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 The general tendency of such individuals is to downgrade those who have superseded them and to discourage those who would in the future gain the very positions they have failed to attain”.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.

It's a steal!

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

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

מַרְבֶּה עֲבָדִים מַרְבֶּה גָזֵל

The one who increases [his] manservants increases theft.

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

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

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

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

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

Dealing with our closest neighbour

Now that Shavuot has passed and, with it, the first cycle of summer readings of lessons from Pirkei Avot, we return to Perek 1.

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

הַרְחֵק מִשָּׁכֵן רָע, וְאַל תִּתְחַבֵּר לָרָשָׁע

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

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

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

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

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

The cost of Torah and the price of honour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examining one's motives: do we live in a binary world?

Continuing our series of erev Shabbat posts on the perek of the week, we now turn to a mishnah from Perek 5.

There is a strange mishnah at Avot 5:21:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Playing out our role

 Continuing our series of pre-Shabbat Pirkei Avot posts on the perek of the week, we now turn to Perek 3.

Rabbi Akiva is universally acknowledged in the Jewish world as one of our greatest and most influential scholars. He is also the most prominent contributor to this week’s Perek, providing four of its 23 mishnayot. We are fortunate that so much of his learning has been preserved for us in the Mishnah and Talmud—but unfortunate in that we no longer have a full understanding and appreciation of his teachings.

An example of this is the three-part mishnah of Avot 3:19:

הַכֹּל צָפוּי, וְהָרְשׁוּת נְתוּנָה, וּבְטוֹב הָעוֹלָם נִדּוֹן, וְהַכֹּל לְפִי רוֹב הַמַּעֲשֶׂה

Everything is foreseen, but freedom of choice is granted. The world is judged in goodness, and everything is in accordance with the majority of the action.

The first part of this teaching is a conundrum, but at least we can see that it is so: the notion that we have absolute freedom to do what we want cannot be conveniently reconciled with God’s knowing in advance that this is exactly what we are going to do; Rambam tells us—as if we could not see for ourselves—that the way this works is beyond human comprehension. The second part can be comprehended as a proposition, but we have no indication as to what it means in cosmic terms or in our daily lives. The third part demands some sort of explanation because its meaning lies beyond us. Knowing Rabbi Akiva as we do, we appreciate that deep meaning lies locked away within his words—but we have lost the key.

The first thing we must understand is that Rabbi Akiva was not an ordinary thinker and it is difficult for us to put ourselves into his mind-frame or into his historical context as a Jewish scholar and revolutionary at a time of Roman oppression. The second thing we have to understand is that, when he says something we cannot immediately understand, it is our task to work at it and try to give it some meaning. If you or I were to declare “The world is like an apricot”, no-one would take us seriously and we would be accounted fools or comedians. However, if a sage like Rabbi Akiva were to say the same thing, our respect for him would demand that we seek a meaning in his words even if it is not immediately apparent.

 This week’s mishnah has generated volumes of learned commentary, much of which Rabbi Akiva might have found quite surprising. Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi chose to include this teaching in Avot even though Rabbi Akiva said many things that are apparently more relevant (for example that “love your neighbour like yourself” is the great general principle of the Torah). From this we may infer that this mishnah says something about our role as humans. Even so, many explanations seemingly turn on global considerations and do not appear to address the individual at all. Be that as it may, each generation looks carefully at Rabbi Akiva’s words and we too engage in this task. If we cannot pull his meaning out of it, we can at least attempt to breathe meaning into it.

So this Shabbat let us ask ourselves: “What does this mishnah say with regard to our role as individuals in a social context? How can it improve us or aid us in the various roles we are required to fulfil?”

Getting paid the going rate

 Continuing our series of pre-Shabbat posts on the perek of the week, we now turn to Avot Perek 2.

The mishnah in Avot that was most frequently cited online last year is taught by Rabbi Tarfon (Avot 2:21):

לֹא עָלֶֽיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמוֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לְהִבָּטֵל מִמֶּֽנָּה, אִם לָמַֽדְתָּ תּוֹרָה הַרְבֵּה, נוֹתְנִין לָךְ שָׂכָר הַרְבֵּה, וְנֶאֱמָן הוּא בַּֽעַל מְלַאכְתֶּֽךָ שֶׁיְּשַׁלֶּם לָךְ שְׂכַר פְּעֻלָּתֶֽךָ, וְדַע שֶׁמַּתַּן שְׂכָרָן שֶׁל צַדִּיקִים לֶעָתִיד לָבֹא

It is not up to you to finish the task, but neither are you free to quit it. If you have learned much Torah you will be well paid—and your employer can be trusted to pay the price for your work. And know that the righteous get paid in the World to Come.

To be frank, it’s only the first part that gets cited, about not being able to finish the job or to abandon it—and that’s often by politicians, civic dignitaries, communal leaders and captains of industry. But the mishnah taken in its entirety paints a comforting picture for us:  we keep on toiling in Torah and God picks up our labour costs, settling up with us in a better world than this: a world where there is lots of leisure and no household chores, no taxes, plenty of opportunities to learn a bit more Torah, and so on. In other words, a great incentive.

But in last week’s perek, Antigonus Ish Socho teaches (Avot 1:3) a mishnah that begins:

אַל תִּהְיוּ כַּעֲבָדִים הַמְשַׁמְּשִׁין אֶת הָרַב עַל מְנָת לְקַבֵּל פְּרָס, אֶלָּא הֱווּ כַּעֲבָדִים הַמְשַׁמְּשִׁין אֶת הָרַב שֶׁלֹּא עַל מְנָת לְקַבֵּל פְּרָס

 Do not be like workers who serve their master on condition that they will receive payment. Rather, be like masters who serve their master without the condition that they will receive payment.

So while Rabbi Tarfon reassures us that we will get paid even if we don’t finish the job, Antigonus cautions us not to work in the expectation of being paid at all. Are these rabbis arguing with one another. And, if they are, can they both be right?

One answer is that even though you know for sure that you will be rewarded (as Rabbi Tarfon says), you have to put that prospect out of your head and just get on with the task of learning Torah. But if it completely slips your mind that you are going to receive a reward, you can’t truly be doing it only for the pay-off (as Antigonus suggests). There is an analogy here with top footballers, tennis players and other athletes who receive vast sums of money for their work. When they are involved in their sport in mind and body, the only thing that matters is the game or competition in which they are engaged. All thoughts of pay disappear.

Another answer is based in the Hebrew words themselves. Rabbi Tarfon’s word for payment is שְׂכַר (sechar). This is typically the going rate for the job. Antigonus however uses the word פְּרָס (peras), which is more like a tip, a gratuity that the worker receives in addition to any regular pay. On this basis it is reasonable to work for one’s ordinary pay, but one should not work in the expectation of picking up unearned bonuses.

The Torah being what it is, there are many other commentaries and explanations based on the theme of reward versus altruism in the service of God. The words of Torah are always open to us and there is no end to the way we read and understand them.

Judging others favourably: a double-edged sword

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.

Living in a non-binary world

 Continuing our series of erev Shabbat posts on the perek of the week, we now turn to a mishnah from Perek 5.

There is a strange mishnah at Avot 5:21:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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