Avot096

נושא: Avot

BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI

Rabban Gamli'el, the son of Rabbi Yehudah the President [of the Sanhedrin] says: Study of Torah is nice together with earning a living, because toiling at both makes one forget sin; and any Torah [study] which does not have work with it is ultimately invalid and brings sin in its wake. And all people who work for the public should do so for the sake of heaven because the virtue of their ancestors assists them and their righteousness is everlasting; and you – I award you as great a reward as if you had done [it].

13:
We now come to the last clause in the teaching of Rabban Gamli'el as set out in our present mishnah. The needs of the community at large are many and often they can only be answered by people who are specially qualified in some way or other to fill those needs. We can readily suggest Mohalim to circumcise sons, Shoĥatim to provide meat for those who eat it, Torah readers, cantors, judges – the full list would be formidable. In our own day and age the number of qualified people who are needed by even the secular community has grown enormously. But here, let us restrict our discussion only to those who provide what may be termed (even in the most generous sense of the term) religious services.

14:
Rabban Gamli'el makes one demand of those who opt to serve the community: that they do so for altruistic motives – what is called in Hebrew l^eshem shamayim, for the sake of heaven. In his classic commentary on our present mishnah Rabbi Ovadyah of Bertinoro explains that when their efforts are crowned with success the service providers and the care givers should not attribute that success to their own capabilities or merit. The success, he explains, derives from the essential righteousness of the people themselves. Even if they themselves may not be perfect they deserve God's blessing because the virtue of their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, comes to their assistance – and the virtue of those patriarchs is everlastingly effective.

15:
On the other hand, Rabbi Ovadyah continues, sometimes the efforts of those serving the community are not crowned with success. They should not be crestfallen when this happens because if they have laboured honestly for the benefit of the public God will account their actions as if they had been crowned with success.

16:
I find this explanation problematic. If the virtue of the patriarchs is assuring the people of success why should the efforts of the service-givers fail? Rabbi Yom-Tov Lippmann Heller, in his commentary Tos^efot Yom-Tov gives an alternative explanation. He says that this clause of our mishnah is directed towards those officials whose duty it is to force the public to act charitably. These officials should not be afraid of demanding that each person give what he is required to give, because "the virtue of their ancestors assists them and their righteousness is everlasting".

Let them not fear that they [the people] will not be able to bear this heavy burden, because the virtue of their ancestors assists them to give [charity] – even much money. But the proviso must be that these officials are making these demands for the sake of heaven and not for some ulterior motive. It also seems to me that the virtue of their ancestors connects with what follows: "and you – I award you as great a reward as if you had done it."

Strangely, Rabbi Heller also thinks that the "I" of the last sentence is Rabban Gamli'el himself! This is not as far-fetched as at first seems. As the president of the Sanhedrin Rabban Gamli'el would be responsible for the collection of monies for all the needs of the community, so the officials in charge of this task would be responsible to him. He reckons the onerous and unthankful task of bringing the money in as meritorious as the actual giving of the charity.

In Avot 093 I wrote that I feel that Tractate Avot was originally intended to fulfill one of two functions: either it was intended to be a kind of preface to the whole Mishnah or it was intended to come right at the end. However, I cannot explain why it ended up towards the end of the fourth of the six orders.

Josh Greenfield writes:

I once heard Rabbi Joel Roth give an explanation related to this. It relates to the ordering of the mishnayot in the final chapter of Avot, so that part is not germane right now. But the gist of it is that Avot was originally the last tractate in the Mishnah, but with the destruction of the Beit haMikdash, Seder Tohorot (the last order of the Mishnah, in which Avot would have been found then) was no longer studied as actively [as you alluded to in Yadayyim 01]. In order that Avot would continue to be studied, it was moved into Seder Nezikin, since the laws taught there (e.g., property and damages) continued to be studied and taught.