Avot229

Today's shiur is dedicated by Jay Slater in memory of his father,
Julius Slater, M'shullam Zisa ben Aharon Pinchas, z"l,

whose Yahrzeit is tomorrow, Marĥeshvan 2nd.

4:
Rabbi Zadok's teaching is very clear: he warns us not to make them – i.e. the words of Torah – a crown with which to glorify ourselves or a spade with which to dig. In other words: he strongly deprecates 'using' Torah to further some end other than Torah itself – be that end self-glorification because of one's great Torah knowledge or be it the attainment of some material objective which is not Torah itself, such as receiving payment in money or in kind.

5:
We have had occasion to discuss this matter on several previous occasions. Indeed, Rabbi Zadok himself quotes the earlier teaching of Hillel which we encountered in chapter one: "he who makes use of the crown [of Torah] is ephemeral" – will pass away, will not last. To a large extent our comments on this mishnah, therefore, will be a recapitulation of things that we have already said; but the topic is so important (and so timely) that these comments deserve repetition, and hopefully we shall also have occasion to add new thoughts.

6:
In his commentary of mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1 (Perek Ĥelek) Rambam relates to the concept of Torah She-lo Lishmah, teaching or observing Torah for an 'ulterior motive'. He writes: When we observe Torah for some reason other than itself

7:
The crown of which Hillel speaks here is, of course, the Torah itself. When we reach mishnah 17 of this chapter we shall see that much later on a Rabbi Shim'on speaks of

This seems to be a reference to three possible national aspirations. One could hope to reach the pinnacle of political or administrative power; one could hope to reach the acme of liturgical involvement, and one could strive for excellence in study of Torah.

In a rather beautiful passage Rabbi Natan [41:1] emphasizes the universality of the crown of Torah:

And it is a commonplace of rabbinic exposition to be found in dozens of places that "water signifies Torah".

In Talmudic times the sages taught Torah with no thought of reward or compensation; indeed such a thing was forbidden, as we shall see later in this Tractate. This means that a rabbi had to support himself by his own efforts and not receive compensation for teaching and administering Torah. In his magnum opus, Mishneh Torah, Rambam writes [Talmud Torah 1:9] that

Rabbi Yehoshu'a was a charcoal maker, Rabbi Akiva was a shepherd, Rabbi Eli'ezer was a merchant and so forth. Of course, some of the sages were very rich: Rabbi Akiva became very comfortably off; Rabbi, the editor of the Mishnah, was fabulously wealthy; Rabbi El'azar ben-Azaryah was rich and so forth.

But to all of them the idea of making one's knowledge of Torah a source of secular profit or advantage was anathema.

To be continued.