PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, I WILL, BE-EZRAT HASHEM, BE ON VACATION. I WOULD APPRECIATE READERS USING THIS TIME TO CATCH UP ON SHIURIM THEY MAY NOT HAVE HAD A CHANCE TO READ AND/OR THINKING ABOUT THE MATERIAL AND RAISING ISSUES FOR ALL OF US TO DISCUSS. WHILE I DO NOT INTEND TO CHECK MY E-MAIL FROM NOV. 22-DEC. 2, I WOULD LOVE TO RETURN HOME TO FIND A LIVELY DISCUSSION AND/OR CHALLENGING QUESTIONS TO FUEL FURTHER THOUGHT.

MISHNAH 16

Having finished the zugot, the Mishnah continues citing the comments of leaders of the Jewish people. As Maharal notes, however, this list skips some leaders, since after Hillel, the nesi’im were (in order): Hillel’s son Shim`on, Rabban Gamliel of Mishnah 16, his son Shim`on (quoted in Mishnah 17), another Rabban Gamliel, R. Yohanan b. Zakkai and R. Shim`on b. Gamliel (Mishnah 18). Maharal explains that each of those who were left out were not the sole leaders of their generation—R. Yohanan b. Zakkai lived at the same time as R. Shim`on b. Hillel and R. Gamliel was in competition with R. Ele`azar b. Azaryah, so he, too, is not quoted here.

NEW INSIGHT INTO THE NASI-AV BEIT DIN RELATIONSHIP

Maharal’s explanation assumes that the Mishnayot are focusing on the sole leaders of the Jewish people, yet he had not been concerned about more than one leader when it came to the zugot-- why should they be different? His reference to R. Yohanan b. Zakkai as precluding R. Shim`on b. Hillel suggests that he thinks of the zugot as more than just two people covering the whole tradition. Rather, it was two people sharing responsibility for the tradition. This explains, for example, the rigidity of his model that the nasi spoke about ahavah while the av beit din spoke about yir’ah. As a claim about how events naturally occurred, it seems odd that for several generations, the man who occupied the position of av beit din was more interested in yir’ah, while the man who occupied the position of nasi was more interested in ahavah.

With our insight into Maharal’s notion of shared leadership in order to qualify as the representative(s) of tradition in any generation, we now understand better. He was not claiming that the av beit din always wanted to focus on yir’ah; he was claiming that it was the av beit din’s job to focus on yir’ah. The nasi, the higher-up, could then freely focus on ahavah.

THE DIVISION OF LEADERSHIP RESPONSIBILITIES

Although Maharal doesn’t elaborate this, my suggestion as to his view makes sense as a scheme of religious leadership. What follows are thoughts of my own that I believe fit what Maharal has said rather than summaries of Maharal’s words. Ahavah is generally seen as a higher religious level, where a Jew worships God out of a recognition of the Creator’s greatness and a wish to become closer to that Being, to the Ultimate End of all existence. However, yir’ah, a sense of awe before that Creator, is the vital first step—we may sometimes go to minyan, study Torah, or perform other mitsvot out of a sense of enthusiasm and a desire to foster our relationship with God—and those are certainly religiously important moments. But day in and day out, it is a sense of commandedness that keeps us on that path, and that prepares us for those moments of ahavah.

The primary leader of the Jewish people—the nasi—took responsibility for articulating the highest possible religious vision, to inspire Jews to the greatest heights possible. That was only reasonable, however, if there was someone else—the av beit din—insuring that Jews were also being reminded of their fundamental responsibilities, and the emotional experience that guaranteed they would not only reach for the heights, but would also live up to minimum standards.

BACK TO THE MISHNAH—AVOIDING DOUBT

Rabban Gamliel says that a person should make a master for him or herself (which we’ve seen before), avoid doubt, and not tend too much to tithe by estimation. The obvious question in this Mishnah is why R. Gamliel simply repeated a notion we’ve seen before; also, what connection is there among these clauses?

Without reviewing other solutions—these were issues that just about every commentator on Avot has raised—Maharal focuses on doubt and its avoidance as the concern of this Mishnah. One can have doubts intellectually, in one’s general actions, or specifically in mitsvah contexts, and the Mishnah comes to encourage Jews to avoid living a life of doubt in each of these three areas.

Thus, the point of aseh lekha rav is to find a teacher to help you avoid intellectual doubt, a teacher who will train you how to think clearly and correctly about issues. The second clause, ve-histaleq min hasafeq, teaches us to avoid doubt in life generally (not only in terms of mitsvot or questions of halakhah). The third clause—tithing—tells us that even where it’s permissible to use guesses and estimation (NOTE: Maharal here assumes that we are allowed to tithe by estimation, but Rambam and Shulhan Arukh rule that we may not), we should avoid doing so.

WHO’S AFRAID OF DOUBT?

Why is Maharal so convinced that doubt is the danger the Mishnah wishes us to avoid in all of our endeavors? He says that a person of sekhel, a person who uses their intellect properly, should use it as sekhel barur, clear. Doubt, in other words, shows a lack of intellectual clarity. A person who either doesn’t know how to think through an issue correctly, ponders his/her choices without a full knowledge or appreciation of their ramifications, and/or doesn’t clarify mitsvah actions fully has not allowed him/herself to develop as fully as possible. Doubt then becomes the enemy of personal development, in that clarity means we know our actions fully and well and can use them as the springboard for greater personal growth.

MISHNAH 17—MORE ON SELF-DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTELLECT

Maharal sees Shim`on as continuing his father’s concern about the proper development of the intellect—when we speak, we are using a different power of the soul than when we think, and while we are speaking we are not generally actively thinking. In terms of developing oneself, then, silence is the better avenue to such development.

That preference for silence might lead us to think that we should also prefer the life of the ivory tower, where we study all the time, developing our intellect, but don’t actually perform mitsvot. The next clause therefore points out that only ma`aseh, actions of mitsvah, instill roots in our soul—so at some point the development of our intellect needs to be acted upon in order to really take root. The action, then, is what finishes the lesson (like a slap on the face to "make the lesson go in," as they used to say on "Kung-Fu: The Legend Continues"), insuring that we are changed as a whole, not just in some theoretical portion of our person.

What Maharal said about silence before was an expression of a preference; choosing to ignore that preference (and speaking freely) was not an actual sin. If one speaks excessively, however, that signifies that the person is emphasizing (or centralizing) speech and the characteristic of one’s soul that feeds that faculty. (For Maharal, different parts of the soul fuel different activities, and speech and thought stem from different areas of the soul). In focusing on the "speaking soul" as the center, Maharal says, the person is sinning, because at least in emphasis, the intellectual has to take priority.

MISHNAH 18

The fundamental issue in this Mishnah is that it, too, seems to repeat an earlier statement. While here R. Shim`on b. Gamliel says that the world is qayyam (remains established) because of truth, justice, and peace, we earlier had a Mishnah saying thet the world "stands" on Torah, avodah, and gemillut hassadim.

Maharal first claims that this Mishnah is discussing how to keep society functioning well, rather than why the world was created. Each of the three values in this Mishnah protects a different area of humanity. Truth, for example, protects our intellects from decay (Maharal actually says that we cannot have activated intellects in a world where falsehood reigns).

Justice protects people’s money, although Maharal takes this one step beyond how we might have casually read it. Rather than meaning that courts protect our money from being stolen or cheated, Maharal says that courts are there to insure that everyone gets the financial stake in this world that God wanted. He doesn’t elaborate how they are supposed to do this, but in his view there is a distinction between din, justice, and din emet le’amitato, a fully truthful judgement. In the latter, the court not only adjudicates specific disputes, but finds a way to distributive justice (a phrase I learned the year R. Lichtenstein was speaking of an honoree at the Gush dinner who was a lawyer, a profession of which R. Aharon used to not be particularly fond. Faced with a corporate lawyer, he spoke for a few minutes about how the law, at its best, functioned to promote "distributive justice"—a true statement, but irrelevant to the case at hand).