Berakhot 167

1:
This last mishnah of the tractate is yet another example of the desire of Rabbi Yehudah the President of the Sanhedrin and the editor of the Mishnah to end tractates on a note of 'uplift'.

2:
In the Bet Mikdash the liturgy was slightly different from the liturgy that we all recognize today. Indeed, the basic formulation of the berakhah was not firmly established until Amoraic times (mid third century CE). The major components were known, but there were many variations. Indeed, it is because of the desire to incorporate into the accepted text of the berakhah all accepted variations that the grammatical form of the typical berakhah, with its awkward change from second person to third person, is as it is. In the Talmud of Eretz-Israel [Berakhot 12d] we find a difference of opinion between two great Babylonian Amoraim of the first generation: Rav, was of the opinion that the text of a berakhah must contain the word Attah [You, addressing God], whereas Shemu'el was of the opinion that the word Attah does not have to be in the text of the berakhah.

3:
In the Bet Mikdash all berakhot ended up with the same doxology, quoting verbatim I Chronicles 16:36: Barukh Adonai Elohei Yisra'el min ha-olam [Praised be Adonai Israel's God from eternity]. The response to this would be Barukh shem kevod malkhuto le'olam va'ed [Blessed be His Majesty's Name for evermore]. (This response was later replaced in the synagogue ritual with 'Amen'.)

4:
According to our mishnah, this liturgical snippet became a bone of contention between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The latter were comprised mainly of the priestly and landed elite, with their observance of Judaism centered almost entirely on the ritual of the Bet Mikdash. The Pharisees – the spiritual ancestors of modern rabbinic Judaism – were firmly entrenched in the local synagogues and study houses. Whereas the Pharisaic ideology was based on the validity of the Oral tradition (by which Jewish law could be constantly updated by rabbinic re-interpretation, the Sadducees denied the validity of any but the immutable text of the Written Torah. There were also differences of belief between the two factions. The one that concerns us right now is the fact that the Sadducees denied that there was any Biblical basis for the Pharisaic proposition that there was life after death.

This, of course, is just the continuation of the verse from Chronicles that we cited above.

5:
The seifa [last section] of our mishnah is introduced purely for "positive uplift" at the end of the tractate. The gist of this midrash is that God's Name should be used in greeting others, citing examples from the Biblical text. It is interesting to note that later halakhic thought (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries CE) took an opposite path, and even the use of the innocuous word Shalom as a greeting was frowned upon because one of the Divine epithets is Shalom. It would be unthinkable that God's Name should be invoked, in the public baths for example, where people are to be found naked…

6:
[Follow] the verse "Do not despise your mother in her dotage":

The 'mother' of this verse, as re-interpreted by the midrash, is "Mother Torah", and the verse is made to teach that it is wrong to deviate from well-established customs simply because they come from an ancient and hoary past.

7:
The last midrash of the tractate is a famous one. It is possible to subject the verse from Psalm 119:126 to two different interpretations. According to the interpretation of Tanna Kamma when people are voiding the Torah (by contravening its basic precepts, but in a manner that existing halakhah cannot deal with) it is time for the sages to act on God's behalf and to contravene some law or other of the Torah in order to save the whole. According to Rabbi Nathan's interpretation, under such circumstances is is "opportune for God to act" to save His own Torah. (In other words, Rabbi Nathan is loath to contravene a Torah law under any circumstances.) The interpretation of Tanna Kamma is the interpretation that has been accepted practice over the generations.

Richard Friedman writes concerning our shiur in Berakhot 166:

You say that this mishna prescribes conduct on the Temple Mount "in the days when the Temple still existed there." Could it not be that it applies even after the destruction? This suggestion is not based on the present tense of the verbs – I think the Mishna sometimes uses present tense to refer to the Temple times that were then in the past and/or in the future. It seems to me that there are two possible reasons for the broader interpretation:

1. I think that sometimes the Mishna explicitly says, "When the Temple was standing," and here it doesn't.
2. There are situations where the k'dusha persists after the holy structure is destroyed. Late in ch. 1 of M.Meg., it says that the holiness of Jerusalem (brought into being through the building of the Temple) was such that even after the Temple was destroyed, the permission to sacrifice at private altars did not come back into force. Elsewhere (in ch. 3 or 4 of M.Meg.?) I think there's a prohibition on using the site of a destroyed synagogue as a short-cut route.

If I recall correctly, that prohibition is much like the one in today's mishna – if the prohibition applies to the site of a destroyed synagogue, al ahat kama v'kama for the site of the Temple, no?

I respond:

I think that Richard is reading more into the text than is actually there. The wording of the mishnah makes it clear that it is an ancient halakhah dating back to Temple times. Its major provisions would have no relevance after the destruction of the Bet Mikdash [70 CE]. Whether or not the Kedushah [sanctity] of the Bet Mikdash continues to pervade its site even after its destruction is a moot point in halakhah: this is why there are differing views on the permissibility or otherwise of going up onto the main esplanade of the Temple Mount, which now houses the Dome of the Rock and the Aksa mosque. Even if we assume (as I do) that the sanctity and its essential prohibitions still apply, this would not necessarily 'eternalize' the provisions of the mishnah under discussion. On the other hand, there is nothing intrinsic in the mishnah which would mitigate against Richard's hypothesis.

Oren Regev asks: What is Massechet Okatzin all about? why does it end the way it does? (i.e. that pro-peace statement)

I respond:

Tractate Uktzin is concerned with the transmission of ritual impurity through the stalks [uktzin] of fruit. (I hope that Oren is not suggesting that this be our next topic of study!) As it now stands, Uktzin is the last tractate of the Mishnah – though there is some evidence that Rabbi Yehudah the editor of the Mishnah had originally intended a slightly different order. (The present order of the tractates within the Orders is purely arithmetic: the largest coming first and the smallest last.) As to why Rabbi should have chosen to end the tractate with an encomium to peace – see what I have written above concerning ending tractates on a note of 'positive uplift'.

So as not to leave us all in suspense, let me quote the ending of Tractate Uktzin, referred to by Oren in his question:

Amen.

There were moments when I was not certain that we would ever reach this point, so it is with heartfelt thanks to God that I conclude here our study of Tractate Berakhot, despite a hiatus for hospitalization and yet another for surgery. The study has taken us fourteen months and our Study Group has now managed to complete the study of two tractates. According to time-honoured tradition, there is only one way that is uniquely appropriate to celebrate this joyous event, and that is by starting on the study of a third tractate!

I have received a few suggestions for a tractate other than Sanhedrin, but no two suggestions were the same! On the other hand more people wrote expressing satisfaction with my choice of Sanhedrin. Therefore, after a few days break, I hope that we shall embark together on our study of Tractate Sanhedrin. Mazzal Tov to everybody.