Avot150

Hareini lomed/lomedet Mishnah le-ilu'i nishmato shel Yitzĥak ben Rosa u-Neĥemya Rabin
I am studying Mishnah in memory of Yitzĥak Rabin, son of Rosa and Neĥemya

1:
Like the previous mishnah, our present mishnah too has been "edited" or "improved" at various stages in its career. Many editors have divided it up into two mishnayot, prefacing the phrase "You do not have to finish the job" with the introductory phrase "He [also] used to say". Others start a new mishnah at the words "If you have studied much Torah…" It is now impossible to ascertain what the original formulation was, so it seems to me that the best thing to do is to present the teaching as one integrated mishnah. Certainly, it presents one integrated teaching.

2:
The previous mishnah was the last in the series of mishnayot attributed to the five students of Rabban Yoĥanan ben-Zakkai. It was also the last mishnah in the chronological series that constitutes the first two chapters of our tractate. In chapters 3 and 4 there does not seem to be any obvious thematic arrangement of the teachings of the various sages. Thus, our present mishnah seems to serve as a kind of bridge between chapter 2 and chapter 3. Clearly it was chosen by the final editor of this tractate because of the conceptual connection of God as Employer with the previous mishnah.

3:
It is fortuitous but appropriate it is that we have reached this mishnah on the tenth Yahrzeit of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin z"l. The hand of the assassin cut off his life before he was able to complete his life's work. Although he was by no means the kind of person whose persona is associated with the study of Torah, he was, nevertheless, a very "Jewish" person. It is to be hoped that the promise of our present mishnah is fulfilled in his case.

4:
Rabbi Tarfon was an older contemporary of Rabbi Akiva. The latter was both a student of Rabbi Tarfon and, later, his colleague. Rabbi Tarfon, therefore, must have died around the end of the 1st century CE or at the beginning of the 2nd century. From what we know of him he was an amiable person with a kindly disposition and a rueful sense of humour – especially concerning himself. He was prone to getting himself into halakhic "scrapes" from which he had to be extracted. Our present framework does not permit an expansive illustration of the personality of this sage, so we shall make do with just two anecdotes.

5:
The Gemara [Sanhedrin 33a] recounts the following incident.

On one occasion the following question came before Rabbi Tarfon: could the meat from a cow that had been ritually slaughtered be considered kasher if the cow's womb had been removed during its lifetime? Rabbi Tarfon obviously considered that no cow could survive for long after such an operation, and therefore determined that the meat should be "cast to the dogs" [Exodus 22:30], since the cow was 'dying' at the moment of slaughter. The owner of the cow (who presumably had hoped to make a fine profit, appealed to the sages of the Sanhedrin assembled in Yavneh. Todos the physician reported to the assembly that no cow or pig could be exported from Alexandria [in Egypt] unless its womb had first been removed – so that it could not subsequently give birth. (This was a measure to protect the rarity of these animals of superior quality, so that they could not be bred outside Egypt and so that their value would remain high.) This evidence obviously indicated that Rabbi Tarfon had been wrong in his assumption that the cow in question could not have survived the hysterectomy; this, in turn meant that the meat that Rabbi Tarfon had "fed to the dogs" was kasher, after all. Rabbi Tarfon immediately recognized his mistake with the rueful remark, "There goes your donkey, Tarfon!" – meaning that he would have to sell his donkey in order to compensate the owner of the cow out of his own pocket. (Rabbi Akiva told him not to worry: he need not compensate the owner of the cow since he – Tarfon – was a mumĥeh la-rabbim" [a duly licenced halakhic specialist].)

Rabbi Tarfon was a kohen [of priestly stock]; he was also very rich. The Tosefta [Ketubot 5:1] tells us that he married three hundred women in one year just so that they would be able to share his priestly emoluments (terumah etc) in a period when several years of drought had caused widespread poverty. (Only the members of a priest's family could benefit from these emoluments.)

6:
The teaching of Rabbi Tarfon that is quoted in our present mishnah is, of course, an extended metaphor: life is short but must be lived until death releases us from that duty. One of the prime duties of a Jew during his lifetime is to study Torah. This is an enormous task which can never be completely accomplished; nevertheless even though we know we shall never complete that task we may not give up working at it.

7:
The message of the metaphor changes slightly towards the end. God may be relied upon to pay the remuneration that is deserved by those who have a lived a good life and studied as much Torah as they can. However, there is no point in speculating why we see some righteous people in desperate straits, because "pay day" for the good life well lived is not until "the future". The Hebrew term here translated as "the future" implies "the future life", "the world to come". We have discussed the origins and implications of such terminology before, so there is no need to repeat here what we have already said at great length in Avot 021 and Avot 022.

8:
I now repeat almost word for word what I wrote one year ago!

We have now reached the end of the second chapter of Tractate Avot, and it has taken us 150 shiurim to cover these two chapters! In our next shiur, God willing, we shall continue with Chapter Three. Even though I am officially on vacation I hope to send out as many shiurim in this series as possible. Please forgive me if here and there I should fail in my good intentions.

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