FINISHING UP R. HANINA B. DOSA

The first clause of Mishnah 10 still quotes R. Hanina b. Dosa, in the same form as last week’s Mishnah:

"Anyone who others are pleased with, Heaven will be pleased with, but whoever others are not pleased with, Heaven will not be pleased with."

There are two complementary questions that we can ask about R. Hanina’s statement—how does it connect to R. Hanina’s previous statements, and how does it differ? We can assume it connects, since the same person said all three. This one also has the same style as the others, in that it articulates a necessary and sufficient connection between areas we might have considered disparate. (In last week’s Mishnah, just to remind ourselves, we showed that yir’ah had to take precedence in order for hokhmah to become well-established, and that ma`asim, actions, had to outnumber wisdom in order for it to be well rooted in one’s soul). Here, of course, it is the connection between society’s view of a person and Heaven’s view.

On the other hand, the Mishnah separates this clause from the others. Maharal does not question that fact, but he does question between this clause and the rest of this Mishnah. As we will see below, he does not arrive at any convincing answer, so that it might be worth our while to consider how he would have explained the Mishnah’s being split in this way.

HEAVEN AND THE "KELAL"

Numerous commentators had read this clause before, and in general had understood it as reflecting an aspect of God’s decision making process. If people are happy with someone, God would view that person benevolently as well. In that way of stating the matter, it is not inherent to God in any way, it is just that haQadosh Barukh Hu values human interactions so much, that one who plays well with others (or works well with others) will by that very fact garner some Divine pleasure. (There are also completely opposite ways of reading the Mishnah: R. Yosef Yavets, for example, believed the Mishnah meant that if we witness someone having good social interactions, it should be taken as evidence that Heaven is pleased with that person. For him, then, social graces reveal a relationship with Heaven rather than create it).

Maharal, however, re-raises a point he had made in the fourth Mishnah of the second chapter (he himself refers to it, I hadn’t remembered the point myself, and had to look it up to see what he was talking about), and that he makes even more clearly here. According to Maharal, when two elements are connected, they develop the kind of relationship that is outlined in the Mishnah, where a connection to one element is necessarily a connection to the other.

Such a relationship exists, Maharal says, between the kelal (meaning the community at large) and God. God connects, in some way, to the broader community. Therefore, one who establishes a good relationship with the community necessarily also establishes that kind of relationship with God.

A STRUCTURAL PART OF THE UNIVERSE

The novelty I see in Maharal’s view is in the nature of the connection to God created by having a good communal relationship. It is not that God decides to treat one well because of their role in the community; it is structurally part of the way the world works that well-developed communal relations translate into a better relationship with God. That means that, in addition to Torah, to mitsvot, and so on, a road to relationship with God is just becoming well liked and a welcome member of the community. This attaches a meaning and significance to ordinary social relations that strikes me as interesting.

Maharal’s reading of R. Hanina’s third statement shows that it, too, articulates an inherent connection between things we might not have recognized as dependent on each other. At the same time, this last one does not discuss ways of acquiring wisdom at all. It therefore makes sense to leave it for another Mishnah.

CONFLICTING VIEWS OF R. DOSA B. HARKINAS’ CONNECTION

Maharal comes up with two possible connections between R. Dosa and R. Hanina, such that they would be put in the same Mishnah. First, he suggests this R. Dosa might be R. Hanina’s father, an explanation that raises the question as to why R. Hanina’s statements would have come first. He suggests that R. Hanina’s statement about insuring the establishment of one’s wisdom provided the best follow-up to a Mishnah that spoke of the problems with forgetting one’s Torah knowledge. R. Dosa’s statements connected to his son’s by virtue of their relationship.

Maharal recognizes, however, that he has no evidence that this R. Dosa was the father of R. Hanina, so he suggests that R. Dosa’s comments also connect back to the question of forgetting. While the earlier Mishnah was addressing forgetting Torah knowledge, this Mishnah is addressing questions of misuse of talents, which lead necessarily to he`eder (lack), a different, but related topic.

Just before we elaborate on Maharal’s reading of R. Dosa, note that he has made two almost contradictory statements—in the first explanation (where he assumed R. Dosa was the father), he said the father came second because of the great connection between R. Hanina’s views and the previous Mishnah. In the second explanation, R. Dosa was inserted here because of reasonable parallels to that same Mishnah. Maharal does not seem to recognize that he has assumed both that R. Hanina’s connection to the previous Mishnah justified putting him before his father—which seems to mean that his statements are more connected to the earlier Mishnah than R. Dosa’s-- and then that R. Dosa’s statements would come here—even if he was not the father—because of their connection to the earlier Mishnah.

R. DOSA FOR HIMSELF

R. Dosa points to four activities as motsi’in ha’adam min ha`olam, removing a person from the world. Maharal sees each one—sleeping late in the morning, drinking in midday, talking too much with young children, and attending the assembly halls of ignoramuses (here amei ha’aretx is clearly a pejorative term) as misusing a different element of a person’s makeup. People have a body, a soul, a sekhel nivdal (by which Maharal means the noblest part of the human intellect), and a connection to the larger community, each corresponding to one of these activities.

SLEEP—PERMITTED PLEASURE OR LAZINESS?

By sleeping late in the morning, a person devotes too much attention to his body. Maharal points out that when asleep, one’s mind is totally not in use, so that sleep is a completely body activity. (Modern dream researchers would probably dispute this theory, since, despite the debate over the exact function of dreams, they seem to have an important role in properly ordering one’s mind and thoughts). He throws in in this discussion several statements in the classical Jewish literature that denigrate sleep—such as Hazal’s comment that sleep is 1/60th of death (which probably means that there are some minimal elements of death in sleep, rather than taking the percentage seriously). This could be placed in a conversation about Jewish attitudes towards sleep—for all that Rambam, for example, mandates eight hours of sleep a day, there are legions of stories about scholars who slept much less throughout their lives. The Vilna Gaon’s sons, for example, reported that their father slept 2½ hours a day, and not consecutively. Here, however, Maharal is only addressing the issue of excessive sleep, of sleeping into the daytime when one should be already living out one’s day.

DRINKING, KIDS’ CONVERSATIONS, AND IGNORAMUSES

Drinking in midday leads to excessive merriment, to having one’s soul be overly happy. Having finally awakened, and not yet having hit the exhaustion of evening, midday is the time when one can work most productively (according to Maharal). To use that time simply to gladden one’s heart is excess that leads to lack.

Maharal categorizes sihat yeladim, children’s conversations, as filled with laughter and silliness, so that engaging excessively in that conversation involves mistreating one’s active intellect. Although Maharal does not mention it, his interpretation would seem to suggest that once there is actual intellectual value in one’s conversations with a child, it is no longer the sihat hayeladim the Mishnah discouraged. Finally, the attendance at the study halls of the ignorant takes involvement in the community (which, as we saw earlier, was a way to connect to God akin to Torah study) and misuses that as well.

THE PATRIARCHS

Maharal also offers an explanation that sees these 4 activities as misusing either the community (the last one) or the legacy of one of the Patriarchs—thus Avraham, who instituted the morning prayer, would be offended by his sleeping late. Yitshaq, who instituted the afternoon prayer, would be bothered by people’s misues of that time period. Yaakov (who instituted the evening prayer, which has no parallel here) also had many children, so focusing inappropriately on them contradicts his legacy.

It is not clear how seriously Maharal took these comparisons, but it at least suggests that he saw the religion as depending in a continuing fashion on the legacy of the Patriarchs. Avraham’s creation of shaharit was not only an issue of that prayer, but of the whole time period as well, as was Yitshaq’s (and presumably Ya`aqov’s, although nothing in the Mishnah refers to nighttime). Ya`aqov, aside from the time period, gave us the notion of children and the proper attitude towards them. The Patriarchs, then, were not only the founders of the nation in a factual sense, but in that their legacy contributed important foundational ideas for our observances.