But if you're so clever and so holy, why do you want to be rich and famous?

The sixth perek of Avot consists of a set of baraitot that tag along after the first five perakim of mishnayot. To some people they may seem like an afterthought, an accidental child trailing in the wake of five illustrious siblings. As if to rub it in, the rabbis named as authors of its teachings include Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi—stigmatised by all but Rambam and Tosefot Yom Tov as being only an Amora and not a real Tanna at all.

Though it contains the longest teaching in Avot, where at 6:6 we learn the 48 things that aid us to acquire Torah, the sixth chapter still contains only 11 baraitot and they are among the least frequently cited teachings in the tractate. But this perek should not be ignored. There is much to learn from it, if we only care to look.

I found myself thinking again about Avot 6:5, where an anonymous Tanna says:

אַל תְּבַקֵּשׁ גְּדֻלָּה לְעַצְמְךָ, וְאַל תַּחְמוֹד כָּבוֹד, יוֹתֵר מִלִּמּוּדֶֽךָ עֲשֵׂה, וְאַל תִּתְאַוֶּה לְשֻׁלְחָנָם שֶׁל מְלָכִים, שֶׁשֻּׁלְחָנְךָ גָּדוֹל מִשֻּׁלְחָנָם, וְכִתְרְךָ גָּדוֹל מִכִּתְרָם, וְנֶאֱמָן הוּא בַּֽעַל מְלַאכְתֶּֽךָ שֶׁיְּשַׁלֶּם לְךָ שְׂכַר פְּעֻלָּתֶֽךָ

Do not seek greatness for yourself, and do not lust for honour. Do more than you have learned. Don’t desire the table of kings, for your table is greater than theirs, and your crown is greater than theirs, and trustworthy is your Employer to pay you the rewards of your work.

As a preliminary question, we can ask: To whom is this baraita addressed? From the text itself we can infer that it these words are being spoken to someone who (i) is not a king but (ii) who is apparently interested in seeking high status (gedulah) and honor (kavod). He is however (iii) not fulfilling his maximum potential for action. He needs to be assured that (iv) what he has is greater than that which is possessed by those whom he wishes to join or emulate, and that (v) if he plays his cards right and serves God properly, he can be sure to receive his due reward.

We might also imagine that the addressee is someone whose appetite for power or high office has not been dampened by the warnings in the mishnayot earlier in Avot that he should be wary of the dangers of being a “household name” (literally “a name made great”: Avot 1:13), that he should shun public office (Avot 1:10, 3:6) and avoid those who hold it (Avot 2:3). Nor, plainly, has this person been confronted by the caution in the Talmud that high office kills whoever holds it (Pesachim 87b, cited on this baraita by Rabbi Ya’akov Emden, Lechem Shamayim).

The Maharam Shik, in his Chidushei Aggadot al Masechet Avot, perceptively asks why it is that a tzaddik or talmid chacham should ever seek greatness, riches and the pleasurable things of this world: surely this is not for them? He then supplies an answer, pointing to the words spoken by King Solomon (Kohelet 9:16):

Wisdom is better than strength. Even so, the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not listened to.

King Solomon was both rich and wise; his words and wisdom are still regularly pondered today, and the point made here is a good one. Can we truly say that we take sufficient care to weigh the words of someone who is poor, who presents himself badly and who looks more as though he is need of some helpful advice himself? And how eagerly do many of us seek to catch pearls of wisdom from someone who has been touched by wealth, fame or high responsibility? At any rate, this baraita serves as a sort of reality check for the impecunious tzaddik or talmid chacham: he must ask himself two questions: (i) is the benefit he seeks to confer on others his real motive for seeking greatness and honour? (ii) is he equipped to cope with the pressures, responsibilities and temptations that greatness and honour may put his way?

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Free will and floods -- a lesson from Noah revisited

I posted this piece three years ago and was disappointed that it attracted almost no reaction at all. I'm reposting it now to see whether the current readership of Avot Today has more to say about it.

There is a mishnah at Avot 5:2 that is seemingly out of place in a collection of teachings that deal with matters of morality and the improvement of one's character. It reads like this:

"There were ten generations from Adam to Noah, to let it be known how slow God is to anger—because all these generations increasingly angered Him until He brought upon them the waters of the Flood".

The obvious moral of the mishnah is implicit: if God is slow to anger, shouldn't we too make an effort not to fly off the handle? Isn't it only right that that we should temper our anger with careful thought as to why we are angry and whether a display of anger is indeed the appropriate response to whatever is troubling us?

There is however much more that can be said about this mishnah.

The world as a fish tank

The ten generations from Adam to Noah had ample time to assuage God’s anger and build the kind of World He envisaged. They did not do so and were almost entirely destroyed. This harsh judgement on the first ten generations of mankind does not mean that no decent, upright souls had ever walked the planet before the Flood. The Torah itself twice records that Enoch “walked with God,” and numerous midrashim praise the qualities of Adam, Seth and Methuselah. However, there is an irreducible number of righteous people below which God’s collective punishment cannot be prevented. This is demonstrated by the famous dialogue in which Abraham persuades God not to destroy the patently evil communities of Sodom and Gemorrah if 50, then 45, 40, 30, 20 or even 10 righteous people live here. Once he has negotiated God down to 10, Abraham breaks off the negotiation, presumably on the unspoken understanding that he has gone as far as he can go.

From the time of Adam until the generation of Noah, God waited patiently for some genuine sign of recognition, some glimmer of gratitude or respect, indeed any sort of response or interaction from His human creations. Not only was none forthcoming, but “the wickedness of man on Earth was great, and every desire in the thoughts of man was nothing but evil the whole time.”

Only Noah, whom the Torah describes as a tzaddik —a righteous man—found grace in God’s eyes. There is substantial debate as to quite how righteous Noah was, and the Torah’s account of his life after the Flood does not mark him out as a role model for subsequent generations. However, we learn that he had two particular qualities that marked him out for continuing the human race: (i) at a time of idolatry he believed in God, listened to Him and obeyed Him, and (ii) in an era of rampant sexual immorality he was a family man.

There is no way that we can understand or experience God’s perspective, but the following analogy might help. Imagine that you have purchased an expensive fish-tank with a selection of beautiful tropical fish. You furnish the fish-tank with all the accessories needed for their health and comfort, provide them with food and keep their environment clean and fresh. The fish however pay you no attention whatsoever. They have no gratitude and show no recognition of your love, your care and your efforts on their behalf. That wouldn’t be so bad by itself, but the fish become aggressive and fight, preferring to eat one another rather than avail themselves of the food you have provided.

There is no satisfaction to be gained by watching these fish swimming around in their tank. The time has come to jettison these fish and try again. But wait! There is one fish that swims expectantly to the surface when feeding time comes, one fish that refrains from attacking its fellows. You reject the idea of starting over with a new set of fish. Instead, you conceive a plan to breed them from this one fish and its mate in the hope that its less aggressive and more positive attributes may be passed on to its offspring.

The lack of any sort of positive response or recognition is almost inevitable with fish, but not with humans—sentient social beings who, having partaken of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, have a far wider scope for behaving in accordance with God’s will.

Free will, determinism and fear of Heaven

It may be that the function of this mishnah is to demonstrate the importance of free will since, without it, the repentance of sinners would be pointless. Starting with Adam, God could have created humans who were programmed to act in precisely the manner He chose for them. Their choices and their decisions could all have been determined in advance of their creation, as could their thoughts, their words and their social interactions. He could have even programmed into them the illusion that they were acting autonomously and of their own free will. The Torah’s Creation narrative however makes it plain that God did not follow this plan. If He had done, the World would have been a tidier, better-run and far more peaceful place, for sure, but the exercise of creating and populating such a World would have been about as meaningless as for an intelligent adult human being to play games with a set of toy soldiers.

For whatever reason, God created a World in which He made mankind in His image, which meant giving humans a measure of free will. This free will could be used for establishing some sort of relationship with God and for doing acts of kindness to others—just as God does good to them. The first ten generations sadly failed to establish any sort of relationship with God: they showed Him neither gratitude nor respect and had no love or fear of Him. They also failed to develop any sort of stable society in which they could act for the good of each other. In short, they were not exercising their freedom of choice in the way that God had hoped they would.

God gave humanity plenty of time to improve but, the more it did not do so, the angrier God became. Only Noah appeared to be acting along the lines that God had hoped would be the norm for humanity, so it was Noah who was saved—along with as much of his nuclear family as was necessary for God to begin human life on Earth for a second time. Everything else was simply washed away.

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Miracles without a message -- or something more meaningful?

As noted in our previous post, not every mishnah in Avot carries an obvious message for our daily lives. Indeed, some teachings seem quite out of place in a guide to Jewish ethics and moral behaviour.

A good example is Avot 5:7, which lists ten miracles that God performed for us in Temple times. Eight of them are clearly the consequence of divine intervention, so they teach us about God’s behaviour rather than ours. The other two—reproduced in bold below—do address aspects of human behaviour and are thus more relevant to mussar and middot. But how much do they really teach us?

The mishnah goes like this:

עֲשָׂרָה נִסִּים נַעֲשׂוּ לַאֲבוֹתֵֽינוּ בְּבֵית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ: לֹא הִפִּֽילָה אִשָּׁה מֵרֵֽיחַ בְּשַׂר הַקֹּֽדֶשׁ, וְלֹא הִסְרִֽיחַ בְּשַׂר הַקֹּֽדֶשׁ מֵעוֹלָם, וְלֹא נִרְאָה זְבוּב בְּבֵית הַמִּטְבָּחַֽיִם, וְלֹא אִירַע קֶֽרִי לְכֹהֵן גָּדוֹל בְּיוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים, וְלֹא כִבּוּ הַגְּשָׁמִים אֵשׁ שֶׁל עֲצֵי הַמַּעֲרָכָה, וְלֹא נִצְּחָה הָרֽוּחַ אֶת עַמּוּד הֶעָשָׁן, וְלֹא נִמְצָא פִסּוּל בָּעֽוֹמֶר וּבִשְׁתֵּי הַלֶּֽחֶם וּבְלֶֽחֶם הַפָּנִים, עוֹמְדִים צְפוּפִים וּמִשְׁתַּחֲוִים רְוָחִים, וְלֹא הִזִּיק נָחָשׁ וְעַקְרָב בִּירוּשָׁלַֽיִם, וְלֹא אָמַר אָדָם לַחֲבֵרוֹ: צַר לִי הַמָּקוֹם שֶׁאָלִין בִּירוּשָׁלָֽיִם

Ten miracles were performed for our forefathers in the Holy Temple: No woman ever miscarried because of the smell of the holy meat. The holy meat never spoiled. Never was a fly seen in the slaughterhouse. Never did the High Priest have an accidental seminal discharge on Yom Kippur. The rains did not extinguish the wood-fire burning upon the altar. The wind did not prevail over the column of smoke [rising from the altar]. No disqualifying problem was ever discovered in the Omer offering, the Two Loaves or the Showbread. They stood crowded but had ample space in which to prostrate themselves. Never did a snake or scorpion cause injury in Jerusalem. And no man ever said to his fellow "It’s too hard for me to find a place to stay when I come up to Jerusalem" [emphases added].

Is this the stuff of which the Bartenura (on Avot 1:1) says “All of it is mussar (moral chastisement) and middot (behavioural standards)”? The fact that a crowd of people found they had enough space to prostrate themselves appears to be the result of an act of God, in which case once again it is miraculous, beyond human understanding and therefore beyond all comment ad criticism. We can praise God for it but there’s no mussar message to take home. In contrast, the fact that people did not complain when they might have been expected to do so can be seen as a description of how a group of humans chose to respond to a particular situation, which is not really a miracle at all. But of course there is more to this teaching than meets the eye.

R’ Ovadyah Hedaya (Seh leBet Avot) puts a different spin on this mishnah in his commentary on one of the teachings at the other end of the tractate, at Avot 1:5, where Yose ben Yochanan ish Yerushalayim opens his teaching with the following instruction:

יְהִי בֵיתְךָ פָּתֽוּחַ לִרְוָחָה, וְיִהְיוּ עֲנִיִּים בְּנֵי בֵיתְךָ  

Let your home be wide open, and let the poor be members of your household.

On this earlier mishnah R’ Hedaya comments that the host who opens his home to all and welcomes the poor is emulating God’s middah of gemilut chasadim (performing acts of kindness). He then alludes to Avot 5:7:  in emulating God the good host should take care to make sure that his guests have room to spread and that they should not have grounds to complain that his place is too uncongenial for them to stay there. The importance of following God’s example and practising acts of kindness is driven home by reference to Avot 1:2, where Shimon HaTzaddik lists gemilut chasadim as one of the three pillars upon which the world stands.

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The Famous Five: are we missing something?

Is there any part of Pirkei Avot that contains no real teaching at all? At Avot 2:10 we learn this:

חֲמִשָּׁה תַלְמִידִים הָיוּ לוֹ לְרַבָּן יוֹחָנָן בֶּן זַכַּאי, וְאֵֽלּוּ הֵן: רַבִּי אֱלִיעֶֽזֶר בֶּן הוֹרְקְנוּס, וְרַבִּי יְהוֹשֻֽׁעַ בֶּן חֲנַנְיָא, וְרַבִּי יוֹסֵי הַכֹּהֵן, וְרַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן נְתַנְאֵל, וְרַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר בֶּן עֲרָךְ

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai had five disciples: Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrkenus, Rabbi Joshua ben Chananya, Rabbi Yose HaKohen, Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel, and Rabbi Elazar ben Arach. 

There’s no obvious teaching here: no mussar, no middot, no guidance for life—just a list of names.

Can there be any more to this list? Maybe. These rabbis are not listed in alphabetical order, and the Sefat Emet wonders why the rabbis’ names are listed in the order we find in the mishnah. They aren’t being named in descending order of greatness because Abba Sha’ul teaches in the name of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai (‘Rivaz’) that Rabbi Elazar ben Arach outweighed them all—including Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcqnus—but Rabbi Elazar ben Arach is listed last (the Sefat Emet doesn’t even trouble to suggest that they are listed in ascending order of greatness, since Abba Sha’ul’s teaching puts Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus in second place).

The order as listed cannot reflect the rabbis’ hierarchical status. If it had done, Rabbi Yose HaKohen, being of the priestly caste, would have led the list. Nor are they named in the order in which they were recruited as talmidim, since Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya was an established talmid before Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrkenus came on the scene. So perhaps, the Sefat Emet speculates, they are listed in order of their age.

Order of age may be the right answer, since we have no data to contradict it. But are there any other possibilities?

We can explain the order in part if we refer to two subsequent mishnayot in the second perek (Avot 2:13 and 2:14). In the first of these, Rivaz tells the five talmidim to go out from their place of learning and see for themselves what is the “good path” that a person should follow in life. In the second, Rivaz sends them out again, but this time with the opposite request: they should report back on what they view as the “bad path” that one should avoid. In each of these mishnayot, when the five report on their findings they do so in the same order as we find here, and it is the words of Rabbi Elazar ben Arach that find favour with their teacher.

Could the later mishnayot retrospectively account for the order in the talmidim are named in our earlier mishnah? In each case it is the words of the last-named rabbi, R’ Elazar ben Arach, that are preferred over the words of the earlier named rabbis, Rivaz gives the reason: it is because his words are broad enough to include the words of the others. Logically, since his words effectively sum up and embrace the words of all the earlier talmidim, it makes sense for his report to be given last.

This still leaves the problem of the order of the first four talmidim. Again there is a possible rationalisation, though it is at best only a partial one. The four divide into two pairs. The first two, Rabbis Eliezer and Yehoshua, have already gained experience of life beyond the four walls of the bet midrash, the house of study. Rabbi Eliezer came to learning relatively late, having worked his father’s land along with his brothers (see Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer) and Rabbi Yehoshua was a tailor (Yerushalmi Berachot, 7d). One might therefore expect their answers to be qualitatively quite different from those of the other two rabbis, whose experience—so far as we know—did not run beyond their education.

A better suggestion comes from Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, quoted in Pirkei Avot im Sha’arei Avot. Each of the five leading talmidim was the head of a sub-group of talmidim that corresponded to one of the five books of the Torah. Thus Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua headed up Bereshit and Shemot respectively, Rabbi Yose, being a Kohen, took Vayikra. The sin-fearing Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel’s remit corresponded to Bemidbar—the book in which sin, and the absence of fear of it, had the most devastating impact. Finally, Rabbi Elazar gets Devarim: this is appropriate since this is the book that summarizes the four that precede it, and his words are those that summarize and embrace those of the four rabbis who speak before him.

If anyone else has a good suggestion relating to the order of the five talmidim and what we can learn from it, can they please share it!

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Flesh, worms and fashion

In Avot 2:8 Hillel lists five excesses in human appetite that lead to adverse consequences. The list opens with the following words:

מַרְבֶּה בָשָׂר מַרְבֶּה רִמָּה

The more the flesh, the more the worms.

The natural implication here is that gluttonous gourmandising is a bad thing. Eat too much and you become obese. In doing so, you are simply providing more nutrition for the worms who will consume your corpulent vastness when you die.

At one level this teaching seems obvious and needs no explanation. Neither of the two compendiums of largely Chasidic commentaries, the popular Hebrew collection in Mima’ayanei Netzach, and R’ Tal Moshe Zwecker’s English-language Ma’asei Avos, offers even a single word on it; nor do the Rambam,  the Sefat Emet, R’ Chaim Volozhiner (Ruach Chaim) or R’ Yisroel Miller (The Wisdom of Avos). Those commentators who do discuss it usually content themselves with homilies about the dangers of obesity and self-indulgence or with speculation as to whether the dead feel pain when their earthly remains are consumed by worms.

Is there any more to this teaching? Apparently so, in the view of R’ Shlomo Toperoff (Lev Avot). After stating that we eat too much food and that dieting has been prescribed by many doctors, Rabbi Toperoff surprisingly adds:

“Some connect ‘more flesh’ with immodesty in dress”.

This comment is all the more surprising when one considers that Rabbi Toperoff was writing back in the 1980s, when fat-shaming was normal practice and women who were overweight were more likely to be embarrassed and therefore avoid wearing clothes that would expose or draw attention to their figure.

I have yet to discover who the “some” are, even with the assistance of the internet, and I wonder whether this explanation was just Rabbi Toperoff’s way of taking a dig at women who wear scanty clothing—an issue which is not raised explicitly anywhere else in Avot. It may be that this mishnah has been cited to that end in writings on the subject of tzni’ut, modesty in one’s manner, speech and attire. I do not however recall any citation of it in Bracha Poliakoff and R’ Anthony Manning’s Reclaiming Dignity, the largest and most compendious text on the subject in recent times.

Can Hillel’s words be taken to include immodest exposure of the flesh—or, more strictly, of the skin that covers it? Not according to R’ Asher Weiss (Rav Asher Weiss on Avos) and the many others who learn this mishnah as warning against the pursuit of worldly pleasures: exposure in this context is often if not mainly for the purpose of giving pleasure to others and, in doing so, in order to attract their attention. The same cannot be said for over-eating, the pursuit of wealth or the amassing of a large household of wives and servants of each gender—the other excesses Hillel lists in this mishnah.

Thoughts, anyone?

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"Peace": it all depends what you mean

The midrashic propensity of Aaron to make peace—and to pursue it even at the expense of literal truth—is well recorded in commentaries on Avot and has been frequently discussed in Avot Today. The commentaries attach themselves to Hillel’s teaching at Avot 1:12:

הֱוֵי מִתַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל אַהֲרֹן, אוֹהֵב שָׁלוֹם וְרוֹדֵף שָׁלוֹם, אוֹהֵב אֶת הַבְּרִיּוֹת, וּמְקָרְבָן לַתּוֹרָה

Be among the disciples of Aaron—love peace, pursue peace, love creatures and draw them close to Torah.

But here’s a story that, while cited in support of this great man’s pursuit of peace, may not strike the right note to modern eyes. I found this passage in When a Jew seeks wisdom: The Sayings of the Fathers, by Seymour Rossel:

“If Aaron learned that a husband and his wife were about to divorce, he would hurry to the husband and say ‘I come because I hear that you and your wife are not getting along, and that you wish to divorce. But think of this: if you should divorce your present wife and marry another, you cannot be sure that your marriage would be better. For at the first quarrel that you have with your second wife, she will remind you that you are quarrelsome and no good, otherwise your first marriage would not have ended in divorce. Let me be a pledge that you and your present wife can be happy if you will both try”.

The source given for this is given as “Legends 3:329”, but the book gives no clue as to which legends these are, and I certainly don’t know. There is however a highly similar passage in one of the minor tractates of the Talmud Bavli, Kallah Rabbati 3, that reads (in translation) like this:

When [Aaron] heard of a husband and wife who had quarrelled, he would go to the husband and say to him, ‘[I have come] because I heard that you have quarrelled with your wife; if you should divorce her it is doubtful whether you will find another like her or not; and further, should you find another and quarrel with her, the first thing she will say to you will be, “You must have behaved in a like manner towards your first wife” ’. In consequence of this all Israel, men and women, loved him.

Unlike the other Aaron-the-peacemaker tales, where the great man shuttles between hostile parties and reconciles them, in these passages we see him take a very one-sided view of the husband’s marital relationship. We have no idea of how the wife views the husband. Perhaps the feeling that the marriage should end is mutual, but Aaron does not ask about this possibility. More to the point, the extent to which Aaron’s intervention establishes peace in a meaningful manner is unclear. It seems that he is not so much mending bridges and bringing peace; rather, he is urging one party to a suboptimal relationship to remain within that relationship because there is a possibility that his second marriage might be equally suboptimal or even more so.

Finally, if was ever the case in bygone times that a man would be happy with his wife because another person had made a pledge to that effect, as the first version of this story states, my personal assessment of human nature in contemporary society suggests that it is not the case now. So, I believe, we are entitled to ask whether, in these stories, Aaron is really pursuing peace—or is he kicking a personal problem down the road, or maybe asking the parties to an unhappy relationship to pretend that their problems don't exist?

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Repent through love -- or love to repent?

Teshuvah—repentance—is a core objective of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and of Pirkei Avot itself, where the concept is mentioned on several occasions. We are told, for example, to repent one day before we die, in other words daily (Avot 2:15); we see the value of repentance as a means of warding off divine retribution (Avot 4:13) and of spending our time on Earth before we pass on to another world (Avot 4:22). We even discover that the avenue of repentance may be barred to us if we have led others astray (Avot 5:21).

Curiously, while the mishnayot promote the importance of teshuvah, they do not discuss what sort of repentance they have in mind.

Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, one of the great Amoraim of the Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 86b), identifies two types of repentance: teshuvah me’yirah (repentance based on fear) and teshuvah me’ahavah (repentance based on love). The passage reads like this:

אָמַר רֵישׁ לָקִישׁ: גְּדוֹלָה תְּשׁוּבָה שֶׁזְּדוֹנוֹת נַעֲשׂוֹת לוֹ כִּשְׁגָגוֹת, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״שׁוּבָה יִשְׂרָאֵל עַד ה׳ אֱלֹקֶיךָ כִּי כָשַׁלְתָּ בַּעֲוֹנֶךָ״, הָא ״עָוֹן״ — מֵזִיד הוּא, וְקָא קָרֵי לֵיהּ מִכְשׁוֹל. אִינִי?! וְהָאָמַר רֵישׁ לָקִישׁ: גְּדוֹלָה תְּשׁוּבָה שֶׁזְּדוֹנוֹת נַעֲשׂוֹת לוֹ כִּזְכִיּוֹת, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״וּבְשׁוּב רָשָׁע מֵרִשְׁעָתוֹ וְעָשָׂה מִשְׁפָּט וּצְדָקָה עֲלֵיהֶם (חָיֹה) יִחְיֶה״! לָא קַשְׁיָא: כָּאן מֵאַהֲבָה, כָּאן מִיִּרְאָה.

Resh Lakish said: “Great is repentance since, on account of it, deliberate sins are accounted as inadvertent ones, as it is said: ‘Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled in your iniquity’”.  ‘Iniquity’ is deliberate, and yet the text calls it ‘stumbling’—but that is not so! For Resh Lakish said that repentance is so great that deliberate sins are accounted as though they were merits, as it is said: ‘And when the wicked person turns from his wickedness, and does that which is lawful and right, he shall live on account of it’. That is no contradiction: one verse refers to a case [of repentance] derived from love, the other to one due to fear.

The mishnayot in Pirkei Avot do not overtly distinguish between these two species of repentance. However, repentance the day before one dies sounds like a fear-response: if you don’t do it now, tomorrow may be too late and you will have to face the eternal and negative consequences of not having done so. Repentance in order to ward off retribution is likewise fear-related. But what of the other two teachings?

On the assumption that prefaces every public recitation of Avot, that every Jew has a share in the World to Come, repenting doesn’t appear to be a condition precedent for gaining admission to this promised world; rather, the teaching suggests that time spent in repentance and performing good deeds is time well spent in enhancing the quality of that keenly anticipated future state. Accordingly, both teshuvah through fear and teshuvah through fear would fit the bill.  The same would appear to apply to leading others astray being a bar to repentance.

Now for a word about repentance on Yom Kippur.

Any assessment of the prayers that comprise the main content of the day’s five services would likely point to Yom Kippur being a day for repentance through fear. In particular, repenting in order to avert the dread decree dominates the early part of the mussaf service—and the aggadic image of the books of life and death being open in front of God the great judge is vivid in the minds of many, if not most, of us. But does that mean there is no scope for teshuvah me’ahavah?

Many years ago I was privy to a conversation involving Dayan Gershon Lopian, who had stepped back from the role of Dayan of the Beit Din of London’s Federation of Synagogues in order to take responsibility for a relatively small orthodox but not especially religious community in North West London. Someone asked him about the ‘Al Chet’ section of the vidui, the lengthy confession that followed each of the day’s main prayers. What did he think of the fact that many of his congregants were cheerfully singing along to the ‘Al Chets’ with great gusto, even though they probably had little understanding of what it was that they were supposed to be confessing.

The Dayan responded that that the cheerful singing of these congregants was a perfect example of teshuvah me’ahavah: they were not repenting because they loved God, but because they loved the ritual and the routine of repentance—the tunes, the occasion, the intensity of the moment. And that, said the Dayan, was good enough for him.

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Free for all -- or pay per bottom?

For the past six weeks I have been struggling to get to grips with my latest challenge. Through no fault on my part I find that I am now President of Beit Knesset Hanassi, a largely Anglo synagogue in Jerusalem’s lovely Rechavia.  One of my first tasks is that of serving as liaison officer, as it were, between our shul and our local Chabad chasidim.

Why, you may wonder, is there any need for liaison? The answer is this: during the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when attendance for prayer runs at higher-than-usual levels, Chabad set up a splendid white marquee in the parking lot adjacent to our premises. We set up a channel of communication, since careful neighbours make good neighbours and so that neighbourly issues could be speedily and amicably resolved. For example, would Chabad’s tent-dwellers need to use our already inadequate bathroom facilities, and would our late-comers be able to sneak beneath the canvas in order to catch the sounds of the shofar?

Well, I’m pleased to report that, after two days of neighbourly davening, we and they are still on cordial terms. Indeed, in theory is no reason why things should be different. We pray to the same God for much the same things. Yes, some of us do pray a little earlier in the day, some of us do so in rather louder voices and we are not entirely on the same page sartorially speaking, but essentially we have much in common and we subscribe to the same Torah.

Several people have however pointed out to me that there is a major difference—and it’s not a doctrinal one. Our shul charges everyone who prays with us on the Yamim Nara’im while Chabad, I have been given to understand, does not.  “How is it that they have free seats”, I have been asked several times, “but you don’t?”

I have thought about this question a great deal because it seems to me that Pirkei Avot points me to an answer.

There is actually no such thing as a free seat. When people chide me for charging people to pray in our shul, I should retort that when people say “free”, they mean “free for the person who sits in it” whereas in reality it is free to that person because its cost has been met by someone else. Whether the hire charge for the marquee and chairs is met by one or more charitable individuals, or by Chabad itself, someone paid. And even if all the hardware is lent, there is still a cost to the lender in terms of depreciation and a cost to the organisers in setting the marquee up in the first place: they pay for it with their effort, their energy and their emotional output.

Our synagogue covers most of its running costs through membership fees and through what is effectively a High Holy Day tax of 200 shekels per bottom per seat. Chabad covers its running costs by other means. Both we and they are conscious of the need to balance our books or, if we can’t, of the need to find a way of meeting any shortfall. We just do it differently.

In this context I am reminded of the teaching of Rabbi Akiva at Avot 3:20:

הַכֹּל נָתוּן בָּעֵרָבוֹן, וּמְצוּדָה פְרוּסָה עַל כָּל הַחַיִּים, הֶחָנוּת פְּתוּחָה, וְהַחֶנְוָנִי מַקִּיף, וְהַפִּנְקָס פָּתֽוּחַ, וְהַיָּד כּוֹתֶֽבֶת, וְכָל הָרוֹצֶה לִלְווֹת יָבֹא וְיִלְוֶה, וְהַגַּבָּאִין מַחֲזִירִין תָּדִיר בְּכָל יוֹם, וְנִפְרָעִין מִן הָאָדָם מִדַּעְתּוֹ וְשֶׁלֹּא מִדַּעְתּוֹ, וְיֵשׁ לָהֶם עַל מַה שֶּׁיִּסְמֽוֹכוּ, וְהַדִּין דִּין אֱמֶת, וְהַכֹּל מְתֻקָּן לִסְעוּדָה

Everything is given on security, and a net is spread over all living things. The store is open, the storekeeper extends credit, the account-book lies open, the hand writes, and all who wish to borrow may come and borrow. The bailiffs make their rounds every day and exact payment from man, with his knowledge and without his knowledge. Their case is well founded, the judgement is a judgement of truth, and ultimately, all is prepared for the feast.

Granted, Rabbi Akiva was not thinking of tents in Rechavia—but the principle is similar. Everything gets paid for in the end, and everyone pays for what they consume. We should never allow ourselves to imagine that life is just a free ride at others’ expense.

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Spot the deliberate mistake?

Today I came across a short piece, “New Year, New Song”, 0n Jewish Link (“Linking Northern and Central NJ, Bronx, Manhattan, Westchester and CT”) by Shira Sedek. There she writes:

We make mistakes, but as it says in Pirkei Avot, a Tzadik (righteous person) falls seven times and he gets back up. We may continue to make mistakes, but are we going to think we can’t change, we aren’t worthy of getting closer to Hashem, or being forgiven? No! We all need to get back up and recognize we are human and sin, ask Hashem for forgiveness, and try our best to change.

No-one would wish to argue with the basic message, but there’s a little problem.  However carefully you read Pirkei Avot, you won’t anything in it about the righteous falling seven times. This is the territory of Proverbs (Mishlei 24:16), which reads:

כִּי שֶׁבַע יִפּוֹל צַדִּיק וָקָם וּרְשָׁעִים יִכָּשְׁלוּ בְרָעָה

For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises up again, but the wicked stumble into evil.

This left me with a conundrum. Did the author not know the source of this famous quote? Or did she deliberately mis-state her source in order to illustrate the very point she seeks to make? Since the article describes her as a “passionate educator … who loves teaching Torah and inspiring her students”, I would not be at all surprised if the reference to Avot was planted deliberately in order to provoke debate.

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Now's the time to act -- forget the fig leaf!

One of my favourite reads for the month of Elul and the onset of the New Year and Yom Kippur is Rabbi Shalom Schwadron’s Kol Dodi Dofek. It has everything a good book on a tough subject (preparing oneself to repent and be judged by God) could ask for: small pages, large print, lots of short paragraphs and a text that is written in simple straightforward Hebrew.

In this book, under the heading ‘Don’t vacillate about repenting’, Rabbi Schwadron brings a short devar Torah in the name of Reb Elya Lopian, who said it in the name of the Chafetz Chaim who cites the mishnah from Avot 2:5 where Hillel teaches:

אַל תֹּאמַר לִכְשֶׁאֶפְנֶה אֶשְׁנֶה, שֶׁמָּא לֹא תִפָּנֶה

Don’t say: "When I have free time, I will study”, for perhaps you will never have any free time.

Says the Chafetz Chaim, Hillel is being kind to us when he inserts the word שֶׁמָּא (shema, “perhaps”) because the truth is that, when a person says “I’ll do it when I have the time”, he for sure isn’t going to get round to doing it. In this vein he invokes the support of Rambam (Mishneh Torah, hilchot Talmud Torah 3:7):

שֶׁמָּא תֹּאמַר עַד שֶׁאֲקַבֵּץ מָמוֹן אֶחֱזֹר וְאֶקְרָא. עַד שֶׁאֶקְנֶה מַה שֶּׁאֲנִי צָרִיךְ וְאֶפָּנֶה מֵעֲסָקַי וְאֶחֱזֹר וְאֶקְרָא. אִם תַּעֲלֶה מַחֲשָׁבָה זוֹ עַל לִבְּךָ אֵין אַתָּה זוֹכֶה לְכִתְרָהּ שֶׁל תּוֹרָה לְעוֹלָם. אֶלָּא עֲשֵׂה תּוֹרָתְךָ קֶבַע וּמְלַאכְתְּךָ עַרְאַי (משנה אבות ב ד) "וְלֹא תֹּאמַר לִכְשֶׁאֶפָּנֶה אֶשְׁנֶה שֶׁמָּא לֹא תִּפָּנֶה

Perhaps a person will say: "[I will interrupt my studies] until after I obtain funds, and then I will return and study, [I will interrupt my studies] until after I buy what I need and then, when I can divert my attention from my business, I will return and study." If you harbour such thoughts, you will never merit the crown of Torah. Rather, make your work secondary, and your Torah study a fixed matter. Do not say: "When I have free time, I will study," for perhaps you will never have free time.

The ”perhaps” in each case is not included because there is any uncertainty as to whether there will be time to study (or in our case, repent) or not. “Perhaps” is there as a fig leaf to cover the embarrassment of the person who knows he is not really to do the thing in question but who is ashamed to admit it—whether to others or to himself.

The moral of the story is that we should not make our good deeds and our fulfilment of important tasks contingent on some external factor. Nor should we delay them if we can do them now.  “If not now, when?” asks Hillel (Avot 1:14). Regarding teshuvah, repentance, Rabbi Eliezer gives him an answer: “Repent one day before the day of your death” (Avot 2:15).

So let’s not delay. Repent today! And let me not delay any further in wishing all the readers of Avot Today and its contributors a ketivah vechatimah tovah: Happy New Year! May our names be inscribed and sealed in the book of life, happiness and fulfilment for the year to come—now and not at some unspecified later time!

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Praying for the welfare of whose government?

At Avot 3:2 Rabbi Chanina Segan HaKohanim teaches:

הֱוֵי מִתְפַּלֵּל בִּשְׁלוֹמָהּ שֶׁל מַלְכוּת, שֶׁאִלְמָלֵא מוֹרָאָהּ, אִישׁ אֶת רֵעֵֽהוּ חַיִּים בְּלָעוֹ

Pray for the integrity of the government for, were it not for the fear of its authority, a man would swallow his neighbour alive.

Writing earlier this summer, Times of Israel blogger Yisroel Juskovitz (“Three Important Points for This Election Season”) has this to say:

Point Number One: Get out and vote. In Pirkei Avot (Ethics of our Fathers) we are taught “Pray for the welfare of your government, for without it, Man would be swallowed up alive.” Taking an active role in the country we live in, I believe is not just an American value, but a Jewish value as well. Voting is not just a right; it is a privilege. Our Democracy is sacred, and it should always be cherished that we live in a country where we can choose our leaders. This a privilege that many other countries do not have. We have two candidates who have very different visions for our country and their policies and performance can have long term consequences for our great nation. …

I don’t know where to start.

First, there is a somewhat anachronistic flavour to the author’s claim that “Taking an active role in the country we live in, I believe is not just an American value, but a Jewish value as well”.  Wasn’t it a Jewish value first?

Secondly, “Voting is not just a right; it is a privilege”. Is this so? It’s questionable whether being able to choose one’s leaders is a Jewish value. Our history suggests rather the opposite. The leaders we have done best with—and particularly Moses and David—were not the products of an electoral system, and I wonder how many of our prophets and rabbinical giants of bygone eras would have won a popularity poll.

Thirdly, even as an Englishman by origin, sitting here in Jerusalem many thousands of miles away, I have been unable to ignore the sheer force of the vituperation flung at Joe Biden, and now at Kamala Harris, by Donald Trump’s cohort of admirers and supporters—and nor have I been able to forget the passionate accusations and personal criticisms fired at Donald Trump while he occupied the White House. It may of course be that both sides are right and that neither Presidential candidate is a fit and proper person to govern the United States. Be that as it may, I find it hard to imagine how anyone who hurls vicious abuse at his or her own government can sincerely pray for its well-being, which is what this mishnah is actually about.

Finally, Avot teaches us to pray for the welfare of the government. But, given the options facing the electorates in so many democracies, where surging popularity is polarising the electorate and where the extremities of right and left are gaining, to the detriment of those with moderate views, I wonder whether it is the welfare of the ordinary folk who are being governed that we should be praying for, rather than that of the government.

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Is it normal to begrudge help for others?

An Avot Mishnah for Shabbat (Nitzavim-Vayelech)

This week’s perakim are Perek 5 and Perek 6. The following piece is on a mishnah from Perek 5.

At Avot 5:13 we find an anonymously-authored Mishnah that reflects on human attitudes towards property—both theirs and that of others. It reads:

אַרְבַּע מִדּוֹת בָּאָדָם: הָאוֹמֵר שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלָּךְ וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלִּי, עַם הָאָֽרֶץ. שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלִּי וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלָּךְ, זוֹ מִדָּה בֵינוֹנִית, וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים זוֹ מִדַּת סְדוֹם. שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלָּךְ וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלָּךְ, חָסִיד. שֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלִּי וְשֶׁלִּי שֶׁלִּי, רָשָׁע

There are four types of people:

(i) The one who says "What is mine is mine, and what is yours is yours" — this is a middle of the road characteristic; others say that this is the character trait of Sodom.

(ii) The one who says "What is mine is yours, and what is yours is mine" is an am ha’aretz [an uncultivated person].

(iii) The one who says "What is mine is yours, and what is yours is yours" is a chasid [a generous soul].

(iv) The one who says "What is mine is mine, and what is yours is mine" is wicked.

The first of these categories has generated much discussion. How can a person be both a middle-of-the-road person and someone who has the character of someone from Sodom?

Rabbenu Yonah clarifies that we are not talking here about someone who does not give charity or help others at all. Everyone agrees that such a person is evil. What we are discussing is the attitude of the giver. Some give begrudgingly, because they are afraid of the consequences in this life or the next if they do not do so. What the rabbis of the mishnah cannot agree on is whether this person’s attitude is perfectly normal or whether it is a character flaw.

Personally I like the account of Gila Ross (Living Beautifully) as to the ambiguity, or bifurcated nature if you prefer, of the “mine’s mine and yours is yours” attitude. She describes the first position of the Mishnah, that such a person as average, and contrasts it with the selfish attitude of the inhabitants of Sodom, then adds this:

“…the Mishnah calls it average for an individual, because an individual can be forgiven for their lack of sensitivity and lack of desire to give to others. However, it’s problematic when this attitude of ‘what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours’ becomes the prevailing viewpoint in a society. Then it becomes cruelty. As long as it’s only an individual, there will be other individuals who will step up to help those in need. If it becomes a societal thing, it becomes cruel because the poor will be neglected”.

A similar explanation can be found in R' Shlomo Toperoff's Lev Avot.

On the whole, Avot is concerned with the conduct of the individual—whether dealing with other individual or with society at large—and not with collective conduct and attitudes. But this interpretation places this mishnah among the exceptions.

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

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A Question of Timing

Here's a sequel to our previous post ("Committing Spiritual Suicide -- Or Killing Time?", Sunday 22 September) which offers a different perspective to humankind's temporal existence.

At Avot 2:18 Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel teaches something unusual:

הֱוֵי זָהִיר בִּקְרִיאַת שְׁמַע וּבִתְפִלָּה

Be careful with the reading of the Shema and with prayer.

In Jewish tradition there are 613 Torah mitzvot plus a very large number of commandments instituted by the rabbis. We are taught that we should treat our religious duties equally and be as conscientious in performing a small mitzvah as a large one (per Rebbi, Avot 2:1). This is because, while God knows which mitzvot carry more weight in His eyes, we don’t—and we can’t even guess what rewards they individually carry (ibid).  

Why then does Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel pick out just two commandments from the whole pack and urge us to take great care in performing them? Surely if a mitzvah is an instruction from God, that is sufficient reason for complying with it carefully—and that will apply to every mitzvah, regardless of its content.

This thought has occurred to our commentators too, and they have not failed to address it. Foremost among them is R’ Ovadyah MiBartenura, who explains that “careful” in this context means “careful to perform them at the right time”. Recitation of both the Shema and the standard daily prayers [the two are treated as a single unit since every morning and evening the one always closely follows the other] is subject to many rules and refinements in terms of the earliest and latest points in the day at which this may be done, more so than many other mitzvot. Once the latest point is passed, time for performing the mitzvah has expired. Since that time has passed and will not return, the mitzvah is lost and can never be fully replaced.

But not everything is lost. An out-of-time recitation of the Shema is still meritorious, just as is the recitation of any other paragraphs of the Torah. Yet the incentive to get one’s timing right is great: according to the Talmud (Berachot 10b), recitation of the Shema at the correct time is rated more highly than even the choice mitzvah of learning Torah. So, explains R’ Chaim Druckman (Avot leBanim), when Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel urges us to take care to recite Shema at the right time, it is on account of his concern that we should obtain maximum merit for doing so, instead of the regular reward for learning Torah. R’ Druckman adds, citing Midrash Shmuel, that the time for saying Shema and praying is both in the morning, when we may not have fully woken up, and again at night when we may be struggling to stay awake, so these are mitzvot that regularly demand an extra level of care.

Strangely, given the importance of timing in our lives today, Avot offers little positive guidance. Most of what it does say relates to not being in a hurry to do things. Thus in Avot 1:1 we are urged not to rush to deliver judgement and in Avot 4:23 Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar gives advice as to when not to placate an angry person, comfort a mourner, question someone making a vow or visit someone who is experiencing acute embarrassment.

There is however some generalised advice that can be made to address the importance of doing something on time, if we combine the force of two mishnayot from the second perek.

At Avot 2:5 Hillel teaches:

אַל תֹּאמַר לִכְשֶׁאֶפְנֶה אֶשְׁנֶה, שֶׁמָּא לֹא תִפָּנֶה

Do not say "When I am free, I will study”, for perhaps you will never be free.

While this principle explicitly references the fundamental and ongoing mitzvah of talmud Torah, of learning Torah in ever-deeper ways, it manifestly applies to almost all positive mitzvot and tackles the excuse that can float into one’s mind so easily when we have the chance to perform less enjoyable mitzvot such as visiting the sick, comforting mourners or making a kitchen kasher for the festival Pesach.

And at Avot 2:20 Rabbi Tarfon says:

הַיּוֹם קָצֵר, וְהַמְּלָאכָה מְרֻבָּה, וְהַפּוֹעֲלִים עֲצֵלִים, וְהַשָּׂכָר הַרְבֵּה, וּבַֽעַל הַבַּֽיִת דּוֹחֵק

The day is short, the work is abundant, the workers are lazy, the reward is great and the Master is insistent.

“Day” here is a metaphor for life itself. The “work” is made up of the aggregate of tasks that God has set for us, and the temptation to lapse into self-justified laziness is great. Who has not said, or at least thought, such things as “I’ve done enough of this already; it’s time someone else did it” or “mitzvah X takes so much out of me that I won’t have the energy to do mitzvot Y and Z, so I’d better not do it”?

So, combining the mishnayot of Hillel and Rabbi Tarfon, we can see that there is a sentiment that a person should not delay but should act in a timeous manner and should not put things off. Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel has already shown how important this is with regard to the Shema and prayer, and we can argue that the principle that responsible timing operates for all mitzvot—a principle colourfully illustrated by R’ Chaim Volozhiner (Nefesh HaChaim) with regard to blowing the shofar on Chanukah: the blow might be perfect, with all the loftiest thoughts, but since the time is wrong there is no mitzvah.

So much for mitzvot—but how far does this apply to ordinary common-or-garden middot? This question has been troubling me for a little while and is actually the spark that kindled this post. Recently we entertained a young visitor for a few days. She was courteous and well-mannered in all respects, a genuinely welcome guest. She also offered to help clear the dishes off our dining table. The only problem was that this offer came when the table had already been so completely cleared that there was nothing left for her to do. Helping others is an excellent character trait but—as with mitzvot—timing may be critical. For those (such as the Sefer Charedim) who hold that the middot in Avot are actually mitzvot, what I have written above is arguably applicable. But most rabbis and commentators distinguish between mitzvot and middot. How might they bring the moral teachings to bear on our well-meaning visitor?

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Committing spiritual suicide -- or killing time?

Three mishnayot in the third perek of Avot contain a phrase that is difficult for us to comprehend: to be מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ, mitchayev benafsho. The first, at 3:5, is taught in the name of Rabbi Chanina ben Chachinai:

הַנֵּעוֹר בַּלַּֽיְלָה, וְהַמְהַלֵּךְ בַּדֶּֽרֶךְ יְחִידִי, וּמְפַנֶּה לִבּוֹ לְבַטָּלָה, הֲרֵי זֶה מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ

One who stays awake at night, travels alone on the road and/or turns his heart to idleness is mitchayev benafsho.

The second, at 3:9, is brought in the name of Rabbi Yaakov:

הַמְהַלֵּךְ בַּדֶּֽרֶךְ וְשׁוֹנֶה, וּמַפְסִיק מִמִּשְׁנָתוֹ וְאוֹמֵר: מַה נָּאֶה אִילָן זֶה, מַה נָּאֶה נִיר זֶה, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ

One who walks along a road and studies, and interrupts his study to say, "How beautiful is this tree!", "How beautiful is this ploughed field!”—the Torah considers it as if he is mitchayev benafsho.

The third, at 3:10, we learn from Rabbi Dosta’i bar Yannai in the name of Rabbi Meir

כָּל הַשּׁוֹכֵֽחַ דָּבָר אֶחָד מִמִּשְׁנָתוֹ, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ

Anyone who forgets even a single word of this learning, the Torah considers it as if he is mitchayev benafsho...

So what does is mitchayev benafsho mean? Literally it means “makes himself liable in [or ‘for’] his soul”. But this is not a phrase that is easily understood—if indeed we understand it at all.

If we consider this phrase in the context of the three mishnayot above, the first thing we see is that none of the triggers for mitchayev benafsho, the liability of one’s soul, is the breach of a Torah or rabbinical prohibition or of a failure to perform a positive precept. This could mean that the rabbis here are alluding to a special category of spiritual fault that leads to some sort of spiritual death or to the idea that a person who pursues chassidut, a higher level of piety, holiness and closeness to God than is demanded of humans in general, may incur a higher level of punishment for his failure to do so than might a person who does not seek to go the extra mile.

The second thing we notice is that, in each case, the person who puts his soul at risk is at odds with an active commitment to the life-giving force of Torah (on which see Avot 6:7). This person is off on his own and obviously up to some mischief at a time—night—which is created for learning Torah (Eruvin 65b). Or he stops right in the middle of his Torah studies to admire the physical world at the expense of the spiritual one. Again, instead of adding to his stock of Torah wisdom or at least keeping it safe, he lets it slip from his grasp. Now we can see that the spiritual fault we considered in the previous paragraph is that of demoting Torah in one’s scale of life values.

The third thing we spot is that only in the first mishnah is the term mitchayev benafsho used without any qualification. In the second and third instances we see the phrased prefaced by כְּאִלּוּ, “as if”, indicating that one’s soul, or life, is not actually at stake.

Having said that, we see is that the sages over the millennia have themselves failed to construct an edifice of consensus as to what the phrase means. Each different meaning of mitchayev benafsho produces a different level of meaning for this mishnah in which it is found. This need not be a problem. By grafting different shades of meaning into the phrase, our rabbis have made these mishnayot more nuanced and capable of bearing greater meaning—and thereby making a greater impact—than if the term had just one fixed meaning.

How then do the rabbis explain mitchayev benafsho? The commentary ascribed to Rashi passes over it the first and times it appears. But at Avot 3:9 it observes that the Satan has no permission to endanger a person for as long as that person is actively learning Torah. Stop for a minute to admire the scenery and that permission is presumably granted.  The Sefat Emet has a similar take: if one is mitchayev benafsho, it seemingly means that one loses the level of shemirah, of God guarding him, that was previously enjoyed. In each of these two cases, the person who is mitchayev is not necessarily harmed: all that has happened is that a level of immunity or protection has been stripped away.

According to the Bartenura, the act of learning Torah has prophylactic properties that protect a person against the mazikim (discussed at length in Avot Today here), regular bandits and the sort of bad happenings one experiences when alone. This explanation works for the facts of Avot 3:5, but it is unclear how far it explains the two later mishnayot. Rambam’s approach is broader, less fact-driven and more principled: mitchayev benafsho is effectively another way of saying “liable for punishment by the hand of God” (at 3:5) or “guilty of a mortal sin” (3:9 and 3:10).

Rabbis Nachman and Natan of Breslov take a practical view of mitchayev benafsho: it’s the natural consequence of not knowing, or forgetting, one’s Torah. If you don’t know your Torah, you won’t know what’s permitted and what’s permitted—and you will go through life picking up penalty points, so to speak. On this basis, no real definition or analysis of the phrase is required. Reb Chaim Volozhiner doesn’t feel any explanation is needed either, since he simply passes over it on all three occasions where it is mentioned.

Among modern rabbis and translators, mitchayev benafsho encompasses many shades of meaning. For example it is rendered as

“Endangers his soul” (Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks)

“Bears guilt for his soul” (Rabbi Dan Roth, Relevance; Gila Ross, Living Beautifully)

“Commits spiritual suicide” Dayan Gershon Lopian

“Sins against himself” Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz

“Sinned against his soul” Rabbi Yisroel Miller, The Wisdom of Avos, version 1

“Forfeited his life” Rabbi Yisroel Miller, The Wisdom of Avos, version 2

“Is worthy of death” ArtScroll Publications

“Is mortally guilty” Judah Goldin

“Is guilty against himself” R. Travers Herford, The Ethics of the Talmud

So, depending on your rabbinical preference, mitchayev benafsho can mean actual spiritual or physical death, liability for spiritual or physical death, a level of guilt that makes one deserving of such deaths, or a form of self-destruction. 

I shall leave this discussion by citing a partial commentary on Avot that doesn’t often get a mention here: Relevance: The Lost Art of Thinking, by Rabbi Dan Roth. Making reference to the first two mishnayot, he comments:

“…[O]ur Mishnah … restores a rare and almost forgotten ability—to use one’s time alone for serious reflection. You are up at night anyway. Do not squander the precious moments. Use them to get in touch with yourself. You are walking along the road. Do not kill the time. Use it wisely to give voice to your innermost thoughts. We should scout out such opportunities and, certainly, when they arise we should utilise them—for these opportunities have the potential of becoming the most worthwhile moments of our lives”.

So to be mitchayev benafsho is effectively to be held accountable for the time we waste and which we fail to make worthwhile.  It’s a lovely message, a highly positive one, even though I suspect that the authors of our mishnayot might struggle to see this message as something that leaps out from the words they chose.

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It's not easy to give -- or is it?

An Avot Mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Ki Tavo)

This week’s perakim are Perek 3 and Perek 4. The following piece discusses a mishnah from Perek 3.

The importance of tzedakah (charity) within the life of every Jew is fundamental. Embedded in Tanach and in midrash, it needs no proof texts here. But how far should one go in performing acts of charity? At Avot 3:8 Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota sets the scene by suggesting that there is no possession in our hands that we can ringfence or regard as sacrosanct, and exempt from the mitzvah of tzedakah, since whatever we have we hold as trustees of God:

תֶּן לוֹ מִשֶּׁלּוֹ, שֶׁאַתָּה וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלּוֹ. וְכֵן בְּדָוִד הוּא אוֹמֵר: כִּי מִמְּךָ הַכֹּל וּמִיָּדְךָ נָתַֽנּוּ לָךְ

Give Him what is His, for you, and whatever is yours, are His. As David says: "For everything comes from You, and from Your own hand we give to You" (I Divrei Hayomim 29:14).

Here Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota is only telling us not to be too fond of our worldly goods. Elsewhere in Avot, at 5:13, we learn that a person who says “what’s mine is yours; what’s yours is yours” is a chasid—someone whose kindness exceeds the usual norm. The two mishnayot operate in different spheres: one speaks to a person’s relationship with God, the other to that person’s relationship with other people. It is possible to agree with Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota that everything comes from God, yet focus one’s generosity on inanimate objectts such as the purchase of books or the procurement of a Sefer Torah, while contributing to neither public causes such as food kitchens for the poor, nor to the needs of individuals.

In life we can and do learn not just from what people say but from what they do. The Talmud supplies us with evidence that Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota—who was not a wealthy man—was committed to helping his fellow humans. At Ta’anit 24a we learn how he was so generous with his assets that even the charity collectors would hide when they saw him coming.

As a contemporary slant on this ancient teaching, R’ Yisroel Miller (The Wisdom of Avos) adds a practical note:

“We live in an age of generational decline and verbal inflation. Whereas the term “mesirus nefesh” used to mean literally sacrificing life itself for Hashem (e.g. choosing death rather than worship idols), today the term is commonly used to praise anyone who gives up much time and comfort for Torah and mitzvos. Praiseworthy as such sacrifices are, Rabbi Elazar is saying that is can be made easier if we develop the attitude that ‘sacrifice’ is not actually sacrificing anything at all.

Imagine someone who truly thinks of their own bank account as belonging totally to Hashem. The Divine Owner graciously allows him to take whatever he needs, but asks him to generously distribute a portion to other needy people as well. With that attitude, giving tzedakah is not a ‘sacrifice’ but a naturally pleasant activity.

Such attitudes are not easy to develop, but many people adopt the stratagem of putting a percentage of every paycheck into a separate tzedakah account. Once deposited, it is no longer seen as ‘mine’ and is much easier to give away wholeheartedly”.

The fact that so many people today run charity accounts is a positive endorsement of the wisdom of R’ Miller’s words—though a cynic might comment that these charity accounts are generally tax-efficient, which makes it even easier to give one’s money away wholeheartedly.

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