AS SUMMER APPROACHES, I HAVE BEGUN TO CONSIDER WHETHER AND WHEN TO END THIS COURSE, AND WHAT COURSE(S) TO OFFER NEXT YEAR. AS PART OF THAT PROCESS, I WOULD APPRECIATE READERS INFORMING ME AS TO THEIR IMPRESSIONS OF THESE SHIURIM—HOW MANY OF YOU READ THEM CONSISTENTLY (EITHER WEEKLY OR CATCHING UP AT REGULAR INTERVALS). I APPRECIATE YOUR INPUT.

MAHARAL’S COMMENT ON THE STRUCTURE OF AVOT

Maharal opens his comment on this Mishnah—the Mishnah reports the statement of R. Yishmael that a person should act "qal le-rosh, noah le-tishhoret, ve-hevei meqabbel et kol ha’adam be-simhah" which we will explain below—by trying to connect this Mishnah to what came before. Fundamentally, he says that R. Yishmael and R. Aqiva (the Tanna quoted in Mishnah 13) came in the time right after R. El`azar haModai, so that it makes sense chronologically to place their comments here. He stresses that Avot is a collection of the statements of "Avot haOlam" the Fathers of the World, and their thoughts are presented in chronological order.

Which would be fine with me, except that Maharal does not leave it there. He also suggests connections with what came before (namely, having ruah haberiyot be nohah hemenu, which was the first clause in Mishnah 10; Maharal explains each of the digressions between there and here). He seems to be struggling with his belief that Avot is in fact structured only chronologically. I find that interesting because the notion that Avot has a deeper structure is a relatively late one among commentators on Avot—Rashi, Rambam, R. Yonah all generally ignored the connection of how one Mishnah connected to the next. In the century before Maharal, commentators began to focus on the question of structure, both within a Mishnah and among Mishnayot. It is therefore worth noting how Maharal struggles with that question—he agrees that Avot does not focus on content structure, yet he cannot resist suggesting such connections as well.

I would just note (this is my thought, not Maharal’s) that even if the mesader haMishnah, the collector of these Mishnayot, was only working chronologically, it still makes sense that a certain conceptual flow would emerge as well. Living in the same society, with only a few years’ difference between them, it seems reasonable that the various Tannaim would address issues that are related to each other. If we were to poll important figures of Torah today, questioning first those in their 60’s, then those in their 50’s, etc., I can well imagine that their focuses (foci?) would differ slightly, but there would probably still be enough similarity to suggest a conceptual connection among them. This is a continuing issue in Avot commentary—the extent to which we focus on connecting comments, as opposed to just leaving them as coincidences of chronology.

R. YISHMAEL’S CONCERN WITH SOCIAL INTERACTION…

R. Yishmael’s statement includes one of the few words in the tractate whose meaning is debated by the medieval commentators. According to Rambam, the word tishhoret has its roots in the word shahor, black, and means someone younger, whose hair is still black. Rashi, however, sees the word as meaning a person of rank, an officer (he notes the Aramaic word shahvar and the translation of the Hebrew word nasati as shaharit, from which he assumes that this root can mean to be lifted up, or occupy a higher position). Maharal offers interpretations for each possible meaning.

For Rambam’s reading, the Mishnah is offering advice as to how to treat people older than you (obediently, which is what qal le-rosh means), younger than a person (gently, noah le-tishhoret), and how to treat general people, with happiness. He prefers Rashi’s reading, however, seeing it as saying we should be sincerely subservient to those greater than us in wisdom (rosh meaning someone whose knowledge should put them ahead of us), yielding to those who have power (noah meaning to yield rather than to actually submit), and treat ordinary people as appropriate to each.

…OR WHO WE SHOULD SEE AS OF HIGH RANK

Given that Maharal explicitly says that he prefers Rashi’s reading, I find the lesson it teaches interesting. In Maharal’s explanation, the Mishnah contrasts our proper attitude towards those of legitimate higher rank with our attitude towards those of high office and political power. In the former case, Maharal recommends actual obedience; in the latter, he just says to yield and be soft, but does not promote any subservience. Subservience, apparently, depends on the person’s having the right to our respect and to our seeing them as possessing superior knowledge and insight, rather than just as an accident of political success.

MISHNAH 13

LAUGHTER, FRIVOLITY, AND SEXUALITY

R. Aqiva leads off his Mishnah with the statement that laughter and frivolity make a person used to (or perhaps more prepared for) sexual impropriety. Maharal offers two reasons as to why laughter and frivolity would lead to sexually inappropriate behavior. First, he suggests that tsehoq, laughter, might be an essentially sexual sort of activity (at least between a man and a woman). He notes, for example, that the word the Torah uses for a husband and wife engaging in such activity (at least in the case of Yitshaq and Rivkah) is metsaheq, laughing together.

In support of this notion, I would like to mention that I have been reading a book of anthropological ideas on humor and laughter. The author notes that in preliterate societies, the joking relationship is often considered appropriate only between men and women who have the possibility of marrying each other (in other societies, it’s the reverse—it’s appropriate when there is no feasible possibility of sexual contact, perhaps as a way of stressing that barrier). Either way, it shows that there is always a connection between the looseness of humor and the looseness of sexual contact.

Alternatively, Maharal suggests that the act of intercourse, even between a husband and wife, even with the most sanctified purposes in mind, is still an essentially physical, animalistic act. (That is a view at odds with many kabbalistic views of the marital act, but that’s a different topic entirely). As an essentially physical act, it takes a person away (during the moments of that activity) from yir’at shamayim, fear of Heaven. The states of laughter and qalut rosh, which literally means light-headedness, similarly contradict yir’ah, fear or awe. If so, sehoq and qalut rosh accustom a person to being in mind-states that are not involved in the awe of Heaven. Once a person becomes accustomed to that mind-set, other related mind-sets become simpler as well.

In this version, Maharal is suggesting a looser connection between laughter and sexuality. While in the first version he saw them as directly related activities, here it is more a common factor they share—distance from the mindset of yir’ah—that suggests one would lead to the other.

THE WAYS OF PERISHUT

Having noted two ways that lead to negative consequences, R. Aqiva (in Maharal’s reading) suggests several ways to get to positive values. One of those is perishut, which we will get to in a moment. In addition, though, R. Aqiva is noting that people have 3 positive acquisitions in life, all of which need guarding since they are not inherent to us—wisdom, Torah, and wealth. For Torah, the safeguard is masoret, which Maharal understands as the devices used through the centuries to insure that Torah is preserved as it was delivered.

For the written Torah, that means the count of letters and words, the ancient system of counting that is meant to insure that our Torahs all incorporate the exact same text. For the Oral Torah, Maharal mentions the notion of simanim, which were mnemonics (some of which are recorded in our editions of the Talmud) to allow people to remember the correct flow of discussions. He notes that some thought masoret meant the tradition of what the Torah meant, but he rejects that, as that is part of Torah itself, and it too needs mental safeguards.