Competition among sages -- where is it?

Writing on Communal News platform, David Wexelman ("Competition Between Religions and Philosophies") states:

There is a teaching in the Ethics of the Fathers that competition between sages promotes more wisdom. The same is true in business where we see price wars. The supplier has to meet the demand at the best price. Also this is true in religion. Religions try to satisfy their followers to prevent them from looking somewhere else to be for them a connection to God.

The proposition that competition between sages promotes more wisdom is a good one, much in keeping with Jewish thought on the value that is placed upon the process by which sharpen their wits and improve their learning skills by pitting their brain-power against each other. I can't find a mishnah in Avot that says this, though. Which mishnah or mishnayot might the author have had in mind?

Crowns in Avot: putting the record straight

There's a fascinating post on Aish.com by Dr Norman Goldwasser, "Lessons from My Father and Childhood in the Segregated South", which is well worth a read. It also contains a brief reference to Pirkei Avot that calls for a gentle tweak. The relevant paragraph reads:

One distinct memory of those encounters was with a man who I think was named Mr. Jones. As he was waiting patiently in our living room, he looked up at me, and for no apparent reason other than to make sure that I knew the obvious, he said to me, “You know your daddy’s a good man.” As is said in Ethics of the Fathers, “A good name is greater than a gold crown". My father indeed had a good name, that stood for kindness – and justice. He always seemed to know what was the right thing to do.

The sentiment expressed by the words "“A good name is greater than a gold crown" is certainly found in Avot, but in a rather different form:

Rabbi Shimon used to say: "There are three crowns: the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood and the crown of sovereignty—but the crown of good name surmounts them all" (Avot 4:17).

Igor's not here today

Here, from Huntingdon, New York, comes a preview of a preparatory program for the High Holy Days that reads as follows:

Cheshbon HaNefesh: Accounting of the Soul for the High Holidays

The High Holiday season invites us to look at our lives, in the words of Pirkei Avot: “Where do we come from and where are we going?” But what is the specific process we might take to do this? Join us at the beginning of the month of preparation, to receive a specific program, and let's begin together.

“Where do we come from and where are we going?” Pirkei Avot does indeed quote something like these words, but there is something -- or rather someone -- who is missing. In full, the mishnah in question (Avot 3:1, taught by Akavya ben Mahalalel) goes like this:

Reflect upon three things and you will not come to the grip of sin Know from where you came, where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give a judgement and accounting. From where you came—from a putrid drop; where you are going—to a place of dust, maggots and worms; and before whom you are destined to give a judgement and accounting—before the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

In other words, the punchline of this mishnah is all about God and the point of doing one's chesbhon hanefesh ("an account of one's soul") -- but God sitting in judgement does not get a plug in the program mentioned above.

This rather reminds me of an old Russian Communist-era joke about two men who are toiling all day long at their work. One assiduously digs holes in the ground and the other equally assiduously fills them in again. A foreign tourist, watching this pointless work with incredulity, asks them what on earth they are doing. The hole-digger leans on his shovel and explains:

We usually work as a team of three. I dig the holes, Igor plants the trees and Anatoly then replaces the soil. But Igor's not here today ...

In like vein, the exercise of asking ourselves where we have come from and where we are going is a bit empty if there is no-one before whom we have to justify our journey and what we do along the way.

Half-quotes, misquotes and false attributions

Here are a couple of small and, some would say, trivial episodes in the life of Avot and Jewish thought which are worth looking at.

The first is a recent post by Times of Israel blogger Michael Harvey ("Judaism vs. American Individualism"). He writes:

"As Pirkei Avot tells us, “For if one destroys one soul it is as if one destroys an entire world, ..."

The sentiment is sound, but the attribution is not: the quote comes from a mishnah in tractate Sanhedrin (4:1). 

The second is a piece in Communal News, in which David Wexelman (on the subject of responses to Covid-19) writes: 

 "The natural order of priorities is first yourself like it says in the ethics of the fathers, “If I will not be for myself, who will be for me.'” 

Pirkei Avot does indeed say this (Avot 1:14), but the quote is somewhat out of context because its author, Hillel, then appears to counterbalance it by adding ""And if I am for myself, what am I?" This addition appears to urge a person to find a happy medium, a path between being only for himself and not for himself at all.

Does any of this matter?

There is a principle, itself enshrined in Avot (6:6), that citing a teaching in the name of the person who teaches it is one of the 48 ways by which Torah is acquired -- and that, moreover, one who does so is viewed as bringing redemption into the world.  People are generally quite good at doing this, but there is a tendency to assume that any general principle that is repeated often enough somehow comes from Avot.  Other examples include "derech eretz kadmah leTorah" (i.e. good behaviour comes at the beginning of the Torah) and the maxim "if you chase after honour, honour runs away from you".  

I believe that we owe it to our readers, our friends, our families and our communities to be more careful with the words of our sages.  A correctly-cited axiom will more accurately reflect its author's meaning than an incorrectly-cited one, and will also spare the annoyance and frustration that can be inflicted on the poor soul who trawls through Avot in search of something that is not there at all.  Good habits of citation also enhance the credibility of the person who cultivates them. So let's get Avot right if we can!