Berakhot 022

1:
The fact that most of this mishnah is included verbatim in the Haggadah that we recite at the Seder service must make it one of the most well-known of all mishnayot. That does not mean, of course, that it is universally understood!

2:
The subject of our mishnah is the third and last parashah of the Shema, which consists of Numbers 15:37-41. It would perhaps be helpful to quote the relevant part of the passage:

3:
The main purpose of the tassels [tzitzit] is that they be seen, otherwise they cannot fulfill their function. Obviously, without artificial light, they can only be seen by daylight, and therefore the sages concluded that the mitzvah of tzitzit is only operative during the hours of daylight. That being the case, one could easily conclude that it was superfluous to recite the third parashah of the Shema at night, when the mitzvah that it enshrines is not operative. (Some scholars even think that at an early stage in liturgical development even the morning Shema did not include parashat tzitzit; only gradually did it achieve liturgical recognition, first in the morning and then in the evening.)

4:
However, the sages note that this third parashah also contains another topic: the duty of being ever-mindful of the event which was the crucible in which the nation of Israel was refined and produced – the Exodus from Egypt. The thrust of ben-Zoma's midrash (quoted in our mishnah) is that it is quite logical that this mitzvah, to be ever-mindful of the Exodus, applies both by day and night. Quite often the biblical verses quoted as "proof-texts" in midrashim are merely pegs upon which to hang a conclusion already arrived at (by logic or tradition). In the epoch when the whole of the Oral Torah was still only preserved orally it was a very useful aide-memoire to be able to "hang" midrashim on biblical verses. (In the mishnah the sages have another midrashic purpose for the verse in question, which is completely irrelevant to our topic: the fact that the midrash of the sages is also quoted by our mishnah is also a hang-over from the period when all studies were conned by rote and it would have been very dangerous to one's memory to "split one's learning".)

5:
Ben-Zoma is Rabbi Shim'on ben-Zoma, who was active in the last quarter of the first century CE. The fact that he is almost universally referred to without his rabbinic title is seen as a mark of disapproval, but we are never quite sure what Shim'on ben-Zoma did to deserve his colleagues' disapproval. He is one of the four sages who are mentioned in Tractate Ĥagigah 2:3 as having engaged in mysticism: ben-Zoma lost his mind as result, [Rabbi Shim'on] ben-Azzai died prematurely, and [Rabbi] Elisha ben-Avuya became an apostate; only Rabbi Akiva [ben-Yosef] emerged from the experience unscathed. However, a more reasonable assumption could be that neither ben-Zoma nor ben-Azzai were granted the title they had earned because they never married. In the case of ben-Azzai this is a known fact; it can be reasonably assumed in the case of ben-Zoma. (The Tosefta [Ĥagigah 2:6] might be suggesting that ben-Zoma also was touched by apostacy in some way, but this is not developed in rabbinic tradition – as it is in the case of Elisha ben-Avuyah.)

To be continued.

Yaakov Adler asks concerning the text of the b^erakhot in view of my explanation as to the immediate causes of latter-day uniformity:

This explains the current de facto uniformity. But is there a halakhic requirement that we should follow the established text? Or are we still free to improvise blessings within the appropriate framework, as was done in the past?

I respond:

Within certain halakhic parameters we are free to improvise. This is the short answer. The long (and reasoned) answer will be given when we reach the first mishnah of Chapter 7.

Next Shiur