Avot181

4:
The teaching of Rabbi El'azar ha-Moda'i which is the subject of our present mishnah lists five heinous acts for which the culprit deserves to be deprived of his share in the next world. Before we detail them seriatim let us just remind ourselves of the meaning of the punishment for Rabbi El'azar and his contemporaries. Terms such as 'the world to come' and 'the future time' held a different meaning for the sages than the concepts which they conjure up for most modern Jews. We discussed this at length when we studied Mishnah Three of Chapter One [Avot 020 – Avot 022], and I refer you to those shiurim. For moderns, in all probability, the term conjures up concepts which are based on the re-interpretation of these concepts in more Aristotelian terms. [See, in particular, explanation #10 in Avot 022.] So the punishment enunciated by Rabbi El'azar in our mishnah is that the culprit will not merit resurrection when the great Day of Judgement comes 'at the end of time'. (The classical commentators, of course, assiduously point out that this punishment will be visited upon them only if they die unrepentant, for "nothing stands in the way of true repentance" [see Rambam, Teshuvah 3:14].

5:
The first item in the list of Rabbi El'azar is the desecration of Israel's sancta. In his commentary on our present mishnah Rambam – incredibly! – understands the term sancta to be referring to sacrifices! It is a complete mystery to me why the great man should have ignored two very salient objections to his interpretation. Firstly, Rabbi El'azar ha-Moda'i lived after the destruction of the Bet Mikdash, so in his day and age there were no sacrifices to desecrate. The desecration of sacrifices to which Rambam refers is based on Leviticus 19:5-8

6:
However, the second point which argues against Rambam's interpretation is the Gemara itself, which associates this teaching of Rabbi El'azar with a different biblical verse. According to this interpretation Israel's sancta are the most basic concepts of Judaism. When discussing those who 'have no share in the next world', the sages in the Gemara [Sanhedrin 99a] quote a verse from the Torah [Numbers 15:30-31]

This despising of the word of God is understood as referring to any denial of the divine origin of Torah [Torah min ha-shamayyim]. For further details see Sanhedrin 139. The sages then quote the words of Rabbi El'azar ha-Moda'i from our present mishnah in their entirety. Thus it seems more than reasonable that they understood the teaching of Rabbi El'azar as saying that the desecration of Israel's sancta is the desecration and denigration of God: in one word the 'apikoros' or 'epikoros'. For the history and development of this term see explanation #6 in Avot 135 and explanations 4-7 in Avot 149.

To be continued.

Still concerning Avot 175, Gerry Berg writes:

I wonder about your translation of "fear of God" as "gut feeling". If "fear of God" were understood as "deference to conventional understandings of God's word", your application of the principle to current problems might turn out quite differently. Rabbenu Gershom's plea, then, might arise from his opposing conventional wisdom (yirat ha-Shem) with his own personal wisdom (hahmah). Rabbi H. ben-Dosa's point would then be to honor convention over personal insights.

I respond:

I do not recall interpreting 'fear of God' as 'gut feeling'. I pointed out the difference between 'fear of God' and 'fear of sin'. I did, however, write something that could suggest that 'fear of sin' equates with 'gut feeling'. I wrote: In all the cases cited it was the 'gut feeling' – the fear of sin – which prompted honest, God-fearing people to act contrary to accepted wisdom and make the changes that they were corporately convinced that love of God and love of justice demanded.

So I take this opportunity of clarifying that all those who follow Torah, regardless of their psychological spur, can experience that 'gut feeling' – an intellectual unease that something we are doing (or not doing), which, even if condoned or required by Torah (in the widest sense) as understood heretofore, may not be what God requires of us.