Avtalyon says: Sages, be careful what you say, lest you incur the penalty of exile and be exiled to a place of bad water and the scholars who come after you drink and die, and [thus] the Name of Heaven is profaned.
EXPLANATIONS:
1:
Our present mishnah brings us to the colleague of Shemayah, Avtalyon. Josephus, in his book "Antiquities of the Jews" calls this sage 'Pollio'. This could be an attempt to hellenize the Hebrew name 'Avtalyon' (whose provenance is a mystery), since Josephus, of course, was writing in Greek. However, another possibility is that this was indeed the sage's name. The name Pollio sounds Greek, of course, and 'Avtalyon' may be an attempt to adapt the Greek name to Hebrew. We have already seen that there were sages before Shemayah and Avtalyon who had Hellenistic names – Antigonos of Sokho immediately springs to mind.
2:
But in the case of Avtalyon there may be an even greater reason to make such an assumption – and it is only an assumption. We learn from other sources in the Talmud that both Shemayah and Avtalyon had non-Jewish antecedents. At some stage in the past – and we have no information as to how far back – an ancestor of Avtalyon was a non-Jew who converted to Judaism: it could have been his mother, it could have been his great-grandmother – we just do not know. However, the fact of his non-Jewish antecedents was remembered by the people. (The Gemara [Gittin 57b] says that they were descended from Sennacherib the King of Assyria, who lived some 650 years before them; this does seem rather far-fetched.)
3:
Despite the fact that in an age when Jewish pedigree was jealously and zealously cherished it was remembered that both Shemayah and Avtalyon did not have such a 'pure' pedigree, nevertheless they were very popular indeed with the people. One story related in the Gemara [Yoma 71b] illustrates this point very neatly. Every year during the Musaf service on Yom Kippur we read how the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies. Both he and the people sincerely believed that he was taking his life into his own hands by daring to enter the most sacred place which represented God's presence in this world. For this reason, we learn, when he emerged from the ordeal unscathed everybody rejoiced and the High Priest would celebrate.
4:
On one occasion one High Priest was being escorted home after Yom Kippur by a jubilant crowd of the common people. At a certain intersection the happy procession met up with Shemayah and Avtalyon, who also, presumably, were on their way home after attending the solemnities in the Bet Mikdash. Upon seeing the two sages the crowds deserted the High Priest in order to congregate around the beloved sages. Understandably, the High Priest, left in the lurch in such manner and his elated mood thus completely deflated, was hurt. As he approached the two sages himself he greeted them: "Welcome, you of non-Jewish descent" – thus hinting that his own pedigree went back directly to Aaron the first High Priest. Shemayah and Avtalyon must have been taken aback at this ill-mannered display, but quickly responded by hinting to the High Priest that his words were not only unkind but also against halakhah, which forbids one to remind pious proselytes of their non-Jewish provenance. "Welcome indeed," they said, "be those of non-Jewish descent who act as disciples of Aaron; but can there be a similar welcome for a descendant of Aaron who does not act as a disciple of Aaron?" (As we shall see in Mishnah 12, Aaron was seen as the paradigm of the gentle soul who always tried to tread the path of peace.)
To be continued.
DISCUSSION:
In Avot047 I responded to something that Meir Noach had written about Deborah: When the sages teach that the task of Deborah was one of encouragement and not of rule they are not referring to her role as prophetess, but to her role in the prosecution of a war – the perquisite of political leadership: she did not prosecute the war; she only advised and goaded Barak.
Jim Feldman possibly misunderstood and thought that I was not paraphrasing the sages but giving my own opinion. While I do not agree with everything he writes, his words are well worth reading:
I take a harder read on Deborah. This is perhaps the oldest section of the Tenach (as judged by linguistics scholars, particularly of the Song of Deborah), so there is no reason to ascribe to the writing any of the misogynistic prejudices of Rabbinic or later times. What the words say is:
"Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, she judged Israel at that time. And she sat under the palm-tree of Deborah between Ramah and Beth-el in the hill-country of Ephraim; and the children of Israel came up to her for judgment."
The "children of Israel came up to her for judgement." I can see no anointment or appointment by God in these words. She was recognized as someone wise in the law and humanity, and the people chose to come to her. The only interpretation of these words that makes sense is that she was "elected" by the consent of the people, the one democratically elected leader in the entire Bible.
To reinforce that judgement, consider her interaction with Barak.
And she sent and called Barak the son of Abinoam out of Kedesh-naphtali, and said unto him: 'Hath not the LORD, the God of Israel, commanded, saying: "Go and draw toward mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun? 'And I will draw unto thee to the brook Kishon Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army, with his chariots and his multitude; and I will deliver him into thy hand." And Barak said unto her: "If thou wilt go with me, then I will go; but if thou wilt not go with me, I will not go." And she said: "I will surely go with thee; notwithstanding the journey that thou takest shall not be for thy honour; for the LORD will give Sisera over into the hand of a woman."
And the two of them depart to pull off a great coup, a military victory gained by exceptional strategy against overwhelming armor. Only after that is a defeated Sisera eliminated by the hand of Yael. What is essential in this paragraph is that Deborah is regarded as the great leader even by the head of the army. That a woman could be elected PM of Israel and even lead her people into war was not to be repeated until Golda Meir.
I append:
The discussion on Deborah is now closed.
NOTICE:
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