UTJ Viewpoints

בס“ד

(ז) שִׁבְעָה דְבָרִים בַּגֹּלֶם וְשִׁבְעָה בֶּחָכָם. חָכָם

אֵינוֹ מְדַבֵּר בִּפְנֵי מִי שֶׁהוּא גָדוֹל מִמֶּנּוּ בְּחָכְמָה (וּבְמִנְיָן),

וְאֵינוֹ נִכְנָס לְתוֹךְ דִּבְרֵי חֲבֵרוֹ,

וְאֵינוֹ נִבְהָל לְהָשִׁיב,

שׁוֹאֵל כָּעִנְיָן וּמֵשִׁיב כַּהֲלָכָה,

וְאוֹמֵר עַל רִאשׁוֹן רִאשׁוֹן וְעַל אַחֲרוֹן אַחֲרוֹן,

וְעַל מַה שֶּׁלֹּא שָׁמַע,

אוֹמֵר לֹא שָׁמַעְתִּי,

וּמוֹדֶה עַל הָאֱמֶת.

וְחִלּוּפֵיהֶן בַּגֹּלֶם:

In the fifth chapter of Tractate Avot, which deals with lists, we first outline the plain sense of this list, the structural edifice, which serves as a commentary, and the meaning and message of the statement being made.

The Mishna assumes a chiastic order:

1. there are seven qualities of a fool, and seven of a sage.
2. the seven sagacious qualities are outlined, with the fool is recognized for doing the opposite.

Since the seven expresses totality, and the sage is identified with a strategic economy of language, we describe the fool positively, the opposite, the foil of the sage. The seven sagacious qualities are

1. not speaking in the presence of one greater in wisdom
2. does not interrupt one’s fellow, contextually, one’s equal
3. does answer hurriedly, without thinking
4. asks a question on point, and when asked a question, answers appropriately
5. answers the question in the order they were asked [like Rebecca’s answering Eliezer in Genesis, not being innerved or impressed with his presentation of self]
6. when he has not heard a tradition, he concedes “I have not heard.”
7. concedes the truth.

And the opposite applies to the fool.

The italicized passages do not begin with an “and” conjunction. The first three refer to speech, truth follows wisdom, and speech is not for showing off or impressing the listener in performance, as in sophistry, the Greek rhetoric masters, or the public reading the Pauline epistles. We speak if we have truth; the truth of one greater in wisdom requires that we be silent, the truth of an equal requires that we not silence that equal, and when we speak, we speak deliberatively and not rashly.

After discussing speaking, in search of truth, the Mishnah turns to asking in search of truth. Questions must be direct and appropriate just like answers.

The structure changes when the defining climax occurs. If one has not heard, referring to a Tradition, tell the truth and say one has not heard. Lying about a tradition is sinful and stupid.

The Mishnaic lists encode messages, teaches Professor Jacob Neusner. The qualities shared by the list reveal the ethical message by illustrating the conceptual unifying ideological glue. The Greek and Roman deal with performance of words and live for kleon, the honor of man. Hence looking good is important The Jew inhabits an alternative spiritual space. Living in the kingdom of man, the Greek looks good because what you see is what you get. The Jew has to be good because the Jewish lives under malchut shamayim, the kingdom of heaven and has to be good. Therefore it is the honor of God, whose seal is truth, and to which the Jew must strive, that requires a discipline that is almost lost to the Greeks. While Plato tried to find and define an epistemology of truth, he did not have a Torah. Socrates was killed for daring to make the journey. Greek society was at its core violent. Torah, with its search for truth, focuses on God and truth in search of peace. With ego canceled out of the discussion, questions are asked for learning, not boastfulness, responses are issued for clarification, not cleverness, and debates are undertaken to discover truth, not to best an opponent..

Rabbi David b. Avraham b. Maimonides noted that Moses did not interrupt Qorah’s soliloquy, indicating that conversation, dialogue [dia + logoV] demands a hearing. It is precisely the lack of dialogue that characterizes the tyrant, the idolater, and the pseudo Orthodox.

Maimonides was not “influenced “ by Aristotle; he gave Aristotle, an intelligent non-Jew who had the benefit of an excellent brain [if not an engaging narrative style] but did not have the benefit of Torah. Moses was willing to give Qorah, the heretic, a hearing. We learn from Qorah’s sophist and sophisticated rhetoric that, at essence, he presaged the Greek pagan, using rhetoric to advance himself but, realizing that he was a pagan atheist, was fearful of confronting the Moses, with an absolute sense of right and truth, in conversation.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik teaches that the Ish Halakhah, Halakhic man, is a religionist who shares the sensibility of the secular rationalist. Metaphysics are artificial guesses, and mysticism usually misleads. It is by probing Torah that we find truth. At the Union for Traditional Judaism, we listen to each other, for the binocularity of insight; we use critical tools, like the literary and historical methodology applied in this essay, all in the passionate search for truth, the sanctification of ourselves through the accurate and precise observance of the commandments, and for the glory of God.

ב אָמַר רַבִּי יְהוֹשֻׁעַ בֶּן לֵוִי:

a. בְּכָל יוֹם וָיוֹם בַּת קוֹל יוֹצֵאת מֵהַר חוֹרֵב וּמַכְרֶזֶת וְאוֹמֶרֶת: “אוֹי לָהֶם לַבְּרִיּוֹת מֵעֶלְבּוֹנָהּ שֶׁל תּוֹרָה:”

b. שֶׁכָּל מִי שֶׁאֵינוֹ עוֹסֵק בַּתּוֹרָה נִקְרָא נָזוּף,

i. שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: (שם משלי יא 22 ) “נֶזֶם זָהָב בְּאַף חֲזִיר אִשָּׁה יָפָה וְסָרַת טָעַם“.

ii. וְאוֹמֵר: (שמות לב) “וְהַלֻּחֹת מַעֲשֵׂה אֱלֹהִים הֵמָּה וְהַמִּכְתָּב מִכְתַּב אֱלֹהִים הוּא חָרוּת עַל־הַלֻּחֹת.”

iii. אַל תִּקְרָא חָרוּת אֶלָּא חֵרוּת, שֶׁאֵין לְךָ בֶּן חוֹרִין אֶלָּא מִי שֶׁעוֹסֵק בְּתַלְמוּד תּוֹרָה.

c. וְכָל מִי שֶׁעוֹסֵק בְּתַלְמוּד תּוֹרָה הֲרֵי זֶה מִתְעַלֶּה,

i. שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: “וּמִמַּתָּנָה נַחֲלִיאֵל וּמִנַּחֲלִיאֵל בָּמוֹת.”

This Mishnah’s three paragraphs, or bavot, all begin with the Hebrew word for “all,” in logic, the universal quantifier. The first bava presents a statement of fact, that a voice issues from Sinai, the Torah’s birthstone, announcing the Torah’s shame at being ignored. In the second bava, the opening particle is she, indicating that its content is a cause of the Torah’s being ignored. The same verse and the same rabbinic gloss repeats; Torah as rejected is impotent, but Torah as studied and applied possesses political and not just theological potency.

This Mishnah teaches in its three bavot, or paragraphs, that…

1. a heavenly voice goes out from Sinai [the source of the first revelation of Torah]
2. bemoaning the disgrace that has fallen upon the Torah and one who does not busy oneself in Torah is nazuf,, i.e., under ban from heaven, for Torah is written in stone, [unchanging].
3. and one who occupies oneself with Torah is raised, as Torah is the source of freedom

Freedom is found in God’s law; both in knowing the contents and living its precepts. Human law is capricious and serves the interests of those who formulated it. God’s law is unchanging as sacred and subversive. We complain when the Jewish Left changes the law, but we are not to complain when the self-defined Jewish “right” changes the law, denying Jewry legally defined rights, written in stone. Asking some institutionally — but perhaps not theologically — Orthodox colleagues why they object to women’s haqafot but not the clapping and dancing on Simhat Torah, the former being permitted because it was never forbidden and the latter is explicitly forbidden by the Talmud [bBetsa 30, 36]One interlocutor claimed that “Ashkenazi Tradition” has “accepted” the clapping and dancing, and this is masorah. This well intentioned but misguided Orthodox rabbi argues that Orthodox Jewish law changes if the right reverend rabbis reveal new insights and incites, affirming a doctrine not unlike Solomon Schechter’s “Catholic Israel” and his colleague, Mordecai Kaplan’s “Jewish peoplehood.” We recall that Kaplan believed in folkways of the people and not the commands of the commander.

In authentic Judaism, the law, i.e., its content and rules, are not to be manipulated. By “allowing” men the license to sin in error and clap and dance on holy days, and attach the “innocence of association of masorah/Tradition to this well intentioned but misguided message, one invokes masorah to outlaw the permitted women’s haqafot. What tractate Avot presents as God’s Tradition, public, objective, and clear, is mystified and ill defined to include the preservation of antecedent culture.

Tradition changes through legal rule, not by committees of Law and Standards or Council’s of Torah sages. The Law is etched in stone, in public, and gives the precious gift of freedom in this world and is the tree of life of the next world, for those who hold fast to it.

Freedom is the consequence of being subject to the law of God and not the will, whim, or wishes of the human sovereign. Knowing the law is in Israel what Ronald Dworkin calls a right, which is a trump card. This trump makes the citizen the sovereign and the sovereign the servant of the people. In order to be free, one must know one’s rights, given by God and affirmed by Torah.

[Update: (2012-02-23 1:23 PM CST) Your humble Editor has corrected a duplication of the Hebrew text. I thank Rabbi Aaron D. Michelson for pointing out my error. I should have checked that but I was a little tired that day. My apologies to all and to Rabbi Yuter.

Here is an English translation taken from Wikisource Seder Nezikin Chapter 6 . Use at your own risk.

2. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said:

a. Each and every day a heavenly echo goes out from Mount Horeb, and announces and says: "Woe to the creatures for disparaging the Torah;"

for anyone who does not involve himself in the Torah is called "rebuked,"

as it is said (Proverbs 11:22): "A ring of gold in a swine's snout is a beautiful woman who turns from discretion,"

and it says (Exodus 32:16): "And the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tablets,"

do not read "graven" (harut) but rather "freedom" (herut),

for there is no free man except one that involves himself in Torah learning;

And anyone who involves himself in Torah learning is elevated,

as it is said (Numbers 21:19): "and from Mattanah, Nahaliel; and from Nahaliel, Bamoth."

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