Zoma’s stands at 16. Far behind in fourth place is Rabbi Tarfon, whose two mishnayot between them are quoted 10 times.

Several well-known rabbis are rarely mentioned online at all. These include Rabbi Akiva (whose four teachings receive between them only three references) and his talmidimRabbi Meir and Rabbi Yose (cited just once each). Those great stalwarts of the Mishnah, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya, Rabbi Yehudah bar Ila’I, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, Rabbi Yose ben Chalafta and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, have not been cited at all.

The distribution of citations between the six perakim remains uneven. Of the 146, 52 are from the first perek, which contains both Yehoshua ben Perechyah's popular mishnah and three of Hillel's teachings. A distant second is the fourth perek, with 35. Next is the second perek, with 28. The other three chapters muster only 31 citations between them.

We hope to bring you a full report on Avot citations for the full year 2022 some time early in January 2023.

Avot online: a six-month review

On 8 April we posted a summary of the citation of mishnayot and baraitot from Pirkei Avot in the online media for the first quarter of 2022. That summary revealed that the most popular mishnah online was Avot 1:6 (Yehoshua ben Perachya: “make for yourself a rav, acquire for yourself a friend and judge all people by their merit”); this mishnah was cited no fewer than six times. Second place was shared by three contenders with four citations apiece: Avot 1:14 (Hillel’s “If not now, when?”); Avot 2:21 (Rabbi Tarfon: “It’s not for you to finish the work, but nor are you free to desist from it…”) and Avot 4:1 (Ben Zoma: “Who is wise/strong/rich/honoured...?”). In fifth place, with three citations, was Shimon HaTzaddik’s teaching at Avot 1:2 (“The world stands on three things: Torah, service to God and acts of kindness”).

Overall, Hillel was most frequently-cited contributor to Avot, which was unsurprising given that he was named as the author of seven mishnayot in Avot, more than anyone else. He was cited a total of seven times, followed by Yehoshua ben Perachya on six, Rabbi Tarfon on five and Ben Zoma on four.

Now, at the half-way mark for the year, the total number of online references to Avot stands at 106 (up 60 from 46 at the end of the first quarter). Hillel’s mishnah 1:14 has taken the lead. The most frequently cited mishnayot, together with the number of times they were cited, looks like this:

Hillel (Avot 1:14) 18

Yehoshua ben Perachyah (Avot 1:6) and Ben Zoma (Avot 4:1) 11 apiece

Rabbi Tarfon (Avot 2:21) 9.

The popularity of Avot 1:14 may have something to do with the fact that it is convenient for use by authors who have little or no interest in Judaism or the Torah but who are generally exhorting their readers to do something now rather than at some later time.

More media citations of Avot come from the first perek than any of the others. In terms of popularity, the six perakim rank as follows:

Perek 1: 40 (37.7%)

Perek 2: 22 (20.7%)

Perek 3: 8 (0.7%)

Perek 4: 24 (22.6%)

Perek 5: 7 (0.7%)

Perek 6: 5 (0.5%)

I must admit some surprise at the relatively low level of references to the third perek of Avot, which contains some wonderful material (including all of Rabbi Akiva’s contributions).

Avot online: a media review

Whenever I see a reference to Pirkei Avot in the media, my interest is always piqued. I want to know why it is being cited, by whom and for what purpose. I ask myself “can I learn something from this citation?” Accordingly, since the beginning of the calendar year 2022, I have been conducting a review of citations of Pirkei Avot in the English-language online media.

The material I have reviewed includes Jewish local and national papers, synagogue and organisational newsletters and the occasional weblog (naturally excluding the Avot Today blog). Quite a lot of this material has nothing to do with religion in general or Judaism in particular: sayings from Avot crop up in political analyses and sports reports too.

With the aid of Google Alerts for ‘Avot’, ‘Avos’ and ‘Ethics of the Fathers’ and other search terms, I have picked up data from which I have the following findings on the citation of teachings from Avot cited online in the First Quarter of 2022:

The total number of citations of Pirkei Avot from 1 January to 31 March was 46 (18 in January, 11 in February and 17 in March).

As between the six chapters of Avot, the distribution of citations was as follows:

Perek 1: 17    Perek 4: 10        

Perek 2: 12    Perek 5: 3

Perek 3: 2      Perek 6: 2  

Which were the most popular mishnayot? Leading the pack with six citations is Avot 1:6 (Yehoshua ben Perachya: “make for yourself a rav, acquire for yourself a friend and judge all people by their merit”). Second place is shared by three contenders with four citations apiece: Avot 1:14 (Hillel’s “If not now, when?”); Avot 2:21 (Rabbi Tarfon: “It’s not for you to finish the work, but nor are you free to desist from it..”) and 4:1 (Ben Zoma: “Who is wise/strong/rich/honoured...?”). In fifth place, with three citations, is Shimon HaTzaddik’s teaching at Avot 1:2 (“The world stands on three things: Torah, service to God and acts of kindness”).

Hillel is actually the most frequently-cited contributor to Avot, which is unsurprising given that he is attributed as the author of seven mishnayot in Avot, more than anyone else. He has been cited a total of seven times, followed by Yehoshua ben Perachya on six, Rabbi Tarfon on five and Ben Zoma on four.

The first quarter also saw two mis-citations. One was the maxim of “Talmud Torah keneged kulam” (“the study of Torah is equivalent to all of them”), which belongs to Shabbat 127a and Pe’ah 1:1. The other was that words, like arrows, once shot cannot be called back (Midrash Tehillim 120).

The data set for this quarter was bound to be relatively small since the weekly recitation of chapters from Avot had not yet commenced. The "season" for Avot traditionally runs from Pesach through to Rosh Hashanah, so figures for the next two quarters should reflect far more references to its teachings.

I shall continue to keep an eye on Avot citations over the year, at the end of which I shall see what generalisations can be made about the use to which Avot is put and its utility as a source of wisdom and/or soundbites for authors of material published online