Avot167

Today's shiur is dedicated by Sol Freedman in memory of his mother, Sylvia Freedman, Surah Sheindel Bas Luzar z"l, whose Yahrzeit will be on Wednesday, 18th Tevet.

4:
Rabbi El'zar of Bartota was certainly not one of those who teach one thing but do another. Apparently he was a very rich man and was extremely generous with his money. One story that is told of him in the Gemara starts with the extraordinary statement that those who were responsible for raising money for charity would actually hide when they saw Rabbi El'azar coming down the street because they were afraid that he would give away too much of his money! How times have changed!

5:
The Gemara [Ta'anit 24a] recounts this as follows:

This is the very essence of "Give Him what is His, for you and yours are His."

5:
The Gemara continues the story:

It is not clear to me whether the Gemara here intends to recount that a miracle occurred for the generous sage or whether it intends to recount that this was he regular wont – that each time he gave away all his money he kept one dinar for himself to buy a little wheat, with the result that he managed to hoard a huge amount. Of course, the romantic among us will opt for the former explanation and the sceptical will choose the latter.

6:
Clearly, his colleagues did not all agree with either the teaching of Rabbi El'azar or his most generous behaviour. The Gemara [Ketubot 50a] tells us that

The Sanhedrin moved to Usha, in the lower Galilee, from Yavneh after the collapse of the Bar-Kokhba revolt against the Romans – i.e. some time after 135 CE. Rabbi El'azar must have been one of the sages in Usha because, as we have said, he was a contemporary of Rabbi Akiva. This is therefore yet another indication that not all the sages agreed with every teaching quoted in Tractate Avot. The purpose of the Tractate is aggadah, not halakhah. It seeks to teach values rather than set down firm rules for behaviour.

In Avot 151 we learned the teaching of Akavya ben-Mehalal'el that a person must always be aware that he or she comes from "a smelly drop". This also resulted in some discussion. Ed Frankel has now sent me a lovely thought that occurred to him recently:

Recently I had an "aha" moment while baking. Several lessons ago we studied 3:1 in which we studied about our developing from a "smelly droplet". I believe at the time that we saw it as do most sources, as a sign that we must remain humble in light of whence we came. Now for the aha moment. I was recently baking honey cake. You can not imagine a worse looking bunch of things mixed together. It looked about as distasteful as anything one might imagine… as I saw the stuff I was mixing, I was also nibbling on some delicious, soft, moisty honey cake that I had baked days before. I saw it and thought: look at this ghastly mess and taste the wonderful treat I make from it. Think of the smelly droplet of which we are all initially formed and the wondrous people we are each destined to become.