5:
He who does not add subtracts. All the commentators are agreed that the context of this rather enigmatic clause is Torah study. Hillel is teaching his students (and we are privileged to be among them) that if one does not constantly add to one's Torah knowledge one is, in fact, reducing it. At first glance this idea may seem inadmissible: one can forget what one has learned; but one need not necessarily reduce one's total learning simply because one has not continued one's studies. All things being equal, it is possible to retain learning that has accrued without adding to it.
6:
I do not think that this is what Hillel is referring to. We, in our day and age, can certainly understand the concept of 'dynamic knowledge'. I once read somewhere the assertion that if new materials of the works of the old Latin authors were to be discovered this would dismay the Latin savants. This would be because until that point of new discovery they could 'know everything there was to know' in their field. We, in the modern world, know that even the person whose knowledge in his given field of expertise is up-to-date knows that there will be new things to learn in a very short time.
7:
In the past five hundred years, since the beginning of the renaissance in the West, our knowledge has been increasing by leaps and bounds. In fact, our knowledge is increasing exponentially. In one of the essays I wrote concerning Masorti Theology I wrote something very relevant to our present discussion:
I recall that when I was a pupil at school one mathematical concept that was problematic for me was the measurement of the rate of acceleration. As a child I found it easy enough to understand the concept of velocity ('kilometres per hour'); but I found the measurement of an object moving at the rate of so many metres 'per second per second' confusing. Basically what it means is that however fast the object is travelling ('metres per second'), its velocity is increasing at a regular rate for every second that passes. As long as the velocity of the object is accelerating it will proceed along its course at an ever faster pace.
That is exactly what is happening to the course of change in the modern world: the rate of change is constantly accelerating. We can hardly keep pace with the enormous changes that are being wrought in the fabric of our lives. It is in this respect that the modern age is completely different from any age that preceded it.
Previous ages saw change; but no age has seen change and development proceeding at the rate of acceleration witnessed in the modern age. The changes began to gain momentum somewhere around the year 1500; they began to accelerate greatly about 250 years ago; in latter decades the rate of change has become excitingly awesome.
Some 400 years elapsed between the Roman emperors Julius Caesar and Constantine, yet the basic way of life of both gentlemen was not very different: they wrote the same way, prepared food the same way, travelled the same way, communicated over long distances the same way, and were very similar in their technological capabilities.
About 400 years also separate us from William Shakespeare in England and Yosef Karo, the author of the 'Shulĥan Arukh', in Eretz-Israel; but our basic way of life has changed almost beyond recognition! For example, we do not write the same way (these words are being written using a computerized word processor); we do not prepare food the same way (we use preprocessed food and microwave ovens); we do not travel the same way (we use vehicles propelled by the internal combustion engine, we use spaceships to reach out into the solar system and even beyond and so forth); and the telephone, radio, television, radar, fax, Internet and satellites, have completely altered our methods of communication. It is superfluous to compare our technological capabilities: we can create life outside the womb, we can revive the clinically dead, we have physically reached the moon, vicariously visited other planets in our solar system, and placed at our own disposal means of mass destruction and annihilation.
Our world is totally different from that of 400 years ago; it is totally different from that of 300 years ago, in the time of Newton; it is very different from that of only 200 years ago, the age of Napoleon. It is even different from that of 100 years ago, when Henry Ford was producing his first automobile! Nowadays even a decade can see incredible change!
8:
Thus, someone who ten years ago was expert in something simple like, say, Word Processing, would today be almost completely ignorant of how to use modern word processing software; and only ten years have passed! And twenty years ago even the concept of word processing was hardly known outside a select band of aficionados.
9:
The same concept applies to Torah learning. By its very nature it is dynamic. The discussion between book and reader, between teacher and student, between two people learning will almost inevitably create new knowledge. This lies at the very heart and soul of Judaism in general and of Conservative Judaism in particular. Our constant ideological claim is that development of Torah did not stop five hundred years ago or a thousand years ago or five thousand years ago. Torah is constantly developing. Therefore 'he who does not add' to his knowledge of Torah will find that in a very short time he has in fact subtracted, because, not being up-to-date, as it were, he can no longer function as becomes someone who has continued to study. In Judaism ignorance is possibly the greatest sin of all. All this is what is taught by Hillel, who was an exemplary Conservative Jew!
To be continued.
