On the Derech

Here's the text of a Minchah-Maariv mini-shiur given by Jeremy Phillips on Tuesday 11 August 2026, during Rabbi Kenigsberg's summer vacation. 

Let’s look at a teaching from Avot that, in very different ways, relates to the value of Torah and not why, or how, but where you should learn it. It’s a baraita at Avot 6:9 that goes like this (omitting the proof pasukim):

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 אֲלָפִי דִּנְרֵי זָהָב וַאֲבָנִים טוֹבוֹת וּמַרְגָּלִיּוֹת. אָמַֽרְתִּי לוֹ: אִם אַתָּה נוֹתֵן לִי כָּל כֶּֽסֶף וְזָהָב וַאֲבָנִים טוֹבוֹת וּמַרְגָּלִיּוֹת שֶׁבָּעוֹלָם, אֵינִי דָר אֶלָּא בִּמְקוֹם תּוֹרָה

Rabbi Yossei ben Kisma said: Once I was traveling and I encountered a man. He greeted me and I returned his greetings. He said to me: "Rabbi, where are you from?" I said to him: "From a great city of sages and scholars, am I." He said to me: "Rabbi, would you like to live with us in our place? I will give you a million dinars of silver, gold, precious stones and pearls." I said to him: "If you were to give me all the silver, gold, precious stones and pearls in the world, I would not live anywhere but in a place of Torah.

Incidentally, it’s not clear whether this baraita should be here in Avot at all.  Some editions of Avot leave it out—and, while it’s also found in Kallah Rabbati, it’s not in Eliyahu Zuta.

Be that as it may, on the surface this looks like a straightforward message. A rich man meets talmid chacham, asks him to come to his town as the rabbi and offers a large inducement. The talmid chacham says no. The moral of the story? Torah is worth more than any money can buy. The first of the proof pasukim cited in support of this baraita validates this understanding. As we sing on Simchat Torah, טוֹב לִי תוֹרַת פִּֽיךָ, מֵאַלְפֵי זָהָב וָכָֽסֶף

But things are never as easy as they seem.

First, let’s look at the man himself. Who was Rabbi Yose ben Kisma?. We only know a little about him, but what we know is quite significant. He lived in Kisari, now Caesarea. Was this a “great city of sages and scholars?” That’s a tricky one. It may well have been originally a great city of sages and scholars—but it was not at the time Rabbi Yose was there. He lived there in the middle of the 2^nd century, when what was formerly a city with an active Jewish population had become a prosperous Roman market town. It was not to become an עִיר גְּדוֹלָה שֶׁל חֲכָמִים וְשֶׁל סוֹפְרִים until more than a century later, under the influence of Rabbi Abbahu and the third generation of Amoraim. Anyway, when Rabbi Yose died, some time after the Bar Kochba revolt, Kisari was a veritable citadel of Roman culture. Rabbi Yose was himself on good terms with the Romans. Indeed, a Gemara in Avoda Zara tells how the local Roman administrators attended his funeral as a sign of respect.

So where was Rabbi Yose going on his journey? If Kisari was a great city of scholars and sages, he wouldn’t need to be going anywhere. According to Rabbi Shmuel di Uceda, author of the Midrash Shmuel, this was indeed the case, as the opening words of the narrative suggest. Says the Midrash Shmuel, don’t think the words pa’am achat mean “once upon a time”; they mean this: “Look at me! I only left the Beit Midrash once and suddenly I was beset by all these temptations – gold, silver, kavod”. This leaves an interesting question, though. If Rabbi Yose hardly ever left the Beit Midrash and the Roman governors probably never had any reason to enter it, how did they become such good friends that the Romans turned up at his funeral?

But let’s leave Rabbi Yose aside and take a look at the man who encounters him on his journey and tries to buy him. Who is this man? Do we even need to know? No, we don’t, if all we are supposed to learn from this baraita is that we shouldn’t sell out and make our Torah subordinate to our material wealth. But the Maharal of Prague disagrees. In his Derech Chaim, the Maharal regards it is highly significant that we don’t know who this man is because, paradoxically, the fact that we don’t know who he is means that we do know who he is. Who turns up in many stories when no-one recognizes him? Why, of course, it’s Eliyahu haNavi! Several times in aggadic passages in the Gemara, Eliyahu turns up incognito. This man who encounters Rabbi Yose must therefore be Eliyahu. Since Eliyahu is an emissary of Hashem, it follows that Rabbi Yose is being tested by God himself, the implication being that even if the gold and silver that you are offered is a reward, as it were, for services rendered in this world, you should have the strength of character to refuse it.

In case the Maharal is wrong about this, and the mysterious man is not Eliyahu haNavi, there’s someone else he might be, someone else who alsoturns up incognito offering great things. And that’s the Satan. This hypothesis is also quite plausible since the level of the bribe to take the position of town rabbi is so great and no other terms of engagement are specified. This suggests that the magnitude of the wealth on offer should be sufficient to blind Rabbi Yose to all other considerations.

So, we’ve dealt with the basic story and we’ve said a bit about Rabbi Yose and the stranger he encounters. Now let’s look at the moment they meet.

Strangely, the first person to speak is the stranger, who greets the rabbi. Isn’t this wrong? It’s axiomatic that a learned rabbi who knows his Pirkei Avot should implement the teaching of Rabbi Masya ben Chorosh in perek 4 and be the first to greet others—and the Gemara teaches that Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was first to greet everyone—even the non-Jews he met in the shuk—so why doesn’t Rabbi Yose do the same? Now here the Maharal’s explanation comes in handy. Whether the stranger is Eliyahu haNavi or the Satan, he would simply have appeared before the rabbi’s eyes without giving the latter a chance to see him coming! And even if this is wrong, we may conjecture that Rabbi Yose—even on his journey—was so engrossed in his Torah learning that he wasn’t looking around to admire the scenery (which might incur a spiritual death penalty if he stopped learning long enough to admire the scenery: per Rabbi Yaakov in Avot perek 3), and he wouldn’t have seen anyone coming at all.

Another mystery is why the stranger opens the dialogue by asking Rabbi Yose straight away where he comes from. It’s much more normal to say something like “who are you? What’s your name? even “Where are you heading?” I’ll come back to this later.

But perhaps the biggest mystery in this baraita, at least for the many rabbis who have commented on it, is the size of the booty offered to Rabbi Yose to go with the stranger and take the job. Put at its simplest level—and this is good news for Rabbi Kenigsberg—there is no halachic limit to the amount a rabbi can earn or own. The Gemara in Kiddushin cites the case of Rabbi Elazar ben Charsom, whose name was a byword for unimaginable affluence and he was praised for being able to learn Torah despite the responsibility he bore for his massive wealth. While Rabbi Tzadok in the fourth perek of Avot, citing Hillel, insists that one must not use one’s Torah as a spade to dig with, there’s no problem with anyone showering their favourite rabbi with gold, silver, share stock in AI start-ups or even tickets to fly El Al. But while the good news for Rabbi Kenigsberg is that the sky is the limit for what he can earn, there’s some bad news too. Nobody in the real world pays rabbis that much. And if you ask rabbis if they are same’ach b’chelkom, contented with their lot, they may ask you what you mean by “lot”. In short, their lot is not usually a happily affluent one.

This factor has coloured commentaries on our Baraita. Rabbi Yisrael Lipschitz, for example, the Tiferet Yisrael, says that the million gold dinars, gold, pearls and precious gems were never intended to be taken literally. No, he says, they are simply an invitation to Rabbi Yose to name his price, presumably on the normal rabbinical scale of his time. Rabbi Shmuel di Uceda takes a different line. When the stranger offers to give Rabbi Yose the million dinars and so on, what he really means to do is to comfort Rabbi Yose by saying “don’t worry. You won’t have to go collecting door-to-door to collect your pay. I’ll do that for you”. I suspect that this was not intended as a serious explanation of our baraita. Rather, it was a cry from the heart from Rabbi Shmuel di Uceda, who lived in Safed at the time when Sultan Murad III deported the city’s 1,500 richest Jewish citizens to Cyprus and left the poor man having to go knocking on doors to collect his own pay.

Now, if Rabbi Yose had accepted the offer and become rabbi in the stranger’s town, what would his job have looked like? The key word here is bimkomeinu; “in our place”. This word is double-edged. It can either mean “right here in our town” or it can mean “in place of us”. This double meaning was almost certainly unknown to Rabbi Yose in his day and age, where the concept of the “middle of the road”, nominally orthodox Jewish community had yet to develop. But we do know, particularly in some English-speaking parts of the diaspora, that there are places where people would really like to say: “We want a rabbi to be frum” in our place”, meaning “in place of us”. He can do all the religious stuff—we are happy to leave that to him, so long as he lets us get on with our lives and do our own thing”. In this sense a rabbi can earn a large salary and enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, though he may find that he is the only member of his community to keep Shabbat, observe the laws of kashrut outside as well as inside the home, or to do any Torah learning.

Incidentally, the tendency of all commentators is to side with Rabbi Yose and praise him for his principled approach in refusing any amount of money and treasure for the sake of Torah. Not one commentator that I know of has a kind word for the stranger who tries to buy Rabbi Yose’s knowledge and scholarship though. I think this is really sad. Here’s a man who, it is assumed, comes from a place that is not a makom Torah—and just look how much he is prepared to part with in order to get a Rav! How many of us would pay so much under similar conditions. The outrageously large sum offered to Rabbi Yose for his Torah presence is as much a praise for the value of the Torah as is his rejection of it.

Now to close with a few random points.

First, is the position of this baraita within the sixth perek significant? Some mefarshim make a great play of learning each mishnah or Baraita from what the one that came before it says. The Baraita that comes before ours, learned by Rabbi Shimon ben Yehudah in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, sings the praises of both wealth and honour as being things that are no’eh latzadikim, things that befit the righteous and which, therefore, are things that holy rabbis are entitled to enjoy. Our teaching says yes, wealth and honour are indeed befitting for a tzaddik—but you shouldn’t compromise your Torah learning in order to get them.

Secondly, we have no idea whether the events recorded in this baraita ever happened. From the strange circumstances of the encounter and the many questions that arise from the dialogue, it may be that this whole thing is an invention of Rabbi Yose, a teaching device that conveys a powerful message: that our Torah is a treasure beyond worth.

In this context, we may be reading here a parable for the workings of the human mind.  Let’s read it like this: when Rabbi Yose says הָיִֽיתִי מְהַלֵּךְ בַּדֶּֽרֶךְ, he isn’t on a physical journey at all: he is telling us that he was on the derech, the derech yasharah, the straight and narrow. The adam who meets him is his own yetzer yara, who was poga, who encounters him unexpectedly (we daven on a daily basis for this sort of meeting not to happen when we ask to be spared a pega ra). Rabbi Yose and his yetzer hara don’t need to exchange names since they already know each other pretty well. The yetzer hara then challenges Rabbi Yose to look at where he is in life and to ask him: “don’t you think you could do better for yourself than to be a big rabbi in this relative Torah desert?” Rabbi Yose realizes that he could do much better in material terms, but he also recognizes that he has a good routine for learning Torah where he is, and that he doesn’t need to exchange the routine he knows for the uncertainties of a move to another place—particularly if it involves the disruptions involved in becoming the local celebrity Rav somewhere else. That would be like using the Torah as a spade to dig with.

Finally, here’s the question that troubles many laymen. Why didn’t Rabbi Yose just take the money and use it to set up a well-funded Beit Midrash from where he could be marbitz Torah and create a new generation of talmidei chachamim? I leave the answer to you.

Weighed in the balance

This week's Pirkei Avot reading is perek 2. Here for this Shabbat is a post from that chapter that discusses an unusual issue: an apparent dispute between two rabbis over which of two distinguished sages is "weightier".  

In Avot 2:11 Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai praises the different qualities of two of his five best talmidim. Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus is the "sealed cistern" who retains his vast corpus of learning, while Rabbi Elazar ben Arach is the "irrepressible spring" from which fresh Torah continues to gush. Which of these rabbis is the greater scholar?

According to Avot 2:12:

He [i.e. Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai] used to say, “If all the wise men of Israel were on one side of the scales and Eliezer ben Hyrcanus was on the other side, he would outweigh them all.”

Abba Sha’ul says in his name, “If all the wise men of Israel were on one side of the scales, and Eliezer ben Hyrcanus was with them too, but Elazar ben Arach was on the other side, he would outweigh them all.”

How might we account for this apparent discrepancy between Rabban Yochanan’s words as cited by him with those quoted by his contemporary, Abba Sha’ul? There are several possible explanations. For example, it could be that

1. The original version is correct and Abba Sha’ul’s is not;

2. The original version is wrong and Abba Sha’ul’s is right;

3. A muddle has arisen on account of the similarity of the frequently-confused names of Eliezer and Elazar, with Abba Sha’ul seeking to clarify that it was Rabbi Elazar and not Rabbi Eliezer upon whom Rabban Yochanan wished to confer the accolade;

4. Both versions were correct at the time when they were spoken: Abba Sha’ul records the fact that, while Rabbi Yochanan initially held Rabbi Eliezer in higher regard than Rabbi Elazar, he subsequently changed his mind;

5. Both versions were correct at the time when they were spoken: the first statement was made before Rabbi Elazar appeared on the scene, but later revised in order to take his learning into account;

6. The first version was intended for public consumption, while the second was intended for the ears of Abba Sha’ul alone;

7. Both versions are correct: Rabban Yochanan however said them in different circumstances and they relate to different qualities possessed by Rabbis Eliezer and Elazar.

Given that both statements have been collated in Avot and passed down faithfully for getting on for two millennia, it is suggested that the correct approach to them should be to seek to validate and reconcile them both, if that is possible. In evaluating the possibility of a reconciliation, we should also recognize that, while argument and dispute are the life-blood of the Oral Torah, it is not normally the way of the Mishnah for any Tanna to seek to embarrass or overtly contradict another. Appreciating that the reputations of Rabban Yochanan, Abba Sha’ul, Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Elazar are at stake, we should not be quick to assume that Abba Sha’ul was either correcting Rabban Yochanan or trying to catch him out—or indeed that the praise of Rabbi Eliezer was given at the expense of Rabbi Elazar, or vice versa.

Seeking a positive reconciliation of the two statements, Rabbi Ovadyah Sforno points to a dispute in the Talmud (Berachot 64a, Horayot 14a) over whether it is better to be “Sinai”—the mountain on which the Torah was given to Israel—or “one who uproots mountains.” Here “Sinai” is a shorthand expression for a person who possesses a vast and all-encompassing database of Torah knowledge, while the “uprooter of mountains” is the master of dialectics who, with that database at hand, can deduce fresh rules and correctly apply them.

Rabbi Eliezer, the cemented cistern that retains everything, would appear to be the epitome of “Sinai,” while the irrepressible spring symbolizes the spontaneous application of reasoning techniques by Rabbi Elazar.

Before any Torah can be taught and transmitted, “Sinai” is preferable since it is impossible to derive fresh concepts from earlier ones if that earlier, necessary knowledge is unavailable. However, once that necessary Torah data is supplied, the “uprooter of mountains” comes into his own since he can raise our understanding of Torah to new heights. In other words, in terms of raw Torah data, Rabbi Eliezer outweighs the rest, while Rabbi Elazar tips the balance when it comes to deductive prowess. Which takes precedence? We rule in favour of the Tanna Kama of Rabban Yochanan against Abba Sha’ul (see discussion of Maharam Shik on this point).

The idea that, without Torah, there is no basis for reasoning but, without reasoning, there is no functional utility in learning Torah, is echoed by a metaphor in a later Mishnah (“… if there is no flour, there is no Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no flour”: Avot 3:21). Torah is the wheat, as it were, which is only made digestible when it is ground into flour—but without Torah there is no intellectual grist for the mill.

A tangible silence

This Shabbat we resume the weekly study of Pirkei Avot, which is traditionally studied from Pesach till at least Shavuot, if not till Rosh Hashanah. We start with a mishnah from the first perek.

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel teaches, at Avot 1:17:

כָּל יָמַי גָּדַֽלְתִּי בֵּין הַחֲכָמִים, וְלֹא מָצָֽאתִי לְגוּף טוֹב מִשְּׁתִיקָה, וְלֹא הַמִּדְרָשׁ עִקָּר אֶלָּא הַמַּעֲשֶׂה, וְכָל הַמַּרְבֶּה דְבָרִים מֵבִיא חֵטְא

Translation: “In all my days I have been brought up among the wise, and I have found nothing better for the body than silence. The essential thing is not study, but action. And anyone who talks too much brings on sin”.

The main message of Rabban Shimon is clear: it is good to be sparing with one’s speech and to prioritise the performance of good deeds even when one is committed to the study of Torah. However, there is still scope for questions and discussion.

Two issues spring out at us. The more obvious one arises from the curious reference to “the body”. Would not Rabban Shimon’s message be just as clear if those words were omitted? And why should anything as intangible as human speech be thought to have an impact on a person’s corporeal wellbeing?

The other issue arises from the inclusion of the first part of Rabban Shimon’s teaching in Avot, when the final part cautions against excessive verbiage and the redactor has also included other teachings about the need to limit one’s speech (Avot 1:5, 1:11, 3:17).

An explanation that both accounts for the reference to “body” and vindicates the inclusion of the apparently repetitive teaching in this Mishnah is offered by the Sefat Emet (as brought by Rabbi Gedaliyahu Schorr, Or Gedaliyahu, parashat Behar). According to this explanation, when Rabban Shimon refers to silence that is good for the body, he is referring to a person’s need to silence the internal voice that advocates for those urges and desires that relate to one’s physicality. How does one silence this internal voice one? By subjugating it through the force of one’s neshamah, one’s spiritual strength.

If one accepts this view, the mishnah teaches of Rabban Shimon’s own personal experience of exercising self-discipline regarding the body. This presumably means curbing excessive eating, drinking and other pleasures that are permitted but potentially harmful when there is over-indulgence. It does not suggest that silence is better than any form of speech; nor does it overlap with the other mishnayot concerning the desirability of limiting one’s verbal output.

Is this why your pet hates your friend?

 This post focuses on a mishnah from the fourth Perek of Avot--the second of the two perakim for this week.

Many cat- and dog-owners have wondered why it is that their domestic pet sometimes takes an apparently irrational dislike to of your friends or family members. You find wondering what was the problem: was the human in question using the wrong deodorant, or did that person give your animal a surreptitious swipe when you weren’t looking? Or is there more to it?

One person who clearly has no doubt as to the cause is Rabbi Yisrael of Kozhnitz. At Avot 4:5 R’ Yochanan ben Beroka teaches this:

כָּל הַמְחַלֵּל שֵׁם שָׁמַֽיִם בַּסֵּֽתֶר, נִפְרָעִין מִמֶּֽנּוּ בְּגָלוּי, אֶחָד שׁוֹגֵג וְאֶחָד מֵזִיד בְּחִלּוּל הַשֵּׁם

Everyone who desecrates the Divine Name in secret is punished in public. When it comes to desecration of the Name, it’s the same thing whether one does it negligently or deliberately.

Why are wrongful acts a desecration of God’ name if they are done in secret? No-one else knows about them. Or do they? In his Ahavat Yisrael, Rabbi Yisrael suggests that a Heavenly Voice proclaims that a desecration of God’s name has been committed.

There’s an obvious problem with this suggestion. If this Heavenly proclamation does take place, how come we never hear it. Rabbi Yisrael has an answer. The Heavenly Voice is actually silent, which is why we don’t hear it. It’s a heart-to-heart communication which we intuit through our feelings. Since it’s not a verbalized statement it can be both perceived and comprehended not just by us humans—if we are sufficiently receptive and sensitive—but by animals too.

Is this why your dog becomes aggressive or frightened when certain visitors turn up, and why your cat warmly welcomes some friends but keeps a frosty distance from others? There is no hard proof to demonstrate that this is so, and anecdotal evidence of instances where this has apparently happened can generally be explained by other means. Though, while stories of sapient animals discerning the good from the bad are the stuff of which much good fiction has been made, Jewish tradition is broad enough to embrace them: thus we learn how the donkeys of Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa and Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair refuse to eat food that had not been tithed or which had been stolen by their new owners (Avot deRabbi Natan 8:8; Bereshit Rabbah 60:8).

Perhaps the real message of Rabbi Yisrael’s understanding has nothing to do with Heavenly Voices at all. The point he seeks to make is that we should be more sensitive to the activities of our fellow humans and not ignore any warning signs and misgivings we may have about their honesty and probity. If this is so, we face the challenge of synthesizing it with Avot 1:6, which demands of us that we should judge others on the basis of their merits and give them the benefit of the doubt.

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

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

The importance of tzedakah 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 objects 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, Rabbi 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 Rabbi 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.

What does it mean to take care?

This piece digs into perek 2 of Pirkei Avot--the second of the two perakim we study this Shabbat.

There is no piece of advice that is given—or ignored—more frequently than the injunction: “Take care!”   From our earliest days as children, we hear these words from our parents and elders. When we grow up, the refrain is taken up by our partners and peers, and when we grow old we receive them from our children. It doesn’t matter what we are doing: going out in the rain, playing in the park, climbing a ladder, lifting a suitcase or descending the stairs. We are always told: “Be careful! Take care!” The most annoying thing about this instruction is that it usually comes without the information we really need to know about what care needs to be taken and how we should take it.

Given the prevalence of this unwanted advice, it is almost a disappointment to read Avot 2:18, where Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel teaches three lessons. The first two of them are clearly connected, since both address prayer, and they are at first sight no more than the usual caution to take care:

הֱוֵי זָהִיר בִּקְרִיאַת שְׁמַע וּבִתְפִלָּה. וּכְשֶׁאַתָּה מִתְפַּלֵּל, אַל תַּֽעַשׂ תְּפִלָּתְךָ קְבַע, אֶלָּא רַחֲמִים וְתַחֲנוּנִים לִפְנֵי הַמָּקוֹם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: כִּי חַנּוּן וְרַחוּם הוּא, אֶֽרֶךְ אַפַּֽיִם וְרַב חֶֽסֶד, וְנִחָם עַל הָרָעָה

Be zahir (careful) in reciting the Shema and in tefillah (prayer). When you do pray, do not make your prayers routine, but [pleas for] mercy and supplication before the Almighty, as it says: “For He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in lovingkindness, and He has a gentle touch with the bad…”

Why does Rabbi Shimon take the trouble to tell us to be careful when we say Shema and when we pray? Is it not obvious that we should do so? And why should we take the trouble to study and internalise this message? If we are seriously committed to our religious practice, aren’t we doing it anyway? And, if we are not, this advice is hardly going to change us.

Rabbenu Yonah, the Bartenura and the commentary ascribed to Rashi explain that this mishnah addresses the need to say Shema at the right time. But since this is in any event a matter of halachah, Jewish law, we might wonder why it might be necessary to add a Mishnaic warning to take care. Perhaps sensing this, the Me’iri posits that the reason for taking care in reciting Shema and prayer is that it enhances one’s recognition of one’s Creator and one’s ability to become close to Him. The Chida (Ahavah beTa’anugim) sees it as being literally a wake-up call, since Shema and tefillah are the first two big events we have to deal with after we have dragged ourselves sluggishly out of bed. Another possibililty is that this mishnah is a corrective, since a person might be tempted to cut corners in saying Shema and tefillah in order to leave more time to learn Torah (R’ Chaim Pelagi, Einei Kol Chai; R’ Dovid Pardo, Shoshanim LeDavid).

The Shema and prayer aren’t by any means the only things our Sages tell us to take care over. For example, in the fourth perek Rabbi Yehudah tells us (Avot 4:16) to be zahir in our learning. There’s also another we find for being careful: in Avot 1:1 the Men of the Great Assembly warn us to be matunim badin (painstakingly careful in judgement). Again, I would have assumed that it was a no-brainer that judges should take care in deciding the cases before them, so why should there be any need for a warning?

We might speculate as to whether there might be some connection between these two mishnayot. Judges are told to be matunim, while people reciting Shema or praying are told to be zahir. Why aren’t judges told to be zehirim and why aren’t we supposed to be matunim?

With judges there is an extra element of taking care. This ideally involves hearing and discussing a case and then taking a break, sleeping on one’s reason for reaching a conclusion and then reassessing it afresh. That is the highest form of taking care since it not only demands a careful rethink but also allows a judge’s subconscious thoughts and perspectives to come to the forefront of his mind.  We want our judges to be matunim, to leave that space for mature reflection, rather than for them to be merely zehirim.

But when we recite Shema or pray, our care-taking is of a different order. Yes, we must be zehirim, we must say the words correctly, at the due time and with the necessary degree of thought and intention—but we may not be matunim and take a break in order to consider our performance of these commandments in greater depth.  We must complete the task of recitation or prayer in a single session,

Caution in teaching: the need for quality control

This week we double up on Pirkei Avot, reading the first two perakim. This piece dips into Perek !.

At Avot 1:11 Avtalyon gives us the first of only three teachings in Avot that are couched in the form of a narrative:

חֲכָמִים, הִזָּהֲרוּ בְדִבְרֵיכֶם, שֶׁמָּא תָחֽוֹבוּ חוֹבַת גָּלוּת וְתִגְלוּ לִמְקוֹם מַֽיִם הָרָעִים, וְיִשְׁתּוּ הַתַּלְמִידִים הַבָּאִים אַחֲרֵיכֶם וְיָמֽוּתוּ, וְנִמְצָא שֵׁם שָׁמַֽיִם מִתְחַלֵּל

Scholars, be careful with your words. For perhaps you will be exiled to a place of bad water. The students who follow you might drink the bad water and die, and the Name of Heaven will be desecrated.

Once it is appreciated that ‘water’ is a metaphor for Torah and that ‘bad water’ is bad Torah teaching, the meaning of this parable is plain: if you, the chacham, are careless in the way you impart Torah to your students, they may misconstrue or misunderstand God’s message. They will then damage the Torah further when in turn they teach it erroneously to students of their own. Having done so, they are liable to be punished—and this will be a chillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name.

R' Ovadyah Hedayah (Seh LaBet Avot) points out the irony that is buried within this tale. Here we have talmidim of a rabbi who follow him and, who despite their learning from him in good faith, are guilty of a chillul Hashem. If one of those talmidim should through his inadvertence or negligence unwittingly bring about the death of another person, in Torah times he would have had been exiled to one of the orei miklat (“cities of refuge”) and—because his Torah education was understood to be a priority—his rabbi had to go into exile with him.

Our tradition of Pirkei Avot learning is never so narrow as to admit only one meaning per mishnah, and sometimes we find explanations that are quite surprising. According to the Chida (Chasdei Avot) the chillul Hashem is not the fault of the chacham but of his talmidim: it is they who cause death and destruction through their impaired capacity to absorb Torah. The moral of the mishnah would thus be that the chacham should be ultra-cautious in choosing his words and, it seems to me, in conducting regular quality control tests by examining his talmidim regularly to seek out signs of error or deviation from true Torah teaching. This process should ideally start at the moment that talmidim are selected, to weed out those who lack the ability to understand what is being taught and the maturity to handle it (per R’ Eliezer Papo, Ya’alzu Chasidim).

Like the words of the written Torah, the guidance of tractate Avot is intended to speak to us at all times and in every generation. We can thus take away from Avtalyon’s teaching a message that applies to parents, medical practitioners, accountants, lawyers and indeed anyone whose words will be given the weight of authority and which may cause havoc if distorted or taken out of context.

Through the Eyes of a Child

This week’s pre-Shabbat Pirkei Avot post picks up on a mishnah from Perek 5

There’s a highly problematic mishnah at Avot 5:25. Some editions omit it entirely; others place it out of its usual sequence, and there’s no consensus as to who teaches it—is it Yehudah ben Teyma or Shmuel HaKatan? Setting this matters aside, this is what it says:

בֶּן חָמֵשׁ שָׁנִים לְמִקְרָא, בֶּן עֶֽשֶׂר שָׁנִים לְמִשְׁנָה, בֶּן שְׁלֹשׁ עֶשְׂרֵה לְמִצְוֹת, בֶּן חֲמֵשׁ עֶשְׂרֵה לִגְמָרָא, בֶּן שְׁמוֹנֶה עֶשְׂרֵה לְחֻפָּה, בֶּן עֶשְׂרִים לִרְדּוֹף, בֶּן שְׁלֹשִׁים לְכֹֽחַ, בֶּן אַרְבָּעִים לְבִינָה, בֶּן חֲמִשִּׁים לְעֵצָה, בֶּן שִׁשִּׁים לְזִקְנָה, בֶּן שִׁבְעִים לְשֵׂיבָה, בֶּן שְׁמוֹנִים לִגְבוּרָה, בֶּן תִּשְׁעִים לָשֽׁוּחַ, בֶּן מֵאָה כְּאִלּוּ מֵת וְעָבַר וּבָטֵל מִן הָעוֹלָם

Five years is the age for the study of the Written Torah; ten, for the study of Mishnah; thirteen, for being bound by mitzvot; fifteen, to learn Talmud; eighteen, for marriage; twenty, to pursue a livelihood; thirty, for strength; forty, for understanding; fifty, for giving advice; sixty, for sagacity; seventy, for elderliness; eighty, for power; ninety, for being bent over. A hundred-year-old is as one who has died and passed away and no longer counts for anything in the world.

Since the age at which to commence the various stages of a child’s education is a matter that spans both religious and secular concerns, it is unsurprising that there is a vast literature on the topic. But let's look at just one question: since the tractate of Avot is not a textbook on educational methodology, what is our takeaway message from a teaching which, prima facie, addresses the way we as Jews should conduct ourselves?

It is immediately apparent that there is no uniform consensus about what “Torah at five” means. Some scholars, including Rambam, the Sforno and R’ Chaim Volozhiner (Ruach Chaim), make no comment at all. Those who do comment tend to have little to say on it in terms of mussar and middot, focusing instead on issues of functional efficacy. Thus the commentary ascribed to Rashi cautions that “five” really means “five and not before” since the study of Torah weakens those who attempt it, the implication being that we should not impose upon a child a greater burden than it can handle. For Rabbenu Yonah, citing the Gemara (Rabbi Shmuel ben Shilat at Ketubot 50a), it’s the age at which a child has the necessary intellectual capacity—though for the Me’iri it’s fine to teach a child the alphabet from the age of three. 

We can also look at the instruction of “Written Torah at five” in quite a different way, even though this view has neither support nor pedigree. These words are not addressed at five year-old children. Nor are they addressed specifically to their parents. They are spoken to us all. Arguably they say: “When you open any of the works contained in the canon of Jewish tradition—whether Torah, prophecy, psalms or anything else—look at its words afresh. Read them through the eyes of a five year-old child who has never read them before. Cast aside all your assumptions and your half-remembered opinions that linger on from your previous reading and start again from scratch. That way, having rid yourself of the baggage of your old habits of thought, you can give yourself a chance to see, through the eyes of youthful innocence, those things that were previously hidden in full sight in the too-familiar words of a text you’ve grown too comfortable with”.

Do you agree?

Quick greet, dead heat

This week’s pre-Shabbat Pirkei Avot post takes us back to Perek 4.

There’s something of a conundrum at Avot 4:20, where Rabbi Matya ben Charash opens his teaching with this short piece of advice:

הֱוֵי מַקְדִּים בִּשְׁלוֹם כָּל אָדָם

Be first to greet everyone.

Usually we all benefit from the fulfilment of precepts in Avot that recommend a particular course of conduct. But here we have a zero sum game. If I greet you first when we meet, you cannot greet me first, and vice versa. Does this matter? Probably not. If we look at the major commentators on Avot, we do not find anyone who raises this point.

Some commentaries suggest that the thrust of this teaching lies in its tail: that it should apply even to a non-Jew (commentary ascribed to Rashi), an idolator (Bartenura) or even an enemy (R’ Shmuel di Ozeda, Midrash Shmuel). Rabbenu Yonah says that these words are mussar but does not spell out what that mussar is, unlike R’ Shmuel di Ozeda, who pointedly observes that it’s not enough to deign coldly to return someone else’s greeting if that person should greet him first.

Rabbi Matya is actually reminding us that greeting another human being should not be a mere mechanical act or conventional social reflex. As Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau (Yachel Yisrael) notes, when a Jew greets another person, the word used is שָׁלוֹם (shalom, “peace”). To offer another person peace is to confer a blessing. By being first to greet others we express our peaceful intent—with one major caveat. There is no magic power in the word shalom: as important as it is for us to choose the right words when we greet others, it is equally important for us to greet them with a friendly disposition (Shammai at Avot 1:15; R’ Marc D. Angel, Koren Pirkei Avot). Growling “shalom” while you scowl is unlikely to produce the requisite effect.

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Stiffening one's resolve

This week's erev Shabbat post on Pirkei Avot returns to Perek 3.

At Avot 3:17 Rabbi Akiva, having cautioned about the slippery slope leading from jest and frivolity down to sexual impropriety, promotes the efficacy of four “fences” in protecting higher values. He says:

מַסֹּֽרֶת סְיָג לַתּוֹרָה, מַעְשְׂרוֹת סְיָג לָעֹֽשֶׁר, נְדָרִים סְיָג לַפְּרִישׁוּת, סְיָג לַחָכְמָה שְׁתִיקָה

Tradition is a fence to Torah, tithing is a fence to wealth, vows are a fence for abstinence; a fence for wisdom is silence.

To the practising Jew of today’s world, the importance and practical utility of Torah, wealth and wisdom need neither explanation or justification. But what do we make of vows and abstinence? These are not part of our daily vocabulary. We no longer make the sort of vows that feature in the Torah, and abstinence is an unfashionable concept in any open society where self-indulgence, and indeed overindulgence, have become the norm. But if a teaching from Avot does not offer us an immediately relevant meaning, we do not jettison it or consign it to the museum of religious curiosities. We must look more closely at it and understand it more fully.

All of us make resolutions from time to time. These are not formal vows or oaths made in God’s name, and they usually relate to things that are either unregulated by the Torah or which are so prevalent that it is hard to avoid them. Typical examples might be resolving to limit one’s intake of alcohol at meals or parties, not to eat a second piece of cake at the shul’s kiddush, to get to bed by midnight or to try to avoid speaking about one’s friends behind their backs. If we mean these resolutions and take them seriously, we feel annoyed with ourselves if we break them—but it doesn’t cost us anything if we do and we do not incur any liability for which we would be obliged to offer a Temple sacrifice, a major deterrent to breaking one’s vows.

R' Yisroel Miller cites an idea expressed by R’ Yehoshua Heller in his Divrei Yehoshua that offers a simple way to apply our mishnah in the context of our own lives. He writes:

“Rather than vowing to keep to your resolution, vow that each time you break it you will give a certain amount of money to tzedakah (enough to hurt, but not enough to bankrupt you). A modified version of this is not to make an actual vow but merely a commitment to give the money each time you break your resolution. This sensitizes us and heightens our awareness of our actions, reinforcing our resolve”.

This creates a sort of win-win situation. If we keep our resolutions, we have money in our pockets and the satisfaction of demonstrating that we are strong because our self-discipline is in working order (see Avot 4:1). But if we fail, we are credited with the mitzvah of tzedakah and one or more charitable causes will be fortunate to benefit from it.

Don't do it just because you can!

This week's trip to Pirkei Avot takes us back to Perek 2 in the third round of pre-Shabbat Pirkei Avot posts since Pesach.

 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.

Avoid offence, make a fence!

It’s back to the beginning again as we return to Perek 1 for the third round of pre-Shabbat Pirkei Avot posts.

The first mishnah in the first chapter of Avot begins by establishing how the chain of Torah tradition passed all the way down from the Giving of the Law at Sinai to its being received by the Men of the Great Assembly in the fifth century BCE. This was a tough time. Prophecy was fading away and the Jewish people had come to understand that, from now on, they were to navigate through life with the guidance of only their own understanding of the Torah. This being so, it was apparent that the Torah needed to be protected if it was to protect those to whom it was given. Our mishnah therefore concludes with the third of three instructions from the Men of the Great Assembly:

עֲשׂוּ סְיָג לַתּוֹרָה

Make a fence around the Torah.

What sort of protection does the Torah need? Essentially, there are two main threats to its integrity. One comes from its deliberate or inadvertent misinterpretation; the other, which our mishnah addresses here, is the concern that its adherents will transgress Torah laws though their failure to perform or obey them properly. A classic example relates to observance of the rule that one must not do creative work on Shabbat, the seventh day of the week. This holy day is “fenced in” by adding to it a little bit of both the day before and the day after, to give a little leeway for those good souls who seek to work right to the very last minute and may, in doing so, slip up. This is presumably why, in its Avot page online, Chabad.org actually translates סְיָג (seyag, “fence”) as a “safety fence”.

Here's an additional and perhaps surprising explanation: fence in your words so that they do not become a burden on the people who have to listen to you. This is especially the case when speaking words of Torah: one’s words should be carefully suited to match the subject matter, the occasion and the audience to whom they are addressed. This is not a modern attempt to make the mishnah more meaningful to contemporary readers. It actually comes from the Me’iri (1249-1315) in his Bet HaBechirah. The Me’iri also cites a tale from the Mishlei HaArav concerning a certain wise man who was excessively long-winded. When asked why he spoke at such length he replied: “So that simple folk will understand”, to which he received the retort: “By the time the simple folk understand, the intelligent folk will be bored out of their minds”.

In reality, while a teacher of Torah (or indeed of anything else) can with relatively little effort adapt his words to a single talmid and will hurt no one else even if he repeats himself 400 times (see the story of Rav Perida, Eruvin 54b), the task becomes exponentially harder with each additional addressee. When dealing with a class full of students, each with their specific aptitudes and requirements, it is hard to establish a fence round one’s words that protects those who are quick on the uptake without imposing an insurmountable barrier for those who are less fortunate. One law professor used to share the following advice with each junior colleague as they joined her faculty: 

“The trick is to say everything three times without repeating yourself even once”.

"I'm gonna make you love me"

 An Avot baraita for Shabbat (Parashat Balak)

Readers of a certain age may recall a soul number popularised in the late 1960s by Diana Ross and the Supremes, together with the Temptations. Its title was also a catchy refrain, “I’m gonna make you love me”. While the precise means by which this objective might be achieved lie somewhere beyond the parameters of discussion on The Hanassi Blog, the need to be loved occupies an important position in Pirkei Avot.

The first Baraita in Perek 6 opens with the words

כָּל הָעוֹסֵק בַּתּוֹרָה לִשְׁמָהּ זוֹכֶה לִדְבָרִים הַרְבֵּה, וְלֹא עוֹד, אֶלָּא שֶׁכָּל הָעוֹלָם כֻּלּוֹ כְּדַאי הוּא לוֹ. נִקְרָא רֵֽעַ, אָהוּב,

Whoever studies Torah for its own sake merits many things; not only that, but the entire world is worthwhile for him. He is called “friend”, “beloved”...

Avot 6:6 goes even further, listing being loved as one of the 48 things through which a person acquires Torah.

There’s an obvious problem here. While we can love others—whether they love us back or not—there is no mechanism that can be guaranteed to trigger love for us in someone else’s heart. Love is an emotion; it is not subject to rational analysis. How often do we see the heartbreak of lovely souls whose love for another is not reciprocated. So how do we understand these baraitot?

The simplest answer is to say that “beloved” (in Hebrew, ahuv) means “beloved by God”, but this doesn’t solve any problems. Rabbi Akiva (Avot 3:18) has already established that, even if God were to prefer those of us who study Torah for its own sake, we are all still dear to God because we are created in His image. So it must mean something else.

Rabbis Nachman and Natan of Breslov suggest that ahuv here means “loved by oneself”. Strange as this may seem, there is good reason to adopt this view. We are commanded to love others as we love ourselves—and until we love ourselves properly we cannot demonstrate the right level of love for others. However, this still requires us to explain what connection, if any, exists between self-love and (i) learning Torah for its own sake and (ii) the acquisition of Torah per se. Stretching the word ahuv well beyond its normal meaning, R’ Mordechai Frankel-Te’omim (Be’er HaAvot) suggests that it embraces all types of love that a person has for mitzvot between him and God and other people: someone who lacks this quality is by definition lacking in the degree of interest and commitment one needs in one’s learning in order to make it effective. Ultimately, though, it seems to me that we are left with questions we cannot convincingly answer.

Incidentally, these baraitot in Avot are not the only occasions on which being loved is mysteriously and apparently linked with learning Torah. Twice a day, in the paragraph that immediately precedes the recitation of the Shema, we are required to recite a blessing that is a sort of “love sandwich”: it opens with a declaration that we are loved by God and closes with a declaration that we are loved by God. The “filling” in the sandwich is a prayer that God in His mercy should help us to learn His Torah. This invites us to speculate as to why our desire to learn Torah, with God’s assistance if and when it is available, should come wrapped in His love for us. R’ Chaim Friedlander (Siftei Chaim, Rinat Chaim: Bi’urei Tefillah) offers a possible explanation: the greatest act of love that God has shown to us is His gift to us of the Torah: we should seek to reciprocate this demonstration of love by loving Him in return, as the first paragraph of the Shema requires of us.

The third worm

  An Avot mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Chukkat)

There are three worms in Pirkei Avot. Two—the rimah (at 3:1 and 4:4) and the tole’ah (3:1—are what one might call conventional worms. But the third, which we meet in this week’s perek is anything but ordinary: it is the miraculous shamir. At Avot 5:8 we learn of 10 things that, the Tannaim agreed, were created at the very end of the sixth Day of Creation, just before all creative work ceased for Shabbat. They are:

פִּי הָאָֽרֶץ, פִּי הַבְּאֵר, פִּי הָאָתוֹן, הַקֶּֽשֶׁת, וְהַמָּן, וְהַמַּטֶּה, וְהַשָּׁמִיר, הַכְּתָב, וְהַמִּכְתָּב, וְהַלֻּחוֹת

The mouth of the earth [that swallowed Korach]; the mouth of [Miriam's] well; the mouth of [Balaam's] donkey; the rainbow; the manna; [Moses'] staff; the shamir; writing, the inscription and the tablets [of the Ten Commandments].

The shamir, which may possibly not have been a worm, was a tiny creature that, in our tradition, was vested by God with the power to cut the huge stones that were used in the construction of Solomon’s Temple.  For two millennia the notion that a tiny worm might cut into solid rock was regarded by many as a laughable fantasy, but the discovery in 2019 of the bivalve shipworm lithoredo abatanica changed all that. This small, unprepossessing creature burrows into limestone and excretes it, creating an as-yet unsolved puzzle as to how it derives its nutrients.

The corpus of the Mishnah deals with law and (in the case of Avot) best principles of behaviour and conduct.  It is not a treatise on natural history. So what is this shamir doing in Avot? What can we learn from it today?

For the father-and-son team of Rabbis Baruch and Amos Shulem (Avot Uvanim) the creation of the shamir resonates an earlier mishnah (Avot 2:13). There Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel recommends that we take steps to foresee possible problems ahead. When God created humans he gave Adam and Eve free will. Had they opted to obey His instruction not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, the human race would have lived happily ever in a sin-free world. The Temple, with its mechanism for atonement, would not have been needed and creation of the shamir would not have been called for. From this we learn that even God, in creating the world and everything in it, took the precaution of engaging in an act of creation that was purely conditional. We too should guard against events and misfortunes that may not ultimately occur.

The Ben Ish Chai (Birkat Avot) offers another answer. The ‘stone’ the shamir burrows into is the yetzer hara, the inclination to take an evil course of action.  But no matter how hard the stone is, the shamir represents the potential of even flesh-and-blood creatures such as ourselves to break it into pieces. This is learned by a kal vechomer: if even a small, weak worm can achieve this effect, how much more should we, bigger and possessed of greater strength and will-power, be able to do the same.

Though he does not mention it here, the Ben Ish Chai has support in the Gemara for use of the word ‘stone’ to refer to the yetzer hara: at Sukkah 52a, citing a verse from Ezekiel, ‘stone’ is deemed to be one of seven metaphors by which the yetzer hara is identified in Tanach. The vulnerability of stone to a slow but unremitting attack from a substance less strong than itself is also acknowledged by Rabbi Akiva’s resolution that, if the constant drip of water can wear away a rock, so too, through persistent study, might the words of Torah eventually penetrate even his then-unlearned mind (Avot deRabbi Natan 6:2, citing Job 14:19).

But there is more to the success of the shamir, and by implication to our own success, than this story suggests. Our achievements are not just credited to ourselves. There is a further ingredient—a vital ingredient without which there can be no success. As R’ Mordechai Dov Halberstam (Knesset Yisrael) comments, our efforts depend on the will of God too. We recognise this on Chanukah, when we give thanks for the victory of the Hasmoneans over the Greeks, the triumph of the weak over the strong.

Just get out of my hair!

 An Avot mishnah for Shabbat: Perek 4 (parashat Korach)

At Avot 4:23 Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar teaches four things about respecting the personal space that others need at certain times:

אַל תְּרַצֶּה אֶת חֲבֵרֶֽךָ בְּשַֽׁעַת כַּעֲסוֹ, וְאַל תְּנַחֲמֵֽהוּ בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁמֵּתוֹ מֻטָּל לְפָנָיו, וְאַל תִּשְׁאַל לוֹ בְּשַֽׁעַת נִדְרוֹ, וְאַל תִּשְׁתַּדֵּל לִרְאוֹתוֹ בְּשַֽׁעַת קַלְקָלָתוֹ

Do not [try to] calm your friend down at the height of his anger; don’t [seek to] comfort him while his dead still lies before him; don’t question him about his vow the moment he makes it; and don’t endeavour to see him at the time of his degradation.

There’s much to be said about this mishnah but this post looks only at the last bit (in bold text).

When someone has been caught something wrong or has just suffered a major setback—desertion by one’s life partner, for example—they may crave a bit of quiet time and solitude in which to think seriously about what has happened, to decide how to react and what to do next. The last thing they want is the intrusive company of others offering advice or unwanted comments. This can apply even to well-meaning companions who sit there, empathising with them and waiting for a distressed friend to open his or her heart and tell them all about it. In a modern context the intrusion may be inflicted by journalists and paparazzi who sense a juicy news story in another’s misfortune.

In our crowded and joined-up world, no one can disappear forever. Eventually even the most ashamed and embarrassed people will have to rejoin human society one way or another. When that happens, we find another mishnah in Avot waiting in the wings. According to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya (Avot 2:13) the “good path” a person should take in their life is to be a good friend. When does one act the good friend? Answer: not before a person is ready to receive that friendship.

Like much of Pirkei Avot, in this mishnah there are no cast-iron rules as to how its guidance is to be applied. A proper approach to putting Avot into practice demands that we first assess every situation in its context, in the light of common sense—a commodity that we struggle to acquire in a rapidly-changing world where yesterday’s norms are tomorrow’s no-nos.

Playing with power

Continuing our series of weekly Pirkei Avot 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.