It’s a longstanding tradition to learn one perek of Avot in the afternoon of each Shabbat between Pesach and Shavuot. Possibly because of the popularity of Avot, most communities that observe this custom have extended it from Shavuot to Rosh Hashanah—not just the beginning of the new year but the end of the long summer days in which our sages perceived an increased risk of sin which the study of Avot might reduce.
Each week we hope to post a short discussion of something from Pirkei Avot. To start off, here's a post on one of the mishnayot from Perek 1.
Hillel teaches (Avot 1:12):
הֱוֵי מִתַּלְמִידָיו שֶׁל אַהֲרֹן, אוֹהֵב שָׁלוֹם וְרוֹדֵף שָׁלוֹם, אוֹהֵב אֶת הַבְּרִיּוֹת, וּמְקָרְבָן לַתּוֹרָה
Be a disciple of Aaron—love peace, pursue peace, love people and draw them close to the Torah.
Aaron was a holy man, the first Kohen Gadol (High Priest) and, according to midrash, knowledgeable in Jewish law. Yet the way we are taught to emulate him has nothing to do with his holiness or his scholarship: it’s to do with the way we feel about other people and behave towards them.
Loving people in general and bringing them close to the Torah is not as simple as it seems, and it's easy to get it wrong. Rabbi Yisroel Miller (The Wisdom of Avos) brings the following story to illustrate how not to do it:
“A Jewish woman who was not mitzvah-observant was befriended by a kiruv-oriented couple who regularly invited her for Shabbat meals. She became close to them and greatly valued their friendship. One day she told them that, after thinking it over, she decided that Orthodoxy was not for her. The Shabbat invitations ceased, the couple drew away from her, and she told me that she felt cheated. The ‘friendship’ was like that of a used-car salesman pushing a product—nothing more”.
R' Miller rightly observes that we should not befriend someone in order to sell them the benefits of Torah observance. We should befriend them because we are students of Aaron, on the basis of our sincerity.
But Pirkei Avot has another side to it. At Avot 1:6 Yehoshua ben Perachyah teaches us to judge other people favourably where that is possible. Have we done so? Rabbi Miller only gives us one side of the story, so we have not been able to look at it from the other side. What if the couple understood the woman’s statement as a brush-off? What if they had children who were upset at what she said? What if the couple felt that their hospitality was being cynically exploited? Maybe what was needed here was an ‘Aaron’ to go between them and heal the fractured friendship if that was a possible option.
This miniature case-study illustrates both the complexities of human relationships and the subtle interplay of guidelines by which we are taught to conduct them.
