Pirkei Avot, Chapter Two: The Straight Path and a Trade

Good evening, dear friends. You have already set before me the text of the third chapter, but I will begin with the first mishnah of the second chapter, which I have not yet had the opportunity to study with you. The one from the first chapter I have already studied; I will review it, and then come back to this mishnah of the third chapter. So we have chosen, as several communities do, to study Pirkei Avot between Pesach and Shavuot, as they prepare for a new revelation of the Torah. For that is how we must approach the study of Torah: we must regard it as entirely new and entirely current, able to answer a new question every single day. Above all, we must not commit the sin of growing old with it, for that would ultimately be an assault on the divine word, which is situated neither in the past nor in the future and is always current — it lives in a permanent present. But for that, there is a second danger to be avoided, and it concerns the preparation of oneself for this revelation. We are not all capable of grasping the nuances of the Torah. We need to hold fast to the teaching of a master; that is a fact. We do not always have the capacity to understand everything; we are not cast from a single mould, and we have limits — sometimes very broad ones, yet limits nonetheless. This projection of man toward the infinite remains a permanent aspiration and a daily conquest; we will have occasion to come back to it. Now, what is it that actually allows us to approach this eternity, this quest for the Divine and for the secrets of the divine word — a word that creates? When, in our daily prayer, we affirm the kingship of G-d, we must not simply place that kingship in a world entirely beyond our reach and our grasp. On the contrary: since we ourselves are an infinitesimal particle of the Divine […] — we are a cell of the Divine. And this cell of the Divine is the whole reality of G-d, for it is not a fragment, it is not a part; let us say that the composition, the structure of this cell is the same everywhere. It is distributed — spread out, as it were, geographically — in the body of man as in the universe. We must know how to bring it to light and give it the authority it deserves — to enthrone it, so that it truly becomes what shapes our way of being, our way of thinking, our way of acting. Each according to his measure: we do not all have the same possibilities. But as I have said before, what matters to the Holy One, blessed be He, is not what we have achieved but rather the will we have shown in the work; whether we have completed it or not matters little.

More than that, our Sages taught: gadol ha-me’aseh yoter min ha-oseh — greater is the one who causes others to act than the one who acts: the one who sets an action in motion, who generates it, who actually succeeds in mobilizing other energies, more than what he does, more than what he accomplishes by himself. That is to say, this concern to pass on to others what we wish to do and do not carry out — what we do not manage to do — from the moment we have consciously handed it on to someone else to do, counts for even more. We have no knowledge whatsoever of the Divine except through the middot, the attributes of G-d. But these attributes are human attributes. When we say hanun, gracious; when we say rahum, merciful; when we say rav hesed ve-emet, abounding in kindness and truth — that G-d is kindness, […] that He is the very substance of truth — these are values we seek for ourselves, and against which we measure ourselves every day.

There are thirteen attributes, and these thirteen attributes we enumerate in Barukh she-amar ve-hayah ha-olam, in a daily prayer: blessed is He who spoke and the world came into being. Barukh gozer u-mekayyem — blessed is He who cuts in order to sustain. Sometimes one must cut short — cut short a repetitive way of thinking. Just as the generations follow one another without resembling one another, so too do our days. There are days we bury, and there are days we would like to keep alive. But we must not get bogged down in the past, nor seek escape in some future or other. We must try to be gozer: just as a tailor cuts cloth only by making the fine cut in the fabric that lies before him — it is the same thing.

It is the same thing in life. To bring about something else, one must know how to cut. One must know how to disconnect in order to be mekayyem, to sustain. Barukh oseh vereshit — blessed is He who makes the beginning, who brings about the beginning. He made the first beginning, and we in turn are called to generate beginnings. And with these beginnings, take note: what came before becomes the rough draft of the beginning we are undertaking. This is very important for our approach to the study of Torah, for meriting the revelation of the Torah — for whoever has not prepared his being, through the thirteen attributes of G-d, to receive the Torah… That is what we try to do throughout this period that separates Pesach from Shavuot: to inscribe ourselves in a new time. We are no longer in the calendar we know, which carries on regardless of us — that of the Shabbat of Bereshit, the Shabbat of creation, and that of the Shabbat of the Exodus from Egypt. That is not the time we are counting. No: this is the time of the Omer. It is another calendar, a calendar we have fixed for ourselves in order to reach another jubilee — to inscribe ourselves in a time we have forged by ourselves, through our own aptitudes, through the effort we have made on ourselves to adapt — not to the attributes as a whole, but to our own place within these attributes. One may find oneself in the attribute of din, the attribute of justice, just as one may find oneself in the attribute of hesed, of kindness; one may find oneself in an attribute of mercy, just as one may find oneself in an attribute of holiness.

Well then, each in his own way, each in his own manner — and no exclusion is possible. For just as all the words, all the letters, do not resemble one another in the way they combine within the Torah, yet every letter — every fragment of being — is important, because if one were broken or separated from its matrix, the entire Sefer Torah would be set aside, so it is with our people, with our community. Now, the Torah does not concern an individual. The Torah was not given to the avot, the Patriarchs. The avot are exceptional beings; they are the matrix of the Jewish people. And what is it they gave us? The middot. That, indeed, is why this tractate of principles is called Pirkei Avot: these are the matrix-elements of the Jewish people. And that is why, although the revelation of the Torah brought about a conversion of the entire Jewish people, it is not like the conversion of a non-Jew who enters Israel. You know that when a non-Jew converts, from the moment he has become part of Israel he is permitted to marry his sister, because it is a new birth for him: he no longer has antecedents, and since he no longer has antecedents, he has severed all those ties of lineage, which have become merely hypothetical. That could have been the case for Israel as well, since we are gerim: we too are converts, by virtue of the law given to us at Sinai. But what places us in another register of existence is the fact that we did not lose the attributes, the antecedents, of our fathers. We remain attached to their way of being, and so the Torah came to be grafted onto a Jewish being already constituted by its antecedents, by its avot, by its matrix-elements. It was grafted onto the small human being that we were — who, taken as a whole, reconstituted Adam. And so, strengthened by this, we strive during this period from Pesach to Shavuot, before receiving once again a Torah that is always the same in its wording yet different each time in its interpretation, through the enrichment we bring to it — and that depends on the refinement we have given to our attributes.

That is why it is important, every Shabbat, to read a chapter of Pirkei Avot — which is not a moral teaching, not a handbook of ethics, but rather a way of reconstituting Adam, of recreating Adam. So then, in this first mishnah of the second perek (chapter): Rabbi omer — Rabbi says. Rabbi is Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi, the one who compiled the whole, who gathered and assembled all the teachings of the Tanna’im; and here he expresses an essential point of view: which is the straight path that a man should choose? As for adam, we have already translated it. We said that we generally develop through four states: enosh, ish — or rather gever, then ish, and then adam.

These are stages of development, and they are subjective; they can be declined — they can have a masculine and a feminine form, they can have a plural — but adam is the only title that does not decline and that includes everyone. So when one is adam, one is in sum a being who belongs to the absolute, to the universal, to the whole of humanity — yet who sets out to trace a straight line, without swerving to the left or to the right, or else trembling while still continuing to trace his difficult path. And note, it does not say she-yivhar, “that he should choose”: there is no definitive choice. One has not chosen once and for all; one is borer. Borer — you know what it means: each time to distinguish, to separate one element from another, to adjust. It is as though we were constantly correcting a line — the line of a straight path that we truly want to keep free of any deviation to one side or the other. Is that possible?

Derekh yesharah — it is not derekh tovah, it is not “a good path.” Derekh yesharah is a path on which a man remains consistent with himself, all through his way of thinking and all through his way of being — which is difficult. But as I said earlier, what matters is not what one has achieved but the will one has put forth to advance along the path one has chosen. So what is this path? Kol she-hi tiferet le-oseha ve-tiferet lo min ha-adam — whatever brings honor to the one who does it in his own eyes, and honor in the eyes of others. This, of course, excludes any spiritual life that dissolves into withdrawal into oneself, into closure, into escape — as though one wished to live in intimacy with G-d alone, because that is what matters most.

Now, if to that end we have had to neglect our family, to disregard our duties toward the community, toward the world in which we live — well, that is not called derekh yesharah. It is not a straight path; it is a crooked path. This path must truly bring us honor — not so much with respect to ourselves, to our human dignity, but because we are indeed recognized as such by what surrounds us, by the world around us. But for that, one must regard the world, in its disparity and in the scale of its values, as a unity — a work of art in which the detail matters as much as the main subject of the painting. Among the mitzvot of the Torah, of course, there are mitzvot that are matters of detail.

There are others that are far graver. There are some we can neglect, sometimes ignore, without great damage being done; there are others that condemn us to death. And yet we are told that there is no scale of values among the mitzvot, just as there is no scale of values among the duties I must answer for — toward myself, toward my fellow men, toward my family. It is a unity of thought, a unity of creation, and it is not for me to fix the scale of values. The Torah did not give it to me; it has not always explained to me why one must act thus, nor what reward it grants to the one who performs this or that mitzvah. For some of them it has spoken to us of a sakhar, a reward — and we will have occasion to return to this — promising a blessed material life, a spiritual life, a World to Come, tehiyyat ha-metim, a possibility of resurrection: a possibility of resurrection through the Torah, a possibility of resurrection through these mitzvot that we practice. For every adjustment, every refinement, corresponds to a new dimension of being in each of us; and this indeed comes from what we ourselves have cast off, the waste we have left behind us, while we have generated other energies by ourselves. So the principle of resurrection does not always lie beyond the grave, as we tend to picture it in our minds. It is here; we live with it every day, we carry it with us. But as for the end of man: just as he came from afar, from dust, from the tippah seruhah, the putrid drop — we will see this in the teaching of Akavia ben Mahalalel — so he returns […]; we pass to another state. And that is the washing that is done to the baby as soon as he comes into the world — sometimes perfuming him — just as is done for one from whom we have been separated. So then: if you do not know what you are to do with the mitzvot, you do not know the reward granted for the mitzvot — and it is not so much that you do not know it: you yourself must not fix it.

If the Torah has withheld it, then know that it is not for you to say: this is important, and that is less so. Consider how you will weigh the loss incurred by fulfilling a mitzvah against the reward granted for its observance, and the gain obtained through a transgression against the loss it costs you. So simply try to see what profit you could draw from fulfilling a detail, and what disadvantage, what loss, you suffer by neglecting a mitzvah. For even the chance to make up for it, even the possibility of transforming a sin — you have lost it: since you ignore this mitzvah, you will not be able to recover it. It no longer exists for you, and unfortunately it will affect you on every level.

Now, how is one to go about it? “Consider three things, and you will not come into the hands of sin.” If you do not want to come anywhere near sin, you must always act on three levels, and think on three levels as well. The first is to realize that there is always something above you. In the end, you are not at the extreme point where you can set yourself up as judge and decide everything; just as you cannot allow yourself that in communal life or in family life, you cannot allow it in spiritual life. Da mah le-ma’lah mimmekha — know what is above you. And at the same time as you realize that there is something that governs you from above, something you need and cannot do without, know also that there is an eye that sees and an ear that hears. An eye that sees: you are judged by the society in which you want to be seen. You cannot […] say, in sum, “I don’t care what others may think, or how they see me.”

Granted, there are people who abuse their capacity to judge, in a crude way — but do not play their game. There is an ear that hears: people are listening. In this world in which we live there is permanent competition, and it is up to you to find your place in this contest in which everyone is engaged — different candidates, different promotions. But know that everyone is listening to you, because what you succeed in, the other wants to do too. And just as others see and listen, so too mah le-ma’lah mimmekha: those who are above you are also there to record in a book everything you do. There are archives: archives on the social level, archives on the national level, archives on the universal level. This you must know when you trace your direction in life and are adjusting it for yourself, day after day. But there is a second teaching that completes this teaching of Rabbi, and it is the second mishnah: Rabban Gamliel beno shel Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi omer — Rabban Gamliel, son of Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi, says: It is good to combine the study of Torah with earning a livelihood, for their combined efforts drive away the temptation of sin. That is the translation I am reading you. Yafeh talmud Torah im derekh eretz.

So what is derekh eretz? It is what we are studying; it is what we keep repeating to ourselves throughout this period of waiting for a revelation of the Torah, for a crowning of what we are. But there is no spiritual life that is wholly with G-d while forsaking the world He conceived for man. We are partners in the making of this world. Consequently, those who opt for research and the study of Torah, those who have opted for education and wish to devote themselves to it — well and good: it is indeed incumbent upon society to provide for their needs. But this must not become, in sum, a line of thought that everyone adopts as a way of life. There is not only the study of Torah; there is the practice of that study in daily life — in the choice of a trade, in the accomplishment of things here on earth, and in a livelihood earned with dignity, without depending on others.

Dependence is limited by the fact that it must be earned and not given — still less begged. So: yafeh talmud Torah — the study of Torah must shape all our action, but to each his task, each according to his merits, each according to his possibilities. As I think I have told you, when the plan for a yeshivah of five thousand students — five thousand students of Torah — was presented […] to the rabbinic authority of the time, the objection was: “But listen, you want to turn out a class of five thousand Torah students — five thousand rabbis every year. Who is going to pay them afterward?” And the answer: “What I want is to train five thousand at the outset, from whom perhaps a thousand rabbis will emerge at the most; from those thousand rabbis, perhaps a hundred great rabbis; and from those hundred great rabbis perhaps some ge’onim — ten ge’onim, fifty ge’onim. But all I aspire to is that there should at least be people who understand them when these authorities try to guide them — who understand their language, who understand their demands. It goes without saying that what I seek above all is to shape all their activities with the spirit of the Torah.” This, in sum, is an important idea for the education of our children. What matters is not the position, the career we have mapped out for them, decided for them, nor the pride we draw when they succeed in the top schools, in brilliant careers — if there is no Torah, and if alongside all that they have failed in their family life, above all in the education of their children, because the foundations of morality and of faithfulness were not respected. Then the balance sheet is one of failure.

We must know how to give priority to the spirit of the Torah — to let it shape this whole career we all wish for our children. That is what Rabban Gamliel says: in principle, yegi’at sheneihem meshakkahat avon — the toil of both makes one forget sin. What does it mean, “makes one forget” sin? Should it not rather say that it keeps one away from sin? No — it makes one forget, that is to say: one has no time to think of anything else. For the poison of a life is idleness: when we have time left over and find nothing to do with it, and try to kill that time in parlor games, in escapes that bring absolutely nothing to the course of a life. That is yegi’at sheneihem meshakkahat avon: the toil leaves you no time to stray — to stray from the path you have traced for yourself.

But one must know that kol Torah she-ein immah melakhah — any law, any Torah not accompanied by melakhah, by a concern for work, for creation — sofah betelah, ends in nothing; and it too, it too can lead a person to sin, for living in dependence on people, on benefactors, is also a state that can harm the healthy development of a man within his society. And now, it is nevertheless essential to maintain kohanim within the people. Just as the Torah chose kohanim for the Mikdash, the Sanctuary, and among them the office passes from father to son, so the “priesthood” of education — the education of a people — does not necessarily pass from father to son: it is the choice of a man who dreams of being able to transmit, of being able to share his knowledge with his community. And so, ve-khol ha-amelim im ha-tzibbur — all those who labor with the community, those men who take this charge upon themselves, must do so le-shem shamayim, for the sake of Heaven.

Not in search of renown — solely le-shem shamayim. And when they do it le-shem shamayim, they can be certain of reaching their goal: zekhut avotam mesayya’tam — the merit of their fathers assists them. For zekhut avot, the merit of the fathers, is transmitted only because everything that was undertaken was undertaken without expecting anything in return, in a spirit of devotion and total self-denial. And that is why it matters little whether they succeeded in their task or did not succeed: ma’aleh ani aleikhem — I account it to you as though you yourselves had accomplished it. That is, all the merit of this spiritual advancement to which you devoted yourselves, with which you concerned yourselves, is yours — as though you yourselves had achieved it, as though you had achieved it for yourselves.

These are the first two mishnayot of the second chapter, which will be complemented in the next chapter by the words of Akavia ben Mahalalel. Akavia ben Mahalalel […] was a man of great erudition who was offered — provided he renounced four positions he had taken against the entire rabbinic council of his time — the office of av beit din, to be their head, if only he would align himself with their view. And he answered them: “I prefer to be taken for a fool in the eyes of creatures, and not in the eyes of G-d.” He remained firm in his positions. And this man […], in this monument of the Oral Torah, left us the mishnah with which we accompany the deceased at his burial: Akavia ben Mahalalel omer — Akavia ben Mahalalel says.

Akavia, who lived in the time of the Second Temple […] — histakkel bi-sheloshah devarim — he too tells us: consider three things, ve-ein attah ba lidei aveirah. This resembles the end of the words of Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi. “And you will not come into the hands of aveirah” — that is, you will not be tempted, you will not come near to overstepping your limits. For that is the definition of aveirah: to have passed — to pass beyond one’s limits. That is sin, that is avon, that is deviation. So what must we consider? Know where you come from, where you are going, and before whom you will render account. Normally, one would say: you will render account and be judged.

No — here it is first to be judged, and then you will render account. Then he answers: me-ayin bata — where do you come from? Mi-tippah seruhah — from a drop, as it has been translated here. Seruhah, saruah: something putrescible. In practice, when this mishnah is recited before a deceased person, the word seruhah is not read; it is simply left out. U-le-an attah holekh — and where are you going? To what place are you destined? Li-mekom afar, rimmah ve-tola’ah — to a place of dust, of decomposition, and of the maggot. And before whom are you to render judgment? Before the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He. The text does not say lifnei Hashem or lifnei Elokim.

No: ha-Kadosh Barukh Hu. We will see later what ha-Kadosh Barukh Hu signifies. So let us go back over this teaching of Akavia ben Mahalalel, who says: Consider three things and you will not come near transgression, near overstepping. Lidei aveirah — it is as if the aveirah had yadayim, hands; as if it were a tool. So we say: you will not fall into the trap of a transgression. Da me-ayin bata — know where you come from. A story is told of a ship that sank in the open sea because of a storm. There were five people aboard who swam to a desert island, and there they found a great tower. They climbed to its summit, and they wanted to reconstruct their lives through their memories.

Each tried to recall his oldest memory — the one that had, in the end, shaped his entire life. The first said: “I remember when the fruit was picked from the tree.” The second said: “I remember when the fruit was still on the tree.” The third said: “I remember the glow, the brilliance, that accompanied this fruit on the tree and set it apart from the whole orchard.” The fourth said: “I remember even the bud of the tree; my memory goes back that far.” The last said: “I remember when I did not yet exist […].” That means that up until then, there had been a history.

“But there was no need for me, and so I was not yet part of the program. But the day it was decided that I must exist, that I must pass into another reality, that means that now I must mobilize myself for an action that has been defined for me — and that is what I am destined for.” We will take up this text again next time, be-ezrat Hashem, and for now, if you have any questions, with pleasure. […] — A small question. I’m going back to the beginning of your talk. You spoke both of the Book and of the fact that each Jew is, in fact, a letter of the Torah.

Every Jew is important […]. But on the other hand, there is the sin that incurs karet (spiritual excision). There is free choice: a person may choose the wrong path. How can we explain, on the one hand, that there is free choice and the possibility of sin, the possibility of karet, which is in fact separation from the people — and on the other hand say that we need all the elements? For if we need all the elements, how can elements be separated off if we need them? — Well, there is a choice that was made by G-d.

As we say, asher bahar banu mi-kol ha-ammim — G-d chose us. We did not choose to be; others decided for us. What motivated our coming into the world, we do not know. The choice we hold in our hands is a secondary choice with respect to the first choice. That is, we are the objects of two choices: the first in the absolute, the second in the relative. And how can we pass from the relative to the absolute? Through the awakening of awareness that takes place by means of this revelation of the Torah — which, let us say, indirectly justifies the choice of the parents. That is why we say bera mezakkeh abba — the son brings merit to the father.

What merit does he bring to the father? You will tell me: when he has indeed secured an added value in life, and the father takes a certain pride in it. But not all children do that. Does it not sometimes happen that the father is a world-renowned figure, the author of great discoveries, while his son does not have the same stature, does not have the same career — perhaps he has not succeeded, perhaps he has failed in his life? But in sum, when he has come back to himself, when he has undergone this awakening of awareness, he then readjusts his own life within the very choice his parents made to bring him into the world, to take him in, to raise him, to educate him. Did they succeed or did they not? Once again, everything depends on the will, on the investment they put into this child’s education — that is all that counts; not the result, not the result. But in the end it is up to him to justify his parents’ choice — to honor it or to discard it. So this choice, I would tell you, is an illusion: it holds only in the adoption of the values of the Torah — and even then, even then, because at the foot of Mount Sinai there was compulsion. The people did not adhere to this revelation as readily as people like to say.

It was insufficiently prepared, and the proof is that forty days later it committed the sin of the Golden Calf. So more time was still needed. But what is eternal, perpetual, what is never lost, is the title of Israel. Since this choice was made by G-d, even when we go against it, it never goes well for us; it distances us for a while, as though postponing the moment of success, of return. That can span many generations, but at a certain moment there is netzer matta’ai, a shoot of My planting, that will spring forth. One must not despair; these are always processes of recycling, which take a great deal of time.

— So in fact this is, in a way, like the phenomenon of Korach? — Yes, absolutely. — I would like a clarification; I am not sure I understood properly. You passed over it very quickly, and I would like to be sure I understood. Did you speak of a notion of washing — the equivalent of a mortuary washing given to a newborn, in connection with a separation? Or did I misunderstand? — The equivalent of a washing; but here it is not for death, it is with a view to a new life. — That’s it, because you said, “as is done for someone from whom we are separated.” So where is the separation here? We are speaking of the newborn, who is separated from something — from a life, from his mother’s womb, is that it? So in fact it is at that level, in relation to that, that the notion of a “mortuary” washing, in quotation marks, is connected with that separation. — Absolutely. — Very well, so I had understood correctly; thank you. — Rav Benizri, at the beginning of the talk you were indeed speaking of the system of reward, and personally, having read these passages quite a lot, I have always been somewhat troubled, because I have always had the feeling that the mitzvah in itself — even if it can bring a reward — the reward of the mitzvah is the mitzvah itself. It is not a gift one receives afterward, don’t you think? And I have always found it difficult to reconcile these thoughts of mine with the text itself. Does the text perhaps go beyond this, in another way? — No, the text lies within your line of thought; it fits squarely within your line of thought. Namely: sekhar mitzvah mitzvah — the reward of a mitzvah is the mitzvah.

The primary reward of a mitzvah is the mitzvah. The elevation that fulfilling the mitzvah brings you is to your credit, and you pass to another level of thought — that is certain. That is the reward of the mitzvah. Now, the benefits of this mitzvah are commensurate with, let us say, the influence, the contribution it brings to the advancement of society, to the advancement of the family. Just as when a worker reaches a higher rung and everyone around him benefits indirectly — well, on the spiritual level it is much the same: when a man rises in his moral dimensions, in his spiritual dimensions, and shares this generously with everyone, that is the sakhar of the mitzvah. The sakhar of the mitzvah is the same thing: it is the rekhush of the mitzvah, the good, what the mitzvah acquires by itself. We will also have occasion to come back to this. It is not because the Torah does indeed speak of ve-natatti gishmeikhem be-ittam — “I will give your rains in their season”… When the Jewish people fulfills its moral duties, it does not have to suffer from any failure or disruption of the laws of nature to its detriment — on the contrary. It is as if all of creation takes part in this development and enjoys this good, but indirectly. How this happens I could not describe to you, but it is a fact. It is a fact that when trust reigns, when there is serenity, everything can suffice in life. One can share a loaf of bread among ten people when there is harmony, and every mouthful counts and satisfies. But when those people do not get along, then everyone fights over the whole loaf.