In Mishnah 3, Antignos of Sokho receives the tradition from Shimon haTsaddiq. Maharal notes that we can tell Antignos’ greatness by the scope of his advice, which addresses an issue that affects the entire world, rather than a particular area of life. Antignos says not to be like servants who work for a master for the reward, but like ones that work for the master not for the sake of the reward. Since the Master in question is the Creator, Antignos’ advice, while directed at people, encompasses a central aspect of how the world should work.

Embedded in Maharal’s comment is the notion that the broadness of our perspective says something about who we are. The most profound thinker, if he focuses on minutiae, is in some sense smaller minded than his colleague who casts his net more widely. Specifically in Avot, later rabbis will give advice that focuses on narrower aspects of life, and this will partially demonstrate for Maharal the continuing yeridat hadorot, decline of the quality of thinking in various generations.

Turning to Antignos’ actual statements, Maharal questions its truth: Are we really required to worship God with no thought of reward? Maharal offers two sources that seem to contradict this notion— in Keriyat Shema we say Le-Ma`an yirbu yemeikhem vimei veneikhem, that we keep the Torah so that our days and the days of our children will be multiplied, clearly indicating that the Torah had no problem with predicating our observance on the reward.

Second, the Talmud says that if one gives charity so that his child will be healthy, the person is a tsaddiq gamur, a fully righteous person. Again, there seems to be no problem with focusing on the reward in the course of performing the action of mitsvah.

Maharal answers that Antignos is speaking of how to worship God me-ahavah, out of love. That level, he notes, is higher than that of a tsaddiq gamur, a fully righteous person—righteousness means doing what is required without any negative elements. Worship out of love, though, means going a level beyond the required. While it may be acceptable to give charity looking for a positive personal outcome, that does not qualify as worship me-ahavah.

The verse in the Torah requires a different answer, since the word le-ma`an most simply means "in order that." In that reading, the Torah says to study Torah, wear tefillin, put mezuzot on our doors, and keep mitsvot so that we have length of days. How could the Torah predicate its encouragement to observance on reward, if that takes us out of the category of worship me-ahavah?

Maharal points out that le-ma`an does not always mean "so that"; sometimes it simply notes cause and effect. Here, then, he would read the verse as saying only "the result of your doing these mitsvot will be that you and your children have length of days, etc." The difference between knowing the result of your action and performing that action for the sake of that result is clear.

Casting Antignos as speaking about how to worship God me-ahavah also helps explain the form of the Mishnah, in two ways. First, Antignos includes both halves of the notion of a slave worshipping the master—he says both "don’t be like the slave who works for the reward" and "be like a slave who works with no thought of the reward." Maharal says the 2nd half is necessary for one of two reasons. Possibly, it stresses that worship me-ahavah means with absolutely no interest in reward (there are some versions of the Mishnah that read "al menat sh-elo le-qabbel—with the specific thought not to get reward), only in serving the Master. Alternatively, it points out that the "al, don’t" in the first clause is not a prohibition, it’s a recommendation of a higher path. Had the clause been written on its own, we might have thought Antignos was actively prohibiting that kind of Judaism (doing it for the reward); by writing the positive side, it becomes clear that this is only for those who wish to worship me-ahavah.

Reading Antignos as focusing on worship me-ahavah also explains the odd second part of the Mishnah, "vi-yehi mora shamayim aleikhem, and let the fear of Heaven be upon you". In the previous two sets of three, the 3 dicta were a seeming set; here, there is no obvious set. Once Maharal cast the 1st part of the Mishnah as describing worship me-ahavah, we understand that this looks toward the other side of worship, me-yir’ah, out of awe of God.

Maharal adds that while Shimon haTsaddiq spoke about the existence of the whole world, Antignos spoke about the perfection of man, the purpose of the world. I believe he is saying that there was a decline here, from focusing on the world as a whole to focusing on people (admittedly central to the world, but not the whole of it) in particular. That is only true for those readings of the previous Mishnah that saw it as actually discussing the health of the world as a whole. Maharal had entertained the notion that Torah, avodah, and gemah help perfect people, and that that in turn helps the world. In this comment, though, he assumes that Shimon was more focused on the world at large than was Antignos.

Finally for this Mishnah, Maharal notes that Antignos, as one person, addressed both ahavah and yir’ah, love and awe. The coming Mishnayot, which will present the pairs of rabbis who led the Jewish people in Torah knowledge, will split those areas, so that one will discuss ahavah and one will discuss yir’ah. How Maharal will impose this structure on the statements in the Mishnah is something we’ll have to follow carefully.

Mishnah 4 introduces the first pair, Yose b. Yo`ezer and Yose b. Yohanan. Maharal notes that there are two versions of the beginning of this Mishnah, one that reads that these two qibbelu mehem, received the tradition from them, and the other says mimenu, from him. If the Mishnah correctly reads mimenu, from him, it means that this pair received the tradition from Antignos. In that scheme, Maharal explains that the Anshei Kenesset haGedolah were a group where each member had a complete transmission of tradition; in the zugot, we have pairs where each has only a partial reception (a return to the notion of partial reception we had in the first Mishnah). To create some sort of buffer between these two kinds of groups, there was a generation with only a single leader (Antignos), but who received the entire tradition. In this reading, Maharal has again focused on the passage of the generations, and the progressive decline that we see. Of course, he recognizes the other possibility and explains that "them" would refer to Antignos and Shim`on, who would be the people from whom this pair received the Torah.

The Mishnah then records Yose b. Yo`ezer’s statements, to have one’s household be a meeting place for hakhamim, to roll in the dust of their feet (an idiom that obviously needs interpretation), and to drink thirstily of their words. Maharal notes that while Antignos focused on people themselves (and how they should worship God), Yose focuses on the household, the center of people’s activities (in our times, he might have spoken of how to set up a workplace correctly). His advice is to make a household where hakhamim, Sages, are present often, but not to treat them as friends. His reading of the words "ve-hevei mit’abeq be-`afar ragleihem, become dusted with the dust of their feet," is that a person should try to attach to their lowest part (meaning, recognizing that Torah sages are greater than we are, and develop as much of a relationship as possible). We should think of them, he says, as the sekhel to our guf.

The sekhel/guf contrast will come up at other times as well, so let’s spend a moment on it. In Maharal’s world, the sekhel, the intellect (which probably includes emotions and spirituality, not only pure thinking), is the central human feature—it is where the real business of being human takes place. The guf, the body, is vital to that, since there can be no sekhel without the body. Nevertheless, the guf itself does not perform central functions of our humanity—it is a necessary but subordinate part of the human experience. (Let me say here, since it will become important later in Avot, that that subordinate status depends on the role played by the body; if we could conceive of a system in which the body also functions essentially to developing a relationship with God, then Maharal’s distinction might be mitigated).

Maharal uses the terms sekhel and guf generally to refer to a similar split (probably most accurately translated as soul and body in English—where the soul works toward the goal of the endeavor, while the matter is the subordinate part necessary for, but not central to, accomplishing that goal). When he refers to hakhamim as the sekhel to others’ guf, he is again betraying his Torah study-centered view of the world—since Torah study is central to a fully lived Jewishness, the Sages become like the soul to our body, since we create the Jewish environment for them to flourish.