Rabban Yoĥanan ben-Zakkai received [the tradition] from Hillel and Shammai. He used to say: If you have learned much Torah do not keep a good thing to yourself, because it is for that you were created.
EXPLANATIONS:
1:
After the long excursus which brought us the teachings of the scions of the House of Hillel, our present mishnah restores us to the format that was used for most of Chapter 1, where each generation of sages is listed chronologically.
2:
Rabban Yoĥanan ben-Zakkai is, from the historical point of view, one of the very important sages. He must have lived a long life, because he was a student of the great Hillel himself and also lived for several years after the destruction of the Bet Mikdash in the year 70 CE. A baraita in the Gemara [Sukkah 28a] verifies that he was very young when he studied under Hillel:
Hillel the Elder had eighty students. Thirty of them were worthy enough for the Divine Presence to rest on them like Moses; thirty of them were worthy enough for the sun to stop as [it did for] Joshua son of Nun; twenty were average. The greatest of them all was Yonatan ben-Uzzi'el; the youngest of them all was Rabban Yoĥanan ben-Zakkai.
(The last sentence is often rendered as "the least of them was Rabban Yoĥanan ben-Zakkai", which is hyperbole – just as is his age at death, which elsewhere is given as 120. Clearly there is an attempt to portray him as comparable to Moses.)
3:
Already at a young age he had become well known. The mishnah [Sanhedrin 5:2] describes him as making a name for himself as a young student during a murder trial:
The more one questions during 'examination' the better. We are told that ben-Zakkai once questioned about the stalks of figs.
He must have been still a student at the time of this incident, since he is referred to as 'ben-Zakkai', a form of identification which usually suggests that the person had not yet been ordained. In its commentary on this mishnah the Gemara presents differing views concerning the nature of this trial. The Amora Rami bar-Ĥamma suggests that the the capital offense in that particular trial was Sabbath desecration by the plucking of a fig from a fig-tree (and this would make the stalk of the fig a substantive issue). But the Gemara counters this with the quotation that what the witnesses say is that "he killed him under a fig-tree". The tenacious Rami bar-Ĥamma suggests that "it could be that he speared the victim with a branch of a fig-tree"! But this cannot be, because the Baraita continues:
Were the stalks of the fig-tree small and thin or large? were the figs black or white?
It is thus obvious that the Gemara is of the opinion that the crime with which young ben-Zakkai was involved was a murder charge, and by his tenacious cross-examination of the witnesses he prevented a miscarriage of justice.
To be continued.
DISCUSSION:
In Avot 112 I wrote: Is it too much to read in this hint something further? – that the only way to end the violence is to refrain from reacting to it. If such a thought is permitted we will find it very similar to the teaching of Hillel's younger contemporary: Jesus of Nazareth also taught that violence should be met by turning "the other cheek".
Art Kamlet writes:
Is it at all reasonable to think "Turn The Other Cheek" could have been derived from Eicha 3:30? Even though in Eicha it seems to mean: Do everything you can to stay alive and don't give up hope.
I respond:
I think it will be useful to understand my response if we first quote the verse in question, together with its context. Here is Lamentations 3:27-30:
It is good for a man, when young,to bear a yoke; let him sit alone and be patient, when He [God] has laid it upon him. Let him put his mouth to the dust — there may yet be hope. Let him offer his cheek to the smiter; let him be surfeited with mockery.
Clearly the meaning is that it is good for a young man to suffer in his youth: presumably the idea is that he will thus learn patience and humility and be better equipped to deal with greater adversity later in life. Whether or not Jesus' recommended pacifism derived from this verse is something that we can never know. Certainly Hillel does not quote it. However, if the suggestion is that Jesus may have had this verse in mind – that the verse from Lamentations served as the jumping-off point for his teaching – I must admit that such an idea is more than just possible.
