4:
The more property the more worry. This is straightforward. Many people strive to amass personal property during their lives; Hillel points out that ownership of property is not an unmitigated blessing, but often entails worries and cares – against damage, against theft, against loss and so forth. Perhaps he is hinting that too much emotional energy is expended in the pursuit of worldly possessions, thus draining the bank of emotional energy upon which the individual may draw for spiritual and intellectual activities.
5:
The more wives the more witchcraft. Two words in this phrase are ambivalent in the original Hebrew. "Wives" can also mean "women" and "witchcraft" may indicate "magic". However, the intention is clear. In Hillel's day and age not only was the amassment of property a status symbol, but the number of women in one's household was also considered impressive. While the ordinary man in the street may well have limited himself to one wife those who were more well off certainly had more than one wife at the same time. Torah law did not rule out polygamous marriages for men (but it certainly did rule out polyandrous marriage for women). Less than a century after Hillel's time there was a prolonged drought in Eretz-Israel. Rabbi Tarfon, who was a rich priest, married three hundred women in one year so that they would be able to share his priestly emoluments (terumah etc).
6:
However, the more women in a man's household the more jealousy and backbiting between the women, vying for status and favours. In an age when belief in such things was rife it is quite understandable that jealous women would resort to magic and spells in order to command the attentions of the one man available to them all. In the Torah [Genesis 30:14-16] we read of such rivalry between Rachel and Leah, two of the four wives of the patriarch Jacob:
Once, at the time of the wheat harvest, Reuben came upon some mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, "Please give me some of your son's mandrakes." But she said to her, "Was it not enough for you to take away my man, that you would also take my son's mandrakes?" Rachel replied, "I promise, he shall lie with you tonight, in return for your son's mandrakes." When Jacob came home from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, "You are to sleep with me, for I have hired you with my son's mandrakes." And he lay with her that night…
Mandrakes were considered to be an aphrodisiac plant.
To be continued.
In Avot 106 I quoted Rabbi Ĥiyya bar-Abba:
If only they had forsaken Me yet kept My Torah! Daniel Kirk asks:
How could the Torah be kept while forsaking God? In Avot 075 you called "very surprising" R. Shimon ben Gamliel's observation in 1.17 that "The essential thing is not study, but deed" or "It is not the study which is essential but the performance." And you commented: "It has often been suggested that in Judaism the greatest sin is ignorance." Is there a contradiction between the suggestion that the greatest sin is ignorance and the sentiment that keeping the Torah is more important than cleaving to God, Who gave it? Or can the two be reconciled?
I respond:
Rabbi Ĥiyya bar-Abba did not think that Torah observance is more important than cleaving to God. (The very first sentence of Rambam's colossal halakhic code, Mishneh Torah, states that belief in God is the fundamental principle "upon which everything else depends".) What the sage was saying is that where belief in God is not to be found it is still possible for someone to observe the commandments of the Torah – because they appeal to him, because they seem to be logical, and so forth. Disbelief in God should not be a reason for not observing Torah, he says, and observance of Torah will ultimately lead the non-believer towards belief, because "the light which is in it would set them back on the right path".
The paramountcy of right behaviour over right belief (orthopraxis over orthodoxy) is emphasized by the quotations that Daniel himself offered in his question. Study is important only when it leads to observance: study without observance is just an intellectual exercise. And yes, perhaps the greatest sin in Judaism is ignorance – ignorance of the commandments: because if you don't know them you can't observe them, which is the main thing.
