Avot053

נושא: Avot

BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI

Hillel and Shammai received [the tradition] from them. Hillel says: Be of the disciples of Aaron – loving peace, pursuing peace, loving people and bringing them closer to Torah.

10:
In our last shiur we saw how Hillel, demonstrating the effectiveness of the system of midrash ha-Torah which he had learned from Shemayah and Avtalyon, had solved an acute halakhic problem. The Gemara [Pesaĥim 66a] now relates the consequences of that halakhic solution – consequences happy for all Israel then and since:

Thereupon they made him the head [teacher] and appointed him President [of the Sanhedrin] over them [i.e. over the Beteyra family], and he midrashically expounded the laws of Passover all that day. He [also] chided them [i.e. the Beteyra family]: "Do you know what it was that brought me from Babylon and has made me your president? It was your laziness! You did not study enough under the two greatest scholars of the age, Shemayah and Avtalyon!"

11:
Lest one should think that Hillel berated them from haughtiness we must also consider his willing admission that he, too, it seems, had not been sufficiently dilligent in his studies!

Then they said, "Rabbi, what if someone forgot to bring the knife [to slaughter the paschal lamb] already on Friday? [How was he to bring the knife on Shabbat when carrying such an object is forbidden?] He said, "I did learn this but I have forgotten! But leave it to Israel: if they aren't prophets they are descendents of prophets. The following day those whose paschal offering was a lamb had tied the knife in the animal's fleece [so the lamb was carrying its own knife]>; those whose paschal offering was a kid had secured it between the animal's horns. When he saw this he recalled the ruling and said, "that's what I learned from Shemayah and Avtalyon!"

12:
Thus Hillel became President of the Sanhedrin. This must have been sometime around the year 30 BCE; and Shammai must have completed the celebrated 'pair' a few years later (originally one Menaĥem was Hillel's Av Bet Din).

To be continued.

Yehudah Wiesen writes:

When you write …there have been gaps in the succession of generations… what do you mean or imply? Are you drawing an analogy to the principle of American law of "chain of custody of evidence" which holds that any break in the observation of physical evidence renders the evidence unreliable and so not admissible in court? Do you mean to imply that our received tradition is similarly flawed and simply not to be trusted? If not, what do you mean?

I respond:

I meant no such implication. (As a non-American my knowledge of American jurisprudence is very lacking and it would never have enabled me to think of such a comparison!) What I meant is very simple indeed, and nothing deeper should be looked for. The way the first chapter of Avot presents the passage of the tradition from 'pair' to 'pair' suggests that each pair immediately succeeded to the task upon the demise of the previous 'pair'. Logic should have told us that this was not the case, because we have seen that from the historical point of view sometimes decades elapsed between one generation of sages and the next. For example, in Avot031 (explanations 1 & 2) we noted that some five or six decades must elapse between Yosé ben-Yo'ezer (who died before 165 BCE) and Yehoshu'a ben Peraĥayah (who did not return to Eretz-Israel until some time after 104 BCE). And in the present case of Hillel we have already learned that it was scholars from the Beteyra family that actually functioned as successors to Shemayah and Avtalyon, and Hillel picked up the mantle only some years later (possibly because of their incompetence).

Yehuda also asks:

Will you give us lists of some of the changes introduced by Hillel and by Simon the Righteous?

I respond:

Well, we did expatiate at large on the unique and revolutionary contribution of Simon the Righteous. I suggest that those interested go to Avot008 in the archives: Simon the Righteous figures prominently in the shiur and in several that follow. As for Hillel, I hope that the Avot052 went some way towards demonstrating Hillel's unique contribution to the development of halakhah, and today's shiur provides even more insight in this matter – and so will the next shiur.