Seven days from Shammai to Rabban Gamliel

The Rambam (the great 12th-century teacher of Jewish law and philosophy) puts it this way:

Bartenura adds a second reading, which he found written: do not be strict with yourself and lenient with others, or strict with others and lenient with yourself. Let your Torah be fixed, the same for you as for others. He brings Ezra (7:10), who set his heart to seek the Torah of Hashem (God), to do it, and to teach it in Israel: as he set his heart to do, so he taught.

Avot de-Rabbi Natan (an early expansion of Pirkei Avot), chapter 13, gives a third: when a person hears something from a sage in the beit midrash (the study hall), he should not treat it as arai (passing) but as keva (fixed).

Friday's page (Avot 2:2) comes back to how learning and work go together, and brings the ruling of the Shulchan Aruch (the 16th-century code of Jewish law) for a person who goes to work.

The Rambam quotes a saying of the Sages. In the Gemara (the Talmud), in Bava Metzia 87a, it is Rabbi Elazar's:

In the Torah (Bereishit, Genesis, 18:5-8) Avraham tells his guests, "Let me fetch a piece of bread," and then runs to the herd. Efron (Bereishit 23:11-16) first tells Avraham, "The field I give to you," and ends by taking four hundred shekels of silver for it.

Avot de-Rabbi Natan, chapter 13, has this teaching and adds its other half:

The Rambam explains a pleasant face as dealing with people gently, with words that are pleasant and welcome.

Bartenura closes by matching Shammai's three rules to the three qualities named by the prophet Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah 9:22): the wise, the strong and the rich. "Make your Torah fixed" answers the wise. "Say little and do much" answers the rich. The pleasant face answers the strong, because it means conquering one's inclination and fighting one's own bad heart, and a later mishnah (teaching) in Pirkei Avot (4:1) asks: who is strong? One who conquers his inclination.

His example, in Aramaic, is a sage who, whenever a tereifah question (whether an injury in an animal makes it forbidden to eat) came before him, would gather all the butchers of the town of Mata Mechasya, and say: "so that a chip of the beam reaches us." In the text of Bartenura that we have, the sage is named Rava. In our printed Gemara (the Talmud), in Sanhedrin 7b, it is Rav Ashi, and Rav Huna did the same with ten scholars when a court case came to him. Horayot 3b tells it of Rav Ashi too, with ten butchers. Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, the classic 11th-century commentator) explains the chip of the beam: if we make a mistake, the punishment will be divided among all of us. He adds that the butchers were expert in these questions.

The Rambam adds a line he quotes from the Yerushalmi (the Talmud of the Land of Israel): "Go, bring me an elder from the marketplace whom I can rely on, and I will permit it for you."

The second half is taught in the Gemara (Eruvin 50a): one who gives too much maaser, his produce is in order and his tithes are not in order. Rashi explains why: only the right amount becomes maaser, and the extra stays tevel (produce from which maaser has not been taken), mixed in with the tithe.

The Rambam ties this rule to the one before it: Rabban Gamliel tells a person to flee from giving maaser by estimate "because it is one of the doubts."

Yehoshua ben Perachyah said, "Make for yourself a teacher, acquire for yourself a friend" (Avot 1:6). There, Bartenura brought two readings, both about learning: take a teacher even if he is not fit to be your teacher, and do not learn alone (this is the Rambam's reading), or take one teacher and learn from him steadily. Here both Bartenura and the Rambam read the same words as about ruling: a rav to turn to when you are in doubt.

A baraita (a teaching of the Sages from the time of the Mishnah) in the Gemara (Shabbat 15a) names four who held the office of nasi for a hundred years while the Temple stood: Hillel and Shimon, Gamliel and Shimon. Rashi explains that these were the last hundred years before it was destroyed, that the first Shimon was Hillel's son, and that this Gamliel is Rabban Gamliel the Elder. Tosafot Yom Tov (Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, a 17th-century commentator on the Mishnah) writes that the Rabban Gamliel of today's teaching is Hillel's grandson, and points to this baraita. The nasi, the Rambam writes in his code of law, the Mishneh Torah (Hilchot Sanhedrin, the Laws of the Sanhedrin, 1:3), was the greatest in wisdom of the seventy-one members of the Sanhedrin, seated at its head. Tomorrow's teacher is Shimon, Rabban Gamliel's son.

The Gemara (the Talmud) in Shabbat 88b has a baraita (a teaching of the Sages from the time of the Mishnah) in nearly the same words: those who are humiliated and do not humiliate, who hear themselves insulted and do not answer, who act out of love and rejoice in suffering: of them the verse says (Shoftim, Judges, 5:31): "Those who love Him are like the sun going out in its strength."

The Rambam gives two conditions even for the best kinds of speech. The first is that a person's deeds match his words, and he says this is what "study is not the main thing; doing is" refers to. The second is to be brief: to say much in few words, and not the opposite.

In the Torah the command was not to eat from the tree (Bereishit, Genesis, 2:17), and Chava tells the serpent, "You shall not eat of it and you shall not touch it" (3:3). Bartenura ends with a verse from Mishlei (Proverbs 30:6): "Do not add to His words, lest He rebuke you and you be found a liar." Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, the classic 11th-century commentator) on Bereishit 3:3-4 tells it in almost the same words. The story is in the Midrash (the Sages' teachings on the verses; here Bereshit Rabbah 19:3). The Gemara (Sanhedrin 29a) learns from Chava's words, in the name of Chizkiyah, that whoever adds, takes away. Avot de-Rabbi Natan (an early expansion of Pirkei Avot), chapter 1, tells it differently: it was Adam who added "do not touch it" when he passed the command on to Chava, as a fence around it.

The Rambam's comment on this mishnah (teaching) is one of his longest in Pirkei Avot. He opens with Mishlei 10:19: "Where there are many words, sin does not stop." His reason:

He retells a story from a book of ethics. A wise man was asked why he spoke so little. He answered that he had examined all speech and found four kinds: speech that is all harm, speech with harm on one side and benefit on the other, speech with neither, and speech that is all benefit. He spoke only the fourth.

The Rambam then gives his own list, five kinds of speech by what the Torah requires. Commanded: reading and learning Torah. Forbidden: false testimony, lies, talebearing, cursing, foul language, and lashon hara (speaking ill of a person, even when it is true). Despised: talk with no benefit and no sin in it, like most of what people talk about: what happened, how a certain king runs his palace, how one man died and another got rich. The Sages call this sichah betelah (idle talk). Beloved: praising wisdom and good character and criticizing their opposites, so that people are drawn to the one and kept from the other. And permitted: what a person needs to say about his business, his living, his food and his clothing. In this last kind, he writes, a person is praised for keeping his words few.

On Avot 1:2, where Shimon HaTzaddik says the world stands on Torah, on the service and on acts of kindness, Bartenura wrote that the world was created only for the sake of those three. Here he reads the same words as being about human society: with these three, people can go on living together.

His words about truth echo a verse in the Torah (Vayikra, Leviticus, 19:11): "You shall not lie to one another." Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, the classic 11th-century commentator) explains those words as the warning against swearing falsely to deny a money claim. And the Torah says elsewhere (Shemot, Exodus, 23:7): "Keep far from a false matter."

The Rambam (the great 12th-century teacher of Jewish law and philosophy) reads the three differently:

The "fourth chapter" is in the Rambam's introduction to Pirkei Avot, known as Shemonah Perakim (Eight Chapters). There he explains the verse "love truth and peace" (Zechariah 8:19): truth is the virtues of the mind, because they are true and do not change, and peace is the virtues of character, through which there is peace in the world.

The verse Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel quotes reads in full (Zechariah 8:16): "These are the things you shall do: speak truth, each man to his fellow; truth, and a judgment of peace, judge in your gates." In the Gemara (Sanhedrin 6b), Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha asks about it: where there is judgment there is no peace, and where there is peace there is no judgment. Which judgment has peace in it? His answer is bitzua, a compromise that the judge arranges between the two sides, and he says it is a mitzvah (commandment) to arrange one. In the same passage Rabbi Eliezer, the son of Rabbi Yosi HaGelili, holds the opposite: it is forbidden to arrange a compromise. There are other views in the passage as well. Rav rules like Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha, and the Gemara goes on to discuss what that means in practice.

Tosafot Yom Tov (Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, a 17th-century commentator on the Mishnah) writes that this is not yesterday's Shimon but his grandson, the father of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi (Rabbi Yehuda the Prince, who compiled the Mishnah), with whom the second chapter begins.

His example is money. If a person is very miserly, it is a credit to himself, because he gathers a lot of money, but people do not praise him for that trait. One who scatters more than is right is praised by the people who receive from him, but it is no credit to him and no ease for him, because he ends up poor. Generosity is the middle between the two. It is a credit to the one who has it, because he keeps his money and does not scatter more than is right, and it earns him credit from people, who praise him because he gives what is right for him to give. And so with all the other traits. The Rambam (the great 12th-century teacher of Jewish law and philosophy) reads the line the same way, and points to "the fourth chapter." That is the fourth chapter of his introduction to Pirkei Avot (Shemonah Perakim, Eight Chapters), where he sets out the middle path.

Bartenura explains what it is that we do not know. For the things the Torah forbids, the punishments are spelled out, a lighter one for a lighter sin and a heavier one for a graver sin. For the positive mitzvot, the Torah states neither the reward for keeping them nor the punishment for neglecting them. The Rambam adds the purpose. The reward of each positive mitzvah was not explained, so that we would not know which mitzvah needs the most guarding and which is below it. We were commanded to do this and that, and not told which of the two has the greater reward with Hashem (God). Because of this, he says, one must be careful with all of them.

The Rambam reads these two lines differently. The reward of a mitzvah is hidden, but there is a way to compare: when the Torah gives a heavy punishment for breaking a positive mitzvah, the reward for keeping it is great. That is how he understands "weigh a mitzvah's loss against its reward." And "the reward of a sin" is the reward for holding back from it, which is also learned from how heavy its punishment is. He cites a teaching brought in Kiddushin: one who sits and does not commit a sin is given reward like one who does a mitzvah. In the Gemara (the Talmud) there (Kiddushin 39b), Rava explains that this is when a sin came his way and he was saved from it.

The Rambam notes that the Torah itself speaks this way about deeds being known to Hashem. Moshe says (Shemot, Exodus, 32:32): "from Your book that You have written."

The Rambam (the great 12th-century teacher of Jewish law and philosophy) says the same: derech eretz here means being occupied with earning a living.

The Rambam explains "brings sin in its wake" the same way: in the end he robs people.

On Sunday, Shammai said to make your Torah fixed (Avot 1:15), and Bartenura explained: Torah as the main occupation, work when you are tired from learning. The Gemara (the Talmud) in Berachot 35b uses Shammai's word, keva (fixed), and sets it against its opposite, arai (passing). Rabba bar bar Chana said, in the name of Rabbi Yochanan, in the name of Rabbi Yehuda son of Rabbi Ilai: the earlier generations made their Torah keva and their work arai, and both lasted in their hands. The later generations made their work keva and their Torah arai, and neither lasted in their hands.

The same page records a dispute. Rabbi Yishmael reads "you shall gather in your grain" (Devarim, Deuteronomy, 11:14) as telling a person to follow the way of the world alongside his Torah. Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai objects: if a person plows at plowing time, sows at sowing time and reaps at harvest time, what will become of Torah? His own answer: when Israel does the will of Hashem (God), their work is done by others. When they do not, they do their work themselves, and that is the time "you shall gather in your grain" speaks of. Abaye said: many did as Rabbi Yishmael said, and it worked for them; as Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai said, and it did not. The next line is Rava asking his students not to come before him in the months of Nisan and Tishrei, so that they would not be troubled about their food all year. Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, the classic 11th-century commentator) explains: Nisan is the harvest, and Tishrei is when the grapes and olives are pressed.

The Shulchan Aruch (the 16th-century code of Jewish law), in its first part, Orach Chayim (156:1), puts today's mishnah (teaching) and the Gemara's words about keva and arai into one ruling. After prayer and a fixed time of learning, a person should go to his work, "for all Torah that has no work with it comes to nothing in the end and brings sin in its wake," because poverty would make him go against the will of his Maker. "Even so, he should not make his work the main thing but arai, and his Torah keva, and both will last in his hands."

Bartenura gives a second reading: the mishnah speaks of those who work with the community to compel them to give for a mitzvah (commandment), such as tzedakah (charity) or redeeming captives. The merit of the community's ancestors helps the community give what was set for them to give, even a great deal of money, and the tzedakah they do will stand for them forever. Those who did the compelling are rewarded as if they had done the mitzvah with their own money. He then brings the Rambam's reading: if, while you were busy with the community's needs, you were kept from doing some mitzvah, it is counted for you as if you had done it. The Rambam's own comment says that those who work for the community are sometimes kept from doing a mitzvah while they are busy with its needs, and that they are rewarded as if they had done it, because they worked for the sake of Heaven. The Rambam says the last line is the word of Hashem to those who work for the community.

Shemaya said (Avot 1:10): love work, hate positions of power, and do not make yourself known to the government. Bartenura there gave two readings: do not get close to the government in order to gain a position through it, or keep away so that they do not make you go against the will of your Maker, as happened to Doeg the Edomite. Doeg served King Shaul (Saul) and, at his order, killed the kohanim (priests) of the city of Nov (Shmuel I, 1 Samuel, 22:18-19). Bartenura also explained the word itself:

In today's mishnah Bartenura uses Shemaya's own phrase, "to make yourselves known to the government," and says that people who carry the community's needs have to do it.

The Rambam begins, "We have already explained," and his earlier explanation is on Avot 1:10. There he wrote that in early times it was very hard to come away unharmed in this world from knowing a ruler and being close to him, and that it ruins a person's faith, because he pays attention to nothing except what will bring him closer to the ruler. His example, like Bartenura's, is Doeg.

Tosafot Yom Tov (Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, 17th century), quoting an earlier commentary, says that Shemaya's warning was not said about a case like this: to make oneself known to the rulers in order to look after the community's affairs is a great mitzvah (commandment), and Mordechai and Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi are the proof.

Rabbeinu Yonah (Rabbi Yonah of Gerona, 13th century) first explains the mishnah in its plain sense, and then says he cannot leave it there, because read that way it speaks of a fault in kings. "Far be it, far be it," he writes: through them the whole world is kept standing, and they do justice in the land. So he reads it another way. A king's love and a king's hatred are not in his own hands. When a king needs a person and brings him close, that came from Hashem (God) and not from the king. And when a person has sinned and Hashem presses him, the king cannot stand by him, even if he wants to. He brings the verse (Mishlei, Proverbs, 21:1): "A king's heart is like streams of water in the hand of Hashem."

And in a later mishnah (Avot 3:2) Rabbi Chanina, the deputy High Priest, says: pray for the welfare of the government, for if not for the fear of it, people would swallow each other alive.