Avot152

4:
Before we discuss the teaching attributed to Akavya ben-Mehalal'el we should review what we know of his biography, for it is quite fascinating. He was apparently a contemporary of Hillel the Elder: that means that he lived towards the end of the 1st century BCE and into the 1st century CE. Although, admittedly, we do not have a reliable source for this we do know that he lived before the destruction of the Bet Mikdash in the year 70 CE, because it is said of him [Mishnah Eduyot 5:6] that when the courtyard of the Bet Mikdash was closed on the day before Pesaĥ, being full of Jews who came to slaughter their Passover sacrifices in three shifts, "none was found in the precincts as great in wisdom and saintliness as Akavya ben-Mahalal'el". (A description of the happenings in the Bet Mikdash on this day, together with our explanations, is given in Mishnah Pesaĥim 5:5.)

5:
Akavya was not only wise and saintly, but he must have been possessed of great Torah knowledge, because he was offered the position of Av Bet-Din. [See Avot 025 for an explanation of this term.] Although this is pure speculation on the part of an incurable romantic I think that this offer may have been made in connection with the appointment of a companion to Hillel which we mentioned in Avot 051. It is just possible that after Hillel's Av Bet Din, Menaĥem, resigned that the vacant position was offered first to Akavya and only when he refused the offer did the choice fall on Shammai. I must emphasize yet again that this is pure speculation.

6:
The circumstances of the offer to Akavya ben-Mehalal'el of high office are recounted in Mishnah Eduyot 5:6. He was indeed asked to become Av Bet Din but there was a condition attached: he must recant on four halakhic decisions that he had made where his opinion differed from that of the rest of the sages. (These four halakhic issues are known to us, but are of no relevance to our discussion here.) His response to the offer tells us much about the man:

However, his noble refusal had serious consequences, as we shall see.

To be continued.

In Avot 148 we mentioned that Rabbi El'azar ben-Arakh went to live in Emmaus.

Daniel Burstyn writes:

Could the Emmaus mentioned in the Mishnah as the place of the exile of Rabbi El'azar be the same places as mentioned in the gospel of Luke? (It was there that they were told of Jesus' resurrection.) If so, perhaps there is a hint here that Rabbi El'azar became a Christian.

I respond:

Three towns are known to us by this name – one near Tiberias in the north, one near modern Latrun and one near to Jerusalem. The one mentioned by Luke must be the one near to Jerusalem and not the spa town chosen by Rabbi El'azar. As far as I know there is nothing in his story to suggest that Rabbi El'azar ben-Arakh had anything to do with the budding Christian sect.

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In Avot 149 I responded to a comment by Martin Lederman. (Please access the shiur to read Martin's comment and my response.)

Derek Fields disagrees with me:

I would like to take issue with your analysis. I am sure that many readers of this list, like me, try to daven the halachicly mandated three times per day. It is not possible, at least not for me, to make every one of these prayer sessions meaningful and spiritual. Sometimes a word or a phrase gives me that momentary sense of the ineffable. Sometimes, I find myself completely absorbed and spiritually open and sometimes, I simply go through the motions knowing that at the very least I have met a basic obligation to recognize that all of my blessings come from Hashem even though I am not focused during that session. For me, daily prayer is a routine that connects me to G-d and to my community. Sometimes the point is just to do it.

When one places such emphasis on spirituality, it creates an expectation that most people can not attain, yet they think that they must. So many people come to shul on an occasional basis and feel that they have failed in prayer because they didn’t get a spiritually moving experience. Then they blame the Rabbi or the liturgy or the music or the pace or whatever instead of realizing that spirituality is really not something that you can make happen on demand. It takes learning, practice, repetition and luck. One of the greatest mistakes of the liberal movements is that they have allowed the congregation to shift the responsibility for prayer from the individual to the clergy. We have led people to believe that it is the responsibility of the clergy to deliver to them a spiritual experience. One of the things that I love about my shul as well as many Orthodox shuls in which I have davened is that at any moment you will see people at different points of their tefillah as they have come in late or davened more slowly or simply taken a different route from the main congregation. They are not reliant on the clergy to make their tefillah moving. This freedom to take responsibility for one’s own prayer experience is liberating. The point is not to "dumb down" the service, but, as you point out, to educate and then turn over responsibility to each individual.

I respond:

In principle I agree with Derek, but I still think that if the amount of "material" that we have to utter in our prayers were reduced to the halakhic essentials it would be more likely that we would achieve kavvanah. Having said that let me recount a story from my own days in yeshivah. One day one of the rabbis asked us how often we thought that we prayed with true kavvanah. Some offered every day, some once a day, others less often. Finally we asked the rabbi how often he thought that he managed to pray with true kavvanah. He replied, "If I'm lucky and with God's help, about once or twice a year!"