Avot343

1:
It seems reasonably clear that the editors of this tractate were not of one mind as to how to conclude it. This fifth chapter is the last one of the tractate: a sixth chapter, a barayta, was attached to it in the middle ages for liturgical reasons. It had become the custom to study this tractate during the sabbaths that link the festivals of Passover and Pentecost. Since there are always six such sabbaths in any given year it was necessary to find an additional chapter to be read on the last shabbat before the festival of Shavu'ot. Since Shavu'ot is the festival which celebrates the giving of the Torah it was but natural that the chapter selected for the purpose was what we now call Kinyan Torah – a chapter on the attributes which should be found in a person for them to be a successful and devout student of Torah. But this sixth chapter is not a part of Tractate Avot (even though it is a part of Pirkei Avot as printed in our prayer-books) and it will not concern our present study of this tractate of the Mishnah.

2:
The last three mishnahs of this chapter – mishnahs 20, 21 and 22 – do not fit into any of the patterns that came before. When we started to study this chapter we noted that it is based on a series of numbers: ten, seven, four and three. Our present mishnah, and the two that follow it, do not have any connection with such a pattern. Furthermore, the prayer which constitutes the last sentence of our present mishnah clearly has no obvious connection with itsmain content and most certainly at some stage or other was attached to mishnah 20 as a conclusion to the whole tractate. At some later stage it was decided to add two more mishnayot.

To be continued.

Since we are now fast approaching the end of our study of Tractate Avot I hasten to present for your perusal some of your messages that have piled up in my inbox.

In Avot 340 we noted that the sages taught that when Abraham asks his wife Sarah to tell the Egyptians that she is his sister this was the first time ever that he had looked upon his wife 'amourously' (!)

Amnon Ronel comments jocularly:

Ah, it must be because of this that they didn't have a son.

On the same subject Jim Feldman writes:

The concept that one is more virtuous by being unenthusiastic about sex with one's own spouse is a Christian concept. My understanding is that within Judaism sex is accepted realistically and even promoted within the bounds of marriage. It is only the nut fringe that goes in for fasting and abstinence and cutting oneself off from the legitimate pleasures of this, our only world. I find offensive the commentator's effort to put the lusty, adventurous Abraham into this peculiarly Christian mold.

I respond:

Of course Jim is essentially correct. But the sages were concerned that a husband should not pester his wife with his sexual advances in a manner that might be too much for her pleasure. The Gemara [Berakhot 22a] deprecates sages who "pester their wives like roosters", and one sage suggests that when this happens it is like a cheapening of the wife. No doubt it was this that prompted Rambam to codify the following instruction:

The fact that a different 'standard' is expected of sages derives from a mishnah [Ketubot 5:6] which enumerates how a woman may demand a divorce from her husband if he does not give her proper sexual attention:

and sages – "each Friday night".