Yosé ben-Yoĥanan from Jerusalem says: Let your home be wide open and let the poor be members of your household; and do not converse overly with your wife. This was said regarding one's wife: all the more must it be so regarding someone else's wife. Hence the sages say that whenever a man converses overly with a woman he causes harm to himself, neglects Torah learning and ultimately will inherit hell.
1:
We now come to the other sage who was the "pair" of Yosé ben-Yo'ezer. Since Yosé ben-Yo'ezer was obviously the more "aristocratic" of the two it follows that Yosé ben-Yoĥanan must have been the nominee of the plebeian section of the pharisaic movement – not that this fact has any meaningful bearing in understanding the statements attributed to him in our present mishnah.
2:
There seems to be a a kind of template in the first chapters of the tractate, a template which presents three statements for each sage mentioned, or sometimes one statement that seems to have three clauses. This is not always the case, but the phenomenon occurs sufficient times for us to make such an assumption. In our present mishnah Yosé ben-Yoĥanan makes three statements:
- Let you home be wide open,
- let the poor be members of your household,
- do not converse overly with your wife.
As simple as these statements may appear to us it can be misleading, since they must be understood in the light of the way people led their daily lives in those times. The first two items on his agenda seem to be linked. First of all he urges his colleagues to have an open house policy. Rambam, in his commentary on our mishnah, understands this as a recommendation that a sage should always have his home open to the street so that
any passer-by who needs something or is hungry or thirsty may gain immediate access to the house.
In order to understand this comment we must know how living quarters were arranged in those times. In fact, the arrangements that I shall describe here held good for many centuries.
3:
People lived in houses of two stories, mainly. One family lived in the ground floor apartment (bayit) and another family lived in the first-floor apartment (aliyyah). These houses were arranged in a kind of U-shape and the open space left in the middle was a communal area which also gave its name to the whole housing complex: "courtyard". Thus a 'courtyard' was the name of a housing complex in which at least six families resided – maybe more. The open end of the U-shape gave access to the street (reshut ha-rabbim). More often than not this access to and from the public thoroughfare was walled off to give the inhabitants of the courtyard a measure of privacy. There was an entrance in the wall or fence and if the inhabitants could afford it there would be a hut by the entrance where a gatekeeper would be on duty to make sure that only people who had legitimate business could get into the courtyard. It follows that Yosé ben-Yoĥanan is expressing disapproval of this arrangement because it would effectively prevent the poor and needy from gaining access. Indeed, a 'case' is mentioned in the Gemara [Bava Batra 7b] in which a pious man was reputed to have regular visitations from the prophet Elijah, but when he arranged for a gatekeeper to guard his courtyard Elijah stopped coming – thus expressing disapproval of this arrangement which was to the detriment of those who most needed help.
4:
In his commentary, Rabbi Ovadya of Bertinoro, extends the explanation given by Rambam: one should strive to emulate 'Father Abraham' whose abode was completely accessible on all four sides so that the poor and needy would not have the trouble of seeking the entrance!
5:
It follows, therefore, that if one follows the advice given in the first clause the situation demanded in the second clause will be automatically fulfilled: 'let the poor be members of your household'. But here, too, Rambam has a slightly different take. Rambam understands this second teaching of Yosé ben-Yoĥanan as stating that it is far better to have poor people as your household servants, who will thereby receive from you an honourable wage; and this is to be seen as infinitely preferable to people (i.e. the rich) having slaves to tend to their household:
Thus the sages deprecate the buying of slaves and praise those who have the poor as their household servants.
To be continued.
In Avot 026 I wrote:
In his commentary on Mishnah Chagigah 2:2 Rabbi Ovadya of Bertinoro explains that the school that objected to the laying of hands on Yom Tov held that since the hands had to be laid on the animal's head with considerable pressure this was tantamount to making use of the animal, which is forbidden on a festival.
David Sieradzki has a tangential question:
Could you please explain why – here and in many other places – there appears to be a reluctance to identify which of the two schools adopted which of the two positions? This seems to come up in the Talmud quite frequently as well – the formula "Rabbi X and Rabbi Y disagreed about matter A. One held … while the other held …" Why is the tradition reticent to tell us which position should be associated with which of the disagreeing members of the pair?
I respond:
The case cited by David is not relevant to his question because the 'reluctance' of neither the mishnah nor the commentator to 'disclose their sources' is there! In the following shiur I had occasion to quote the mishnah in its entirety where, of course, full details are given. But the phenomenon mentioned by David certainly does exist in many other passages. The editors of the Gemara were very careful to state their sources; indeed, more often than not they state not only who said what but also who it was who heard the sage say it: the formula "Rabbi X says that Rabbi Y says" [Amar Rabbi X Amar Rabbi Y] means that Rabbi X was present to hear the original statement. A different formula, "Rabbi X quotes Rabbi Y as saying" [Rabbi X Omer mi-shum Rabbi Y], is used for indirect reporting. However, there are occasions when the editors of the Gemara just did not know to whom to attribute a statement. More often than not it was when a conversation between two sages is being reported and it is not clear which of the two made the statement under discussion. It is in such cases that the editors of the Gemara resort to the formula mentioned by David: "Two sages, Rabbi X and Rabbi Y. One of them said A and the other said B".
