Avot148
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BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI
of the Rabbinical Assembly in Israel
RABIN MISHNAH STUDY GROUP
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Today's shiur is dedicated by Jay Slater in honour of his father, Julius Slater, M'shullam Zisa ben Aharon Pinchas, whose Yahrzeit will fall on Marcheshvan 2nd.
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TRACTATE AVOT, CHAPTER TWO, MISHNAH FIFTEEN:
Rabbi El'azar says: Be diligent in your Torah study that you may [successfully] respond to an Epikoros. And be aware before whom you toil and who your employer is.
EXPLANATIONS:
1:
The text of our mishnah has reached us in an imperfect state. Over the centuries many hands have tried to "restore" it, but in most cases have made matters worse, not better. The translation given above is based on the text as given by Rambam in his Mishnah Commentary. Other versions have added a clause towards the end of the mishnah, Other versions have added a clause towards the end of the mishnah, apparently having been led astray by comparison with a similar text in Mishnah 16, as we shall see when we reach the next mishnah. Yet another version has the first clause standing by itself ("Be diligent in your study of Torah") and preface the next clause with the words "And know" (what to respond to an Epikoros). This was probably an attempt to give the mishnah a threefold structure: you will recall that we have noted throughout these first two chapters that most of the mishnayot are triune. Our explanation here will follow the text as given by Rambam. 2:
From a midrashic passage that has survived it seems clear that the evaluation of his students (as given in our mishnah) by Rabban Yoĥanan ben-Zakkai was made before the outbreak of the great Jewish war in 66 CE. During their 'pacification' of Judah … the Romans had set aside several towns and villages that were not destroyed but used as resettlement centers for 'friendly enemies'. Yavneh was one such place, Lod was another and Emmaus was a third… As we know, after his escape from beleaguered Jerusalem Rabban Yochanan ben-Zakkai settled (or was settled) in Yavneh… A midrash [Kohelet Rabba 7:15] tell us that most of the students of Rabban Yoĥanan ben-Zakkai went to Yavneh but that Rabbi El'azar ben-Arakh was persuaded by his wife to go to Emmaus. Emmaus was a kind of spa town where people went to 'take the waters' and enjoy the invigorating climate… It was a town, it seems, in which life was easy and morals were loose. At any rate, Rabbi El'azar ben-Arakh continued there his meditative delvings into esoterica – something very dangerous to do on one's own. In Emmaus Rabbi El'azar ben-Arakh, the erstwhile star pupil of Rabban Yoĥanan ben-Zakkai, lost all his learning. According to one passage [Shabbat 147b] when some of his former colleagues finally came to find him they found that he was even unable to read Hebrew correctly! It does not seem too far-fetched to assume that this sage had lost his reason – wholly or partly.
To be continued.
DISCUSSION:
We continue with more of your messages concerning Avot 143 that have reached me. In Avot 143 shiur I wrote: A conscious effort should be made to think about what the words [of Shema] mean; … And the second parashah, dealing as it does, with the doctrine of reward and punishment is an essential concomitant to acceptance of the duty to observe the mitzvot.
Al Sporer writes: My problem is that when I think of the words in the second paragraph I shake my head, NO, NO, NO. Even if you restrict these words to mean punishment by banishment of the Jews from the land of Yisrael I cannot accept the plain pshat of those words. If the Holocaust has taught me anything it has taught me that we Jews should not continue to blame ourselves when misfortune happens. This "blaming the victim" syndrome has caused Jews to be passive when they have been victimized. Arthur Waskow, at least, has given the second paragraph the kind of 'spin' , a drash, that is more acceptable to me, namely, that if we do not take care of the environment, the land, the air the waters, then we will destroy our land and thus we will have banished ourselves from it. Is there any talmudic source that at least hints at this kind of analysis of the meaning of the second paragraph? I respond: I do not think so. Banishment from Eretz Israel is almost always presented in the Torah as the inevitable consequence of maintaining an immoral society [see, for example, Leviticus 18:22-29]. (In Avot 139 I quoted a midrash whose connection with ecological preservation is clear, but there is no threat made there.) Certainly, the problem that Al raises is a very real one, but it seems to me that a more successful way to deal with it is as I suggested in my commentary on the second parashah of Shema in the Siddur Va'ani Tefillati (page 331). Here, in a very abbreviated manner, is what I wrote there:
There is a real difficulty with the concept of Reward and Punishment as it is expressed in the second Parashah of Shema. According to what is written in this parashah if the people of Israel behave according to God's will they will be blessed with plenty, but if they do what is wrong in God's eyes their punishment will be the opposite – failure of harvests, privation and starvation, culminating in loss of political independence.
Clearly, modern thought cannot reconcile meteorological vagaries with observance or non observance of the mitzvot. Therefore I suggested that
one way out of this difficulty might be to ignore the division of the passage into verses and to re-allocate the verses. According to this suggestion there is at the beginning of the parashah a main conditional clause ("if you listen diligently to my commandments") followed by a series of secondary conditional clauses ("and if I give your rain … and if you gather in your produce [successfully] … and if I give you grass … and if you eat and are satisfied …") This series of conditional clauses has one consequential clause: "Be careful…" In other words: even when I bless you with economic plenty and all good things nevertheless you must be very careful to avoid idolatry. Such a reading of the text is in line with the style of Biblical Hebrew and also gives an additional reward: especially in an affluent society there is a danger of idolatry, worshipping all kinds of new and demanding gods. Our own society knows such gods very well. Such an understanding of the parashah fits in very well with the teaching of the sages [Avot 4:2] that "the reward of a mitzvah is the mitzvah and of a transgression the transgression".
I hope this helps in some way to resolve the difficulty of the passage. To facilitate an understanding of the suggestion offered above I append here an appropriate translation of the verses concerned:
If, then, you obey the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day, loving God and serving Him with all your heart and soul; and if I grant the rain for your land in season, the early rain and the late, and you gather in your new grain and wine and oil; and if I provide grass in the fields for your cattle and thus you eat your fill – then take care not to be lured away to serve other gods and bow to them…
Today's shiur was a little longer than usual because I am now taking a short vacation. God willing, the next shiur will be on 10th November.
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