Avot325

1:
Our mishnah continues the series devoted to the number four and this time the topic is the ability to learn. We must remember that the reference is to the student who comes to study with the sage in Tannaïtic times. We must recall that up to the time of Rabbi and the publication of the Mishnah all learning had to be by rote. We have discussed this many times; see, for example, Avot 085.

2:
When everything has to be learned viva voce directly from the teacher and nothing can be written down it is clear that the ideal student will find it easy to absorb new material and will be able to maintain the accumulating material in his memory. Of what use is a swift understanding if what has been understood cannot be maintained? On the other hand, in the 'classroom situation' under discussion those slow on the uptake are at a distinct disadvantage, even if after they have grasped something they can maintain it in their memory.

3:
Swift to understand and slow to forget – wise. Perhaps the translation 'wise' here is misleading. It seems to me that what our mishnah is saying that such a person has the makings of a sage, Ĥakham.

4:
Slow to understand and swift to forget; this is an unfortunate disposition. We should note that just as the student described in the previous clause is not described as a saint (on the model of the previous mishnayot), so in this present clause the student's disposition is not described as being wicked. But it certainly is very unfortunate for the would-be student of the sages. One wonders how many great rabbinic minds were lost to posterity because their intellectual apparatus did not suit the learning situation into which they had to be placed.

In Avot 323 I responded to a comment by Marty Berman concerning the attitude of some sections of the orthodox community to Conservative Judaism. My response engendered a passionate reaction from one of the participants in this study group:

I understand that it's painful when some in the Orthodox community deny the legitimacy of other forms of Judaism, but I think it's counterproductive to respond with the same invective. I don't think it's right to call Orthodox Judaism a "deviation" from tradition, any more than it would be to say that about Conservative Judaism or other branches of Judaism.

I respond:

My response was certainly not invective. I referred to the orthodox form of Judaism as "a painful deviation" from traditional Judaism. However distressing that description may appear to some it is, nevertheless, my considered and sober opinion. One dictionary that I consulted has the following definition of 'deviation': "a variation that deviates from the standard or norm". That describes how I see the historical development of orthodox Judaism and this view of mine is nothing new. I have expressed it in various forms on many occasions – and some of those expressions are available in the pages of the Virtual Bet Midrash.

There are two historical developments which teach me that modern orthodoxy is a deviation from traditional rabbinic Judaism as it was practiced for centuries. Those two developments were the publication of the Shulĥan Arukh in 1556 and the reaction of Rabbi Moshe Schreiber (Ĥatam Sofer) to the advent of Reform Judaism (another deviation in a different direction). You can read about these two events and how they intermesh with the rise of Conservative Judaism in an essay I wrote some twenty years ago and which was published in the Bet Midrash Virtuali in 2002 under the title Historical Background. Furthermore, just recently I referred to these events in my contribution to a panel of speakers in the convention to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the Masorti Movement. What I had to say there is available (in Hebrew) under the title Pluralism in Halakhah.

The great deviation of orthodoxy was (and is) the apotheosis of the Shulĥan Arukh and the de facto application of Schreiber's dictum that "all new developments are forbidden by Torah law". It is Conservative Judaism that has maintained the traditional posture of Judaism as it was until the elevation of the Shulĥan Arukh to its present exalted status. (It is the method of Conservative Judaism that is traditional, not necessarily all of its conclusions.)

There is nothing wrong whatsoever with modern orthodoxy being espoused by those who follow its dictates. What is wrong is the claim of modern orthodoxy to be the only legitimate vehicle of Jewish religious expression and that all other streams are invalid per se.