At Avot 3:10 Rabbi Dostai ben Yannai teaches in the name of Rabbi Meir a lesson that most of us would regard as easy to understand but extremely hard to apply:
כָּל
הַשּׁוֹכֵֽחַ דָּבָר אֶחָד מִמִּשְׁנָתוֹ, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ
מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: רַק הִשָּֽׁמֶר לְךָ וּשְׁמֹר נַפְשְׁךָ
מְאֹד פֶּן תִּשְׁכַּח אֶת הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר רָאוּ עֵינֶֽיךָ. יָכוֹל אֲפִילוּ
תָּקְפָה עָלָיו מִשְׁנָתוֹ, תַּלְמוּד לוֹמַר: וּפֶן יָסֽוּרוּ מִלְּבָבְךָ כֹּל
יְמֵי חַיֶּֽיךָ, הָא אֵינוֹ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ עַד שֶׁיֵּשֵׁב וִיסִירֵם
מִלִּבּוֹ
Anyone who forgets even a single word of this learning, the Torah considers
it as if he had forfeited his life. As is stated, "Just be careful, and very
much guard your soul, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen"
(Devarim 4:9). One might think that this applies also to one who [has forgotten
because] his studies proved too difficult for him; but the verse continues
"and lest they be removed from your heart, throughout the days of your
life." From this we see that one does not forfeit his life unless he
deliberately removes them from his heart.
For any Jew learning
Torah today, the task is in many respects incomparably harder than it was for
the Sages of the Mishnah: Rabbi Dostai and his contemporaries had ‘only’ to
master the canonical books of the Tanach plus the Oral Law that Rabbi Yehudah
eventually organized into the Six Orders of the Mishnah and the accompanying
teachings that became known as baraitot, toseftot and midrash. They never had
to face the task of conquering what was to become a possibly exponential growth
of literature ranging from the commentaries and codifications of the Rishonim
through to the generally far more voluminous output of the Acharonim. On the other hand, without the convenience of
the printed text and the luxury of online data retrieval, anything they failed
to commit to memory or were able to explain cogently to others was liable to be
lost forever.
The Chasid Yavetz places
this mishnah within the context of the arrangement of teachings in the third chapter
of Avot. There it follows a series of six mishnayot that deal with different
aspects of Torah: sharing it with others, not turning away from it but adhering
to it, the importance of studying it with others and the need to resist the
temptation to be distracted while learning it. Once we have mastered these matters, we are
all set for a promising role as a talmid chacham—someone who is wise in
the ways of the Torah—but there is still one thing left to address.
Explains the Chasid Yavetz, there is a parallel between the
pursuit of Torah and the pursuit of profit in the business world. Most of us
are probably familiar with the types of businessmen that inhabit our commercial
world. Discounting those poor souls who really don’t have a clue, there are
three other personalities in the business world: those who make money and don’t
know how to hang on to it, those who know exactly how to hang onto it but never
seem to be able to make it, and those happy folk who possess the knack of making
money and the wherewithal to safeguard it. So too in the world of Torah, we see
those who know how to learn but can’t retain it, those who would retain it well
if they could but remember it, and those who are not only good at learning but
keep their knowledge and their understanding secure. The Chasid Yavetz bases his
categorization on the proof verse from Devarim and the two verses that precede
it, though he could equally have treated it as an echo of the -authored “four
types of Torah student” mishnah at Avot 5:15.
I don’t suppose that many, and perhaps any, serious and
sincere contemporary Torah scholars would ever go about deliberately forgetting
any part of their Torah learning except possibly where they had mis-learned it
in the first place and had to put it right out of their minds before seeking to
re-learn it properly. But there may be another form of forgetting that is more
than merely accidental but certainly not malicious. An argument in Jewish law
may be complex, built on the interrelationship of several different
propositions—and sometimes when we apply layers of halachic propositions one
after another we reach a result that is so absurd or self-evidently wrong that
we deliberately reject it and start again. It may be that, in this process of
rejection, a valid Torah proposition is set aside too and is subsequently
forgotten. I like to think that our God, being all-knowing and merciful, would
not condemn this form of forgetfulness.
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