The last of the three Mishnayot that record Hillel’s thoughts is fairly well known, questioning "If I will not be for myself, who will be for me? And even when I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" While commentators generally see these questions in terms of Torah and mitsvot, Maharal adds a new twist to each.

TORAH AS A NON-TRANSFERRABLE ASSET

For the question of "If I am not for myself," Maharal points out that Torah is one of the areas of life that cannot be passed from one person to the next. While a parent who makes a fortune can pass that money on to a child and rain that falls in the merit of one person benefits many others as well, the spiritual elevation provided by mitsvot and Torah study can only result from personal involvement. When Hillel says "If I am not for myself," in Maharal’s view, he is stating a fact of Torah study, that it cannot be acquired by somebody else and yet create a spiritual impact upon me. I wonder what Maharal would have done with the notion that my financially supporting someone else’s learning could redound to my credit—such as Yissachar and Zevulun. Presumably, Maharal would say that Zevulun got reward for supporting a Torah scholar rather than the benefit of Torah study itself, but the Midrashim on the issue seem to suggest that the two brothers shared the benefits of Yissachar’s Torah study equally.

THE SOUL—AN INFINITELY SPACIOUS REPOSITORY OF MERIT

The second clause—and when I am for myself, what am I? —Maharal takes as a reference to the impossibility of filling the soul with mitsvot. The point then is that even if we have made attempts to study Torah and fulfill the commandments, we should not think that we have completed our task. Rather, the soul is always capable of being filled further.

Maharal gives an analogy to express this that we’ll get to in a moment, but I wanted to note the underlying assumption of both these clauses. In the first, Maharal spoke of our inability to achieve the elevation of our soul provided by Torah and mitsvot except by doing them ourselves. Here, he notes that the soul can never be "filled" with Torah and mitsvot. He clearly assumes, in other words, that the main focus of these actions is their impact on the soul, not the external reward we get for them. If, for example, the reward God gives for Torah study is the essential outcome of the act, there would be no reason to claim that I can only learn for myself—I should be able to learn and direct God to give that reward to whomsoever I designate. Maharal’s notion that that is impossible assumes that it is the internal result of these actions that counts most centrally.

Maharal then gives the Midrash’s analogy to a villager who marries a princess. Try as he might, the villager can never provide her with the comforts she was used to from home. So, too, the soul is a piece of the Divine bestowed upon our physical world, and our bodies are—no matter how hard we try—poor hosts for it. Hillel therefore reminds us that even if we toil carefully in the fields of spirituality, we cannot fulfill (or fill) our soul’s yearnings.

In saying this, Maharal has brought in a theme we have seen before, but which the text does not allude to, the contrast between the physical and the spiritual. While Hillel’s statement denies the possibility of achieving enough to engender a sense of pride—even when I do work for myself, what does that make me?—he does not indicate that the problem lies in our physical side being unable to fulfill our spiritual side. That piece of it comes from Maharal’s view of the world, a view we’ve seen already.

LIFE—A TOO-BRIEF CANDLE

Our physical limitations also explain the question of "If not now, when?" for Maharal. While the question could just be taken as the ordinary preference for doing mitsvot as soon as possible, since delay can lead to further delays and so on, Maharal says it’s a reference to the brevity of our lives (as physical beings). Since we live only a short time, we need to grasp each possible moment for Torah and mitsvot. Again here, the Mishnah certainly referred to the urgency of time in our observance of Torah, but it was Maharal who brought in the question of our physicality.

Maharal closes his discussion of the Mishnah by pointing out that Hillel was known as greatly humble, and that the thrust of this Mishnah echoes that humility, since it stresses our inadequacies at reaching our spiritual potential.

MISHNAH 15

SHAMMAI—THE YANG TO HILLEL’S YIN

Shammai’s dicta—"Make your Torah a fixed part of your life, Say little and do much, and greet everyone with a pleasant countenance"—should, in Maharal’s structure of the zugot, reflect yir’ah to Hillel’s ahavah. Here, that doesn’t seem so clear, since it’s not clear how having Torah a fixed part of our life is a protection against anything, or the others either. Maharal therefore claims that Shammai is in fact trying to protect against losing the regular presence of Torah study in our lives, not keeping our word or our promises, and giving the impression that we denigrate others. Each of his dicta thus protects against a specific danger.

Aside from showing how Shammai fits into the general pattern of the zugot, Maharal also shows how Shammai specifically complements Hillel. While Hillel is known for his openness to others, his calm with their lack of readiness for the truths of Torah, Shammai is known as a qapdan, a stickler for standards. In the famous Talmudic stories of people who demanded that Shammai convert them to Judaism on various conditions (one while standing on one foot, another on the condition that he only be responsible for the Written Torah, a third that he could be Kohen Gadol), Shammai simply refused. Hillel, however, found a way to work with them that eventually brought them to full observance.

NECESSARY QAPDANUT

Shammai’s statements here, Maharal suggests, point to areas where a qapdan is necessary, where it’s important to stand on standards. Unless we are maqpid to have our Torah study be a fixed part of our life, unless we take great care with our words so as not to misspeak, unless we take great care with how we greet others, we will end up acting inappropriately. Maharal does not, however, explain how these three areas in particular need haqpadah more than others.

It turns out, Maharal suggests, that Hillel and Shammai were talking about avenues of ahavah and yir’ah for ordinary people. While Shemayah and Avtalyon explained how people of power could use that power properly, and avoid the negative consequences inherent in such positions of power, Hillel and Shammai expanded their thoughts and applied them for the general populace.

MAHARAL’S REVIEW OF THE CHAPTER TIL THIS POINT

At this point, the Mishnah moves away from zugot to just rabbis—beginning with the leaders of each generation, but then just quoting whoever came up. Maharal pauses here, therefore, to note the history of the tradition until this point. There were five stages of leadership where the tradition was whole—Moshe, Joshua, the Elders, the Prophets, and the Members of the Great Assembly. In parallel there were five zugot, where the tradition was whole between the two of them (with one focusing on yirah and one on ahavah, as we have seen). Maharal then shows how the number five is important in terms of the revelation of Torah, in that he believes there were five qolot, Voices, that transmitted the Torah.

Without describing his attachment to the number five in detail (we’ll see more of it in later Mishnayot), it is worth noticing that Maharal has made a structural statement about the course of the history of the passage of tradition. At each stage of the decline in preserving tradition, five generations was the limit that that level of tradition could be held on to—first, five groups where each member possessed the entirety of tradition and then five where each had a part.

Incidentally, Antignos of Socho does not fit Maharal’s picture, since he was an individual in possession of the whole tradition. Maharal suggests that he was a transitional figure between the two set-ups, helping Shim`on haTsaddiq pass on the tradition.