TWO MISHNAYOT, THREE CLAUSES

The two clauses of Mishnah 9 and the first clause of Mishnah 10 all quote R. Hanina b. Dosa, and all follow a similar form:

1.. Whoever’s fear of sin precedes his wisdom, his wisdom will be well established; but whoever’s wisdom precedes his fear, his wisdom will not be well established.

2.. Whoever’s actions are greater than his wisdom, his wisdom will be well established; but whoever’s wisdom exceeds his actions, his wisdom will not be well established.

3.. (First clause of Mishnah 10) Anyone who others are pleased with, Heaven will be pleased with, but whoever others are not pleased with, Heaven will not be pleased with."

A problem Maharal does not explicitly mention, but which we will be able to answer by the time we finish his comments on these clauses, is why R. Hanina b. Dosa’s comments got divided into two Mishnayot. Although we will understand that more fully when we discuss Mishnah 10 in full (next week), this week’s discussion will already suggest a fundamental piece of the answer—that Mishnah 9 discusses wisdom and its necessary components while Mishnah 10 discusses other topics.

SOME GROUNDWORK—THE UBIQUITY OF HUMAN SIN

Maharal mentions two minor problems in Mishnah 9 that are worth noting, although they will not form the crux of his comments on this Mishnah. First, he notes that the Hebrew phrase used for fear of sin is yir’at het’o, rather than yir’ato min hahet. The first phrase more literally means "one’s fear of one’s own sin" rather than the simpler "one’s fear of sin," which is what the second phrase conveys.

Maharal answers, based on a verse (Qohelet 7;20) that says that there is no person who does only good and never sins, that everyone has sins that they should be fearing. The state of sin is inherent to the human condition, so that fear of sin should be a highly personal reality. While this certainly answers Maharal’s question, it also reminds us of an important element of the human experience, the constant battle against, and vigilance about, sin. Religious action, in other words, is never only a positive experience, it is also and always an effort to avoid the traps of sin that our humanity leads us towards.

PRECEDING OR COMING AT THE SAME TIME?

The second point Maharal notes is that our Mishnah seems to believe that fear of sin should precede wisdom but another Mishnah (3;17) has announced that without wisdom, there can be no fear. He answers that while complete fear cannot be achieved without wisdom, one can start with fear and build it up through the vehicle of wisdom, or vice verse. [The question has to be answered by any commentator, since that Mishnah also says without fear there can be no wisdom, as we will see when we get there, be-`ezrat Hashem]. The concern of this Mishnah, then, was only which of the two would be the starting point for the necessarily interrelated growth of one’s fear and wisdom.

Finally in the lesser questions, Maharal notes that the Mishnah leaves out the middle- what if one’s fear came at the exact same time as one’s wisdom, with neither preceding the other? Here his answer is that by "precedes", the Mishnah really means places higher value on, so that Maharal is not as concerned with the question of time precedence, since the real issue is which ranks higher in this person’s priorities.

UNGROUNDED WISDOM SHALL NOT LAST

Maharal asserts that wisdom is not a part of a human being, but is rather an addition constructed on it. This allows him to use the analogy of a building, which needs foundations and so on. Without the proper foundation, the structure of wisdom cannot last.

Even before we review how Maharal proves that the fear of sin (and, really, of God) is the necessary foundation to true wisdom, it’s worth pausing for a moment to consider the claim he has just made. We tend (I think) to regard our wisdom as our own, as inherent to us. There are even sources that suggest such a view—for example, the Talmud says that a Torah sage may forgive insults to his honor, since the Torah that sage has studied becomes his own. The notion that one has a proprietary interest in one’s Torah suggests that it becomes a part of that person.

Maharal, however, sees wisdom as external, as always being added on to who we are, so that our ability to absorb and retain wisdom depends on having the proper foundation for that wisdom. The first foundation he discusses is fear of God. The connection between wisdom and fear of God is based on the fact that all true wisdom actually comes from God. Maharal proves, or at least supports this contention by noting that the Talmud is puzzled by the verse in the Torah that says "ve-davaqta bo, and you shall cleave to Him," since it is impossible to cleave to God. The Talmud answers that we should cleave to a Torah scholar, which Maharal notes suggests that the Torah scholar’s wisdom seems to make him an adequate representative of God. As such, to gain wisdom means to develop a connection with God, the outgrowth of which is wisdom. If so, fear of God (which is really how Maharal reads fear of sin here) insures that the wisdom one acquires is connected to God; and only such wisdom has lasting power.

ACTIONS AS THE PREPARATION OF THE SOUL

Having posited fear of God as the necessary foundation for lasting acquisition of knowledge, Maharal must now explain in what sense actions can be important in that process. If fear is a sufficient foundation for wisdom, what role would actions play? Here, Maharal makes another interesting point—two aspects of people need to be properly prepared to allow for wisdom to take root. The first is the connection to God, as the source of wisdom. The second is personal preparedness, meaning that the person’s soul is ready to take in the wisdom acquired.

This seems, at first glance, to contradict Maharal’s previous claim that wisdom is an added structure to the soul, rather than a part of it. He apparently therefore means that wisdom involves building on to the soul—it is added in the sense that it does not spring up naturally from inside oneself (it is not an inherent capability of a person), but lasting wisdom is the kind that is embedded on one’s soul. To do so requires proper preparation, the preparation of actions.

NON-JEWISH WISE MEN

The existence of wisdom among non-Jewish people, and particularly among people who have neither fear of sin nor actions to back up their wisdom bothers Maharal, since he had claimed that the acquisition of lasting knowledge would require both of these things. He offers two answers, each interesting. First, he suggests that everything he had said until now applied only to Torah knowledge, which means that his whole claim about the connection of wisdom to God also only applied to Torah knowledge. That would mean there are two kinds of knowledge, the holy—connected to God—and the secular—unconnected to God and acquirable even without any fear of sin or of God.

TORAH U-MADDA—HOW DOES IT FIT?

The view that there are two different kinds of knowledge, one kind connected to God and the other not is a nightmare for advocates of Torah uMadda in many senses. For example, Rambam ruled in the Mishneh Torah that the study of physics, by which he means how the world works, can qualify as an act of ahavat Hashem, since the wonders of the world lead a person to praise and develop a great love of God. Does that mean physics should require fear of sin before one can acquire it? If not, when does the secular act of the study of physics change into an act of ahavat Hashem? Maharal does not raise these issues, but they are latent in his comment and worth raising and considering.

The second answer Maharal suggests is that this Mishnah is only explaining the simplest way to acquire wisdom. Certainly there are people whose natural intelligence is so great that they can acquire wisdom even without fear of sin and kind actions, but for a person without that natural intelligence, these are the two strategies to adopt. This answer avoids the problem of where the dividing line is between different types of knowledge, but concedes that there are people who can acquire all wisdom without any of the foundations Maharal had just posited.

Personally, I am more convinced by the first answer—I think that there are areas of human knowledge that humans can inherently understand and develop wisdom about. Other areas require a connection to spirituality and to God before they can be fully acquired. Defining the dividing lines between those two, however, is a much bigger project than we are engaged in here.