One destination, two paths

There is a strange mishnah at Avot 5:21:

כָּל הַמְזַכֶּה אֶת הָרַבִּים, אֵין חֵטְא בָּא עַל יָדוֹ, וְכָל הַמַּחֲטִיא אֶת הָרַבִּים, אֵין מַסְפִּיקִין בְּיָדוֹ לַעֲשׂוֹת תְּשׁוּבָה. מֹשֶׁה זָכָה וְזִכָּה אֶת הָרַבִּים, זְכוּת הָרַבִּים תָּלוּי בּוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: צִדְקַת יְיָ עָשָׂה, וּמִשְׁפָּטָיו עִם יִשְׂרָאֵל. יָרָבְעָם בֶּן נְבָט חָטָא וְהֶחֱטִיא אֶת הָרַבִּים, חֵטְא הָרַבִּים תָּלוּי בּוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: עַל חַטֹּאות יָרָבְעָם אֲשֶׁר חָטָא, וַאֲשֶׁר הֶחֱטִיא אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל

Whoever causes the community to be meritorious, no sin will come by his hand. But anyone who causes the community to sin is not given the opportunity to repent.

Moses was meritorious and caused the community to be meritorious, so the community's merit is attributed to him; as it says: "He did God's righteousness, and His laws with Israel" (Devarim 33:21). Jeroboam the son of Nevat sinned and caused the community to sin, so the community's sin is attributed to him, as it says: "For the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and caused Israel to sin" (I Melachim 15:30).

Let’s leave aside the issues of what the verses cited in support of this teaching actually prove, and why the first of the two does not even refer to Moses, and move on to another point, one that our Sages discuss. They ask: when the mishnah says, of the person who makes the community meritorious, “no sin will come by his hand”, to whose sin does this refer? Is it the person who benefits the community who is saved from sinning—or is it the community itself?

R' Shimshon Raphael Hirsch mentions both possible readings and treats them as being valid, as does R’ Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of the Fathes). Some commentators opt for the latter since this is the reward that the community gets for following the example of its righteous leader. R’ Avraham Azulai (Ahavah beTa’anugim) gives the example that, when the leader performs an act which is normally forbidden  but for which he has a heter (permission), it will not happen that others, watching him, will perform the same act in breach of halachah. The Meiri argues however that it must mean the leader, since he should not go to Gehinnom when he dies while his community relishes the joys of the Garden of Eden. R’ Yitzchak Magriso (Me’am Lo’ez) supports this view, which originates with Rambam.

Now here’s a fresh perspective on this Mishnah, based on an idea of Maharam Shik.

Looking generally at people whose actions benefit the community, we can divide them into two camps. There are those who act this way because they love God and are motivated by their love for Him to do His will by assisting His creations to keep on the right path. There are also those who are motivated by love for their fellow humans, with whom they empathise and deeply wish to elevate to heightened standards of behaviour towards God and man.

What is the significance of this distinction? Perhaps it offers a key to unlock the answer to our question above. We can say that, where a person is driven by love for God, it is he who will not be caused to sin in the process of helping others. However, where a person seeks to help others because of his love for them, it is they who will not be led into the grasp of sin.

In reality we do not live in a binary world in which everything is either-or. There is no reason why a person cannot be motivated both by love of God and by love of one’s fellow humans. Indeed, when it comes to either seeking to acquire Torah learning (Avot 6:6) or to learning Torah for its own sake and without any ulterior motive (Avot 6:1), the paradigm figure is one who loves both God and His creations.

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Playing with power

An Avot mishnah for Shabbat: Perek 3 (parashat Shelach Lecha)

Continuing our series of erev Shabbat posts on the perek of the week, we return to Perek 3.

Now here’s a mystery. We have a three-part mishnah in the name of Rabbi Yishmael (Avot 3:16) and our sages only agree about the third part:

הֱוֵי קַל לְרֹאשׁ, וְנֽוֹחַ לְתִשְׁחֽוֹרֶת, וֶהֱוֵי מְקַבֵּל אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם בְּשִׂמְחָה

Be easy to a rosh, affable to a tishchoret, and receive every man with happiness.

Our problem is that we cannot agree on the meaning of any of the key words, and especially rosh and tishchoret. One rabbi (R’ Marcus Lehmann, The Lehmann-Prins Pirkei Avoth) actually gives our mishnah four quite different translations.

Commentators over the years have maintained that the rosh is one’s head, one’s ego, a ruler, a leader, a superior, an elder, a civic leader, a venerable old man—and even God.

As for the tishchoret, this has been explained as someone who is young, old, black-haired, oppressed, a town clerk, the king’s secretary, or a time at which one should be slow and steady.

R’ Yishmael’s words were incorporated into this tractate over 1,800 years ago and we have lovingly preserved them while losing track of their original meaning. However, we cannot walk away from a mishnah and pretend it doesn’t exist so we must take on the task of giving it our own meaning, one that is both Torah-compliant and suited to the needs of our generation. R’ Reuven P. Bulka (Chapters of the Sages: A Psychological Commentary on Pirkey Avoth) seeks to do just that. He writes:

“The present mishna deals with ego difficulties relative to communal functioning. Primarily, they may be said to focus around individuals who have not reached the position of prominence in the community they felt was appropriate for them. The general tendency of such individuals is to downgrade those who have superseded them and to discourage those who would in the future gain the very positions they have failed to attain”.

Anyone who has been involved in Jewish communal affairs is likely to have come across people who fit this bill. Basically good-hearted and well-meaning souls, they feel they have been taken for granted and are disgruntled at not being voted into positions of authority or being nominated as one of the chatanim on Simchat Torah. They may become sullen and unhelpful towards those who are less experienced than themselves and who might benefit from the assistance of an older person. It can be a struggle to overcome one’s inner demons and, in R’ Bulka’s view, this is what Rabbi Yishmael has in mind.

Or perhaps we can summarise it simply like this: don’t demean the authority of those above you and don’t abuse your authority when dealing with those below you.

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Watering down a warning

Politicians! Can you trust them? Should you trust them? Or are they just so many clowns? In many parts of the world we are in the throes of elections and therefore in need of the guidance of a piece of advice from Pirkei Avot that is as crisply relevant today as it was two millennia ago. It comes from Rabban Gamliel ben Rebbi in Avot 2:3:

הֱווּ זְהִירִין בָּרָשׁוּת, שֶׁאֵין מְקָרְבִין לוֹ לְאָדָם אֶלָּא לְצֹֽרֶךְ עַצְמָן, נִרְאִין כְּאוֹהֲבִין בְּשַֽׁעַת הַנָּאָתָן, וְאֵין עוֹמְדִין לוֹ לְאָדָם בְּשַֽׁעַת דָּחֳקוֹ

Be careful with the government, for they befriend a person only for their own needs. They appear to be friends when it is beneficial to them, but they do not stand by a person at the time of his distress.

The meaning of this message is clear and no-one who lives in any country that claims to be a representative democracy should need any explanation.

But there are commentaries on Avot that appear to deny the relevance of this mishnah to our generation. R’ Chaim Druckman (Avot leBanim) points out that there are some old editions of Rambam’s commentary that qualify this teaching with the words בימי קדם (“in earlier days”), and those of the Me’iri which add בדורותיהם (“in their generations”), in other words in the era of the mishnah—but no longer, and therefore without pointing an accusing finger at the governments under which Rambam and the Me’iri were writing.  According to R’ Druckman, it is reasonable to suppose that these extra words were inserted in order to pass the office of the censor, which would have been an arm of the government itself. If so, it is easy to see why, in our time when there is no equivalent degree of state censorship, these words should be omitted.

I have two comments to make.

First, if Pirkei Avot was also taught orally and without interruption from the time Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi redacted it (c.180-200 CE), those students who were familiar with this mishnah would had studied it before its effect was watered down in order to escape the censor’s attention; it would thus be an easy job to delete the added word as soon as censorship ceased to be an issue.

Secondly, the added words do reflect a significance between the days of the Tannaim and the contemporary political scene.  In times gone by, in the absence of any printed or electronic media, contact between ordinary citizens and those holding government positions (or seeking to do so) would have been mainly personal: it is more difficult to say “no” to a person who is standing before you and speaking with you face-to-face than it is to reject the blandishments of those seeking your support when they are delivered remotely. It is therefore far easier for us to dismiss their promises and aspirations as being vacuous or self-seeking than it would have been for our ancestors—which is why the advice of Rabban Gamliel was particularly appropriate in his era, even though it still holds true for ours.

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Avot, AI translation and interpretation

“AI is changing how we’ll work with Torah texts”. This is the title of an article posted to Anash.org on 19 June. It reads, in relevant part:

“The world of AI is still in the infancy of its potential, especially in relation to successfully formulating Torah thoughts and plunging the depths of meforshim and Chassidus. As time passes and AI’s abilities and skills are finely tuned, it will be capable of adding an astounding level of understanding and perspective to our learning …”

The article relates that Rabbi Rayi Stern and his team at Aitorah.org are currently working on AI-generated translations of Pirkei Avot in 12 different languages. It continues:

“Within each language, users can choose a classic translation, a free translation, or other options. In order to keep improving, they encourage users to give feedback—including any suggested edits to the translations, input, or compliments on what they enjoyed of the text. The team is very particular about every step of the output.

“Our goal is to make sure that a responsible and safe approach is adhered to; that all necessary checks and balances are in place—on both a computer and a human level,” a member of the team shared. “With technology able to do so much, the challenge becomes how to use it best. The English translations were fully edited, and extensive work went into the process, in order to ensure consistency…”

This sounds like a fascinating exercise, a sort of multidimensional hafoch bah vehafoch bah (“turn it around and turn it around”, per Ben Bag Bag, Avot 5:26). So long as we recognise borders, never lose sight of the original words of the Tannaim and measure the products of AI against the yardsticks of two millennia of tradition, we should have nothing to lose and plenty to gain.

There are of course certain caveats. One is that, just as there is no single Hebrew text of the entire tractate that has gained universal approval, there is no single English translation that can claim the exclusive right to be accepted as authoritative. The Hebrew does not change, but English does. Variations as between English and American vocabulary, grammar and syntax can be significant, as well as variations generated by changing shades of meaning over the course of time (for example, two hundred years ago it was quite normal to refer to an employer as a “master” and an employee as a “servant”). There are also mishnayot that have never been properly understood even in the original Hebrew (for example Rabbi Yishmael’s teaching at Avot 3:16: הֱוֵי קַל לְרֹאשׁ, וְנֽוֹחַ לְתִשְׁחֽוֹרֶת). But a caveat is not an impenetrable barrier to reaching new understandings of old teachings.

I’m curious to know how many Avot Today readers share my enthusiasm for this project and my optimism that it will bear valuable fruit. Please comment!

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it's a steal!

An Avot mishnah for Shabbat: Perek 2 (parashat Beha'alotecha)

Continuing our series of erev Shabbat posts on the perek of the week, we return to Perek 2.

At Avot 2:8 Hillel cautions against various examples of excess. One of them reads like this:

מַרְבֶּה עֲבָדִים מַרְבֶּה גָזֵל

The one who increases [his] manservants increases theft.

This reads a little awkwardly for the modern Torah student because the vast majority of people today do not retain manservants: butlers, valets, footmen and the like are the domain of costume dramas. Since manservants are no longer a familiar part of daily life in Western society, if we want to see something of the servant’s bond of loyalty and sense of commitment to his master we have to refer to costume dramas like Downton Abbey or to literary works such as P. G. Wodehouse’s series of Jeeves books and Kazuo Ishiguro’s prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day.  

Faced with the problem of the lack of contemporary relevance, some commentators omit any discussion of this teaching (e.g. R’ Dan Roth, Relevance: Pirkei Avos for the 21^st Century; R’ Yisroel Miller, The Wisdom of Avos). Strangely, other authors have gone retrograde, opting for “male slaves” (David N. Barocas’ translation of Me’am Lo’ez; Chanoch Levi’s translation of Ru’ach Chaim; Joseph G. Rosenstein, Reflections on Pirkei Avot); David Haddad’s French translation (Les Actions des Pères) does the same with “esclaves”. While no translations have jettisoned “manservants” for something more familiar like “employee” or “domestic employee”— the mishnah is often explained as applying to this modern concept.

If we take “manservant” literally in its classical English context, what do we see? A “gentleman’s gentleman,” a man who serves but is never servile, and whose wit and resources are entirely devoted to the needs of his master. Belonging at the bottom of the hierarchy of society, such a servant might be expected to earn the lowest of wages, a factor that might motivate him to supplement his meagre income through theft of his master’s property. In the case of any theft, the master with only one servant in his employ would have little difficulty in identifying the likely culprit. However, with a multitude of servants, not only would it be harder to point the accusatory finger at any individual suspect; it would also be much more difficult to supervise the duties and activities of all the servants, so opportunities for theft would themselves increase.

But if we transfer the context of this mishnah from the domestic sphere to the corporate world, we can see how very practical it is. Statistically speaking, some 75% of employees steal from their employers and around one-third of business bankruptcies have been triggered by the consequences of employee theft [Figures taken from https://www.embroker.com/blog/employee-theft-statistics/].

Finally there’s a neat twist to this mishnah in the explanation of R’ Shmuel de Ucida (Midrash Shmuel): whose thefts are we talking about? When a person has a larger staff than he can afford, it’s not the staff who work for him but he himself who does the thievery in order to pay for his bloated and overmanned establishment. This explanation works just as well in the commercial world as in the domestic one, as Gila Ross (Living Beautifully) observes.

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The Suffs that dreams are made on

Until earlier this week I had never heard of “Suffs” and had no idea what a suff was—but now I have been enlightened. The word “suff”, it appears, is an abbreviation of “suffragette”, the term originally bestowed on those brave women who fought and sometimes even gave their lives for the right of women to vote in national and local elections in the United Kingdom.  “Suffs” is an award-winning musical, created by Shaina Taub.

According to the Times of Israel:

Taub won awards for best book of a musical and best original score written for theater for the Broadway show about the women who fought to be able to vote in the United States. In her acceptance speech … she quoted a Jewish text that she said had a prominent place in her show’s literature.

“The epigraph on my script is a quote from the Talmud: You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it,” said Taub, who also plays suffragist Alice Paul in the show. She added, “This is a hard year in our country, and I just hope that we can remember that when we organize and we come together we are capable of making real change and progress for this country for equality and justice. And so I hope we can all do that together.”

The famous quotation, from Rabbi Tarfon, is found in the canonical text of Jewish ethics, Pirkei Avot [at Avot 2:21]. It is part of the Mishna, the code of oral law that is at the core of the Talmud. The saying has animated legions of Jewish activists, from acolytes of the late liberal Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the acting attorney general at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, who have sought to battle against steep odds to make change…

Shaina Taub’s award, and her acceptance speech, have been widely reported on the media. I know this not only because I have set my Google Alerts to Pirkei Avot but because so many people have kindly contacted me to tell me about it (A big “thank you” to all who did. I’d rather receive the same information several times over than risk missing it once). It’s gratifying to see the Ethics of the Fathers in the limelight, and anything that spreads the good word can only be for the best. But there is a bit of a downside too.

Anyone who uses Google Alerts for Pirkei Avot will know, as Avot Today has reported in the past, that Rabbi Tarfon’s teaching is one of the most frequently cited in the tractate. In 2022 only Hillel’s “If not now, when” mishnah (Avot 1:14) was the only one to gain more quotes and, in 2023, it topped the chart with 17 citations.

Whenever I see the words “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it” online, I feel tempted to bet that the speaker is not a rabbi but a politician, businessman, or a campaigner for a special cause. This is because Rabbi Tarfon’s words are quoted only in part. He finishes it with the following words:

“If you have learned much Torah, you will be greatly rewarded, and your employer can be trusted to pay you the reward of your labour. And you should know that the reward of the righteous is in the World to Come”.

So what Rabbi Tarfon actually means is that (i) you're not obligated to finish your work of learning Torah because there's more Torah to learn than we can manage in our time on Earth [as Rabbi Tarfon says in the mishnah that immediately precedes this one] and that (ii) you're not free to abandon it because there is no cut-off point in one's life at which the Torah's obligations no longer apply, But this isn't quite what Ms Taub means.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain. There is a certain symmetry in the idea that campaigners with an abbreviated name should be encouraged to rally round an abbreviated battle-cry. Even so, I look forward to a time when politicians, businessmen and campaigners will be comfortable to speak Rabbi Tarfon’s words in full.

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Pirkei Avot comes to Ruth

Left over from Shavuot

I was supposed to say a few words of Torah last week at the Beit Knesset Hanassi’s Shavuot Ne’ilat HaChag. I prepared a devar Torah that I’ve now written up for Avot Today and I’ve posted it below. In the event, I didn’t speak on this topic at all: I shelved it in favour of a dispute that broke out between two of our grandkids as to who owns ice cubes when one child pours water into an ice cube tray owned by the other. Anyway, without further ado, here’s …

 
PIRKEI AVOT COMES TO RUTH

Shavuot raises fascinating issues for Pirkei Avot enthusiasts such as myself, since there is no obvious interface between Pirkei Avot and Megillat Ruth. None of the 60 or so rabbis who are name-checked in Avot cite any verses from Megillat Ruth at all—and yet most of this short canonical book is about middot and mussar: the very stuff of which Pirkei Avot is made.

We don’t have to venture very far into Megillat Ruth before we find somewhere that Pirkei Avot comes into play. The very first verse is redolent with Avot-related issues:

וַיְהִי, בִּימֵי שְׁפֹט הַשֹּׁפְטִים, וַיְהִי רָעָב, בָּאָרֶץ; וַיֵּלֶךְ אִישׁ מִבֵּית לֶחֶם יְהוּדָה, לָגוּר בִּשְׂדֵי מוֹאָב--הוּא וְאִשְׁתּוֹ, וּשְׁנֵי בָנָיו

And it came to pass, in the days when the judges judged, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem Yehudah went to live in the fields of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons.

We learn that Elimelech disappears off to Moab together with his wife Naomi and their two sons. Since Megillat Ruth doesn’t spell out why he does this, we could be don lekaf zechut and judge him favourably, saying that Elimelech may well have had honourable reasons for doing so (Avot 1:6), but Rashi—following a midrash in Ruth Rabba—points to him running away in order to avoid having a stream of poor and hungry people turning up on his doorstep. This is not a crime, but it’s definitely not regarded as best Pirkei Avot practice: indeed, Yose ben Yochanan Ish Yerushalayim (Avot 1:5) urges us to keep open house for the poor and let them be the children of your household. I’ll say more on that later.

The Malbim (Geza Yishai on Megillat Ruth) explains the departure of Elimelech in a way that is both more favourable to him, and less so. He is don lekaf zechut to the point that, in the Malbim’s eyes, Elimelech feared that the angry poor would descend on his home and loot it, adding that he only intended to stay away until their rage relented and that he established his home in the sedei Moav, the countryside, rather than in a settled area where bad influences abounded. According to the Biur Hagra though, this ploy failed since Elimelech’s sons Machlon and Chilion assimilated into the local culture.

Having initially pointed to a plausible ground for Elimelech’s flight, the Malbim identifies a downside to his actions: even if Elimelech was justified in leaving Bet Lechem, he was the only wealthy man there to do so: all the others stayed put. This causes two Pirkei Avot problems: (i) he is falling foul of Hillel’s precept of standing solidly together with one’s people, al tifrosh min hatzibbur (Avot 2:5) and, (ii) since he is apparently happy that others should give tzedakah to the poor while he doesn’t, he is deemed as being mean and stingy in terms of the Avot 5:16.

Should Elimelech have, remained in Bet Lechem Yehudah, opened his house to the poor and fed them? Yes, says PA and yes say many traditional commentaries—this is something we should all do. Perhaps unsurprisingly most modern commentators say “yes—but no”.   Thus R’ Yaakov Hillel—who usually takes a stricter line wherever he can—says that in our generation we must be extremely careful. Why? Because we live in affluent times and “most people cannot handle a lifestyle that deviates greatly from contemporary norms”. Other rabbis recommend limiting this hospitality in other ways: for example, it should not impose a burdensome workload on one’s wife, and the tzniut of the ladyfolk of one’s home should not be compromised by the presence of a ceaseless stream of hungry male visitors. 

A further question that the opening verse of Megillat Ruth invites is whether Moab was an acceptable place for a Torah scholar to move to in the first place. At Avot 4:18 Rabbi Nehorai teaches:

הֱוֵי גוֹלֶה לִמְקוֹם תּוֹרָה, וְאַל תֹּאמַר שֶׁהִיא תָבוֹא אַחֲרֶֽיךָ, שֶׁחֲבֵרֶֽיךָ יְקַיְּמֽוּהָ בְיָדֶֽךָ, וְאֶל בִּינָתְךָ אַל תִּשָּׁעֵן

Exile yourself to a place of Torah; do not say that it will come after you, because it’s your friends [who are learning partners] who sustain your Torah: so don’t rely on your own understanding.

There is no suggestion that Moab is a makom Torah and no hint from Megillat Ruth that Elimelech’s Torah learning might followed him there. Incidentally the Pele Yo’etz, in his sefer Elef Hamagen, lists various differences between the two most important things in a man’s life, which are his Torah and his wife. One such difference is that, when a man leaves town his wife will follow him—while the Torah won’t. We learn this from the sad case of R’ Elazar ben Arach (Shabbat 147b), who actually followed his own wife and relocated at the popular health spa of Diomsit, forgetting all his Torah in the process.

I shall conclude with a moral-driven message for the wealthy which we learn from the tale of R’ Yose ben Kisma at Avot 6:9: it’s better to be a poor man and live in an Ir gedolah shel chachamim and soferim, a citadel of Torah, than to have literally assets in the millions but live elsewhere. If Elimelech had only appreciated this, he would have stayed put and the course of Jewish history would have changed.

And that’s why we should all be grateful to be living in Rechavia now, a corner of Jerusalem that is literally sprouting chachamim and soferim and where the general level of security, health and affluence is relatively high.

May the Almighty in his wisdom confer upon all the rest of Israel the many blessings and chasadim that he has conferred on us here and now, and may we see this in our own lifetimes.

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Superstition, stealing from the poor, and making sense of a mishnah

There are many different ways to learn Avot, but they can all be divided, broadly speaking, into two camps. The first involves digging deeply into two things: text, which lies on the surface, as it were, and context, which is not visible on the face of each teaching but can be accessed by looking beyond it. The second does neither of those things. Rather, it seeks to identify a moral principle that underlies the teaching or that is reflected by it.

In the first approach, we might ask questions like “what precisely does this word mean?” or “why was this word chosen when another might have been?” We might also seek to frame the teaching by asking if it was addressed to oneself, to one’s students, to one’s colleagues or to the population at large. We might also investigate the immediate economic and political circumstances in which the speaker lived, and then contrast his words with other sayings learned in his name and which are brought in the Talmud or midrashic literature.

In the second approach, we start with the premise that the teaching before us has been included in Avot because it has a moral or ethical content that is of lasting value, or because it can be read in a way that does so. We then match this moral content against the political, economic and social circumstances of our own lives, in our own generations.

The basic difference between the two approaches is that the first enables us the better to discover what the Tanna who authored the teaching actually had in mind when he was articulating it—in other words, what the teaching meant to him. In the second, we seek to find out what the teaching means to us.

Neither approach is “right” or “wrong” and there is no reason why we should not systematically employ both. I have often done this myself, usually starting with text-and-context and then moving on to the second approach. The advantage of the first approach is that it brings us closer to the mindset of some of our earliest and most brilliant rabbinical scholars. However, the more closely we pinpoint the precise meaning of a saying in Avot and tie it down to its immediate context, the greater the distance we create between that saying and our own very different lifestyles and circumstances.

The advantage of the latter approach is that it will enable us to extract a takeaway message from every mishnah and baraita in Pirkei Avot. We have to accept, however, that we may face the accusation that we are putting meanings into the mouths of rabbis who clearly had something else in mind at the time they were speaking.

Why have I written this? Because I recently came across a troubling passage in When a Jew seeks wisdom: The Sayings of the Fathers. There Seymour Rossel has this to say of Pirkei Avot:

“Its sayings and advice are still fresh and useful today. If anything, they have grown more important, for as we read them we can see in them the mark of eternal truths”.

Had he stopped there, that would have been fine. But after this positive endorsement of the tractate’s content he adds:

“True, some [of the sayings] are so outdated as to be beyond repair, others the product of ancient superstitions, and still others merely folklore inserted as if by accident”.

I was profoundly disturbed by this. In the first place I struggle to identify any sayings in Avot that can be designated “the product of ancient superstitions” or “merely folklore inserted as if by accident”. Secondly, I cannot agree that any of the sayings in Avot are “so outdated as to be beyond repair”.  Many modern English commentaries on Avot have breathed fresh life into it without ever extinguishing the old. Foremost among these are R’ Abraham J. Twerski’s Visions of the Fathers, Irving M. Bunim’s Ethics from Sinai, R’ Yaakov Hillel’s Eternal Ethics from Sinai, R’ Reuven P. Bulka’s Chapters of the Sages, R’ Marc D. Angel’s The Koren Pirkei Avot and (I’m mentioning this only for the sake of completeness) my own Pirkei Avot: a Users’ Manual.

While Seymour Rossel’s book does not state this explicitly, it is apparent from the format, illustrations and gently didactic style of the text that it has been written specifically with children in mind. I would guess that the target audience is readers who range from the age of bar- or batmitzvah to the mid-teens. At this age, while they may feel that they are old enough to make up their own minds as to the status and worth of the teachings in Pirkei Avot, they are just as vulnerable as the rest of us to subliminal messages regarding the tractate’s pedigree—and, in a book such as Rossel’s which is written in a warm and accessible style, they may feel dismissive of its origins if they associate Avot with superstitions and random folklore.

You have to read about a quarter of the way into Rossel’s book before you find what he calls “an example of superstitious fact-gathering”. There he cites Avot 5:12:

בְּאַרְבָּעָה פְרָקִים הַדֶּֽבֶר מִתְרַבֶּה, בָּרְבִיעִית, וּבַשְּׁבִיעִית, וּבְמוֹצָאֵי שְׁבִיעִית, וּבְמוֹצָאֵי הַחַג שֶׁבְּכָל שָׁנָה וְשָׁנָה. בָּרְבִיעִית, מִפְּנֵי מַעֲשֵׂר עָנִי שֶׁבַּשְּׁלִישִׁית. בַּשְּׁבִיעִית, מִפְּנֵי מַעֲשֵׂר עָנִי שֶׁבַּשִּׁשִּׁית. בְּמוֹצָאֵי שְׁבִיעִית, מִפְּנֵי פֵּרוֹת שְׁבִיעִית. בְּמוֹצָאֵי הַחַג שֶׁבְּכָל שָׁנָה וְשָׁנָה, מִפְּנֵי גֵֽזֶל מַתְּנוֹת עֲנִיִּים

There are four periods when plague increases: in the fourth and seventh years [of the sabbatical cycle], in the year following the seventh, and following the Chag [i.e. Sukkot] each year. On the fourth year, because of [the neglect of] the tithe to the poor that must be given on the third year; on the seventh, because of the tithe to the poor that must be given on the sixth; on the year after the seventh, because of the produce of the sabbatical year; and following each Chag, because of the robbing of the poor of the gifts due to them.

On this mishnah he writes:

“We may smile in amusement at this belief that harming the poor brings evil and disease upon the community as a whole, and we may believe that God would not be so cruel as to make the innocent suffer along with the guilty …

…superstition such as this is not so reliable as beliefs based on actual data. It can get in the way of making truly intelligent decisions in regard to important problems. So Judaism no longer relies on superstition to any significant extent”.

I personally haven’t found anything amusing to smile about in this mishnah. If a reader wishes to take it in a literal physical sense, they may quite reasonably do so. Hunger, particularly when it is so severe as to cause malnutrition, can lower one’s resistance to illness and, among the poor who tend to live in more crowded and sometimes insanitary conditions, disease can spread rapidly. A reader can take this mishnah in a more abstract, principled manner too: rather than teaching of the importance of good nutrition, it is a lesson in being sensitive to the needs and feelings of others and of assuming some responsibility for the well-being of those less well off than ourselves, even if we may not happen to be personally acquainted with them.

Incidentally, there is no harm in reading the provisions of Avot critically, especially since some of its teachings appear to challenge or even contradict other ones. Rabbis have done this for centuries and it is part of our tradition. Avot is robust enough to withstand even tough and sometimes unsympathetic criticism (see e.g. Joseph G. Rosenstein’s Reflections on Pirkei Avot).

The mishnayot and baraitot of Avot, treated as nothing more than slick slogans and soundbites, may seem outdated and irreparable, but I believe that it is disrespectful of the Tannaim to dismiss their words without examining them carefully. It is also wasteful because, in dismissing them, we also discard the opportunity to measure our own thoughts, feelings, aspirations and prejudices against yardsticks for conduct that have shaped who we are, as Jews today.

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Dealing with our closest neighbour

An Avot mishnah for Shabbat: Perek 1 (Parashat Naso)

In this, our second series of erev Shabbat posts on the perek of the week, we return to Perek 1.

There’s a curious mishnah near the beginning of Avot, at 1:7, which has something to say about the company we keep. Taught by Nittai HaArbeli, it opens like this:

הַרְחֵק מִשָּׁכֵן רָע, וְאַל תִּתְחַבֵּר לָרָשָׁע

Distance yourself from an evil neighbour, and don’t be a friend to a wicked person…

Most commentators not unreasonably take this advice literally, for there is much to discuss on that basis. Issues regularly pondered include how to tell whether a neighbour is bad or not, what’s the difference between “bad neighbour” and “wicked person”, how far to distance or disassociate oneself, and how in practice does one achieve these ends, particularly if one is expected to judge all people favourably unless it is impossible to do so (Avot 1:6). Additionally, in contemporary Jewish society, despite its affluence, the costs associated with moving home are seen as a deterrent—and, even when one moves away from an evil neighbour, there is no guarantee that one’s new neighbours will be any better.

There is an approach to this teaching which not resolve these issues but seeks to divert it from interpersonal relationships to the zone of introspection. In the writings of the Kozhnitzer Maggid and R’ Ovadyah Hedayah we are encouraged to view the “bad neighbour” as our own yetzer hara (“evil inclination”) which competes for our attention with our yetzer tov (“good inclination”).

According to the Vilna Gaon (on Ruth 1:18) the yetzer hara is compared to a fly which sits between the two openings of the heart, buzzing between them. The yetzer hara’s task is to entice us sin. If it fails to achieve this task by direct means, it tries another way: by encouraging us to perform mitzvot that are really only a disguise for an underlying sin—for example short-changing a customer in a shop in order to donate the “profit” to charity.

If the yetzer tov and yetzer hara are both locked inside us, there are plainly limits as to how far we might distance ourselves from our own worse selves. Here there are no easy answers. Keeping away from obvious temptations (bars, fashionable clothing shops, gambling dens, nightclubs, confectionery stores or whatever else takes one’s fancy)—these practical steps can help up to a point. Our sages, quoting God’s own words as it were, go further: barati yetzer hara, barati Torah tavlin (“I created the evil inclination, and I created Torah as its antidote”: Kiddushin 30b). But ultimately we still have to take the antidote. In other words we have no choice other than to cultivate and build up enough self-discipline so that we can effectively put our yetzer hara into a sort of internal exile.

If you enjoyed this post or found it useful, please feel welcome to share it with others. Thank you.

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Shalom from Sinai: a Shavuot miscellany

Chag same'ach

As we approach Shavuot and the season of the Giving of the Torah, let’s remind ourselves that we are celebrating not just the Ten Commandments (with a further 603 Torah commandments to follow) but also the transmission to Moses of the Oral Torah. As we learn at the beginning of Avot 1:1:

מֹשֶׁה קִבֵּל תּוֹרָה מִסִּינַי

Moshe received the Torah from Sinai…

This can only mean the Oral Torah—the teachings of which Pirkei Avot is an important part—because we already know from the Written Torah that Moses received it on Mount Sinai and the mishnayot of the Oral Torah are not meant to repeat what we already know from our written tradition.

On behalf of Avot Today, its contributors and its commentators, I wish you all chag same’ach, a happy and meaningful festival in which we can all reflect in depth and at leisure on the intricate web of laws and ethical principles that shape our daily lives and mould our very existence.

 Avot Today: an update

Since our previous update, interest in our Facebook Group and Blog has continued to grow.

The Avot Today Facebook Group now has nearly 340 members. We keep looking for more serious contributors who can write for us on a regular basis. If you think you might be such a person, please message me (Jeremy). The Avot Today blog has received over 75,000 site visits from readers since it started in May 2020. 

The blog holds all the Avot posts that feature on the Facebook Group. It has the advantage that its text can be word-searched and the topics it covers can also be hunted down by keywords.

Do please share this information with anyone and everyone you know who loves or appreciates Pirkei Avot. The more the readers, the more the comments—and the more we can all learn from each other.

 

Avot for Spanish-speaking women

I don’t know how many readers of Avot Today have Spanish as their mother tongue but, if they do, here is something for them:  titled “The wonderful role of being a Jewish woman”: Spreading Judaism for Spanish-speaking women, it’s a 43 minute presentation by Rabbanit Esther Matot. Rabbanit Matot, who was born and raised in Argentina, has been dedicated for more than a decade to promoting greater knowledge of Judaism, especially among women. You can check it out here.

Psyched for Avot

Rabbi Mordechai Schiffman’s regular Psyched for Avot posts are going from strength to strength. If you have yet to sample Rabbi Schiffman’s special blend of erudition and psychology, here’s a link to over 160 shiurim on Pirkei Avot which he gave over the years at Kingsway Jewish Center. You can also take the time to read the 56 essays, covering the first three perakim of Avot, which he has made available on his website here.

Reclaimed!

Many Avot Today readers are also members of the Judaism Reclaimed Facebook Group, here. A much bigger group than Avot Today, with nearly 7,500 members, it describes itself as being “dedicated to discussions relating to Philosophy and Theology in the Torah”.  Its many posts and discussions occasionally stray into the territory of Pirkei Avot. The most recent of these is a discussion of the proper response to the death of an enemy, posted in the wake of the death last month of Iran’s President Raisi in a helicopter accident.  Judaism Reclaimed has now established a parallel weblog on which it is in the process of reposting all its Facebook posts. At present it has around 70 pieces, all of which can be searched by text and by keyword. You can check it out here.

Rav Asher Weiss on Avot

It’s not officially available till 1 July, but yesterday I found a copy of Rav Asher Weiss on Avos on the shelves of the iconic Pomeranz bookstore in Jerusalem. It’s a two-volume set, published by Mosaica, and you can read all about it here. 

I’ve bought a copy and look forward to perusing it. Given Rav Weiss’s eminence as a contemporary Torah scholar, I’m sure it will contain many fascinating insights into Pirkei Avot and I hope to share some of them on Avot Today.

Who learned Torah from Joshua?

The festival of Shavuot, which Jews around the world celebrate this week, commemorates Matan Torah, the Giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai that is so dramatically described in the Bible. Moses was the Torah’s first recipient, but now it is ours. How did the Torah begin its journey from the safe hands of Moses to our own?

The first mishnah in Avot opens by outlining the chain of tradition that runs from Matan Torah to the point at which the Torah passes into the hands of the Anshei Knesset Gedolah (“the Men of the Great Assembly”). This was a body of scholars  who lived around the beginning of the Second Temple period and who commenced an ongoing process of teaching and explaining the Oral Torah which continues to this day. Avot 1:1 begins like this:

מֹשֶׁה קִבֵּל תּוֹרָה מִסִּינַי וּמְסָרָהּ לִיהוֹשֻֽׁעַ, וִיהוֹשֻֽׁעַ לִזְקֵנִים, וּזְקֵנִים לִנְבִיאִים, וּנְבִיאִים מְסָרֽוּהָ לְאַנְשֵׁי כְנֶֽסֶת הַגְּדוֹלָה

Moses received the Torah from Sinai and gave it over to Joshua. Joshua [gave it over] to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets gave it over to the Men of the Great Assembly.

This post considers just one question: who were the “Elders”?

The answer should be obvious. Following Joshua’s death, the Tanach records the era of the Shofetim (“Judges”), in which Israel was ruled by a succession of ad-hoc military leaders. Towards the end of this period the people clamoured for the appointment of a king. This was done through the agency of Shmuel—the first of a lengthy sequence of Prophets who initially guided and advised Israel’s kings and continued to offer their encouragement and inspiration until the early days of the Second Temple, when prophecy ceased. We should therefore be safe to assume that the “Elders” (in Hebrew, zakenim) were the Judges: they received Torah from Joshua and passed it on to the Prophets (not to the kings, whom the mishnah does not record as being not part of the chain of tradition).

The Bartenura’s commentary on Avot 1:1 states that the “Elders” were those people who lived after the time of Joshua. This should alert us to a problem. This should be obvious—but is it? If this is so obvious, why does the Bartenura need to give it?

As it turns out, there is no clear consensus as to how Joshua handed Torah down to future generations.

The commentary ascribed to Rashi agrees that Joshua passed the Torah to the Judges, starting with Otniel ben Kenaz, but raises the possibility of an alternative. Joshua, he explains, did not want to pass the Torah on to the Seventy Elders who were granted prophecy in Moses’ lifetime (Bemidbar 11:24-34), but no reason is offered for his reluctance to do so. R’ Yehoshua Falk (Binyan Yehoshua on Avot deRabbi Natan) follows this Rashi and the Sefat Emet (Imrei Kodsho al Masechet Avot) appears to prefer Rashi’s “Seventy Elders” option.

As usual with Avot, there are further views to consider. Abarbanel (Nachalat Avot) is clearly troubled by two things. One is the fact that the mishnah uses the plural word “Judges”, while Otniel ben Kenaz is only one judge. The other is the fact that the Seventy Elders did not live till the time of the Prophets and could not therefore have passed the tradition to them. He therefore crafts a more complex scheme of transmission: Joshua shared his Torah with the members of his Bet Din (i.e. a plurality of Judges) and also to Otniel ben Kenaz, from whom it was passed from judge to judge until there era of the Prophets.

The significance of the plurality—“zakenim”—is not lost on R’ Sha’ul Chai Moskovitz (Lev Same’ach) who observes that, when all Israel was no longer encamped together in the desert, it became necessary to spread the learning so that the various tribes could take it with them to their respective territories. This explanation assumes that zakenim are literally the old and wise (zakenim = zeh kaneh chochmah, according to the Chasid Ya’avetz), rather than judges in either the judicial sense or as political and military leaders.

Is this all a historical quibble, or does this part of the mishnah have a message for us even today? R’ Chaim Yosef David Azulai (the ‘Chida’) presumably thinks so because he looks at this link in the chain of tradition through in terms of middot—the human qualities we are encouraged to cultivate. In his Kikar L’Eden he teaches that the word “zakenim” alludes not to the status of the recipients but to their humility, the gematria of the Hebrew letters that spell “zakenim” is identical to that of the phrase “God of the humble”. Elsewhere, in his Ahavah beTa’anugim, the Chida offers another explanation: in short, “zakenim” are people who, having grown older and wiser, are now controlled less by the demands of the flesh than by the spirit.

My unauthoritative opinion on the subject? Noting that the Torah is handed down by Joshua to the Elders and the Prophets before it comes down to the Men of the Great Assembly, I feel that this teaches us something important. Joshua was a Torah scholar who spent his time midrashically in the Bet Midrash of his Moses his teacher. From this Torah scholar the Torah passes through the hands of the zakenim who, as portrayed by Tanach, are effectively men and women of action and military commanders.  Torah then passes through the Prophets—people who, in addition to being a link in the chain, have also their own direct channel of communication with God. And the Prophets pass their received Torah to the Men of the Great Assembly, a body of lawyers, sages and legislators. This shows that it is for every one of us, regardless of our very different functions, professional callings and capabilities, to take our share of the responsibility of transmitting Torah from one generation to the next.

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The cost of Torah and the price of honour

An Avot baraita for Shabbat: Perek 6 (parashat Bemidbar)

Continuing our series of erev Shabbat posts on the perek of the week, we finally reach Perek 6, “Kinyan HaTorah” (“Acquisition of the Torah”), which we learn ahead of the festival of Shavuot which marks the giving of the Torah at Sinai.

Not all the teachings in Avot consist of rabbis telling people what to do. One of them, a baraita in the final perek (Avot 6:9), opens with a short story:

אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹסֵי בֶּן קִסְמָא: פַּֽעַם אֶחָת הָיִֽיתִי מְהַלֵּךְ בַּדֶּֽרֶךְ, וּפָגַע בִּי אָדָם אֶחָד, וְנָתַן לִי שָׁלוֹם, וְהֶחֱזַֽרְתִּי לוֹ שָׁלוֹם, אָמַר לִי: רַבִּי, מֵאֵיזֶה מָקוֹם אָֽתָּה, אָמַֽרְתִּי לוֹ: מֵעִיר גְּדוֹלָה שֶׁל חֲכָמִים וְשֶׁל סוֹפְרִים אָֽנִי. אָמַר לִי: רַבִּי, רְצוֹנְךָ שֶׁתָּדוּר עִמָּֽנוּ בִּמְקוֹמֵֽנוּ, וַאֲנִי אֶתֵּן לָךְ אֶֽלֶף אֲלָפִים דִּנְרֵי זָהָב וַאֲבָנִים טוֹבוֹת וּמַרְגָּלִיּוֹת. אָמַֽרְתִּי לוֹ: אִם אַתָּה נוֹתֵן לִי כָּל כֶּֽסֶף וְזָהָב וַאֲבָנִים טוֹבוֹת וּמַרְגָּלִיּוֹת שֶׁבָּעוֹלָם, אֵינִי דָר אֶלָּא בִּמְקוֹם תּוֹרָה

Rabbi Yose ben Kisma said: Once I was going on my way and I encountered a man. He greeted me and I returned his greeting. He said to me: "Rabbi, where are you from?" I said to him: "I’m from a great city of sages and scholars". He said to me: "Rabbi, would you like to live with us in our place? I will give you a million gold dinars of gold, precious stones and pearls”. I said I to him: "If you were to give me all the silver, gold, precious stones and pearls in the world, I wouldn’t live anywhere but in a place of Torah”.

Is any further comment needed, or indeed desirable? Here, in narrative form, we read a simple story of a great and highly principled rabbi who refuses all inducements and blandishments for the sake of being able to learn Torah in the company of other like-minded scholars.

Those who discuss this stranger tend to do so in a pejorative sense. Thus R’ Abraham J. Twerski (Visions of the Fathers) describes him as “lacking the basic underpinnings of spirituality” with his “superficial manners and his overvaluation of money”. The Chafetz Chaim says the man was not asking Rabbi Yose to teach Torah but only that people would honour him (Shmuel Charlap, Chafetz Chaim al Avot).  The Maharal of Prague, seeking to identify him by name, pointed to two candidates who could have scarcely been more different from one another: Elijah the Prophet and the Satan.

But perhaps there is more to this story than meets the eye. For one thing, though we know very little about Rabbi Yose ben Kisma, we do know that he lived and taught in the Roman city of Caesarea—an affluent place but hardly a notable makom Torah after the Bar Kochka revolt of 132-136 CE.

Further, everyone reads this baraita from the standpoint of Rabbi Yose ben Kisma. But why do we not read it too from the perspective of the unknown man whom he meets? Here we find a man who is so desperate to secure a rabbi who will illuminate his town with Torah and enrich it with his knowledge that he is prepared to pay any price for it. Perhaps he is even greater in his dedication to Torah than is Rabbi Yose. After all, the rabbi articulates his concern for himself, while the man he meets is seeking a rabbi for an entire community.

If you enjoyed this post or found it useful, please feel welcome to share it with others. Thank you.

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Don't do it just because you can!

Taking a simplistic view of Jewish life, we can divide our day between (i) things we absolutely must do, (ii) things we are told to do as a sort of optional extra, (iii) things we are allowed to decide for ourselves whether we do them or not, (iv) things we are told not to do but there may be no problem if we do them, and (v) things we are prohibited from doing. When we study the Torah, much of what we learn involves looking at particular actions and trying to decide which category they belong to.

Much if not most of Pirkei Avot addresses the third category: activities where we have an option or a discretion as to whether we do them or not. The tractate helps to sensitise us and make us more aware of the consequences of our actions.

As we have mentioned before, Rabban Gamliel ben Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi (Avot 2:3) teaches:

הֱווּ זְהִירִין בָּרָשׁוּת, שֶׁאֵין מְקָרְבִין לוֹ לְאָדָם אֶלָּא לְצֹֽרֶךְ עַצְמָן, נִרְאִין כְּאוֹהֲבִין בְּשַֽׁעַת הַנָּאָתָן, וְאֵין עוֹמְדִין לוֹ לְאָדָם בְּשַֽׁעַת דָּחֳקוֹ

 Be careful with the government, for they befriend a person only for their own needs. They appear to be friends when it is beneficial to them, but they do not stand by a person at the time of his distress.

While the normal meaning of this mishnah is plain, there is another way of reading it that mines it for some fairly heavy mussar (moral chastisement). We do so by translating the Hebrew word רָשׁוּת (“rashut”, meaning “the government”) as “permission”.  If we take this route, we then have to reinterpret the rest of the mishnah. Who is it now that befriends a person for its own sake but deserts him at a time of need? The only plausible answer is a person’s yetzer hara, the urge to perform acts that may be downright evil, certainly illegal or, as in our case, merely undesirable.

Is there any source for this? Yes. The Torah (Vayikra 19:2) requires us to be kedoshim, holy people, because God himself is holy. On this verse, Rashi cites a midrash which explains that being holy entails being perushim, people who separate themselves from sexual immorality and other sins. Ramban picks up on this: perushim in his view means more than separating oneself from that which is forbidden. How so?

According to Ramban we must distance ourselves from not only that which is forbidden but also with that which we are permitted to do, if by doing a permitted act we commit a chillul Hashem (a desecration of God’s name) and damage our own reputation at the same time. Examples are not hard to come by. The drinking of alcoholic beverages is permitted under Jewish law, but a Jew who knocks back half a bottle of whisky and carouses through the streets at 3.00am, singing bawdy songs at the top of his voice, can expect that neither his reputation nor that of God will benefit from this exercise. Rather, the opposite: people will view him as a drunken nuisance and a poor ambassador for the religion to which he aspires.  This sort of conduct is called being a naval birshut haTorah (a despicable person with the rashut of the Torah).

R' Chaim Druckman (Avot leBanim) cites this explanation of rashut in his discussion of Rabban Gamliel’s mishnah above, and he is not alone in offering it since it can be found three centuries after Ramban in R’ Shmuel de Uzeda’s Midrash Shmuel. However, it does seem to strain the meaning of the rest of the mishnah and, despite its powerful message, the injunction not to be a naval birshut haTorah does not seem on the face of it to be the message that Rabban Gamliel had in mind.

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Keep the donkey, not the jewel!

There’s an anonymous Mishnah at Avot 5:13 that says a lot about our attitude towards property.

אַרְבַּע מִדּוֹת בָּאָדָם: הָאוֹמֵר שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלִּי וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלָּךְ, זוֹ מִדָּה בֵינוֹנִית, וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים זוֹ מִדַּת סְדוֹם.

שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלָּךְ וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלִּי, עַם הָאָֽרֶץ.

שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלָּךְ וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלָּךְ, חָסִיד.

שֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלִּי וְשֶׁלִּי שֶׁלִּי, רָשָׁע

There are four types of people: One who says: "What is mine is mine and what is yours is yours" — this is a neutral quality; others say that this is characteristic of Sodom.

One who says: "What is mine is yours and what is yours is mine" is a boor. 

One who says, "What is mine is yours and what is yours is yours" is a chasid (i.e. a really good and kind sort person).

And one who says: "What is mine is mine and what is yours is mine" is wicked.

Merely okay, or something better?

A midrash (Devarim Rabbah on Ekev, 3:3; Yalkut Shimoni on Mishlei, 947) tells a story of Shimon ben Shetach that is usually a little embellished in the telling. The Wikipedia version, slightly edited, reads like this:

Shimon ben Shetach … lived in humble circumstances, supporting himself and his family by conducting a small business in linen goods. Once his pupils presented him with a donkey which they had purchased from a gentile merchant. Using the legal formula prescribed by the Talmud, they said "When we pay you, this donkey and everything on it is ours." After receiving the gift, Shimon removed the saddle and discovered a costly jewel. The students joyously told their master that he might now cease toiling since the proceeds from the jewel would make him wealthy—the legal formula of the sale meant that the jewel was now his property. Shimon, however, replied that even though the letter of the law said they were right, it was clear that the seller had no intention of selling the jewel along with the animal. Shimon returned the gem to the merchant, who exclaimed, "Praised be the God of Shimon ben Shetach!"

[Incidentally, in the two versions of the midrash cited above, the contract is made not by the talmidim but Shimon ben Shetach himself, and there is no mention of the use of any Talmud-prescribed formula. Moreover, the term ‘gentile merchant’ is not used.  The seller is described simply as an Ishmaelite, i.e. an Arab. Another version of this tale is found in Talmud Yerushalmi, Bava Metzia, halachah 5, daf 8a. There the students of Shimon ben Shetach buy the donkey for him so that he will no longer have to earn his living by selling flax. In all three versions cited here, the jewel is not found under the saddle but is tied to the donkey’s neck].

What does this story have to do with our mishnah? Quite a bit, since we have to ask whose jewel is the rabbi giving the merchant—his own or the merchant’s? If the former, he is giving away what he owns and is therefore a chasid. If the latter, he is returning it to its rightful master and only qualifies for being an average sort of person at best.

The addition of the story that the talmidim bought the donkey with the stipulation that its owner passes title to “the donkey and everything on it” provides a reason for letting us say that, since the jewel would then be gifted to Shimon ben Shetach and therefore belonged to him, by gifting it to the merchant he was being a chasid. However, there is a simpler way to achieve the same objective. Where a person who parts with an object that belongs to him loses hope of recovering it, this abandonment of hope (yi’ush) effectively renders that item ownerless—and thus capable of being acquired by the next person who comes to possess it.  On this basis the rabbi, on acquiring the jewel through yi’ush and then returning it to the merchant, would qualify under our mishnah as a chasid.

Is it wrong to be average?

What is so bad about just being regarded as an average, neutral sort of person, neither favouring oneself over others nor promoting their interests at one’s own expense? One answer is that, even if you are neither a tzaddik nor a rasha, and indeed treat others as you would yourself, this neutrality does not foster the positive value of love between fellow human beings (“Love your neighbour as yourself”: Leviticus 19:18) that lies at the very core of the Torah.

Another reason to prefer to be a chasid is that neutrality is actually a form of fatalism: a person can believe in God but still say: “Everything that happens in this world is the way God wants it. He created the mazal for each of us; our fate is in the stars. If God wanted anyone else to have my money/house/car He would have given it to them in the first place.” This attitude, which reflects a view of a static world in which it is impermissible for any individual to affect the material wellbeing of another, is unacceptable in terms of Jewish thought. One might have thought that the litmus test of a person’s human quality is not what he thinks but what he does and that a bad attitude, in and of itself, is not as important as how a person acts. The mishnah therefore comes to tell us otherwise: in this case anyone who has this attitude to life is not merely misguided: he is evil, a rasha.

Yi’ush: abandoning hope

The Malbim (Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yechiel Michel Wisser, in Artzot HaShalom) posits another scenario that brings this Mishnah into the context of yi’ush. Take the case of Reuven and Shimon who are travelling together, each with their own goods.  A thief comes along and steals the property of them both. Shimon abandons hope of ever recovering his property; Reuven however perseveres and later recovers both his and Shimon’s goods. As a matter of halachah, Reuven doesn’t just get his own stuff back. He is now also the rightful owner of the goods that used to belong to the despairing Shimon. If he returns the stolen items to Shimon, this is an example of “what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours” in a positive sense. But, explains the Malbim, if Shimon seizes his former property back by force on the basis of “what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours”, even though he has said exactly the same thing as Reuven, he has demonstrated the middah of Sodom.

 An obvious question here is why voluntarily giving the recovered property back to its original owner is only a middle-of-the-road middah and not regarded as an act of chesed. The answer suggested by R’ David Sperber (Michtam leDavid al Masechet Avot) is that Reuven only returned the goods to Shimon after the latter contemplated litigation and had approached a Bet Din with a view to instituting legal proceedings.

 There’s a further twist to the question of yi’ush.  Let us say that the Ishmaelite donkey vendor had totally lost hope of recovering his precious jewel. Overjoyed at receiving it back against all odds, he utters the words "Praised be the God of Shimon ben Shetach!" and we all rejoice in the kiddush Hashem: the jewel that by law belonged to the rabbi is returned to its original owner, and both are happy.  Now, if at any later stage in his life the donkey seller loses another jewel, particularly if he does so in an area in which there is a Jewish population, he will recall that his previously lost jewel was returned by a righteous Jew and he will likely continue to nurture the hope that another worshipper of the same God will come across it and return it to him. There will be no yi’ush and, if any Jew does return it, he will only fall within the category of “what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours”.  He will not be a chasid but an ordinary, unexceptional citizen.

 What about the students?

 There still remains the problem of the talmidim of Shimon ben Shetach. I am surprised that, if they knew our mishnah at Avot 5:13, they should have been so keen for their teacher to retain the jewel, sell it and live off its proceeds. He was after all a man whose attitude towards material wealth and well-being must surely have been familiar to them.

 Midrash does not name these students and it is likely that, given the difficult conditions under which Torah was studied during his lifetime, he may not have had many. We do however know that two talmidim he shared with Yehudah ben Tabbai went on to became the Nasi and Av Bet Din in their place: they were popular and outstanding personalities, Shemayah and Avtalyon, and there is nothing to connect them with this midrash.

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