Moses received Torah from Sinai and passed it on to Joshua; Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets and the prophets passed it on to the Members of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be moderate in judgement, Create many students, and Make a fence around the Torah.
I wrote:
The 'Avot' of the title of the tractate are the leaders of the pharisaic movement. There are several instances in Tannaitic literature of the outstanding religious leaders of the early generations being called 'Avot ha-Olam', Fathers of the World (meaning, Fathers of our world – the world of the sages).
Cheryl Birkner Mack writes:
I learned (from Rabbi Dov Berkowitz) that Avot here is used in the sense of Avot m'lakhot, and not as ancestors.
I respond:
It is true that the term Avot is often used in the sense of 'essentials', 'prime causes', 'basics'. In the well-known concept quoted by Cheryl the term Avot melakhah means 'basic major actions' prohibited on Shabbat from which many 'derivative actions' may flow. Hardly less well-known is the concept Avot Nezikin, which means the four 'basic major sources of damages' which are actionable at law. When we studied tractate Yadayyim we often refered to Avot Tum'ah – 'basic major sources of impurity' which infect others by touch or proximity.
I take it then that the intention of Cheryl's teacher was to suggest that the Avot of our present tractate should not be understood as referring to people but rather as referring to 'the basics' or 'the essentials' of Judaism. This is a very interesting and very appealing suggestion.
I wrote: But tractate Avot is most distinguished from all the other tractates of the Mishnah in that it has little or no halakhic material in it… I say 'little or no halakhic material' because it depends on how you choose to define halakhah. If we look upon the 'earnest recommendations' of the sages as halakhah then we will find many instances of halakhah in this tractate: statements of the nature of 'do this', 'do not do that', 'imitate this' and 'do not imitate that' and so forth. However, almost all scholars are content to look upon our tractate as being composed entirely of aggadah, as opposed to halakhah.
Jacob Chinitz writes (savagely edited by me):
I suggest that this delineation of the nature of Halakhah and Aggadah in terms of action and thought …is not accurate, or at least is not adequate… [There are Mitzvot] which are not in the nature of action but of thought or feeling. So if we count belief in the existence of God, as Rambam does, is this Halakhah or Aggadah?… If this is true, cannot we say that much of Avot is Halakhah, even if the content is of a thought or emotion nature? Perhaps the real distinction between Halakhah and Aggadah is not that of action and thought, but of mandatory and voluntary… Take the first statement: Moshe Kibel Torah MiSinai. Is that Halakhah or Aggadah? If the Gemara in Perek Chelek insists that Haomer Ein Torah Min Hashamayim Ein Lo Chelek Baolom Habah, the belief that Moses received the Torah from Sinai becomes a mandatory belief, and is therefore Halakhah, not Aggadah. Even though the text does not use the words Asé or Lo Ta'asé.
I respond:
There are some misunderstandings here. If you read carefully what I wrote you will see that I did not suggest (or even think) that the difference between Halakhah and Aggadah is one of action versus thought. This is palpably wrong. The difference between Halakhah and Aggadah is a difference of content and type. Ultimately, Halakhah is concerned with defining required behaviour, whereas Aggadah is concerned with values. Therefore, belief in God is Halakhah even though it does not involve any 'action': 'Thou shalt think thus' is mandatory. If a 'custom' is voluntary, by definition it is not mandatory and is not 'Halakhah' in the strict sense of the term: required behaviour.
Furthermore, Halakhah is not concerned with emotions or intentions, as such, only with actions: witness the prolonged discussion of the sages throughout the ages as to whether the mere intention to perform a mitzvah is as good as performing the mitzvah itself (and the consensus is that it is not). On the other hand, the performance of a mitzvah without the requisite 'intention' (i.e. emotional involvement) is generally recognized as valid.
The comparison between our present mishnah ("Moses received Torah from Sinai") and the statement in Sanhedrin 10:1 ("Anyone who says that Torah is not from Heaven has no share in the next world") is misleading because they are not talking about the same thing: Sanhedrin 10:1 is about the Written Torah while Avot 1:1 is about the Unwritten Torah. Indeed, I find it most instructive that the sages phrased the requirement in Sanhedrin in quasi halakhic terms ('thou shalt') but did not do so in Avot.
