An Avot Mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Shofetim)
This week’s pre-Shabbat post returns to Perek 1.
At Avot 1:11 Avtalyon gives us the first of only three
teachings in Avot that are couched in the form of a narrative:
חֲכָמִים, הִזָּהֲרוּ בְדִבְרֵיכֶם, שֶׁמָּא תָחֽוֹבוּ
חוֹבַת גָּלוּת וְתִגְלוּ לִמְקוֹם מַֽיִם הָרָעִים, וְיִשְׁתּוּ הַתַּלְמִידִים הַבָּאִים
אַחֲרֵיכֶם וְיָמֽוּתוּ, וְנִמְצָא שֵׁם שָׁמַֽיִם מִתְחַלֵּל
Scholars, be careful with your
words. For perhaps you will be exiled to a place of bad water. The students who
follow you might drink the bad water and die, and the Name of Heaven will be
desecrated.
Once it is appreciated that ‘water’ is a metaphor for Torah
and that ‘bad water’ is bad Torah teaching, the meaning of this parable is
plain: if you, the chacham, are careless in the way you impart Torah to
your students, they may misconstrue or misunderstand God’s message. They will then
damage the Torah further when in turn they teach it erroneously to students of
their own. Having done so, they are liable to be punished—and this will be a chillul
Hashem, a desecration of God’s name.
Our tradition of Pirkei Avot learning is never so narrow as
to admit only one meaning per mishnah, and sometimes we find explanations that
are quite surprising. According to the Chida (Chasdei Avot) the chillul
Hashem is not the fault of the chacham but of his talmidim:
it is they who cause death and destruction through their impaired capacity to
absorb Torah. The moral of the mishnah would thus be that the chacham
should be ultra-cautious in choosing his words and, it seems to me, in conducting
regular quality control tests by examining his talmidim regularly to
seek out signs of error or deviation from true Torah teaching. This process
should ideally start at the moment that talmidim are selected, to weed
out those who lack the ability to understand what is being taught and the
maturity to handle it (per R’ Eliezer Papo, Ya’alzu Chasidim).
Like the words of the written Torah, the guidance of tractate
Avot is intended to speak to us at all times and in every generation. We can
thus take away from Avtalyon’s teaching a message that applies to parents,
medical practitioners, accountants, lawyers and indeed anyone whose words will
be given the weight of authority and which may cause havoc if distorted or
taken out of context.
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