But were the principles of Jewish middot and mussar
given together with the Torah at Sinai? To put it another way, we can ask which
comes first—Torah or the basics of good behaviour?
There is a midrashic teaching that the Torah existed even
before the world was created and that it was used as its blueprint. The notion
that Torah comes first is buttressed by a verse from Proverbs,
יְהוָה קָנָנִי רֵאשִׁית דַּרְכּוֹ קֶדֶם מִפְעָלָיו
מֵאָז
God made me [i.e. Torah] as the
beginning of His way, the first of His works of old (Mishlei 8:22),
which is even quoted in a baraita near the end of Avot (at 6:10), but in
another context.
The position is different in the context of human conduct.
There, middot—the acquisition of good personal qualities and characteristics—arguably
precede Torah.
There are several sources for this surprising proposition. In
Psalm 94 we read:
אַשְׁרֵי הַגֶּבֶר אֲשֶׁר תְּיַסְּרֶנּוּ יָּהּ
וּמִתּוֹרָתְךָ תְלַמְּדֶנּוּ
Happy is the man to whom You inflict
mussar, God, and teaches him from Your Torah (Tehillim 94:12).
The mention of mussar—the instruction that leads to
the improvement of a person’s middot—comes first, bearing the
implication that one must first master oneself before seeking to master the
Torah.
In the Talmud
(Berachot 5b) we find Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai listing Torah as one of three
things that can only be acquired through prior suffering. The Maharal in the
introduction to his Derech Chaim appears to equate this suffering with mussar.
Further, the kabbalist Rabbi Chaim Vital (Sha’arei
Kedushah, chelek 1, sha’ar 2) maintains that the Torah is only given to a
person once there has been a tikkun hamiddot (‘repair of middot’)
since, in its absence, the Torah cannot dwell in him. The Maharal, along
similar lines, analogises mussar as the keli (“vessel”) in which
a person’s Torah learning may be held. Also, citing a midrash (Vayikra Rabbah
9) that derech eretz (good interpersonal skills) preceded the giving of
the Torah by 26 generations, he appears to liken it to the soil in which the
roots of the tree of Torah grow deep so that the tree cannot be budged from where
it stands.
When God created the world, in His wisdom, and for whatever
reason He chose, he did not give the Torah to any of the 20 generations that
preceded the Flood. Nor was there a Sinaitic revelation before such outstanding
characters in Jewish history as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or Joseph (the midrashic
tradition that the Patriarchs kept the Torah raises many difficult questions
for those who take it literally, and it is easier to learn from it that they
were so sensitive to God’s will that they intuited what God wanted of them and
acted accordingly).
Now here’s the big question. So (i) God waited 26
generations before giving the Torah at Sinai, (ii) derech eretz comes
before the Torah and (iii) mastery of middot and mussar is a
prerequisite for learning Torah. Can we conclude from these propositions that,
if the generations before Moses had recognised and acknowledged God for what we
understand Him to be, and if they had perfected their behaviour towards one
another and the development of their character traits, God would not have needed to
give the Torah at all?
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