Pirke Avos - Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Fathers

admin August 1st, 2007

I guess I was wrong. I figured that I was the only person reading my blog here. But it seems as if at least one other person is reading it. (and it can’t be my mom) I got a nomination for Best New Blog in the Jewish Israel Blog awards, and even got 10 votes. (Okay, one of those was me) but since my mom isn’t that computer literate, and my wife won’t vote, there must be at least a couple others reading this. If you enjoy what you read, please feel free to post comments and discussion. When we get past a handful of readers, it will hopefully get more interesting and drive me to post more material.

Since it’ll take me another year or more before I cover all of Avos here, you might want to get a headstart by looking at these other Pirke Avos resources on the web:

Torah.Org’s Pirke Avos

Anshe Emes’ Fred Toczek covers the first perek of Pirke Avos

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admin July 8th, 2007

Genuine kindness occurs when our sole motivation is caring about the welfare of others.

Yossi ben Yochanon from Jerusalem said: “Let your home be open wide to the multitudes. Let the poor be like children of your home. And don’t overemphasize light conversation with your spouse.”

They said this about one’s own spouse, how much more so about the spouse of your friend.

Thus said the scholars: “One who overindulges in light conversation with his spouse brings evil upon himself, nullifies the words of Torah, and in the end will inherit Gehenom.”

This Mishnah focuses on the third of Shimon HaTzaddik’s pillars of the universe: acts of loving-kindness.

Let us consider: Wouldn’t the world be better off without kindness?

At first, this seems like a callous question. But imagine for a moment a world where all of your needs were fulfilled and you experienced no lack or emptiness. Picture a society where no one needed to depend on anyone else to provide for him; a community where everyone was completely self-sufficient and fulfilled. Where God instantly responded to your every act and choice with the exactly appropriate response. A perfect world.

Picture a society where everyone was completely self-sufficient and fulfilled.

This is much different than the world we know: a world where fundamental human needs go unmet without the active intervention of others. How inefficient! If God is perfect and all-powerful, why doesn’t He meet all of our needs Himself? Why did He create a seemingly flawed world where people suffer and struggle desperate for the aid and comfort of others?

In short, why a world of kindness?

Obviously God could have created a world where kindness was unnecessary. If He merely wanted to see that our emotional, physical and spiritual needs were met, He could have arranged to do so Himself. That He chose instead to rely upon human kindness must therefore be one of His great gifts to mankind.

ABC’S OF KINDNESS

The essence of kindness is to focus on another soul, to desire completeness and consistency for him, and to strive to provide it. To be kind you have to learn to look at another human being. Understand where he is hurting, lacking or incomplete — and endeavour to fill that hole.

Acts of kindness are the fundamental building blocks of human relationships. The Hebrew word ohev — “to love” — comes from the word hav — “to give.” We think that we love someone, and then give to them. Actually the opposite is true. The extent to which you give to someone is the extent to which you come to love. Because that’s the extent to which you’ve invested yourself in the other.

One of the greatest challenges of a human being is to become other-centered. You must learn to see the needs, dreams and aspirations of others as real. The idea is to never become inured to the struggles and wishes of others. This opening of your heart, and identification with the souls of others, is the ultimate goal of kindness.

THE KINDNESS PARADOX

There is a paradox in kindness. Why do we have to help others? Because they are in need and we care about them. But the other side to kindness is that by helping others, we really help ourselves most of all. Kindness is a primary way to achieve self-perfection.

We are constantly faced with free will choices to be kind or callous. Choosing correctly is how we refine the character of our soul. But the paradox is that kindness is only genuine when we do it because we care about the welfare of others.

Please go home. I am not here as a prop for you to fulfill mitzvot.

There is a story of a great rabbi who became ill and was hospitalized. A community leader came to pay a visit and said, “Rabbi, I have come to fulfill the mitzvah of Bikur Cholim — giving comfort and strength to the ill.” The rabbi looked at him and said, “Please go home. I am not here as a prop for you to fulfill mitzvot.”

Although the ultimate accomplishment of kindness is the elevation of your soul, in practice you must focus on the recipient, not on yourself.

The purpose of kindness is to allow you the opportunity to give to another fragile soul. In this light, the words of Yossi ben Yochanon becomes quite clear.

LET YOUR HOME BE OPEN WIDE

If the ultimate expression of kindness is one human helping another, then the home is the perfect setting. In our society we have divorced ourselves from looking after one another. By creating a bureaucratic “safety net,” we have removed individuals from the process of helping the less fortunate. We tend to view the impoverished with fear, discomfort, apathy, annoyance, callousness or resentment. For most people, caring for the homeless and indigent is a function of government, of the same order as filling potholes and carting away the litter.

Yossi ben Yochanon says that to make kindness “real,” you have to bring it home. Merely writing a check to support community institutions is not sufficient. You’ll help the poor, but it won’t have nearly the same effect on you personally.

Take an active step and reach out. Make your home open to those who require help, assistance, or just companionship. Make yourself available to help people with their problems. Of course this does not mean giving up your own privacy. Find the healthy balance.

LET THE POOR BE LIKE YOUR CHILDREN

Nobody enjoys being poor or needing help. There are serious issues of pride and self respect. Helping people retain their view of themselves as significant members of society is as critical a component of kindness as feeding them.

Your children certainly depend upon you for food, clothing, shelter, emotional support, companionship, education and more. Nevertheless, no parent would make a child feel ashamed or resented for being so dependent! Judaism says the poor should be treated the same.

A home is a powerful force — providing comfort, refuge, calm and love. Part of the purpose of helping those in need is to bring them in and show them a healthy family lifestyle.

DON’T OVEREMPHASIZE LIGHT CONVERSATION

This Mishnah is often cited as evidence of a misogynist bent to rabbinic Judaism. If you look closely, nothing could be farther from the truth. Remember the context of our Mishnah is “building a relationship with another soul by understanding and meeting their needs.”

Our Mishnah says not to overemphasize sicha — light conversation. Sicha is conversation focused on making a connection between two people and creating intimacy. Sicha is two people getting to know each other, laughing, sharing, reminiscing and dreaming.

If our Mishnah thought that talking to one’s spouse was destructive, it would have said: “Don’t engage in conversation.” Instead the Mishnah says: “Don’t overemphasize conversation.” The clear implication is that some degree of light conversation is a positive thing.

The most fundamental tool for establishing intimacy and connection is to talk to your spouse.

Ask any wife if she would like every conversation with her husband to be a lofty elevated discourse on philosophy, ethics or law. If every conversation is either a lecture or a business meeting, you will fail to build the emotional relationship, connection and intimacy so crucial for a marriage. Rabbi Yossi says: Don’t forget the most fundamental tool for establishing intimacy and connection. Talk to your spouse.

Having said this, Rabbi Yossi goes one step further. Yes, it is important to spend sicha time establishing an intimate relationship with your wife. But don’t overemphasize — take it past that!

Rabbi Yossi teaches that not every conversation can be about the soft stuff. Talk to her about the weighty stuff. Unlike a Victorian Englishman, Rabbi Yossi suggests that a spouse is an intellectual equal and the majority of your interaction should be on a higher plane.

Sicha establishes the emotional connection that every person needs. But Rabbi Yossi says: Make your kindness elevating. Use it as a foundation to lift the relationship to higher dimensions.

OVERINDULGING IN LIGHT CONVERSATION BRINGS EVIL

Now that we understand the power of speech to build emotional connection, the final lines of the Mishnah become clear. For a marriage to work, each spouse must understand each other. Without this, one will inevitably impair the other’s development.

Like all other powerful tools in life, conversation aimed at building relationships can be used for good or evil. When you become too close with the wife of another, you pull her focus and commitment away from her husband. Most women who have affairs report that they were not seeking sex, but rather an emotional fulfillment and connection. This corrupts the world and eventually brings destruction and emotional ruin upon lives.

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admin June 8th, 2007

To truly understand Torah, philosophical principles need to be translated into action.

Yossi Ben Yo’ezer from Tzreida and
Yossi Ben Yochanon from Jerusalem
received the tradition from them.

Yossi Ben Yo’ezer from Tzreida said:
“Let your home be a gathering place for scholars,
get dusty (wrestle) in the dust of their feet,
and drink in their words with thirst.”

This Mishnah continues to explain the foundations of the world, and focuses specifically on how to approach learning Torah. As stated earlier (1:2), Torah study is the fundamental tool for perfecting your relationship with yourself. Yossi Ben Yo’ezer offers practical advice on how to succeed in learning.

At first glance, Yossi Ben Yo’ezer’s prescription for succeeding in Torah learning seems unusual. If you asked me how you could optimize the study of algebra, I might suggest working out more problems, spending more time in class, or getting a tutor. Inviting the math club to meet in your living room wouldn’t be the intuitive recommendation. So what is Yossi Ben Yo’ezer suggesting — “Let your home be a gathering place for scholars” — and why is this the optimum approach?

LEARN LIKE A JEW, NOT A GREEK

There is a tremendous gulf between the Jewish and Greek approaches to learning. The Greek ideal of a scholar is the philosopher. Greek intellectual endeavor centers on the acquisition of knowledge and the creation of elegant intellectual constructs. Greek scholarship was focused on the purity of knowledge, determination of ideal forms, and the definition of abstract systems of thought.

It is a remote, objective approach to intellectual endeavor.

By contrast, Jewish learning focuses not just on form, but on meaning and purpose. The Torah’s focus is on realizing ideas which change your very nature. It is insufficient to merely grasp a concept in the abstract; you should understand its implications and consequences and strive to change accordingly. In the Torah ideal, every philosophical, ethical or moral principle should be translated into physical action and made manifest. Every action should be taken with an eye as to how it will change who you are and how you view your world.

There is a classic story of two rabbis exiled to the Soviet Union during World War Two. At the end of the war, they return to Berlin, penniless and without shelter. Hearing of a lecture at the university on the dangers of smoking, they decide to attend to gain a few hours of shelter and warmth. They sit dumbfounded through the lecture as a cigar-smoking German professor expounds on the evils of smoking.

Just because I lecture on geometry, must I become a triangle?

At the conclusion of the lecture, they approach the professor to ask how such powerful arguments could fail to move him. Incredulous, Herr Doktor Professor looks at the rabbis and says: “Just because I lecture on geometry, must I become a triangle?”

The good doktor’s university training had taught him that there needn’t be any connection between ideas and actions. His lectures and his learning were just words.

Learning Torah is not about creating elegant philosophical models; it is about refining your very nature. The goal of Torah learning is to provide you with the tools needed to lift your soul. For that end, Yossi Ben Yo’ezer’s advice is exactly on target.

MAKE IT SIGNIFICANT AND PERVASIVE

“Quality time” just doesn’t cut it. A few hours of occasional focused learning is ineffective in providing significant growth. The Torah presents a complete intellectual, moral, ethical and philosophical framework for living your life. If the Torah’s system is going to elevate your life and refine your soul, it needs to be pervasive. It is not enough to spend a few hours here and there in a synagogue learning or attending classes. It’s not enough to sit and skim pages in a book. You have to take the ideas and principles you learn and bring them into your daily life. You have to “live Torah.”

If you create a barrier between religious and secular life, you rob Torah of its ability to change you.

If you create a barrier or separation between your “religious” and “secular” life and treat Torah as a mantle to slip on and off, you rob it of its ability to change you.

Your home is the center of your life. Ask yourself: What is the focus of my home? Do I spend every night watching TV? Do I spend all of my time with the sports section? Do I dedicate my Sundays to surfing the Internet?

Ultimately, you will fill your home and your life with whatever you treasure. If you really want to grow, surround yourself with an environment of learning. Furnish your home with books, and fill your life with people focused on spiritual and moral growth. Your home is where you raise your family and live your life. If you create an abiding atmosphere of growth and learning, you can’t help but lift yourself, your spouse, your children and your community.

WRESTLE IN THE DUST OF THEIR FEET

You’ll never succeed if you are a dilettante. Remember, learning is not an abstract intellectual game. It is about understanding and implementing the fundamental principles which guide your life.

Why is it that you remember the content of conversations and arguments more readily than you remember lectures? Because you’re involved in an argument. You have an emotional stake. It matters to you. Lectures are distant and remote and demand nothing of you. If you want to learn, you have to jump in, demand truth, and “wrestle” with the ideas until you are clear on what they mean.

Yossi Ben Yo’ezer saw two mistakes which keep students from becoming involved in their learning: Pride and Timidity. Our Mishnah addresses them both. Don’t think that you are too good to learn from your teachers. If they have wisdom, and you want it, you’ll sit at their feet and listen.

On the other hand, you can’t just passively sit on the ground and blindly accept the “Truth” as it is taught. Yossi Ben Yo’ezer advises you to “wrestle in the dust of the scholars feet.” Torah learning is based on feedback. It was never intended as a one-way stream of information flow. Only if you get actively involved with the ideas and wrestle with them until you have clarity, only then can you really grow.

Don’t be passive about your learning. Be humble and get involved. If you find someone with a handle on Truth, dive in and get your share.

BE SURROUNDED, INVOLVED AND PASSIONATE

Learning hinges on three factors: 1) It has to surround you and fill your life, 2) you can’t be too haughty to listen or to shy to mix it up, and 3) you have to want it.

Without all three, it doesn’t really matter how many books you read or how many classes you go to. Torah isn’t about accumulating factlets; it’s about spiritual, moral and personal growth. No matter how true a concept, it cannot change you if you hold it distant, remain passive or act apathetic. You have to be passionate and involved. You have to surround yourself with learning.

Do you want to sleep walk through life?

If you see learning as the gathering of pithy sayings, or the memorialization of quaint rituals, then your Torah is stale, dry and lifeless. As with the German professor, there is no link between your words and your actions. Truth needs to be acquired with passion. It’s not a game; it’s the real thing.

You were created to learn and grow — and now all of the marbles are at stake. Do you care? Do you really want to sleep walk through life? Do you enjoy being clueless?

If Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were sitting in your living room teaching you how to get wealthy, would you sit in the back corner and smile shyly? No. If what they are saying is important, you’ll get up close and listen. You will sit right at their feet and be enraptured by every idea.

How much more so for teachers of life. As Yossi Ben Yo’ezer says, you will “drink in their words with thirst.”

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admin May 8th, 2007

God could have created a bunch of puppets. He created humans instead.

Antigonos of Sokho received the tradition from Shimon HaTzaddik.
He used to say:
“Be not like servants who serve the master
on condition that they receive a reward.
Rather be like servants who serve the master
irrespective of any reward.
And let the fear of heaven be upon you.”

Each of the next three Mishnahs expounds on different aspects life’s fundamental triad, as discussed in the previous Mishnah: Torah, Avodah (service), and Chesed (kindness). Our Mishnah focuses on “Avodah” — the proper approach to serving God.

EARNING GOOD

God created human beings in order to give them good. Yet a “good” is only truly good if you earn it, and not if you are just accidentally associated with it. We see this clearly from our own daily experience. While there is a certain guilty pleasure in receiving more than we deserve, it also carries a tremendous destructiveness. Literature and the tabloids abound with stories of moneyed layabouts whose lives are destroyed by inherited wealth.

Even young children recognize the insignificance of gold stars for just showing up.

A human being whose life focuses on consuming the fruits of another’s labors atrophies, corrupts and wastes away. Even young children recognize the insignificance of gold stars distributed to everyone just for showing up. Still, a pat on the back, a smile and recognition of a job well done is the kind of confirmation every soul hungers for.

In “The Way of God,” Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (16th century Italy) explains that among all the good available in this world, the ultimate good is a relationship with the Creator and Source of All Good. Therefore God created a world in which you can build a relationship — and “earn” that ultimate good.

God created a world in which some actions tend to make His presence clearer and more real, while some actions tend to obscure His presence and make Him seem more distant. Man was created with the ability and opportunity to choose between these behaviors. While not all choices have a moral component (e.g. picking between vanilla vs. chocolate), those that do bring you closer to God.

These “physical actions with a moral and spiritual aspect” are called “mitzvot” and act as a link between the spiritual and the physical. Mitzvot serve as the levers which allow physical actions to perfect a supra-physical soul. Each choice of good tends to refine the world, and brings the benefit of a closer relationship with God. Each rejection of good tends to corrupt the world and brings the detriment of distance from God.

TWO SIDES OF CHOICE

Paradoxically, this model — where good choices bring clear rewards and bad choices bring obvious damage — actually fails to bring the maximum good into the world. It is clear that God’s ultimate goal for human beings is not for them to do good. It is for human beings to choose to do good. If God merely wanted to maximize the number of “good” actions in the world, he could have created a race of puppets and robots who would invariably exhibit the desired behaviors. For behaviors and choices to be meaningful, it is critical that we could have acted otherwise… but chose to do good.

If all destructive choices were immediately answered with an electric shock, only crazies would do evil.

If God had created a world in which all good actions were rewarded with chocolate, and all destructive choices were immediately answered with an electric shock, only crazies and rebels would dare to do evil. Although we would theoretically have “choice,” we would be functional automatons.

This idea suggests one answer to the puzzle of why God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” during the Ten Plagues. On the surface, it would seem that God was removing Pharaoh’s free will. If you look deeper, you will understand that God was actually restoring it. In the face of the overwhelmingly tragic consequences of holding back the Jews, how could any sane man resist the demands of God? The battle was so dominated by God that Pharaoh was compelled by logic to concede.

Confronted by such mind-boggling firepower, Pharaoh was a mere puppet without any real choice. By hardening his heart, God gave Pharaoh the strength to counteract the force of the open miracles, and returned to Pharaoh the ability to decide according to his desires, independent of the external consequences.

In a world in which good choices clearly produce rewards, and bad choices bring damages, there would be no moral choices — just economic ones. Doing good would be reduced to a financially optimal decision rather than a spiritually purifying one. Thus it was necessary to create a world where there was a “cost” to doing good and a “benefit” to doing evil. Spending money to feed the poor reduces your ability to indulge your pleasures, while bonking someone on the head does in fact get you a new wallet, some credit cards and a little extra spending cash. The question is, are they worth your soul?

You were created with two competing motivators: Will and Desire. The ultimate battleground of Free Will is the struggle between what you know you should do and what you feel like doing. You feel like taking his wallet, but you know you shouldn’t. You know you should help someone out of a bind, but it’s more trouble than you feel like.

Human Beings were given a powerful drive to satisfy short-term physical desires, and also the strength of will to act instead according to their understanding of what’s proper. The Torah — our “Instructions for Living” — helps clarify that understanding.

TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

In our Mishnah, Antiginos focuses us on the attitude needed to maximize our success in building a relationship with God: “Be not like servants who serve the master on condition that they receive a reward, rather be like servants who serve the master irrespective of any reward.”

One danger of providing external motivators to encourage a behavior is that when the rewards cease, the behavior is soon extinguished. If you serve God for the sake of external reward, then it really isn’t God you are serving, but rather the reward. It is crucial to remember that the goal of the system is not the delivery of “reward,” but the delivery of the greatest benefit — a relationship with your Creator.

How deep a relationship can you have if you are only in it for the gifts you receive?

You were created in order to have the opportunity to build a relationship with God. How strong and deep of a relationship can you have if you are only in it for the gifts you receive?

Antiginos says, don’t serve God because He’s a sugar daddy, and you’ll get rich doing so. Don’t do it because it’ll help you rack up the cosmic mitzvah points. God created you because He loves you, wants to give to you, and wants a relationship with you. Build your relationship for the sake of the relationship, not for external gifts. But be sure to build it.

Anitiginos continues with a reminder of the flip side. Just as choosing Good draws you closer to God, choosing Evil brings damage, destruction and ill into the world. Serve God for the relationship, not the reward. “And let the fear of heaven be upon you.” Realize that there are significant consequences for choosing to distance yourself from Him.

One clarification: Antiginos is not rejecting the idea of ultimate reward for doing good. He merely holds that your motivation for serving God shouldn’t be the external reward. Two of the great heretical movements in Jewish history, the Beothusians and Sadducees, were founded by students of Antiginos who misunderstood his message. Starting from the premise that there are no ultimate consequences to our choices, these students wandered off the path and led generations of Jews away from Torah and to their spiritual end.

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admin April 8th, 2007

A chair needs three legs to stand. Our spiritual lives also have a 3-part balance.

Shimon HaTzaddik was from the remnants of the Great Assembly.
He used to say:
On three things the world stands.
On Torah,
On service [of God],
And on acts of human kindness.

THE WORLD IN BALANCE

Why should the world stand on three things rather than two or four or some other arbitrary number? We could easily list dozens of critical needs, obligations and aspects of life. Why does Shimon HaTzaddik stop at three, and why these three?

Our Mishnah is zeroing in on a fundamental truth about our place in the cosmos. We are not alone, and life is not ours alone. We live in a world where we are compelled to act, react and interact with others.

We have three primary relationships in life. We have to learn to live with ourself, with God, and with others.

Human beings interact with the world on three levels: thought, speech and action. Each of these three is the key to the three basic relationships: You act on yourself through thought or will. You interact with God through speech. And you relate to others through actions.

In our quest to perfect ourselves, we need to also lift others and lift our relationship with God. Success and balance in all three is required to truly grow in this world.

Throughout Torah literature, you will find this 3-part balance reflected. In the Rosh Hashana Machzor (prayer book), a central prayer declares:

“Teshuva (Return), Tefillah, (Prayer) and Tzedakah (Righteousness) avert the bad decree.”

This prayer is focusing on the 3-part balance offered in our Mishnah, and presents concrete tools for working on the three primary relationships. Let’s examine them one by one.

TESHUVA - RETURN

Teshuva literally means “return” — to return to the purity within yourself. Teshuva is the ultimate act of self-recognition, and the primary tool in self-perfection.

Teshuva is an intellectual process. It requires you to identify your obligations, understand your actions, recognize the consequences of your choices, and resolve to exercise your will over your future actions.

TEFILLAH - PRAYER

The word Tefillah, or prayer, derives from the Hebrew word “to focus.” We focus on what is truly significant and important. What is the “service” that God demands of us? Clarity and focus.

The Amidah is the standard, central prayer of every Jewish prayer service. It is structured to include three sections: A set of opening paragraphs where we recognize before whom you stand, a set of closing remarks where we express gratitude, and a central section targeted at the special needs or purpose of the day.

As the Ramchal describes, the gifts of life are more precious if you realize that you want them. Prayer helps us connect to God by helping us focus on Who He is, what we need, and the gratitude we should feel for all He has already given us.

Prayer is designed to help focus your will.

p class=ArticleText>The purpose of prayer is not to mumble incoherently, nor is it to request favors from a Celestial Busboy. Prayer is designed to help focus your will. It is connecting to God through speech.

Jews pray three times a day. We stop every morning and ask: “What am I trying to accomplish with my life, and what am I going to do today to make progress?” In the afternoon, we stop and ask: “How am I doing today?” And every evening we reflect: “How did I succeed today?”

The members of the Great Assembly fixed the specific language of prayer — not to limit us, but to help guide us toward what we should want out of life.

Judaism does not believe in a remote deity or Celestial Watchmaker Who created the universe and walked away. We believe in an engaged God Who is the source of all goodness and blessing in the world. At every instant, God is aware of who you are, what you are working on, and what you require. You focus your will, and God responds.

The Sages taught that prayer should be spoken. “Speech” is the will manifested in reality. “Thought” is ephemeral and slippery. You can change your mind, but words bring ideas into concrete reality. Talk to God. It will make the relationship more real.

TZEDAKAH - RIGHTEOUSNESS

The word tzedakah is often translated as “charity.” It is anything but. Tzedakah is “righteousness” — doing the right thing.

How are you supposed to react to other people? Ayn Rand and the Objectivists held that the needs of others create no obligation on your part. This is a very un-Jewish idea. Torah demands that we be other-centered.

We are required to look at other human beings, try to understand what they are lacking, and endeavor to help them. One of the worst mistakes is to turn a blind eye and become insensitive to the suffering of others.

At its highest level, tzedakah requires us to “understand” another human being: Who is he? What does he lack? How can I help him fulfill his role in life? Then I need to act.

PILLARS OF OUR MISHNAH

In our Mishnah, Shimon HaTzaddik declares that the world stands on three things: Torah, service [of God], and acts of human kindness.

The first pillar of creation is knowing your identity and your mission. Torah is God’s instructions for living. It provides the understanding to help refine our nature and perfect ourselves. It is the means by which we learn what the world is about, and what our obligations are.

Avodah, the second pillar, is service of God.

What does it mean to serve God? And why would He want us to do so? An all-powerful, perfect being has no lack for us to fill, and by definition has no need of our obeisance. So why does He want us to “serve” Him?

Clearly, service of God is for our benefit, not His.

Three activities are commonly referred to as “serving God”: prayer, mitzvot and the Temple service. The Temple service was the ultimate act of harnessing the physical, and converting it to serve the spiritual — an open and concrete demonstration of the physical world’s subordination to our will.

Mitzvot are physical actions imbued with spiritual significance. Every mitzvah involves an opportunity to use our free will to transcend visceral drives. Mitzvot are the levers which allow actions in a physical universe to have impact on a spiritual soul. Mitzvot are the embodiment of the soul harnessing the power of physicality and the body.

Prayer, as discussed above, is the process of focusing one’s will directly on ultimate goals — e.g. self perfection, a relationship with others, and a relationship with God.

God created us to impart these ultimate pleasures. The extent to which we seek to elevate our world and allow the spiritual to transcend the physical, is the extent to which we can be said to “serve God.” The second pillar of creation is, therefore, to fulfill your mission.

Chesed, the third pillar, is a commitment to performing acts of human kindness. Life is not a zero sum game. The success of others is your boon not your bane.

God created us in order to give us good. The world was designed such that the greatest good is to give to others and to be other-centered. A person totally focussed on himself and oblivious to the needs of others has, almost by definition, failed in the first two pillars. The third pillar of creation is to know that you are not in it alone. You are your brother’s keeper.

PILLARS OF JEWISH HISTORY

Each of the three patriarchs excelled in a different pillar. Abraham was the paragon of kindness to others. He set up his camp at the crossroads of the world — where the main east-west road met the main north-south road from Egypt to Mesopotamia — and offered food and shelter to all who passed by.

Isaac was so dedicated to serving God, and so strong in his ability to subordinate physical drives to his conscious will, that he was even prepared to offer himself as a sacrifice, if God would so desire.

Jacob was the scholar, the embodiment of Torah. He spent 14 years learning in the Yeshiva of Shem and Ever, and achieved the Torah level of Truth.

When we assimilate these three primary values, we have achieved human balance. For just as a chair or table needs three legs to stand, so too does our world — both the micro-world of ourselves, and the macro-world of community and nations. So taught Shimon HaTzaddik.

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admin March 8th, 2007

   Moses received Torah from Sinai and handed it down to Joshua; and Joshua to the Elders; and the Elders to the Prophets; and the Prophets handed it down to the members of the Great Assembly.

   They said three things: Be deliberate in judgement, stand up many students, and make a fence for the Torah.

‘MOSES RECEIVED THE TORAH AT SINAI’

The first step in understanding an idea and communicating it is to know its source. Demand to know: What is it based on? Who says that it’s true?

We live in an information age. We are bombarded by a constant flow of information, images, and ideas aimed at shaping how we see the world. Be a prepared listener. Know the agenda and position of the speaker, and you’ll understand how to listen to what he has to say.

The Torah concept of learning is not about the accumulation of information and factoids.

Our Mishnah opens by telling us the source and transmission of all Torah wisdom. The ethics, philosophy and moral standards are not the products of human minds. They are not merely the pithy sayings of wise men who preceded us. The Mishnah reminds us that the ultimate source for all decency and morality is God and it can’t exist in His absence. This Torah was received by Moses at Sinai, and handed down generation by generation — from Moses unto you.

But Moses didn’t just hear the Torah; he accepted it. He studied it, he experienced it, he adapted himself to it and grew to fulfill it. The Torah concept of learning is not about the accumulation of information and factoids. It is not about oohs and ahhs of elegant philosophical constructs. It’s about hearing an idea, making it part of yourself, and changing your very nature to match your understanding of Truth.

‘…AND HANDED IT DOWN’

“Mesorah” implies handing something over in trust. We can’t alter it or twist it to match our needs. We are responsible to hand it over exactly as it was received.

Our Mishnah hints at two transitions where the transmission of Torah was potentially at risk. When Moses handed responsibility for Torah to Joshua, it passed from one who received it directly from the Almighty, to one who had merely heard it at the feet of a teacher. Then, when the Prophets handed it down to the members of the Great Assembly, authority passed from those who directly experienced God’s presence through prophecy, to those who could only experience it through learning His words.

Our Mishnah uses the word “Mesorah” at each of these junctures to reassure us that the Torah passed true and pure from teacher to student — across these two great divides in our experience of God.

‘THEY SAID THREE THINGS’

The second step in understanding and teaching an idea is to identify its essence.

Why do organizations have mission statements? Because if you can’t summarize the concept, then you don’t really understand it. When you understand it, you can articulate it clearly, directly and to the point. Every good salesperson knows how to describe his product with two or three key phrases. A business plan which can’t be summed up in a sentence or two is an idea which hasn’t been fully considered.

The members of the Great Assembly said much more than three things, but they were able to distill the essence of their message into three fundamental principles. The Mishnah teaches us the bottom line for passing Torah on:

‘BE DELIBERATE IN JUDGMENT’

What makes you a human being? It is your ability to choose between your drives (what you “feel” like doing) and your will (what you know you “should” do.) It is one of the great slanders of human history that people are slaves to either nature or nurture. Although we are clearly influenced and constrained by your environment, we are given full ability to choose how to act and who to become.

Human beings are essentially creatures of will. The fundamental struggle and the fundamental gift is Choice.

Though influenced and constrained by environment, we have full ability to choose who we want to become.

But how do you choose? Do you live your life willy-nilly, bouncing from one ill-conceived action to another? Do you go just ride along with the current fashion? Or do you think? Our Mishnah reminds us that we are obligated to think, to live a considered life. Be deliberate.

Many live life randomly. We react to circumstances as they occur and go with the flow. But choices are too critical to be thrown off without thought. Our Mishnah suggests a disciplined, ordered approach to decisions. Recognize what the issues are, categorize them, prioritize them, weigh them and decide. This doesn’t mean we should be paralyzed with indecision. The Mishnah wants us to decide based on reason, thought and consideration. But it wants us to decide. Be proactive. Don’t just blow in the wind. For as the song says, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

‘STAND UP MANY STUDENTS’

Judaism is not a cult. We are not looking for brain-dead automatons capable of following orders. Neither are we looking for gurus who can bend and shape pliant masses to their will. The goal of a Torah teacher is not to create beautiful syllogisms or abstract intellectual constructs.

The goal of Torah is to communicate a fundamental understanding of our nature, purpose, obligations and opportunities. The ultimate purpose of learning is to make you independent and give you the tools needed to fulfill your mission in the world. A true teacher aspires to clearly communicate his ideas, principals and goals — and then get out of the students’ way to enable them to function on their own.

Your obligation as you learn, is to spread it around. If you gain clarity on an issue, don’t leave others in the dark. Teach it to them, and stand them up to teach others.

‘… AND MAKE A FENCE FOR THE TORAH’

To ensure the success of any endeavor or system, it is necessary to insulate against failure. You want to minimize the likelihood of failure, and minimize the damage failure causes. Construct a safety net.

The 613 mitzvot of the Torah are physical manifestations of spiritual principals. They are the levers that allow a supraphysical, spiritual soul to act in a purely physical world — and which allow physical actions to have an effect on a supraphysical, spiritual soul.

Positive mitzvot are actions that work to perfect specific aspects of your spiritual self, and negative mitzvot are restrictions against actions that, if taken, would damage aspects of your spiritual self.

Rabbi Moses Chaim Lutzatto (The Ramchal) taught in his classic work, “The Way of God,” that God created the world in order to bestow Good, and Man was created to be the recipient of that Good. A “good” is only truly good if it is earned, and not if one is merely accidentally associated with it. After all, how much pleasure do you take in being praised publicly for something someone else did?

The essential Good is a relationship with the Creator, the Source of all Good. A relationship with the Almighty that you have earned.

The way to earn a relationship with God is to choose Good. To the extent that you choose Good, God’s presence in the world becomes clearer, and you become closer to Him. To the extent that you reject Good, God’s presence in the world becomes obscured, and you become more distant from Him.

If all good was rewarded with chocolate and all negative punished with shocks, then only a fool would ever choose the negative.

Yet if you choose Good only because of the reward you will receive, then the choice is really a “financial” one rather than a moral one. If all good acts were rewarded with chocolate and all negative acts punished with electric shocks, then only a fool or a determined rebel would ever choose the negative. Your choice really wouldn’t be a choice, and there would be no real “earning” of that reward.

Therefore it is logically necessary to create a world in which there is a cost to doing “good” and a benefit to doing “evil.” If I bonk you on the head and take your wallet, I may damage my soul but I do have your money. Whereas, if I give money to feed the poor, I can’t indulge my own pleasures as fully, but I have lifted myself and bettered my world. In this way, you have the opportunity to weigh the reward of doing good against its cost, and the cost of doing evil against its benefit. That’s a real choice.

Mitzvot address situations where we have a physical drive or hunger to act one way, and a moral, ethical commandment to act in another. They create a conflict between “desire” and “will” — and gives us an opportunity to choose. Each time we decide, we either lift or lower ourselves. The choice is ours.

The Sages understood this struggle, and created fences to assist us in fulfilling our potential. Fences are rabbinic laws, customs and decrees that expand the definitions of Torah Laws. One key role of a fence is to limit the likelihood of failures that would damage your soul. By creating a boundary before the point of actual damage, the Sages ensure that even an error bringing you across that line will still leave you short of the point of true damage.

If you’ve ever seen the yellow warning signs on a twisting mountain road, you can be sure that the posted speed limit is lower than the speed at which you will actually go flying into the abyss. Plus the highway engineers erect barriers to catch those who push the limit too far.

Another critical role of rabbinic “fences” is to maximize our opportunities to choose. If we recognize that each mitzvah is a tool to perfect some aspect of the soul, then it is almost disappointing that there are some mitzvot (i.e. some opportunities) that we seldom have the chance to experience. By moving the line closer to our actual daily lives, the Sages have given us additional chances to “choose.” And through choosing, we refine the soul, elevate our friends and lift our world.

Choice is our primary tool for acting in this world. Let’s not waste it.

• The Potential of Man
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