Maharal on Avot—Pereq 3, Mishnah 16 &18

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT THIS SHIUR IS ENDING WITH NEXT WEEK’S PRESENTATION, AND THAT WE WILL BE"H BEGIN A NEW SHIUR IN SEPTEMBER. TO INSURE THAT WE FINISH THE THIRD CHAPTER OF AVOT IN THIS SHIUR, WE WILL DO TWO (SHORTER) MISHNAYOT THIS WEEK, AND RETURN TO THE (MUCH LONGER) MISHNAH 17 NEXT WEEK. PLEASE NOTE THAT AS OF NOW REGISTRATION FOR SEPTEMBER HAS BEEN DISAPPOINTING. WHILE I HOPE TO OFFER NEXT FALL’S SHIUR (SO FAR, THE REGISTRATION HAS FAVORED HELEK, THE LAST CHAPTER OF SANHEDRIN), I CAN ONLY JUSTIFY THE TIME I SPEND IN PREPARING THE CLASSES IF I HAVE SUFFICIENT REGISTRATION.

R. AQIVA ON THE STUCTURE OF REWARD AND PUNISHMENT

The Mishnah continues its presentation of R. Aqiva’s views, in this Mishnah discussing the way reward and punishment works. In an expression filled with metaphors, R. Aqiva outlines a system in which the possibility of borrowing exists, but there collection of any debts created is certain, whether the borrower wishes to repay those debts or not. Studying the way Maharal interprets those metaphors will afford us the opportunity to review his (and the mainstream of traditional Jewish thought’s) view of reward and punishment.

THE SECURITY AND THE NET

The Mishnah refers both to a security that has been given, and a net that is cast over all of life. Maharal first suggests that the security is the soul, meaning that Hashem has the power to take a person’s soul out of his or her body (meaning the person dies), so that we can never completely free ourselves of His control. Beyond that, there is a net that gives the Deity more direct control (as fish in a net are more directly controlled by the fisherman than they would be just by the power to catch and kill them). That net, according to Maharal, is God’s power to make us suffer in partial or full expiation for our sins.

Surprisingly, Maharal then suggests that the metaphors lend themselves to the exact interpretation (and prefers this second reading). Since the metaphor of the net refers specifically to life, Maharal sees that as a reference to God’s power to end our lives, while the security would be the Divine ability to visit expiatory suffering upon human beings. Leaving the details of the interpretation aside, Maharal clearly sees R. Aqiva’s opening gambit as reminding us that God’s major tools for disciplining us in this world are suffering and death.

TWO CHALLENGES FOR US

With the reminder of God’s ability to repay, R. Aqiva goes on to point out the balance of freewill and reward and punishment in our lives. In important senses, we have freewill—that’s the meaning of the store being open. Furthermore, while some of our actions run up a punishment bill, as it were, the Shopkeeper does not collect those debts right away. Although Maharal does not say so, the Shopkeeper’s patience might be to increase the freedom of the choice; if every action’s consequence was immediate and directly connected to the action, there would be less freedom in choosing wrong. (Imagine if, instead of ultimately causing cancer to a higher percentage of people than usual, smoking immediately caused cancer—would anyone smoke then?) The first challenge of freewill, then, is keeping in mind that it does not mean our sins lack consequences; it only means those consequences are well-enough hidden to allow us to ignore them at moments of sin.

When Maharal begins discussing the gabbaim, the debt collectors referred to in the Mishnah, he points out that they are all of God’s various messengers to carry out the justice of the Torah. These messengers can carry out their justice at any time (that’s the meaning of "tamid be-khol yom), they only do the letter of the law (no more or less), which is important so that people do not attack the justice as unfair, or excessive, or anything of that nature. The reference to yesh lahem al mi she-yismokhu, they have someone upon whom they can rely, means not only that their justice is fair, but that it stems from God, so that we should not suspect it of being administered independently of the Divine Will.

RECOGNIZING THE MESSENGERS

The most interesting clause of that Mishnah (to me) is the reference to nifrain min haadam mida’to ve-she-lo mi-da’to, these messengers exact payment with the person’s knowledge or without. In the context of reward and punishment, that would seem to be obvious (it is rare that people volunteer for suffering to punish their sins). Maharal says that it means that the punishment is administered whether or not the person suffering the punishment recognizes it as such.

One could argue that if God means to punish our sins, it should be necessary for the person being punished to know and understand why he’s being punished (imagine a parent who suddenly punishes a child without the child knowing the cause of the punishment). In Maharal’s reading, R. Aqiva is pointing out that that is not true of God’s justice; since the people being punished are adults, are cognizant of their various actions, a refusal to see the evils that befall them as punishments for their various sins (in those cases when the sufferings are, in fact, punishment) is their own problem, not the Lord’s.

This point accurately summarizes what I see as a significant religious challenge of our time. It is all too rare to hear someone say that a tragedy befell them because of their sins. While I only permit myself to reflect on this away from a particular circumstance (in at least one reading of Iyov, it is his friends insistence that he had sinned that is seen as their sin, worthy of death), I think that our (and I have not, barukh Hashem, suffered any yisurim that I could not clearly see as expiatory or educative yet, so I do not speak from personal experience) refusal to accept yisurim as punishment is a major flaw in the belief system of our community.

In this context, I am reminded of the story about a Hasidic rebbe who was suffering, and crying over his sufferings. Some of his hasidim questioned why he did not accept these sufferings happily, as examples of Divine love (their assumption was that these could not be for sin, since he was the rebbe; they must therefore be yisurim shel ahavah, sufferings the Talmud refers to which are sent by God for other reasons). His response was ""If God sends us sufferings, we should suffer them."" So, too, if God sends us punishments, it behooves us to experience them as such.

THE GOAL—THE MEAL

Given a Mishnah so focused on freewill and retribution, the reminder of the meal at the end bothers Maharal. He explains that it is there to remind us that retribution is not the goal of the system, the reward is. That reward, referred to briefly here, is the "meal," the state where each person’s level of perfection will have been reached, with no more growth or change, just the opportunity to be connected to the Divine. Maharal actually spends some space on two other Talmudic sources that refer to Paradise more fully, but that discussion takes us far afield from our Mishnah. In Maharal’s reading, then, the point of the Mishnah is to remind us of the system of freewill, which allows us to accumulate spiritual credits and debits. The debits will be repaid whether we recognize that repayment or not, and in such a manner as to allow us not to recognize them (maintaining our freewill). Nevertheless, that is not the goal of the sytem, which really focuses on the future "meal" where we will simply bask in the level of perfection we have achieved, glorying in our connection to God.

MISHNAH 18

This Mishnah is obviously opaque, meaning that no matter what our assumptions about Avot, we will need some interpretive input to plumb its depths. Literally, the Mishnah declares that qinin, the laws of the number of birds a person whose two doves became mixed in with others, must bring in order to fulfill the original obligation, and niddah, how to deal with a woman who has lost count of her niddah status (in the times before women decided to leave out those calculations altogether, preferring to be mahmir in every case rather than keep track of which part of the Torah’s zavah/niddah cycles), are gufei halakhot, actual laws. Gematria and tequfot (for Maharal, mathematics and astronomy), on the other hand, are characterized as parperaot lahokhmah, appetizers for wisdom.

Maharal notes that the end of the previous Mishnah, which we will see next week, had contrasted wisdom with and without ma`asim, deeds. On the basis of the juxtaposition, Maharal assumes that here hokhmah means that type of wisdom that leads to specific guidance as to how to act—in Jewish terms, halakhah—and the Mishnah is therefore pointing out that even those areas of halakhah that deal more with how to resolve doubt than with specific actions, are nevertheless at the core of halakhah (since they do guide us in how to act in those situations).

The mathematics that Maharal understands gematria to refer to, as well as astronomy, do not lead to such guidance. While they may be useful in some ways and expand our understanding of the world, Maharal stresses their lack of specific utility. (Note, however, that as long as a type of study would help a person understand how to act in certain situations, he would seem to accept the utility of the knowledge behind that. His comment, in other words, seems directed against "pure" knowledge, but that would only be for as long as the knowledge does not have a practical application. He says he’s discussed this in his work Tiferet Yisrael, a discussion we’ll have to leave for another time.