We live in an age in which truth has, for many people, ceased to be an absolute quality but the product of individual choice. You have your truth, I have mine. This choice between competing truths is often based on an earlier choice as to which of a number of competing narratives one accepts. The concept of the relative truth needs no further explanation here, but there is one truth-related issue that affects some of the mishnayot in Avot: the use of metaphor and parable in establishing the meaning of a teaching.
An obvious candidate for explanation via non-literal devices
is Avot 5:23, where Yehudah ben Teyma says:
הֱוֵי עַז כַּנָּמֵר, וְקַל כַּנֶּֽשֶׁר, רָץ כַּצְּבִי,
וְגִבּוֹר כָּאֲרִי, לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹן אָבִֽיךָ שֶׁבַּשָּׁמָֽיִם
Be bold as a leopard, light as an
eagle, swift as a deer and mighty as a lion to do the will of your Father in
Heaven.
The basic idea is that someone who wants to serve God should
do so in the optimum manner, doing His will with speed, efficiency and good
grace, even if it involves a good deal of effort. But, rabbis being what they
are, many have mined aggadic material in order to bring out further meanings.
R’ Shlomo Toperoff does this in Lev Avot in a manner
which, though traditional and well precedented by many commentators from
earlier eras, may make uncomfortable reading for the modern reader who might
mistake aggadic traditions for scientific truths. Here are a couple of
examples:
“[A] characteristic of the eagle
is that it flies with its young on its back, and this serves a dual purpose.
The eagle teaches its young to fly at a tender age, but it also shows
gentleness and concern for its young by protecting it from the arrows of
missiles … The eagle carries its young above its wings so that no harm befall
it…”
and
“The Rabbis add, ‘As the gazelle,
when it sleeps, has one eye open and one eye closed, so when Israel fulfils the
will of God He looks on them with two eyes, but when they do not fulfil the
will of God He looks at them with one eye’…”.
As for eagles’ wings, we have a reference point in the Torah
itself where, at Shemot 19:4 and Devarim 32:11 we read of being carried on
eagles’ wings as being the epitome of safe, protected travel; we also
understand the contrast between the eagle’s fierce and predatory attitude
towards its prey and the care it expends on its young. But, unless there has
been a dramatic change in nature or in the behaviour of birds, we can see that
eagles do not actually carry their young on their backs as they fly through the
air. If the egrets could even mount the parent bird’s back, they would fall off
in the course of its flight. This would have been known to the Tannaim too,
since eagles were far more common in earlier times when humans occupied less of
the planet and the environment was more favourable to their lifestyle.
We face a dilemma when dealing with metaphors that
apparently contradict science. Do we teach them as they stand, as countless
generations of our forebears have done, do we explain the moral they
encapsulate but make excuses for their factual accuracy—or do we take them as
literal truths?
I ask this question because I have had some troubling
conversations on this topic. One was with a friend who became angry and disaffected
with his Judaism when it was pressed upon him by a friendly and respected rabbi
that the gestation period for snakes was seven years (Bechorot 8a; sadly, the
object of this aggadah was not to teach anything about snakes but to illustrate
the wisdom of our sages). The other was with a contemporary rabbi who
insisted—and still insists—that birds can fly on a single wing, notwithstanding
all practical and theoretical considerations to the contrary (see Tosafot to
Shabbat 49a on the tale of Elisha ba’al kanofayim).
My feeling is that we should not throw the baby out with the
bathwater and discard a colourful if sometimes literally inexact body of
aggadic scholarship that has served us so well throughout our history. We
should however be on our guard and make it plain, when teaching it, that what
we are concerned about is the message, not the factual scenario through which
the message is transmitted.
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