THREE SEPARATE CLAUSES—OR ARE THEY?

When you read this Mishnah simply, it seems to mention three different activities for which the person who does them can be considered "mithayyev be-nafsho, causing himself (or herself) liability for his life." Those three are: one who is awake at night, one who walks on the road alone, and one who frees himself for battalah, for idleness.

To read the clauses as independent, though, raises the question of the problem with staying awake at night—particularly since night starts with when the stars come out, for much of the year that being before 9PM. Further, there are plenty of sources that suggest that nighttime is a particularly good time for studying Torah. A commentator on this Mishnah must therefore enunciate a reason that being awake at night is a problem. Another issue, for those commentators who care to involve themselves in the question, is the connection (if any) among these three causes of being liable for one’s life. Even if we don’t generally assume that the parts of a Mishnah are connected to each other, here they would seem to have to be—otherwise, why mention only these three ways to be mithayyev be-nafsho? Since R. Hanina b. Hakhinai chose these three ways of being mithayyev to link in a single statement (there are two others later in this pereq, so it seems like he could have thought of others had he tried), there would seem to be some connection among them.

THE WAY OF THE WORLD’

Maharal’s going to offer two ways of reading the problem of ha-ne`or balayla, staying up at night. The first focuses on the world’s ordinary running as the way life should proceed, and that this Mishnah comes to castigate those who leave that ordinary running. In the first clause, therefore, the Mishnah means that people should sleep at night. One who stays up instead is abrogating the order of nature. Even while espousing this, however, Maharal recognizes that studying Torah would represent an exception to the rule he just made—if someone wants to stay up excessively late to study Torah, they would have that option with no problems from the sentiments of R. Hanina b. Hachinai.

In this reading—we’ll come back to the other reading below—the problem with being mefaneh libo le-batalah, clearing one’s heart for idleness has to be along the same lines. I would note that Maharal seems to see that as the next clause in the Mishnah, even though the girsa we have places it after the one about walking alone along the road. Seen as an independent item from the first clause, the Mishnah means that idleness goes against the assumptions of the human condition. There is a strong anti-idleness attitude in halakhah, and in Maharal’s reading, this clause echoes that.

IDLENESS IS THE DEVIL’S WORK

One example of that attitude is the gemara’s objection to non-Jews establishing a day of rest. The gemara cites a verse in Jeremiah that says the ordinary course of nature will always proceed, which it takes to mean not only that Nature’s laws will not be abrogated (in terms of day following night, etc.), but also that non-Jews must live their ordinary lives every day. Rather than allowing them a day of rest, (As an aside, I have never been sure whether this precludes only a ritual day off, like Sunday as a religious holiday, or if it means that we expect non-Jews to work at their jobs seven days a week. The latter seems unlikely, since people want and need time to work productively on areas of life outside of their careers. I would instead read that gemara as frowning upon non-Jews’ taking a day for specifically resting from all one’s labors, with the idea of that day as set aside—a set day each week—for religious contemplation) the pasuq insists that life move forward consistently.

The gemara also frowns on idleness in Jewish contexts as well. In one example, the gemara objects to a wife being freed from all her household responsibilities regardless of how much of a household staff her husband can provide her. While, if the money is there, the husband is required to free her from many of her tasks, the gemara wants to be sure that she is left with some responsibilities, to avoid idleness, the source of much grief. For men, the (ideally) ever-present responsibility to study Torah should make Judaism’s attitude towards idleness clear.

WALKING ALONE ON THE ROAD—AN UNNATURAL ACTIVITY

To get back to our Mishnah, the mefaneh libo, would be ignoring the natural order in sitting idle, the element of his behavior that Maharal focuses on. The final clause in the Mishnah is hamehalekh ba-derekh yehidi, one who walks alone on the road. In Maharal’s presentation of the Mishnah, this, too, should be a problem because of its being unnatural. Maharal says that people are meant to be involved in a society. By walking alone, the person is refraining from being socially involved, which is not natural.

To prove his point about society, Maharal quotes an interesting gemara that says that anyplace that Adam haRishon decided was a place for human habitation became inhabited, and anyplace that wasn’t so delineated did not. To explain, Maharal says that Adam haRishon, as the first and paradigmatic human, was able to judge the places in the world that had a connection to the human condition. Those that did, he designated as fit for human habitation; those that did not, he did not.

THE LIMITS OF BEING HUMAN

I care less about the accuracy of the gemara’s assessment of human habitation than about two other elements. In terms of truth, certainly there are people living places now where they never lived during Adam’s time. If someone who wants to uphold the statement were to argue that Adam haRishon viewed the entire globe—including sections of the world undiscovered until relatively late in human history-- then it might be true, but largely meaningless. Any place that become inhabited at any point, we would just say that Adam haRishon had been gozer, had delineated it as inhabitable, to begin with, giving us no real information to use.

I am, instead, intrigued first by the notion of Adam as paradigmatic; the idea that he set the pattern for all of the humans who followed is worth mulling. It suggests that Adam defined our human nature to some extent, so that in the first generation of humanity, our range of options for what it means to live a human life was shaped.

More relevant to our Mishnah, the gemara seems to say that we are supposed to live in humanly habitable places, that there is little value (and, perhaps, a negative value) in constructing a mountain retreat off away from all other people. In that view, of course, solitary travel has the same problem. That distrust of solitude is an issue worth considering—other Jewish thinkers have stressed the value of periods of solitude, even extensive periods. Maharal seems to think even of an intercity trip as inappropriate to use as a time for solitude.

OR, IN CONJUNCTION WITH IDLENESS

The other way to read the Mishnah, which Maharal also offers, is to say that it is not the act of being awake (or, presumably, walking along the road alone) that is a problem, but having those be opportunities for idleness rather than productive activity. Maharal seems to come to this because he recognizes that some people will be up at night occupied with their livelihood, and he cannot imagine that that is a problem, if it’s necessary. He therefore suggests that if one is up at night and instead of seeking productive activity focuses on battalah, that that’s a problem. Note that in this version, it’s not the act of not sleeping that is the problem (as it was in the first way), it is rather the nonproductivity.

MISHNAH 5

This is a relatively short Mishnah, so I thought we could finish it here as well—the Mishnah says that one who accepts the rule of Torah removes from himself the yoke of the kingdom and of derekh eretz (which Maharal takes to mean the need to earn a living) and vice verse for one who does not accept that rule. Maharal notes that there are three realms in which a person can operate—the natural realm, the human realm (which isn’t fully natural, since people have freewill—animals respond to instinct, to needs and urges; people are able to choose their response), and the Divine realm.

The point of the Mishnah is that operating in the Divine realm puts a person above the natural and human realms (so that the yoke of government and of livelihood, representatives of each of those realms, are removed). Part of what’s interesting about this is that Maharal has viewed the Mishnah as referring to general areas rather than the specific examples cited. It’s not that Torah frees us from government per se, but from having to worry about ordinary human interactions as a whole. It’s also, I think clearly, a view tinged with supernatural overtones that 21st century people might have a hard time agreeing with, but eminently worth considering nonetheless.

Maharal connects the assumption of this Mishnah—that Torah trumps nature and society—to the placing of the objects in the Mishkan. The shulhan is the symbol of kingship, for reasons Maharal does not explain. The menorah has seven branches symbolizing the seven days of the week. In Hebrew, the term for seven days of the week is shiv`at yemei Bereshit, the seven days of Creation, which puts into the concept of weekdays the concept of nature as well. Those two objects were in the outer room of the Mishkah. The Aron, symbol of Torah (since it contained the original tablets), was placed in the Holy of Holies, again showing that the Torah realm is qualitatively superior to the other two. Here, too, the placement and symbolism of the various objects in the Mishkan make a point about the world and how it works, a point that stresses the supernatural underpinnings to that world.