Welcome to the BHSS Pirke Avot Blog: April 2015

Monday, April 20, 2015

Week 3 - April 20 - 26, 2015 - Chapter 2

Joel - Week 3: Chapter 2 - Goes up April 20

Mishnah 2:15-16

Rabbi Tarfon used to say, “The day is short; there is much work [to be done]; the workers are lazy, the wages are great, and the Master of the House is pressing.” He would [also] say, “It is not your duty to complete the work, yet you are not free to avoid it.”

Jeff Klepper and Danny Friedlander wrote a beautiful melody for these texts-- Lo Alecha is the name of the song. Having learned my first Pirke Avot as I did from songs at camp, this is one of the earliest texts I learned.

The text applies in so many ways in our lives. On a personal level, we often feel that our days are too short, and that the work we have to do (whatever that is) is great. Sometimes we feel lazy even when the wages we stand to earn are great, and who among us doesn’t feel we have masters to be accountable to? This kind of understanding can play out in our Jewish lives; we are so busy in other aspects of our day to day that there’s often little or nothing left of our time or energy for the life of the spirit, for the study of Torah, for the sacred work of acts of loving-kindness.

On a societal level, too, we have so much work to do. The amount of world-repair there is to do can feel overwhelming, never-ending. And despite the rewards that come from making the world more whole, we can feel similarly overwhelmed by the obligations we have as Jews to do that repair work; that sense of overwhelm can incline us to laziness-- since we can feel overwhelmed personally and/or societally, we might tend to just give in or give up. Maimonides picks up this theme when we takes the shortness of the day to indicate how few are the years of our lives, especially in light of how much knowledge there is for us to gain.

Rashi brings a different spiritual interpretation to the first part of this teaching: he suggests that the shortness of the day refers to this life-- that we have so few days while we live, but that the wages for serving God in this life will be paid in the world to come.

Even further than Rashi’s idea, the teachers of Jewish tradition look at the wages referred to here and suggest that the study of Torah yields a wage of joy and happiness, and that the extension of this idea is that studying Torah can earn us a place in the world to come.

The Master of the House is, in the rabbinic mind, God, of course. Do you feel commanded by God? Do you feel pressed by the Divine to act in the world in a certain way? In what ways could living as if you did believe that affect the choices you make in your life and the way you order your priorities?

There is a kind of release at the end; Rabbi Tarfon reminds us that we don’t have to finish the grand work we are called to do. It is from this text, though, that I first saw in Judaism an ethic which says, “Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” We have to begin, to take a first step, in our Jewish lives. Feel like you know nothing of the stories of the Torah? Start from the beginning of the Torah. Feel like you can’t read Hebrew? Take a class from you synagogue. Feel like you know a lot? Enroll in the Melton mini-school and I guarantee you’ll learn more. Can’t come to services every week but are feeling spiritually hungry? Come to BHSS one Friday night or Saturday morning a month. Can’t come to shul but feel like you want to honor Shabbat and make it holy? Light Shabbat candles before or after the Friday night baseball or soccer game. Have a vision of a justice project you want to work on? Bring together some friends and get started.

Rabbi Tarfon anticipated Nike’s ad campaign by a couple of thousand years.

In short, Rabbi Tarfon says: Just do it.

Beth - Week 3: Chapter 2

Mishnah 2.2 Rabban Gamliel, the son of Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Nasi, said, “It is good to join the study of Torah to some kind of work for the effort required by both robs sin of its power. Torah study without work will end up being useless and will cause sin. Let all who work with the congregation do so for the sake of Heaven; the merit of their ancestors will sustain them and as a result, their righteousness will remain forever.” As for you (God Says), “I will credit you with a great reward, as if you had accomplished it all.”

Some of our great sages were not only scholars, but also had a profession, other than the study of Torah. Probably the most famous of those sages who had a profession other than scholarship is, Maimonides. He was not only a great Jewish Scholar and philosopher, but also a physician and an astronomer. Like Maimonides, Nachmanides was also a physician and a scholar. Being a Torah scholar and having a profession are not and should not be (according to this passage) mutually exclusive.

The phrase “robs sin of its power” literally means “makes sin forgotten” as stated in Pirke Avot: A Modern Commentary on Jewish Ethics (pg. 20). According to Rashi, a person engaged in business and the study of Torah will have “no desire to steal the money of others. Rashi praises the work ethic and supports the pursuit of an occupation to help sustain the world,” (pg. 20).

Bartinoro felt that it is important for individuals to “work with the congregation to move others to give charity …,” (Kravitz & Olitsky; pg. 20). Rabbi Rami Shapiro (Ethics of the Sages : Pirke Avot Annotated & Explained), states that working for the community’s benefit puts the strength of the community behind you, enhancing your work effort and thus expanding the results. While the results will be shared by all you will still get the credit.

To me, this Mishnah embodies two very important concepts. First is the idea of balancing scholarship (Torah study) with work As I’ve stated before, I consider myself a lifelong learner. I balance my desire to learn and educate myself with my professional life in order to maximize my contributions to society. Both things (study / learning and work) enable me to make different types of contributions to society.

Financially, my work enables me to take care of myself, pay my taxes (which contribute to the society at large), take part in and help the economy grow, and when I can give, give charity to those in need. My work (an administrative assistant in a law firm) also enables me to be of service to others. My job is to help make the jobs of others run more smoothly. It also puts me in contact with people who are often in a very vulnerable place in their lives. I am able to be compassionate and keep in mind that they may need some extra special care and consideration.

My scholarly pursuits enable me to be well rounded and knowledgeable. Thus helping me form opinions and make decisions. Torah study, specifically, enables me to understand the history of my people. It also informs my opinion formation and decision making. By knowing and understanding Jewish law and history I can make decisions about how to live and act in today’s world. For example, I did not grow up in a very religiously observant family, meaning we did not follow many / most of the halachically proscribed rules. We did not keep kosher, refrain from every day or worldly pursuits on the Sabbath, etc. As an adult I experimented with both being kosher and observing Shabbat in a closer accordance with halacha than I had done as I was growing up. I was fully kosher at home and “Kosher style” outside the home. I was never rude to a host who either didn’t know or understand the rules of kashrut but when out of the house I tried to always observe the rule of not mixing meat and dairy. I also refused to do any work on the Sabbath, went to synagogue every Friday and on Saturday mornings went to Torah study and the Sabbath morning service. I was in the choir, on committees, etc. in order to support my temple life. After doing this for about 10 years, I then met my partner, who is not kosher and had no desire to be. I have struggled for a long time with not being kosher. But I am coming to understand that for me the whole idea of kashrut is more about ethics than about anything else. So I am working toward becoming a more ethical eater / consumer. I am finding ways to incorporate more foods that are raised in an ethical manner and to buy products that are made by companies that are more ethical. At the same time I need to balance my financial needs and limitations while pursuing more ethical consumerism. This is not always easy. For me it is a journey of small steps and occasional steps backward.

As for Shabbat worship, it does not need to be an all or nothing thing. I live in a modern world that sometimes requires me to pay attention to other things. I do the best I can to go to as many services as I can and be involved in Torah study. I do not do any work on Shabbat that is for my “profession” and I try not to do arduous chores that take me out of the restfulness of Shabbat. I try to find time to relax and breath in all the goodness of life instead of rushing around trying to accomplish things. This is my Shabbat today.

The second important message of this Mishnah is the idea of working to serve the community / congregation. Another Mishnah from this Pirke Avot comes to mind: Rabbi Tarfon said “You are not required to complete the work, but neither are you allowed to abstain from it,” (Gates of Prayer pg. 20). So, I am not required to fix the world by myself, but I am not allowed to sit idly by and watch others (or no one) do it. I feel that this part of the Mishnah refers to the importance of those things I do to help strengthen not only our congregation but the community at large. Attending services on a regular basis, participating in Torah study, writing this blog all help our BHSS community become just a little bit stronger. I know I will eventually join a committee and work on other projects as needed that will help our congregation. As for working to strengthen the greater community in which we live, I try hard to set a good, ethical example for those around me. I contribute financially to charities when able to do so. Throughout my adult life I have contributed time and effort to committees and endeavors that help those in need or help the society at large. I always feel I can do more and work to find ways to do that. While I don’t feel the need for any special recognition for doing things, it is nice to feel that somewhere, in some way my efforts are recognized. I am still grappling with whether that recognition comes from some cosmic force of Karma or from a supreme being that “recognizes’ my efforts in some way. But that is a topic for another blog!

Texts used to help write this blog:

All the main translations I use will, be taken from this text.

Respectfully submitted,

Beth F. Levine

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Week 2 - April 13 - April 19, 2015 - Chapter 1

Joel Week 2: Chapter 1

Mishnah 1: At Sinai Moses received the Torah and handed it over to Joshua who handed it over to the elders who handed it over to the prophets who in turn handed it over to the men of the Great Assembly. The latter said three things: be deliberate in judgment, raise up many disciples, and make a fence around the Torah.

Yikes! I could spend six weeks unpacking just this text, and never exhaust it!

Where to begin? Well, Sinai is a good place. After all, it is there, in the shadow of the mountain, only 7 weeks removed from miraculously departing 400 years of slavery, only days from crossing the Reed Sea, it is there that we truly become a covenanted people. Before that, Abraham and Sarah and their descendants had been individually promised a special relationship with God. At Sinai, we stood as a nation-- as if under the wedding canopy, betrothing ourselves to the Holy One of blessing.

And if Moses is the original receiver of Torah, and we know that Moses won’t live forever, then text has to come down to us somehow. And if we can show that that chain of transmission is unbroken, then our authority to interpret the text can be rooted deep into the Jewish soil—deep into the Jewish soul. And if we lose that chain, we will be fractured, indeed. This text is why, when I stand in front of our bnei mitzvah and hand them the Torah, I say, and really mean, “Today we are pleased to form a new link on the chain of our sacred tradition.” It is a chain that goes all the way back to the days of Mount Sinai.

So let’s look more closely at that chain to begin. Joshua you probably know; he is the one to whom Moses passes the mantle of leadership when Moses dies just before the Israelites enter the promised land.

According to many major commentators (Rashi, Maimonades, Bartinoro, and Heller), “the elders” to which this text refers are the leaders of the people during Joshua’s time and beyond.

The prophets, you’ve probably also heard of—you know—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and all the rest. “The Men of the Great Assembly” may have been the predecessors of the rabbis themselves, although we’re not quite sure exactly to whom this refers.

But what’s key about mentioning the prophets and the others who will inherit this text is the implication that it wasn’t just the Written Torah, the actual words in the scroll, which were received by Moses and passed down. The audacious assertion of the author of this Mishnah is that the Oral Law, all the interpretations of the laws, were given to Moses, too.

This is a critical turn on which the rabbis hang their authoritative hat. Because what the rabbis appear to be doing time and time again is expanding and, dare I say, even contradicting the Written Law with their Oral traditions. But if we say that it’s all been there from the beginning—the Written Law and all of it’s Oral explanations, then what the rabbis are doing is not so much what could be deemed heretically reinterpreting the law, but simply uncovering what was there all along.

It is here where, in a sense, Orthodox and non-Orthodox Judaism part ways in a critical sense. Orthodox Jews believe, as this Mishnah suggests, that the Oral law—the interpretations of the rabbis—are not new at all—they have been there since Mount Sinai and are therefore as sacred, as eternal, as the Written Torah itself. Non-Orthodox Jews generally consider the Oral law to be important in understanding how Jews in each generation understood the Torah itself. But classically, non-Orthodox Jews don’t put those interpretations on equal par with the words in the scroll the way Orthodox Jews do.

Stay with me. If we Reform Jews, for example, believe that the explanations of the rabbis are a response to the modernity of their times, then we should study them for insights into their times and insights into the ways they might bring meaning to us. Having studied the interpretations of those who have come before us, we can then feel free to embrace their understandings as true today just as they were then. And, at times, we can feel free to disagree and argue and debate their understanding. We can feel encouraged to say, “The rabbis 2000 years ago were interpreting the Written Torah in their context. We can interpret them for our context.”

We are still inheritors of that unbroken chain. It’s a big responsibility, and it can’t be left to one or two people to do it.

And what does the first maxim of Pirke Avot call us to do?

First, they want us to deliberate on words of Torah in order to make judgments about how to live as Jews in the modern world. Sounds like what the rabbis themselves were up to.

Second, they who were living in exile knew that we needed more and more and more students of Torah. The priestly class who inherited authority by dint of birth when the Temple stood was no more in power. Now, we needed great teachers and engaged students who would pass it on.

And lastly, the used the metaphor of fence to describe the work they were doing to ensure that people would uphold the core laws of the Torah itself. For example, the Torah says, “don’t cook a calf in its mother’s milk.” A fence around that law meant that the rabbis exhorted us never to mix any meat with any milk, regardless of its provenance. These fences are the way that Jewish law grew and expanded and, I really believe reformed in every generation. Reform Judaism, in this way, didn’t begin in Germany in the early 1800s. It began with these rabbis, and probably earlier.

Honor the origins of our text, the rabbis say here. You have a sacred responsibility to keep the chain. And you have to continue to make it work as the world grows more complex and as new threats arise to our core values.

A heady way to begin.

Beth Week 2: Chapter 1

Mishnah 1:2 Shimon the Righteous was one of the last of the Great Assembly. His motto was: “The world stands on three things - the Torah, the [temple] service, and acts of loving Kindness.”

Mishnah 1:18 Rabbi Shimon the son of Gamliel, said, “The world stands on three things: on truth, on judgment, and on peace; as it is stated (in scripture): “Execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates.” (Zech. 8.16)

Okay, hum or sing along with me:

Al shlosha devarim, al shlosha devarim, al shlosha, shlosha devarim ha olam ha olam …

So which is it: … omed al hatorah …. or … kayam al ha emet …?

In Ethics of our Sages, Rabbi Rami Shapiro translates 1:2 as, “... The world rests on three things: on wisdom, on surrender, on compassion.” He further states that the literal translation of those three things is “Torah, worship and loving-kindness. True Torah is wisdom: knowing that One God manifests as one world, one humanity, and one moral code - justice and compassion for all. True worship is surrender to God’s will, that is, reality as it manifests in and as you at this and every moment. … True loving-kindness is compassion to toward the self and other.” Rabbi Shapiro asserts that when you “awaken to wisdom and know reality” your “narrow mind” will be transformed to a “spacious mind” and you will “experience the non-duality that is God. Thus enabling you to feel great compassion for yourself and others “in the infinite expanse of God.”

Rashi and Maimonides differed in their interpretations of “the world Stands.” Rashi believed that the world would not have come into being without these three things. Maimonides believed that, proper human existence could not be maintained,” without these three things. (Pirke Avot: A Modern Commentary On Jewish Ethics Edited and Translated by Leonard Kravitz and Kerry M. Olitzky)

According to Pirke Avot: A Modern Commentary On Jewish Ethics Edited and Translated by Leonard Kravitz and Kery M. Olitzky, a person’s behavior is a result of one’s commitment to God. When a person performs acts of loving-kindness it brings that person closer to God.

Rabbi Shapiro asserts that, “A world without justice is a world run by fear. Fear gives rise to anger, anger to violence and violence to even greater fear and injustice. A world without truth is a world driven by lies. Lies give rise to confusion, confusion to conflict, conflict to hatred and hatred to even more lies. A world without peace is a world driven by division. Division gives rise to scarcity, scarcity to hoarding and hoarding to genocide.”

So, again, what exactly does the “world stand” upon. I have heard it stated (sorry I cannot remember where) that the Torah, worship and acts of kindness (Mishna 1:2) are purposes for which God created the world. While, justice peace and truth (Mishna 2:18) are the things that keep the world from collapsing.

I posit here that these six things are fundamentally connected. Torah, worship, loving-kindness, truth, judgment and peace all depend upon one another to some extent. Torah sets forth the rules and examples (positive and negative), i.e. the moral compass. Without this moral compass we would be devoid of all the other things (loving-kindness, truth, judgment & peace). I know that some would say Torah is not necessary to have a moral compass, but I feel that it helps lay the groundwork toward the development of the moral compass.

Worship, defined here as the surrender to what is (some may call it God’s will), is necessary in order to bring about change. Because only when you acknowledge and accept things the way they are can you begin to change them. If you live in a fantasy world, not accepting of reality, you never face the world as it is and thus can not change it.

Loving-kindness is perhaps one manifestation of truth, judgment and peace. In a world without truth, justice (judgment), and peace it would be difficult to find much compassion / loving-kindness. Surrendering to the reality that is creates the environment where truth, justice and peace can be created.

If we look at our world today, it is rife with examples of what happens when we live with fear, lies and division, a result of not surrendering to what is. One example would be the fight for gay marriage in the USA. What creates this fight? Fear, lies and division. People fear what they do not understand (whether by ignorance or the decision to remain closed-minded in the face of overwhelming evidence). They create lies to support their fears and beliefs. Compassion and loving-kindness are forgotten. Division is created and hatred, violence, etc. ensue.

Another example would be the Israeli / Palestinian problems. I know this is an oversimplification, however I see the problem as one that illustrates fear, lies and division. People fear what they don’t understand (or don’t want to understand), the other. Everyone creates their own truth - which by definition is thus a lie. People lose their compassion (loving-kindness) for each other. Once again, division is created and hatred, violence, etc. ensue.

No matter what societal ill we look it, from racism, gender inequality, poverty, war, even the fight over global climate change, can each be reduced down to a lack of several of all of these things: Torah, worship, loving-kindness, truth, judgment / justice, and peace.

Texts used to help write this blog:

All the main translations I use will, be taken from this text.

Respectfully Submitted

Beth F. Levine