Avot147
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BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI
of the Rabbinical Assembly in Israel
RABIN MISHNAH STUDY GROUP
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TRACTATE AVOT, CHAPTER TWO, MISHNAH FOURTEEN (recap):
Rabbi Shim'on says: Be careful with the recital of Shema. And when you pray do not make your prayer fixed, but [a plea for] mercy and supplication before the Omnipresent, blessed be He; as it says: "For He is gracious and merciful, patient, full of kindness and relenting of evil. And do not be wicked in your own eyes.
EXPLANATIONS (continued):
21:
The last item in the teaching of Rabbi Shim'on ben-Netan'el that is brought in our present mishnah exhorts one "not to be wicked in your own eyes". There is more than one way of understanding this injunction. Rambam, in his commentary on our mishnah, understands Rabbi Shim'on to be saying that one should not hold oneself to be wicked, because if we do we will lose hope of bettering ourselves and start down the slippery slope into true wickedness. However, I am not certain that Rambam himself approves of this teaching. At any rate, it contradicts instructions that he himself has given in his magnum opus, Mishneh Torah [Teshuvah 3:4] where he says that
Throughout the year every person should look upon themselves as if they are half righteous and half wicked, and that the whole world is half righteous and half wicked: [in such a way as] if one sins but one more time one will become [definitely] liable – and similarly the whole world.
But, of course, there is a difference between admitting that one has sinned and considering oneself to be wicked – irretrievably sinful.
22: 23:
Rabbi Simlai taught: to what may a fetus in utero to be compared? – to a folded notebook: each hand on one side … its head between its knees, its mouth sealed and its umbilicus open. It eats what its mother eats and drinks what its mother drinks … But when it is born what was sealed is opened and what was open is sealed, because otherwise it could not live even for one hour. There is a candle at its head [when still in utero] so that it can see from one end of the world to the other… And let this not surprise you, because a man can sleep and dream of castles in the air! No man is ever happier than those days [in the womb] … It is taught the whole of Torah … but when it is born an angel comes and strikes it on the mouth causing it to forget all the Torah … and it does not leave there [the womb] before it takes an oath … What is the oath? – "Be righteous and do not be wicked; and even if the whole world tells you that you are righteous be wicked in your own eyes…"
DISCUSSION:
In Avot 143 I wrote: One who conceives of God (other than metaphorically, of course) as being an old man or king with a long white beard, white robes, seated upon a high and lofty throne somewhere in the farthest reaches of heaven, surrounded by angels who play unceasingly on harps – one who believes in such a God is an idolater pure and simple! Such a person does not believe in the God of Israel.
Amnon Ronel writes: Someone who kisses mezuzot and books and tzitzit and bows down to the ark, is what he sees and does metaphorical? I respond: I understand what Amnon is saying, but I think he is misunderstanding the ethos of these actions. They are physical actions which express an inner emotion, so, yes, in a sense they are metaphorical. These people do not kiss the mezuzzah so much as they kiss what is written in it; they are not bowing down to the ark but to the word of God which it houses. All of these are what is called by the sages Ĥibbuv Mitzvah [affection for the mitzvah] and, needless to say, none of them are halakhically required. Concerning the same passage that roused the ire of Amnon, Art Kamlet writes: I thought some of the prophets claim to have seen a vision of God? I respond: A vision is a vision, and – as Rambam makes quite clear in his "Guide for the Perplexed" and elsewhere – is a product of the imagination. [See, for example, Mishneh Torah, Yesodé ha-Torah 1:12.] In that same section I also wrote: The One God exists, but because God is not a part of the physical universe, God's existence can only be comprehended intellectually and emotionally in the mind and heart of the believing Jew. It is this conceptualization of the divine essence that the Jew affirms when declaring, twice daily, Shema Yisra'el Adonai Eloheynu Adonai Echad: God is, God is God, and God is unitary. Ed Frankel writes: In an internet list there has been a great hubbub recently about the lack of a neutral gender in Hebrew. As a result, there are few descriptors of God that use feminine language. Personally I was never troubled by this, as I learned from my youth the concept I cite above from your commentary. Avot 143 aroused a few more messages. God willing I shall bring them next time. Mo'adim le-Simĥah mi-Simĥah!
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