Hillel says: Do not opt out of society; do not believe in yourself until your dying day; do not judge your fellow until you reach his place; do not say something which it is impossible to obey, because in the end it must be obeyed; and do not say, 'When I get some free time I will study' – you may not get any free time.
1:
One of the constant complaints from people comparing notes concerning Tractate Avot is the difficulty in giving accurate citations. This is because it seems as if no two editions of the tractate have the same division of mishnayot, and what is mishnah 13 in one edition turns out to be mishnah 17 in another. Part of the problem is because of the custom, introduced in the era of the Geonim well over one thousand years ago, of reading one chapter of our tractate per week on Shabbat afternoons during the summer months. Thus it eventually became the custom to print the tractate in prayer-books for the sake of convenience. And it is almost a truism that anything that is printed in a Siddur is subject to the possibility of corruption. Printers would join and separate mishnayot to suit the convenience of layout and so on.
2:
However, in almost every edition of Avot the numeration problem seems to begin with our present mishnah. In some editions it appears as part of mishnah 4 while in others is is an independent mishnah. Clearly the latter apportionment is preferable because mishnah 4 was attributed to Rabban Gamli'el while our present mishnah is attributed to Hillel. It will be easier for us to suggest a resolution of this issue if we can identify the Hillel of our mishnah.
3:
One suggestion would be that the Hillel in question is the son of the Rabban Gamli'el who is the author of mishnayot 2,3 and 4. Rabban Gamli'el did have a son named Hillel who succeeded his bother Yehudah as president of the Sanhedrin some considerable time after the death of his grandfather, Rabbi. However, this suggestion seems rather unlikely. We would have to explain why no teaching is attributed to his predecessor in the presidency, Yehudah, and why several mishnayot are attributed to him (mishnayot 5, 6, 7, and 8) when much greater luminaries only had one mishnah devoted to their teachings.
4:
A better solution would be to attribute these mishnayot to the great Hillel, the founder of the dynasty, some of whose teachings we learned in chapter 1. The most cogent reason for accepting this resolution is concerned with the arrangement of the first part of the tractate. From the beginning of Chapter 1 scholars from each successive generation were quoted, student following master. In Mishnah 12 we are introduced to Hillel and Shammai as being the students of the previous pair, Shemayah and Avtalyon. Three mishnayot are devoted to the teachings of the great Hillel and one mishnah, 15, to those of his colleague Shammai. At that point Mishnah 16 continues with the teachings of Hillel's son (or maybe grandson) Rabban Gamli'el and then the tractate continues onwards to the point we have reached quoting the teachings of the heads of the dynasty of Hillel.
5:
Mishnah 9 of our present chapter will return us to the teachings of Hillel's most prestigious student, Rabban Yochanan ben-Zakkai and, subsequently, his students. It thus seems most reasonable to assume that the original pattern of Avot was to follow Mishnah 15 of chapter 1 with Mishnah 9 of Chapter 2, Hillel and Shammai being followed by Hillel's student of the next generation. However, at some stage in the development of the tractate it was decided to interpolate the teachings of the leaders of the House of Hillel. Therefore, in order to restore the historical connection between the generations which had been interrupted, several more teachings of the great Hillel were inserted after the teaching of Rabban Gamli'el, the son of Rabbi.
6:
While this suggestion seems to be the most reasonable, I would go even further (even though I must readily admit that there is no internal evidence whatsoever to support my view). I tentatively suggest that all the mishnayot in chapter 2 – mishnayot 2 to 8 – are to be attributed to the great Hillel. Mishnah 3 was without attribution at all and the others just continue the anonymous attribution. Furthermore, the teaching of Mishnah 3, concerning politics, seems to be most appropriate to the age of Hillel and Herod the Great.
To be continued.
Mishnah 2 of chapter 2 contained the teaching that study of Torah should be accompanied by gainful employment and useful work.
Aviva Orenstein asks:
How do all the full-time torah students who study in kolel but do not work get around the teaching of the mishna? I am not asking if they are right, I am wondering how they justify their non-working status to themselves.
I respond:
When we studied Tractate Pe'ah I explained how this prohibition was circumvented. Please see in our web archives Pe'ah 004, explanation 16.
