📋 Shiur Overview
Combined Argument Flow Summary: Philosophical Class on Pirkei Avos and the Rambam’s Eight Chapters
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1. Housekeeping and Opening Banter
A new battery for recording, a broken printer preventing textual study, and a request for donations. This week’s parsha is Noach.
Side Digression: Noach’s Reputation
Despite the Torah calling Noach a tzaddik, many meforshim (commentators) seem to downgrade him, especially relative to Avraham. Some like him, some don’t. This is flagged as a joke/aside, not the real shiur.
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2. Framing the Shiur
The class is studying the Rambam’s “Eight Chapters” (Shemoneh Perakim), the introduction to Pirkei Avos. Last week was a “pre-pre-hagdama” (preliminary introduction); this week continues with new chiddushim (insights) and controversies. Because the printer is broken, the session will be more of a “schmooze” (discursive talk) than close textual work.
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3. Recap: Ethics as a Discipline
There is an area of life — really all areas of life — concerned with living well. This is called ethics. Aristotle essentially invented ethics as a distinct discipline of study — not the concept of a good life itself, but the idea of carving wisdom into discrete, separately-studied subjects (“masechtos” of knowledge).
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4. Socrates as the Origin Point of the Ethical Orientation
Before Aristotle, pre-Socratic philosophers focused on physics (nature, change, what the world is made of — water, fire, elements, etc.). Socrates (as reported by Plato) declared he was only interested in how to live, not in natural science. Plato himself was interested in physics/metaphysics/ontology at least sometimes, but Socrates’ primary question was always ethical.
Side Digression: Socrates as “the First Jew”
Socrates’ attitude — “Don’t tell me what the world is made of; tell me how to live” — mirrors a Jewish sensibility (Torah vs. science). Caveat: How to live is not fully separable from how the world is constituted. Ethics cannot be completely divorced from physics/metaphysics. The Western philosophical tradition (as opposed to Chinese, Japanese, or Indian traditions) begins with this Socratic ethical orientation. Socrates and Avraham Avinu share this spirit.
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5. Aristotle’s Great Innovation: Classification of Disciplines
Aristotle, Socrates’ student’s student, performed the monumental work of classifying areas of wisdom into separate disciplines. This wasn’t classification for its own sake but for the purpose of studying each thing separately — making “tzad dinim” (categorical distinctions) out of everything. Every Aristotelian work begins by asking: What subject are we learning? Where does it belong in the grand scheme of knowledge? Aristotle is effectively the inventor of the university model — discrete disciplines studied independently.
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6. The Parallel Jewish Project: Rebbi Yehuda HaNasi and the Mishnah
In the Jewish context, Rebbi Yehuda HaNasi performed an analogous organizational feat with the Mishnah: creating distinct masechtos (Shabbos, Pesachim, etc.). Before the Mishnah (in Tanakh, in oral teaching), knowledge was not organized this way. The Talmud/Gemara “confuses things back” somewhat, but the Mishnah is a deeply organized work.
Side Digression: Rambam vs. Mishnah’s Organizational Principles
People often say the Rambam reorganized the Mishnah more systematically and that “our tradition” doesn’t value that kind of reordering. This misses the forest for the trees: compared to what came *before* it (Tanakh, pre-Mishnaic oral Torah), the Mishnah itself is already a massive project of organization. The Rambam and Rebbi Yehuda HaNasi may differ in organizational *principles*, but they share the fundamental value of disciplinary specificity — saying “I’m studying *this*; don’t talk to me about other things right now.”
The Rambam organizes deductively — starts with generalities, moves to particulars (logical, top-down teaching). The Mishnah organizes analogically — grouping things by similarity (“this is similar to that”) rather than deriving from overarching general rules. Lomdus (Talmudic analytical methodology) attempts to convert the Talmud’s analogical reasoning into formal deductions, which is very difficult because the original reasoning mostly doesn’t work that way, at least not explicitly.
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7. Ethics as a Coined Discipline and Masechta Avos
Aristotle explicitly coined (or repurposed) the Greek word “ethics” to name the discipline that asks: What is a good human life? What is correct behavior? The Mishnah contains a tractate called Avos, which is the Mishnah’s designated space for ethics.
Side Digression: Who Named the Masechtos?
It’s unclear who named the masechtos (Rebbi Yehuda HaNasi? Later tradition?). The name “Avos” (literally “fathers”) is not self-evidently explained in the text.
The Organizational Question
Is the point of Avos to tell the story of the chain of tradition, or is the generational structure merely an organizational principle for arranging ethical sayings? The Amoraim didn’t compose a Gemara on Avos, which is notable. The generational framing (Moshe to Yehoshua, etc.) may be primarily an organizing device rather than a statement about the transmission of tradition — since the Mishnah’s editor needed *some* principle of organization for ethical material, and chronological/generational ordering was the chosen method.
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8. The Quality of Traditional Jewish Names for Texts
Side Digression: Naming Conventions
Jewish traditional names for things are generally non-descriptive (“bad”):
– Parsha names: Noach is not about Noach; Lech Lecha is not about Lech Lecha. They are simply taken from the opening words.
– Mishnah tractate names: Generally better — Shabbos, Eruvin, Pesachim, Taharos are descriptive. But Beitzah is a bad name (just named after the first Mishnah); there’s a tradition to call it Maseches Yom Tov, which is more descriptive (and therefore probably not the original name — “the rule” being that better names are likely later additions).
– Bava Kamma/Metzia/Basra: Not descriptive names per se — they just mean “first/middle/last gate” — but they are parts of Maseches Nezikin, which is a proper name.
Side Digression: The Organization of Tanakh
– Traditional Jewish division (Torah, Nevi’im, Kesuvim): These are poor categorical names. “Kesuvim” is just a catch-all for everything not in Nevi’im. “Nevi’im” conflates two very different kinds of books — Nevi’im Rishonim (historical/narrative books like Shmuel) and Nevi’im Acharonim (actual prophetic books).
– Septuagint organization (by Greek Jews): Divided Tanakh into ~4-5 topical categories — Law (Torah), Historical books, Prophetic books, and Wisdom/Poetry books. This is a more correct topical organization. Christians adopted this organization for the Old Testament; it originates from Greek-speaking Jews. There is a historical reason for the traditional Jewish organization, but it is not explained here.
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9. The Meaning of “Avos” — A Chiddush (Novel Interpretation)
Step 1: The Standard Assumption Is Problematic
Everyone assumes “Avos” means “our fathers” — i.e., the rabbis who carried the tradition (analogous to “Church Fathers” in Christianity). But this is challenged:
– The word “Avos” is almost never used in rabbinic literature to mean “bearers/transmitters of tradition.”
– “Av” appears in “Av Beis Din” (father/head of the court), but that’s a specific institutional title, not a general concept of tradition-bearers.
– “Avos” in its most common biblical usage means the Patriarchs — Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov — who are also literal fathers.
– No one can produce an example from rabbinic literature where the Nasi or tradition-bearers are called “Avos.”
Step 2: The Actual Rabbinic Usage of “Avos”
The real Mishnaic usage of “Avos” means categories/generalities (klalim):
– Avos Nezikin — primary categories of damages
– Avos Melachos — primary categories of forbidden Shabbos labor
– Avos Tumah — primary categories of impurity
Throughout the Mishnah, outside of “Av Beis Din,” the word “Avos” consistently carries this meaning of foundational categories or general principles.
Step 3: The Conceptual Framework — Avos and Toladot
– Av = a principle, a generality, a “father” concept that generates derivative rules.
– Toladah = a derivative, a “child” born from the principle — the result of applying the general rule.
– Klal = another word for a generality/whole.
– Binyan Av = one of the 13 Middot (hermeneutical principles), meaning: constructing a general rule (“father”) from one or two specific cases, which then “gives birth” to new applications.
– Essentially all 13 Middot are different methods of generalization or logical derivation.
Side Digression: Gezerah Shavah as a Special Case
Gezerah Shavah might seem to be just an analogy, but a valid analogy must be grounded in some hidden generality or deduction. This is why one cannot create a Gezerah Shavah independently — when one appears, it is typically an Asmachta (mnemonic marker), and the real deduction behind it must be known through tradition.
Step 4: The Conclusion
“Pirkei Avos” = “Chapters of Foundational Principles” — the most important foundational principles of ethics/conduct, not “Chapters of the Fathers” (tradition-bearers).
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10. The Rambam’s Two Purposes for Pirkei Avos — and Why the First Is Wrong
The Rambam’s Claim
The Rambam, in his preface to the Mishnah (*Hakdama l’Peirush HaMishnah*), states that Pirkei Avos has two purposes. The first is to demonstrate the truth and authenticity of the oral tradition (*Torah Sheba’al Peh*) by presenting an unbroken chain of transmission from Sinai onward.
The Core Critique
If the Mishnah were trying to establish an unbroken chain of transmission, it does a remarkably poor job, because it skips enormous numbers of generations and provides only the most schematic outline.
The Rambam’s Own Chain vs. the Mishnah’s Chain
The Rambam, in both his *Hakdama to Peirush HaMishnah* and elsewhere, constructs a detailed 40-generation chain from Moshe to Rav Ashi, naming each link. This is a serious attempt to demonstrate authenticity.
Side Digression: Islamic Parallel
The Rambam’s method mirrors an Islamic scholarly practice — the *isnad* (chain of transmission) attached to each *hadith*, with an entire field of study devoted to evaluating the reliability of these chains. The Rambam borrows this framework to authenticate the oral Torah. Rav Sherira Gaon did something similar earlier.
Side Digression: The Rambam’s Other Argument
The Rambam also argues: the Karaites/Sadducees accept the Bible, and the Bible itself says to listen to the rabbis. But the Rambam still needs to provide a transmission chain for the *content* of the oral tradition — the *shemu’ot* (received teachings) going back to Moshe.
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11. The Mishnah’s Chain Is Full of Gaps
Walking through the Mishnah’s chain step by step exposes massive temporal and informational gaps:
– Moshe → Yehoshua: Known from the Bible — no new information.
– Yehoshua → Zekeinim (Elders): These are the elders who outlived Yehoshua — still biblical.
– Zekeinim → Nevi’im (Prophets): A gap of several hundred years. The first named prophet is Shmuel, and between Yehoshua’s elders and Shmuel there is a vast, unnamed period.
Side Digression: Who Counts as a Navi?
Discussion of whether Shoftim-era figures count, whether Pinchas qualifies, etc. The first officially named *Navi* in the relevant sense is Shmuel.
– Within the Prophetic Period: From Shmuel down to Eliyahu HaNavi, nobody knows who the prophets in between were. This is “solved” by the figure of Achiyah HaShiloni, who is made to span an impossibly long period.
Side Digression: Achiyah HaShiloni as a “Magic Person”
Achiyah HaShiloni serves as a convenient bridge figure — “it worked for the Rambam, why can’t it work for the Baal Shem Tov?” Also a jab at Ibn Ezra for being critical of others’ traditions but not his own.
– Nevi’im → Anshei Knesset HaGedolah: Another huge gap.
– Anshei Knesset HaGedolah → Shimon HaTzadik: Generally agreed to be a gap of ~200 years (or at minimum ~70 years). Shimon HaTzadik lived in the time of Alexander the Great, not in the time of Ezra.
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12. The Core Argument Restated
This is not a claim that the tradition is false. The chain is accepted as true. The point is narrower and methodological:
– The Mishnah does not provide any information you wouldn’t already know from the biblical texts and common knowledge of the era.
– There is no evidence in the Nevi’im themselves that prophets functioned as “authoritative transmitters of Torah” in a chain-like fashion — this concept is retrojected onto them.
– The Gemara itself never conceptualizes prophetic succession as a formal authorization chain (“Hoshea authorized Amos,” etc.).
– The Rambam’s chain, by contrast, does try to give real, otherwise-unknown information, making it a genuine attempt at authentication.
Contrast with Sherira Gaon
The Sherira Gaon’s account is genuinely informative — it transmits traditions that no one would otherwise know. By contrast, the Mishnah’s opening list tells nothing that wasn’t already common knowledge in Mishnaic times.
The Rambam’s Own Difficulty
The Rambam himself raises the question of why Rabbeinu HaKadosh only listed the last few generations rather than the entire chain. The Rambam offers an answer, but this answer is undermined by the fact that Rabbeinu HaKadosh apparently never felt this was a problem — suggesting the Mishnah was never trying to do what the Rambam says it was doing.
Summary of the Critique
– Even if the Mishnah were trying to answer deniers of the Oral Torah, the chain as presented would be a poor argument for that purpose.
– The Rambam’s own formulation (in the Mishneh Torah introduction) is a better argument, but the Mishnah itself is not making that argument.
– Therefore, the Rambam’s claim about the *purpose* of Pirkei Avos’s opening is “lo nachon” (incorrect).
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13. The Tzeddukim, the Karaites, and the Rambam’s Conflation
Side Digression
The Rambam treats the Tzeddukim as proto-Karaites — people who rejected the Oral Torah in a “Protestant” manner (believing only in the written text). This is historically inaccurate: there is no evidence in Chazal that the Tzeddukim rejected the Oral Torah as a category. Rather, they had *disagreements* (Machlokot) with the Perushim on specific halakhic and theological matters (resurrection, angels, etc.), and they had their own interpretive traditions — sometimes more literal, sometimes not. Even the Karaites have their own traditions; the issue was never a clean “written vs. oral” divide.
The argument “it doesn’t say X in the Torah, therefore X is not binding” is actually a *good* argument that requires a real answer. The concept of “Halakha L’Moshe MiSinai” functions as a kind of “kludge” to address cases where no textual basis can be found — essentially saying, “We don’t know the source either, but this is what our fathers did.”
Key point: Even if the Mishnah were trying to answer such deniers, there were no Tzeddukim in the Mishnah’s time — they existed in the Rambam’s era (as Karaites). The Rambam is projecting his own polemical context backward.
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14. The Legitimacy of Disagreeing with the Rambam on Pshat
A rule learned from Rav Shmuel Ibn Tibbon: “When it comes to truth, the Rambam was always right. When it comes to pshat in Pesukim [and by extension, Mishnayot], he is usually wrong.”
Side Digression: Precedent from Ibn Tibbon
Rav Shmuel Ibn Tibbon — the Rambam’s premier European student and translator of the Moreh Nevuchim — wrote comments on the Rambam in which he used extreme language, saying the Rambam “must have been sleeping” when he wrote a certain passage because the text says the opposite of what the Rambam claims. There is a well-established tradition of respectfully disagreeing with the Rambam on textual readings, even while accepting his philosophical ideas.
Side Digression: The Rambam’s Lack of Students
The Rambam had essentially zero students in Egypt (or perhaps one, the dedicatee of the Moreh, and “it didn’t work out”), making Ibn Tibbon’s role as interpreter all the more significant.
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15. The Organizational Principle of Pirkei Avos
Why the Generational Structure?
Pirkei Avos is organized by generations in its opening sections, but this is merely a practical organizational device, not evidence that the tractate is “about” the chain of transmission.
How Rabbeinu HaKadosh Organized the Mishnah
A vivid (partly humorous) reconstruction: Rabbeinu HaKadosh had a massive, jumbled collection of traditions and aphorisms. He (and likely a staff) sorted them into large categories (the six Sedarim), then subdivided into tractates — like sorting index cards into boxes. This is compared to the Rambam’s similar method (evidence of his index cards exists from the Cairo Genizah). Sometimes material ended up in the “wrong” place — not by mistake, but because perfect organization of all halakhic material is impossible or impractical.
Aphorisms Are Hard to Organize
For ethical aphorisms (as in Avos), there is no natural topical structure the way there is for halakhic material (Shabbat laws go in Moed, etc.). So chronological/generational order was the most natural available organizing principle.
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16. The Biblical Precedent: Mishlei (Proverbs)
To demonstrate the near-impossibility of thematic organization for aphorisms, Mishlei serves as a parallel case:
– Mishlei is explicitly described as a compilation made by King Chizkiyahu’s staff (“asher he’etiqu anshei Chizkiyahu”) — stated in the text itself, not modern Bible criticism.
– Chizkiyahu, as a wealthy and pedagogically-minded king, inherited manuscripts attributed to Shlomo HaMelech containing random aphorisms.
– His staff essentially just collected them together, trying to avoid duplicates (though some slipped through — sometimes the same verse appears twice, word for word).
– People have attempted thematic reorganization of Mishlei; it can be done but you don’t gain much — it becomes repetitive and boring.
Side Digression: Organization as Interpretation
Any organization imposes interpretation. Some organizational choices are obvious (Sukkah belongs in Sukkah) while ethical material resists obvious categorization.
Side Digression: Biblical Books Are Edited
Every biblical book is edited by human hands. Books don’t just happen; they require editorial work.
– The Midrash about Moshe Rabbeinu writing thirteen Torah scrolls in one day: rather than being literally miraculous, Moshe had a writing staff who copied the scrolls, some of which had errors that needed correction. The Rambam nearly explicitly supports this view.
– Another Midrash about the problem of writing on Shabbat (since Moshe died on Shabbat) proposes it was an “eis” (emergency dispensation). This is dismissed as “gag al gag” (piling speculation on speculation). The simpler explanation: Moshe published the Torah and distributed thirteen copies to the tribes using a scribal staff.
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17. Why Attribution Matters for Ethics Specifically
A secondary justification for the generational structure: ethics is learned by example. The weight of an ethical saying comes partly from *who said it*. A saying attributed to Yogi Berra sounds cool; the same thing said by a nobody sounds unremarkable. The authority of the speaker gives ethical aphorisms their force.
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18. The Chain of Tradition as Mere Framing, Not the Goal
The opening Mishnah’s chain of transmission (Moshe → Yehoshua → etc.) is organizational scaffolding, not the primary content. The *goal* of Masechta Avos is to convey the ethical sayings themselves — “95% of it is that.” The chain of tradition is the *frame* that makes the organization work, not the message itself. People who mistake the organizational frame for the purpose of the tractate are making a fundamental error.
Side Digression: The Difficulty of Canonical Organization Generally
The Rambam’s Mishneh Torah organizational achievement was extraordinary; the Chazon Ish once said the Rambam “forgot something,” but the retort is: try writing your own Mishneh Torah and forget as few things as he did. A famous quip: “The Rambam was a miracle anyway, so you don’t ask the Chazon Ish for miracles.” Others have tried similar organizational projects with much worse results.
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19. Ethics as a Distinct Subject Area — The Deeper Philosophical Point
The very existence of Avos as a separate tractate teaches something profound: there is a distinct subject matter called “the good life” that is not reducible to the laws of Shabbat, Eruvin, or any other halakhic domain. This is a major chiddush — it cannot be taken for granted.
Avos as “Avos” for the Entire Mishnah
Avos may function as a kind of “Avos” (foundational principles) for the entire Mishnah — just as the Mechilta frames certain things as foundational, Avos provides the ethical foundation underlying all 63 (or 60) tractates. This parallels Hillel’s principle — the idea that there is an “ikar” (essential core) to the whole Torah, which Avos represents.
Side Digression: “What Is the Principle of the Torah?” as a Recurring Question
Many Mishnayos and stories (e.g., Shammai vs. Hillel’s different answers to the convert) are essentially different answers to the same fundamental question: what is the principle/foundation of Torah? This was clearly a live question the Tannaim worried about — “what are the things the world stands on?” i.e., what constitutes a good society (per the Rambam’s translation).
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20. Avos Is at Least as Important as Any Other Masechta
If you read the Mishnah without Gemara (i.e., on its own terms as Rebbi composed it), Avos is at least as important as any other tractate like Sukkah. Length is irrelevant; what matters is that it exists as a distinct subject matter of inquiry.
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21. Shared Questions Within Avos Reveal Philosophical Discussion
Reading the content of Avos carefully reveals shared questions running across many of its Mishnayos. This is extremely significant because it shows the Tannaim were engaged in genuine ethical-philosophical discussions — sometimes based on verses, sometimes not.
Key Example: Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s Assignment
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai told his five students: “Go out and find what is the good way to live.” This is directly comparable to Socrates’ inquiries — going around asking people fundamental questions. The students came back with different answers (e.g., “a good eye”), which means they thought independently and reasoned about the question. This is what learning (“Talmud”) actually is.
Side Digression: Universality of the Question
The question “What is the straight path?” is universal — Confucius, Aristotle, Buddha all addressed it. The answers too (“good eye,” etc.) are translatable into any language and represent something “very basic and human.” The Rambam’s observation that the Mishnah says “l’Adam” (for a person) rather than “l’Yisrael” reinforces this universality.
Side Digression: Connecting Ethical Principles to Halakha
If Rabbi Eliezer says “ayin tovah” (good eye) is the straight path, one could say Bava Kamma is entirely about having a good eye — don’t damage others’ property, and if you do, pay. The ethical principle and the halakhic tractate are connected.
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22. The Critical Error: Reading Answers Without Questions
A fundamental mistake in how Avos (and Jewish thought generally) is studied: because Avos is written aphoristically — giving answers, sometimes without the preceding question — readers assume there was no philosophical discussion behind it. But the Mishnah is the result of Talmud (learning/discussion). The answers presuppose questions.
Key formulation: “You can’t answer without a question.” Reading answers without questions produces ignorance (“amei ha’aretz”), just as reading questions without answers can produce heresy (the Abarbanel anecdote about someone who read the questions, fell asleep before the answers, and became an apikores).
Definition of a Discipline
A discipline is a set of concerns/questions about a defined area that people discuss. Shabbos is organized around questions about melacha; Avos is organized around the basic, obvious questions of how to live. If you only know the answers because you’re “such a frum guy,” you actually know nothing.
Side Digression: Why “Drush” and Jewish Thought Are Not Taken Seriously
Most Jewish thought (“drush”) is “people saying stuff without responsibility” — they give answers without questions. Without knowing the question, there is no way to evaluate whether the answer is good. There’s no dialectic, no accountability.
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23. The Problem: The Bavli’s Silence on Avos
Having established that Avos constitutes a genuine and important discipline, a major difficulty (kushya) arises: the Talmud Bavli never wrote Gemara on Pirkei Avos. If this subject is so important, why did the Bavli not treat it with the same dialectical expansion it gave other tractates?
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24. Avos d’Rabbi Nasan as the “Missing Gemara”
The Answer
Avos was actually the first Masechta to receive an explicit commentary/expansion — a work that expands the questions, answers, and sayings, essentially doing what Talmud does.
Dating and Authorship
– Nobody knows definitively who wrote it or when it was compiled.
– It is attributed to Rabbi Nasan, a prominent Tanna.
– There are two extant versions, and significant scholarly debate surrounds its composition.
– Machzor Vitry suggests that because it is attributed to Rabbi Nasan, it may have the status of a Mishnah-era work.
– It is probably earlier than the Talmud (pre-Bavli), and whoever named it after Rabbi Nasan must have considered it a very early, authoritative work.
– The implication: perhaps the Talmudic editors saw no need to compose a Gemara on Avos because they believed such a work already existed in the form of Avos d’Rabbi Nasan.
– The fact that later generations didn’t take it as seriously as a formal Gemara is “on them” — a historical contingency, not a reflection of its original status.
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25. The Status of Avos: Universal Basics vs. Particular Jewish Content
Is Avos the “Bare Minimum” or Something More?
Ambivalence: in one sense Avos represents the bare minimum of Jewish ethical teaching — a kind of foundational, universal wisdom. In another sense it is not. The reductive theory that Avos is simply “what keeps Jews going” as a survival manual is unsatisfying.
Avos Precedes Particular Jewishness
The content of Avos precedes particular Jewish identity in terms of basics (though not necessarily in terms of importance). The ethical and philosophical questions Avos addresses are prior to the specific project of being Jewish — they are the foundational human questions that any civilization must answer.
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26. The “Jewish Question” as a Question of Survival and Priority
Framing the Dilemma
The “Jewish question” — explicitly not the German/antisemitic version, but the internal Jewish question: What do you save when everything is at stake? A thought experiment: Imagine a catastrophic scenario (like the death of Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students, or the Holocaust). You are left with five people. The entire project of Torah/Jewishness either survives through them or it doesn’t.
The Paradox of Messianic Passivity vs. Human Agency
You must believe that survival will not happen automatically. If you assume everything happens by itself, you are not living in the world of those who actually saved the tradition. This generates a paradox about Mashiach:
– Mashiach must represent the smallest moment in potential (b’shem = in potentia), because if everyone passively waits for Mashiach, no one acts, and Mashiach never comes.
– Someone must wake up and say: “Mashiach won’t come unless I do it.”
– The messianic hope requires human initiative, not passive waiting.
Sophie’s Choice: What Do You Prioritize?
In the survival scenario, you have received the full Jewish education, but you no longer have the institutional infrastructure to sustain everything. You must prioritize to the extreme: whatever you prioritize, you keep; whatever you consider slightly less important, you lose. This is compared to Sophie’s choice — a genuine, agonizing dilemma about what to save.
Practical vs. Ideal
Sometimes the question is not what should be done but what can be done. Circumstances may resolve the dilemma — if one option is practically impossible, the choice is made by reality, not by ideal deliberation. But even then, what you judge to be possible to save is itself a profound question.
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27. The Two-Part Structure of Yiddishkeit
The Fundamental Distinction
1. The universal part: Torah as an answer to human questions — how to live life. These are the same questions asked by Socrates, Confucius, Aristotle, Buddha. The Torah says that anyone who accepts it will have a better life. In this sense, Torah addresses Adam (any human being).
2. The particular part: whatever is specific to Jewish identity, law, and practice beyond the universal.
Caveat: “Universal” and “particular” are “not good words” and the terminology may be misleading or oversimplified.
Moshe was asking and answering the same fundamental human questions as the great philosophers of other traditions. The Torah’s universal dimension overlaps with general human philosophical inquiry. The deeper question — which part do you save in the survival scenario, the universal or the particular? — is posed but deliberately left unanswered.
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28. The Overlap Between the Aseres HaDibros and Sheva Mitzvos B’nei Noach
9 out of the 10 Commandments are essentially identical to the Seven Noahide Laws (with only Shabbos and perhaps kibbud av va’em as exceptions). The idea that a non-Jew wouldn’t respect his father just because it’s not formally listed among the Sheva Mitzvos is mocked. The Sheva Mitzvos B’nei Noach is “just a formulation” — the moral substance is largely the same. The Aseres HaDibros sound universal because they largely *are* universal, and the Rabbis themselves were uncomfortable with the Aseres HaDibros for precisely this reason (they seem too universally agreeable, not distinctively Jewish).
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29. The Central Tragic Dilemma: Universal Ethics vs. Particular Jewish Observance
The Sharp Question
If you could only get your children to do one of two things — not be murderers, or keep Shabbos — which would you choose?
This is not a hypothetical but reflects a real, recurring dilemma in Jewish history.
The False Assumptions
– People assume lo sirtzach (don’t murder) comes “for free” — that basic moral decency is the default and the real challenge is maintaining distinctively Jewish practices like Shabbos. This assumption is wrong. The Torah itself testifies to Jews who are murderers. Lo sirtzach is not free. Neither is lo signov (don’t steal). Basic ethical behavior requires active cultivation.
– Conversely, the universalist side assumes Shabbos is “free” — that Jewish identity and practice will persist naturally. But it doesn’t. If you don’t actively invest in it, you lose it.
– In conditions of limited resources (“bandwidth”), you cannot achieve both. You will get what you actively choose to cultivate; the rest will default to whatever society or human nature provides.
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30. The Tragic Nature of the Choice — A Philosophical Principle
To be human is to face tragic choices. A tragic choice is one where both options involve real loss, and there is no costless resolution.
– Parable: Two people each had to choose between saving a son or a daughter. Each saved one, and their descendants have argued ever since about whose ancestor was the villain. Both made horrific choices — because both choices were horrific.
– Modern society (both secular American and Chareidi Jewish) denies the existence of the tragic. Politicians promise peace without sacrifice; religious leaders promise full observance without moral cost.
– Only God can have everything. Only God can be simultaneously a chassid and a litvak, perfectly just and perfectly merciful. Human beings must choose, and they will be imperfect in whichever direction they choose.
Side Digression: Political Analogy
Every politician promises both security and peace, when in reality there is a tragic trade-off. No one admits to making a tragic choice because “we have very little attunement to the tragic in life.”
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31. Application to Modern Jewish History
Modern Jewish history is essentially the story of this tragic choice playing out:
– “Right-wing” Judaism (broadly) chose distinctively Jewish observance (Shabbos, Torah learning, yeshivas) at the potential cost of universal ethical formation.
– “Left-wing” / liberal Judaism chose universal ethical goodness at the potential cost of distinctive Jewish practice and identity.
– Both sides think they got the other thing “for free.” Both are wrong.
This extends all the way back historically:
– Jews who converted during the Crusades
– Spanish conversos
– The famous position of Rav Yosef Yaavetz (quoted approvingly by Rav Shach) that “the smart people converted” — but reframed sympathetically: these people faced a genuine tragic choice (be dead and Jewish, or alive and Christian) and chose what seemed best for their families. “Who are you to judge them?”
—
32. “Ethics from Sinai” — The Attempt to Deny the Trade-Off
The modern Jewish intellectual tradition of claiming “Jewish ethics” as something distinctively from Sinai (referencing a book titled *Ethics from Sinai*):
– If you open the book, there is “very little Sinai in it” — it mostly contains universal moral wisdom dressed in Jewish garb.
– This project exists precisely because of the discomfort with the trade-off: people want to claim that Jewish particularity *just is* universal ethics, thereby avoiding the tragic choice.
– The children’s Shavuos story about the nations rejecting the Torah (because they want to steal and kill) is meant to establish that Jews are the people who don’t steal and kill. But if that’s empirically not true — if Jews also steal and kill — then the story’s claim collapses, and the trade-off reasserts itself.
—
33. The Role of Moshiach
The resolution of this tragic dilemma is precisely the job of Moshiach — to create conditions where one can be both a good person and a good Jew, where universal ethics and particular Jewish observance no longer compete for limited human bandwidth. Until Moshiach comes, the trade-off remains real.
—
34. The Historical Dilemma in Full: Why Keep Shabbos in a Civilized World?
The Dilemma Across Historical Settings
– In ancient times (e.g., Moshe Rabbeinu’s era), the surrounding peoples were “murderers and thieves,” so the distinctiveness of Jewish practice served an obvious moral function.
– In medieval/modern Europe, the surrounding civilization is quasi-Jewish: inheritors of both Socrates and Abraham, readers of Aristotle’s *Nicomachean Ethics*, people who invoke the God of Abraham and strive to be decent.
The pressing question: If the surrounding culture is already ethical, what is the added value of specifically Jewish observance? Why not just join them?
Side Digression: King Ferdinand’s Character
Ferdinand is described as someone who pretended to be a good Christian but was neither a good human being nor genuinely pious. Machiavelli used Ferdinand as an example of a prince who feigns religiosity for political purposes.
The Historical Choice Was Tragic, Not Crazy
The choice to remain Jewish or convert in Christian Europe was not “crazy” — it was tragic. One cannot be triumphalist about those who chose to remain Jewish, because the stakes and uncertainties were enormous.
—
35. The “Long-Term” Argument for Jewish Distinctiveness
A speculative but serious argument (attributed partly to “Rabbi Pritzker”):
– Perhaps the only people who keep Shabbos are ultimately the ones who don’t murder — but it might take 1,500 years to see that play out.
– This is a long-term wager: Judaism’s ultimate vindication may not be visible in any given generation.
– This argument seemed reasonable at certain historical moments (e.g., ~70 years ago, post-Holocaust) but not at others (50, 200, or 400 years ago). Its persuasiveness fluctuates with historical circumstances.
—
36. The Counter-Argument and Its Problem
A common but flawed argument: Since everyone is obligated to be a good human being, the point of Judaism must lie in what is distinctive — the specific commandments, not universal ethics. Problem: This makes Pirkei Avos a difficulty (*kashe*), because Pirkei Avos (and Hillel, and even Jesus) seem to say the point of Judaism is universal ethics.
Side Digression: Deflections of Pirkei Avos
Some try to reinterpret Pirkei Avos as meaning something different from Aristotelian ethics — “he meant it *b’shukal*, in a Torah way.” Skepticism that this distinction is meaningful.
—
37. The Pedagogical Anxiety: What to Tell Your Children
The real reason people avoid teaching that Judaism is fundamentally about ethics is fear: if children learn that Judaism is “just” about being good, they might convert to Christianity, which also teaches goodness.
Side Digression: Long-Term Consequences of Conversion
The speculative (and somewhat provocative) question of whether descendants of Jewish converts might, generations later, end up among persecutors of Jews (e.g., Crusaders). This is highly speculative and raises the question of whether one can even take moral responsibility for descendants a thousand years hence.
—
38. The Impossible Hypothetical
If you had to choose: your children keep Shabbos but become horrible human beings, or they become decent human beings but don’t keep Shabbos — what do you choose?
There is no clear answer, despite what some might claim based on halakhic sources (*Shulchan Aruch*).
Side Digression: Is Shabbos a “Minhag”?
A brief, somewhat tangled aside about whether Shabbos can be classified as a *minhag* (custom specific to the Jewish people) versus universal moral obligations (like not stealing). The point concerns the categorical difference between particularist and universalist commandments.
—
39. The Ramban’s Position Revisited
The Ramban was not simply on the side that says Judaism must be about distinctiveness over ethics. The Ramban may have genuinely believed there is nothing very wrong with being a good, decent Muslim — and may have acted accordingly. The Ramban’s relative leniency (e.g., permitting Jews to outwardly pretend to be Muslim under duress) stems from this view: just be a decent human being; don’t be overly anxious about the particularist elements if survival is at stake. Those who explicitly argue the opposite (that ethics must be Torah MiSinai, that universal ethics without Torah is insufficient) do so out of anxiety about the assimilation dilemma.
—
40. The Messianic / Long-Term Argument Restated
Jews lost to Christians and Muslims in countless ways throughout history — culturally, politically, materially. What was preserved by maintaining Judaism? The answer hasn’t fully arrived yet. Belief in Moshiach sometimes means believing that the long-term vindication of Jewish distinctiveness is still coming. Jews “missed all the waves” (Muslim golden ages, Christian civilizational achievements) but are still waiting for their “ultimate culmination.”
—
41. Final Qualification: Truth vs. Utility
The thinkers being discussed (Abarbanel, Ramban, etc.) were not utilitarians. They thought in terms of truth. They tried to argue that Jewish ethics is truer, not merely more useful. The “long-term” utilitarian-style argument is a modern reframing; the original thinkers wanted to claim substantive truth for Jewish universal ethics.
The final word: “I don’t know the answer. How would I know the answer?”
📝 Full Transcript
The Foundations of Ethics: Aristotle, Socrates, and the Organization of Knowledge in Jewish Tradition
Opening Remarks and Housekeeping
Instructor: Yeah, Baruch Hashem [Thank God], the thing is charged. I actually bought a new battery in the middle of the shiur [Torah class] last week so that it’s something problem. So you have to learn from this. You just, if you have $10 in your credit card, you just push a button and it comes. So very useful. Hopefully it will work. So that should last the whole shiur, a card. Like it’s not, I mean a battery.
Now, also my dear child broke my printer. So we can’t learn any text. About the situation, someone wants another new printer for their smadrish [study hall], they’re welcome. I was looking into this service where you lease one and they take care of it for you, but it’s kind of expensive, we’ll see. So now, like this.
Introduction: Starting from the Beginning
Instructor: This shiur is about starting from the beginning every time. Last week was Parshas Bereishis [the Torah portion of Genesis], this week is Parshas Noach [the Torah portion of Noah] already.
Digression: The Character of Noach
Instructor: I think he’s a great guy. How do I know it’s Noach? Like one of the very few people. Why do the meforshim [commentators] hate him? Because if it says in the title that he was a tzaddik [righteous person], like seriously, you’re going to believe that? It’s so strange. You’re going to buy it? One guy was like a tzaddik. Yeah, sure, he was a tzaddik. All right. Not like my rav [rabbi], man. Anyways. They don’t hate him. Some of them. Some meforshim liked him the hand figure that shouldn’t don’t like him usually for some reason there was a good guy okay.
Student: Yeah okay this is not the sheila [question] either that was just a joke to begin it.
Instructor: Otherwise I’ll have people in my head I only say jokes like that guy that says anyways.
The Study of Eight Chapters: Framework and Approach
Instructor: So, like this, we’re starting from the beginning, and the beginning meaning the beginning of this work that we’re studying, which is called Eight Chapters. It’s not really called that way, just the amount of chapters that it has. And last week was a pre-pre-hagdama [introduction to an introduction], and this is going to be only one pre-hagdama, I guess, or we’ll continue what we did last week, but I have more chiddushim [novel insights] and more controversies to make. And you’ll help me. If you don’t listen to me, I can’t do it. No point. I might as well talk to chat. So listen.
Since I can’t do textual work, which I did like some preparation for that, and I don’t have it here. Next time I’ll try to fix that situation. We’ll have to do this stam shmues [informal discussion] thing.
Recap: The Nature of Ethics as a Discipline
Instructor: And to summarize what we did last week, what we did last week was like this, that there’s an area of life, actually all areas of life, called doing areas of life well, living well. We call this thing ethics. I mean, from Greek, I think Aristotle kind of invented this ethics as an area of study, like most areas of study that Aristotle invented.
Invented doesn’t mean that he invented the concept of having a good life. He invented the concept of dividing wisdom into these very discrete masechtas [tractates/organized subjects]. This was Aristotle’s big innovation over Plato or previous philosophers.
The Pre-Socratic Focus on Physics
Instructor: Previous philosophers, some of them were interested in this, some were interested in that. Famously, Plato says of Socrates that he was only interested in ethics and not in physics. The previous philosophers, it’s very interesting, previous philosophers were all about understanding what the world is, what’s called physics, which is just a Greek word for nature, change. That’s what they were into.
Socrates’ Revolutionary Focus on Ethics
Instructor: And Socrates said that he’s not interested in how many elements things are, if they’re all water or all fire or whatever things they’re used to be interested in. He’s interested in how to live, which is what Aristotle gives the name ethics. So that’s an interesting point.
Student: And anyway, Aristotle, like most about Socrates or about Plato?
Instructor: It’s a point about Socrates. Plato is interested in physics at least sometimes, or in metaphysics and physics, what’s called later metaphysics, right? Like in ontology and how things are. But Socrates said that his primary question is only about how to live, not really interested in science.
Socrates as “The First Jew”
Instructor: He was the first Jew. Don’t tell me what the world is made out of. Tell me how to live. Of course, how to live has something to do with how the world is made out of. So it turns out that you can’t really separate these things. That’s a very important point. But this is an important spirit tzaddikim [righteous people].
Many people say this about Torah versus science, but it’s actually the one traditional philosophy that we have. Maybe if you’re Chinese or Japanese or Indian, you have different traditions. But us Yidden [Jews], we’re ultimatum of Socrates, the Socratic tradition, it’s called the Western philosophic tradition, and I started off with this guy that went around saying that I don’t really care so much about how things are, I care about how to live. That’s the word, first and last question that he wants to know, so very important. Socrates and Avraham Avinu [Abraham our forefather].
Aristotle’s Project: The Classification of Knowledge
Instructor: So, now, came along this other yid [Jew], his student’s student, named Aristotle. And Aristotle did this very important work of classifying areas of wisdom. Why am I talking about this? I don’t know. Classifying areas of disciplines. Classifying not for the purpose of classifying, but for the purpose of studying each thing separately.
Aristotle’s Method of Making Distinctions
Instructor: It was Aristotle’s big thing was making tzad dinim [categorical distinctions] out of everything, if you look. And his biggest tzad dinim that he made was just this corpus of works that he writes, which is how he taught, right? It’s not just that his books are organized that way. That’s how he taught and he taught people to think that way and to teach this way, to learn this way.
The Structure of Aristotelian Works
Instructor: To think, and literally every book starts off with what subject are we learning now? It’s always the first two chapters of each work. It’s like, where does this belong in the grand scheme of everything? Is this about this part of the world? Is this about that part of the world? Is this about how to live? Is this about how we should live? Is this about how humans should live? Is this about how a king should control the society?
He has this very clear—of course it becomes later more systemized—exactly how to organize all the sciences, what we call now disciplines, different disciplines. Aristotle was the inventor of there being you can go to university and you can study this discipline or that discipline.
The Jewish Parallel: Rebbi and the Organization of the Mishnah
Instructor: Or in the Jewish context, Rebbi [Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi] was the inventor of this. I don’t know if he literally was the inventor of this, but definitely the systemizer of this, and said that there’s such a thing called Masechta Shabbos [Tractate Shabbos], Masechta Pesachim [Tractate Pesachim]. And the Chumash [the Five Books of Moses], there isn’t those things. We don’t have those things as much either. The Talmud confuses things back a little bit. But the Mishnah is very much organized and very much in this ideal of order and everything should be in the correct place.
The Rambam’s Reorganization
Instructor: People very often talk about the Rambam [Maimonides] as going in a different order of the Mishnah, like the Rambam has a more systematic order. People say, well, our tradition is not really that. But this is, I think, missing the forest for the trees. Because if you compare Mishnah to what was before Mishnah, to something like Tanakh [the Hebrew Bible], or something like how Torah was taught before, the product of the Mishnah is at its most basic a project of organization, of putting things—that’s what the editor of the Mishnah, he didn’t make all the halachos [laws], right? It’s not most of them. What he invented was this organization work.
Shared Values Despite Different Principles
Instructor: Of course, maybe his principles of organization were different than Rambam’s principles of organization. We can get into details of that. But the value of having specific disciplines and saying I’m learning this, don’t talk to me about other things, I’m studying this aspect of reality or this aspect of law or this aspect of ethics, that’s something that the Mishnah definitely does believe in, and it’s one of the great projects of what we call the Rabbinic project, is doing this kind of philosophical work and telling us where things belong, what kind of area of reality or of knowledge there are.
Ethics as a Named Discipline
Instructor: So why are we saying this? This is a sort of preface to understand that there is this area of—yeah, it’s very important—there’s this area of inquiry, kind of questions called, again Aristotle gives it this word, it’s a Greek word, Aristotle explicitly says that he kind of makes up this word, not makes it up, but he kind of coined this usage of the word, calling ethics the area of study called the subject of asking and understanding and doing. What a good human life is.
Student: You looking for papers or pens?
Instructor: There’s a whole big drama.
Instructor: The correct behavior or asking what is a good life. Okay?
Masechta Avos: The Mishnah’s Ethical Tractate
Instructor: And as the Mishnah, as we were just saying, the Mishnah, this is somewhat connected to something we discussed last week, how the Talmud, the Gemara [the rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah] is not as organized. But the Mishnah very clearly has a Masechta called Avos [Tractate Avos/Ethics of the Fathers]. I don’t know who gave the names of the Masechtas, if Rebbi gave them or not. But we call it Avos.
The Question of Naming
Student: Do you know?
Instructor: It doesn’t say anywhere Masechta Avos, like Masechta Avos. Naming is a very hard thing. Who gave the names of the Masechtas? Nobody knows, right? It was named maybe, or maybe it’s saying that these are the ways of to behave.
Student: Or which doesn’t mean fathers. How do you know that it’s…
Instructor: Well, the Amoraim [the Talmudic sages who compiled the Gemara] didn’t think so, because they didn’t bring it down with their whole Avos.
Student: Well, it starts off…
Instructor: Well, because there’s no Mishnah that says Avos Musa [Moses received] or something. It starts off from the beginning. We discussed this last week. I don’t know if… It’s not… These are the kind of questions I don’t think you can answer from the text. I don’t think that it’s clear at all that the point of Avos is even to give the story of tradition.
The Organizational Principle of Avos
Instructor: It’s possible that it’s opposite, it’s just a way of organizing the ethical sayings by generation. Because remember, the Mishnah is a work, whoever created the Mishnah, again, Rebbi or possibly there was some organizations of Mishnah before him, wrote this, edited, compiled this work. I’m assuming that he gave the names, I don’t know if he gave all of them, some of the masechtas have more than one name, but most of them are kind of agreed upon, and he called this the service and he needed the principle of organization. Remember that now we say the Rambam for example made about—
[End of Chunk 1]
The Organizational Principles of Pirkei Avos: A Novel Interpretation of “Avos” as Categories Rather Than Fathers
The Purpose of Pirkei Avos: Chain of Tradition or Organizational Device?
Instructor: It starts off from the beginning. We discussed this last week. I don’t know if… I don’t remember… Yeah. Like, it’s not… I don’t… This is the kind of question that I don’t think you can answer from the text. I don’t think that it’s clear at all that the point of Avos [Pirkei Avos: Ethics of the Fathers, a tractate of the Mishnah] is even to give the story of tradition. It’s possible that it’s opposite. It’s just a way of organizing, recognizing the ethical sayings by generation, because remember, the Mishnah is a work, whoever created the Mishnah, again, possibly there were some organizations of Mishnah before him, wrote this, edited, compiled this work, and I’m assuming that he gave the names. I don’t know if he gave all of them, some of his sects have more than one name, but most of them are kind of agreed upon, and he called this Pesach Tesovos [Pirkei Avos], and he needed the principle of organization.
Organizational Principles: Mishnah vs. Rambam
Instructor: Remember that we say the Rambam [Maimonides], for example, made a much more logical organization. The Rambam always, or tries at least, to have his halacha [Jewish law] start with generalities and then go to the more particulars, which is like the logical way of teaching, deductively. The Mishnah definitely doesn’t reason half as deductively as the Rambam. It’s much more analogically. That’s why the principles of organization of the Mishnah are mostly analogy. I mean, this is similar to this, this is similar to that, a lot more than finding the general rule that encompasses both and then working from that, right?
Lomdus and the Formalization of Analogical Reasoning
Instructor: Lomdus [analytical Talmudic methodology], what I already discussed is what Lomdus does is it tries to deductify, how do you say, to formalize every analogy in the Talmud into a deduction. And it’s usually a very hard thing to do because they mostly don’t work that way. At least not explicitly. But okay, we can get that’s like a slight criticism or question of what kind of organization, but he still does this organization, right? And he has to put in all the halachas [laws] of Nezikin [damages] into like a certain kind of [organization], and then all the laws of property and so on.
[Brief interruption]
Instructor: We’re going to get stuck. It’s fine. We’ll get someone to clean it tomorrow.
The Editorial Work of the Mishnah’s Compiler
Instructor: So he’s doing all this work, who is editing the Mishnah, he’s doing all of this organizational work. His biggest thing is to organize things and he names things. Naming is very hard by the way. I think in general by the way, the Jewish traditional names for things are kind of bad, meaning, it’s fine.
The Problem of Traditional Jewish Names
Student: What, how I know this? What do you mean? What, like, examples are you bad?
Parsha Names: Non-Descriptive Labels
Instructor: The example is Parshas Noach [the Torah portion of Noah]. It’s not about Noach, is it? Right? Bereshis [Genesis] is kind of about Bereshis [beginning], but it’s just luck, because it’s also the first word. But Noach is not about Noach, nor is Lech Lecha [the portion beginning “Go forth”] about Lech Lecha, and so on. Right, Parshas [Torah portions] have bad names. Bad names meaning nondescriptive names, names that are just picked from the beginning of them.
Mishnaic Tractate Names: Generally Better
Instructor: Mishnah has generally better names, like Shabbos [Sabbath], Eruvin [ritual boundaries], Pesachim [Passover], Teharos [purities], Uktzin [stems], and so on, they usually have better names. That’s an example of a bad name, that’s why there’s a tradition to call it Maseches Yom Tov [Tractate of Festivals]. Descriptive name, probably not the original name because it’s better, remember the rule. Maseches Beitza [Tractate Egg] is not a good name, just named after the first Mishnah.
Student: What other Mishnahs don’t have very good names?
Instructor: I think most of them are named well.
Student: So this is a little bit too particular for most Maseches [tractates]?
Instructor: OK, but you have to give the guy some slack.
Student: I didn’t say slack. I thought I was going to say some of the others.
Instructor: Most Maseches are named correctly. I thought you were going to say Bava [gate] is the one that just names it.
Student: No, it’s not. It’s named Maseches Nezikin [Tractate of Damages]. It’s just three parts of Maseches Nezikin, right?
The Broader Pattern of Poor Naming Conventions
Instructor: Okay, but when I say the Jewish principles of names are usually bad, it’s that we have some three-volume book called [Tanakh divided into Torah, Nevi’im, Kesuvim], which are three very bad names.
Student: No, not three. Two of them are not very descriptive.
Instructor: There’s not really like a category of book called [Kesuvim], just means catch-all category, everything that’s not Nevi’im [Prophets]. And Nevi’im is also not a good category because we, in some Tanakhs [Hebrew Bibles] that you will look today, you’ll see they have something called [Nevi’im Rishonim and Nevi’im Acharonim], which are two different kinds of books. There’s no connection, Sefer Shmuel [Book of Samuel] is not Navi [prophecy], like it’s written by a Navi [prophet], but it’s narrative, it’s history.
The Septuagint’s Superior Organization
Instructor: In the Septuagint [Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible], the Greeks were better at, the Greeks meaning the Greek Jews, right? This is Jewish work. This book, the Greek Bible, very Jewish book, and they organized the Tanakh, of course, they organized the Tanakh into kind of four parts, or five parts, like the Torah, which is the law, okay? Then they have historical books, which include a whole bunch of, yeah, Divrei Hayamim [Chronicles] and Ezra and Esther and so on. And they have prophetic books, which are the four big prophetic books that we know. And then they have wisdom books, right? Wisdom or poetry books that can be divided sometimes further, right? Like Mishlei [Proverbs], Koheles [Ecclesiastes] and so on.
Student: I think it’s a contrast to Christians who don’t have any kind of result in Old and New.
Instructor: No, no, the Christians accept this. Like within the Old Testament this is usually how it’s divided and this is actually a very correct topical [organization]. This is not that way.
Student: I’ve always thought Christians had…
Instructor: No, no, no. This is correctly, correctly topically organized. There is a historical reason for our organization which we’re not allowed to tell you now, but it doesn’t tell you anything. Like Nevi’im and Kesuvim are not categories, they’re kind of not tell you anything about it. And like I told you, the Parshiyos [Torah portions], things like that, we’re used to having kind of bad names.
A Novel Interpretation: What Does “Avos” Actually Mean?
The Standard Assumption and Its Problems
Instructor: So back to my discussion about Pirkei Avos, like Avos is not a descriptive name. By the way, Avos doesn’t translate to a chain of tradition, does it? Fathers, I don’t know what it means. It just means fathers. It doesn’t mean nothing. We do know that the Mishnah uses fathers, like this is the Mishnah’s, just to be clear. Let me make a case for my chiddush [novel interpretation] today. Okay? This is a chiddush. I just made it up. Okay?
Yeah, everyone assumes that Avos means our father. Now, this is a very weird explanation. I didn’t look at any chiddush today. I’m telling you myself. I told you. Avos is never used or almost never used in the sense of the rabbis who carry the tradition. Do you know one more place in rabbinic literature where they want to say the people who have carried our tradition, like what we call them father, like in other traditions there are like you have church fathers, right? And church fathers are not literally fathers but whatever, like they’re not really the people who carry the tradition, they’re just the early thinkers of the church.
Student: That makes me think that there’s such a word.
Instructor: Of course there’s such a word. Nobody disagrees with such a word. We have, we have words like Av [father], like Av Beis Din [head of the court], the father of the Beis Din [rabbinical court]. We do have such words, but you don’t like Avos to be a name, right? Nashim [women], everyone knows what they are. Seder Nashim [Order of Women], or Maseches Moed [Tractate of Festivals]. Moed is another weird name, but it means, b’chalamayad [in any case], right? Chagigah [festival offering], everyone knows that chagigah is a category. You find it 10,000 times, talk about chagigah, and that’s the Maseches by chagigahs, right? Bava Kamma [First Gate] is not a descriptive name, like I said, it just means the first gate, but part of a book. But Nedarim [vows], everyone knows, you learn the Shas [Talmud] 10,000 times about nedarim, this is the Maseches about [vows], okay? Find me where we talk about avos in this sense. Like, where? When? Weird, right?
Student: Biblically, or…?
Instructor: Rabbinically, even biblically also. I mean, Avos, like Avraham Avinu [Abraham our father], right?
Student: Yeah.
Instructor: Avos usually means the patriarchs, right? Avraham Yitzchak Yaakov [Abraham, Isaac, Jacob] are Avos. Because Avos we have, right? Avraham Yitzchak Yaakov. And they’re literal fathers also. Of course, when we call them fathers we don’t just mean the literal part, but they are literal fathers. But do you ever have… Do they call the Nasi [president of the Sanhedrin] an Av ever?
Student: Yeah, it’s only Av Beis Din then. It takes on a general term.
Instructor: It’s possible, but you have to find. We have search. You’re going to tell me if you find the concept of it anywhere.
Student: Should I do searches?
Instructor: I mean, the concept that I can… We’re all big time, we don’t remember, right? So, it’s fine. I’ve also generally… Ah, wait.
Student: What?
The Actual Mishnaic Usage: Avos as Categories
Student: I also used to mean?
Instructor: Very good. Very good. So you’re getting to what I want to claim. This is what I’m going to claim or claiming today. The second, what I’m claiming is that, now I do know of a use of the word Avos in Mishnah. Okay? You want me to search for you here? Mishnah, Chazal [the Sages], where’s my thing? Okay here. Mishnah, Avos, just the word Avos. Okay very simple.
[Attempting digital search]
Instructor: Probably only gets you the Pirkei Avos of this. It’s a low vet [the letter vav]. I’m searching this private. Why is it low vet? If it’s low vet, then it’s bad. Computer doesn’t work though.
Student: Yeah, it’s not loading or something.
Instructor: Okay. All right, we’ll do this. It’s not finding doesn’t make sense it says Avos, it’s right, it’s not finding me anything. No, it’s not working, my search thing. In any case, whatever I’m searching is not working.
Student: Could just do Mishnah if you want.
Instructor: I need the mother computer has the sort that I’m looking for. Okay. Listen. In the Holy Mishnah, in the concept of Avos, there’s Av Beis Din, that’s correct. Nasi and Av Beis Din is mentioned in Chagigah. But other than that, Avos generally in the Mishnah is used in the concept of Klalim [general principles], right? Avos Nezikin [primary categories of damages], Avos Melachos [primary categories of forbidden Sabbath labor].
Student: Yeah, like greater categories, things like that.
Instructor: Right? Klalim, right? Generalities, what’s called kinds and right of a settlement so on. Of course, taking murder doesn’t know exactly what Avos Melachos means, there’s like we discussed there’s this whole discussion of what it’s supposed to mean and what do we learn from it blah blah blah blah blah, but obviously Avos has a rabbinic meaning in this concept, okay?
The Emerging Chiddush
Instructor: So what I think and I’m telling you a shot, my shot is I don’t have any good reason to think even what the Rambam says like, remember it will tell you something important…
[End of chunk 2]
The Mishnah’s Chain of Transmission vs. The Rambam’s Authentication Project: A Critical Analysis
The Rambam’s Two Stated Purposes for Pirkei Avot
Instructor: Of course, the Gemara doesn’t know exactly what *Avos Atoma* [the fathers of impurity] means, like we discussed. There’s this whole discussion of what it’s supposed to mean, and what do we learn from it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But obviously, *Avos* [fathers/ancestors] has a rabbinic meaning in this concept. So what I think, and I’m telling you my *pshat* [interpretation] is, I don’t have any good reason to think—I think, even what the Rambam [Maimonides] says, remember, I’ll tell you something important.
Student: You found someone telling me?
Instructor: No. Good, so, listen, what I’m saying is like this. It’s missing stuff here for some reason, I don’t know how it could be. Okay, do you have what I’m saying? What I’m saying is that the Rambam says that *Pirkei [Avot]* [Ethics of the Fathers] has two purposes. The Rambam says in his preface to the Mishnah two purposes:
The first is to tell us the truth of the tradition—like the unbroken chain from Sinai of *Torah Sheba’al Peh* [the Oral Torah] all the way to *Shimon HaTzadik* [Shimon the Righteous], basically, which is not very interesting, by the way. If the Mishnah were trying to do that, it’s doing a pretty bad job, because you can’t give a genealogy and say and skip like 10,000 generations.
Student: Like well magical 39 then yes?
Instructor: Oh yeah, we remember that guy. After that there was a kind of unnamed—I’m gonna find a Mishnah where it says there’s such a thing, something like that.
Student: It also says in the Midrash—
Instructor: Okay, so you found something, but not of great proof.
The Rambam’s Authentication Method: An Islamic-Influenced Chain
So what I say is like this: The Rambam says that it has two purposes. One is to tell us—it means like the greats or something like that, these great people. It could be that in short you say it’s not—it doesn’t disprove it, it’s possible. It’s still possible, like it’s possible, it’s possible that that’s the word, the meaning.
The Rambam says that it always has two purposes. One is to tell us the truth of the tradition by giving us this unbroken chain. And I’m claiming that the Mishnah, if it’s trying to do that, it’s doing a pretty bad job at it, because it just like—by the way, because the Mishnah literally doesn’t know anything that was not known.
The Rambam’s Historical Context: Responding to Karaite Challenges
Gosh, I shouldn’t be doing this, right? Like, if someone wants to tell you that the Rambam—just to be clear, the Rambam is not speaking the same context as the Mishnah, right? It’s possible that the Mishnah had something similar, but the Rambam has this context where there’s this threat, there’s this, how do you call it? There’s a challenge to the authority of the rabbis, right? There’s Karaites, mostly, who say, well, we have a Torah, that’s cool. The Torah is great, they’re Protestants, it’s enough. And then the rabbis come and say all kinds of things. Who said? I could say things too. That’s basically Anan’s time.
And the Rambam, in order to answer this, does this Muslim thing, and it has a word in Islam, I’m forgetting the word, where every *hadith* [Islamic tradition/saying] has a chain of transmission attached to it. And there’s like a whole area of study in Islam called, whatever it’s called, studying these chains. Like this is a reliable chain, this is an unreliable chain, blah, blah, blah.
And based on this kind of language, the Rambam tries to do that for the whole *Torah Sheba’al Peh* [Oral Torah], right? The Rambam is the—I don’t know if the first one, like Rav Sherira [Gaon] did something similar—but the Rambam does in his *Hakdama* [introduction], both in the *Hakdama* of *Peirush HaMishnah* [Commentary on the Mishnah] and more strongly gives us this chain, and he even counts it: 40 generations from Moshe [Moses] to Rav Ashi, and he gives each name—like this guy received from that guy and that guy from that guy—and that is supposed to show us that there’s like an authentic transmission of the Torah.
Student: Wait, wait. Wait. *Kasha’s* [questions/difficulties] on the Rambam’s chain—but there’s the Rambam’s chain. So wait, wait.
The Rambam’s Additional Argument from Biblical Authority
Instructor: So now the Rambam does that, and we see that he needs to do a lot more than the Mishnah does, because he’s trying to give you something that seems reliable, right?
Student: Yeah, but doesn’t he say that all these *Tzeddukim* [Sadducees] and the Karaites or whatever, right, says that they all believe in the Bible, so if they believe in the Bible, then the Bible says to listen to the rabbis.
Instructor: Yeah, that’s another one of his arguments, yes. But he still needs to give—and it’s true that the Rambam thinks there’s a lot less authentic tradition than people assume—but he still needs to give some kind of chain of like where we get any of these. Like the Rambam still thinks that the skeleton of the *Torah Sheba’al Peh* [Oral Torah] is these *shemu’ot* [received traditions], these things that we’ve heard all the way back to Moshe. And to him, one way of making that look good—I say the word “look good,” like to convince you of its authenticity—is to give you an unbroken chain of transmission, like this person from that person, that person from that person.
The Mishnah’s Chain: A Schematic Outline, Not a Detailed Transmission Record
The Rambam himself knows that the Mishnah does not do this, right? The Mishnah, including *Pirkei Avot*, which the Rambam thinks is doing the same thing that he is doing—the Mishnah doesn’t do that. The Mishnah does like this: The Mishnah knows whoever is mentioned in the Bible—thank you very much, I’ve read the same book—the elders of the people after the time of *Yehoshua* [Joshua] were still fine. Okay.
From Yehoshua to the Prophets: The First Major Gap
It’s a kind of the *Nevi’im* [Prophets]. Oops. You know how long it was between those two things? Who are these *Zekeinim* [elders] anyways? These are the *Zekeinim* that still know *Yehoshua*. Who are these *Nevi’im* also? Well, first name *Navi* [prophet], isn’t it? Who is the first name *Navi*?
Student: *Shmuel* [Samuel].
Instructor: Very good. So *Shmuel* was—in the book of *Nevi’im* starts like, sort of starts in *Shmuel*, right?
Student: *Shmuel*.
Instructor: You can assume that the Mishnah when he says *Zekeinim* means also *Shoftim* [Judges]—why not? I don’t know, maybe he does. But then *Nevi’im*—but the first name *Navi* that we know of, more or less, there’s some *Nevi’im* in *Shoftim*, they’re unnamed—the first name *Navi* or official one—
Student: What?
Instructor: Yeah, first name *Navi* in the Torah is *Shmuel*.
Student: *Pinchas* [Phinehas] maybe his name?
Instructor: Maybe he practices the function of *Navi*. The first name one is *Shmuel*, which was a very long time—like there’s a few hundred years gap between that and the *Zekeinim* from *Yehoshua*.
Student: What?
Instructor: Well they’re *Nevi’im*, but they were in times of Moshe—it doesn’t help us, right? It’s very clear *Nevi’im* when we call up *Nevi’im*, right, when we talk about this.
Gaps Within the Prophetic Period: The Achiyah HaShiloni Solution
Now of course the *Nevi’im* also—now just to be clear, *Nevi’im* we have then *Shmuel*, and then after *Shmuel* there’s some other named prophets, but then all the way down to *Eliyahu HaNavi* [Elijah the Prophet], nobody knows who was the prophets in between. Of course that’s why we have this magic person called *Achiyah* [*Achiyah HaShiloni*]—I need to solve this problem. It was a great—it worked for the Rambam, why can’t it work for *HaBaal Shem Tov* [the founder of Hasidism]?
But it’s very funny because what if you—what if you do a *mesorah* [tradition] of Torah that’s based on the fact that *Achiyah HaShiloni* lived from the times of David or maybe from *Yetziat Mitzrayim* [the Exodus from Egypt] all the way to—because of course *Ibn Ezra* is great at being critical of other random people’s traditions but not at his own, like everyone else.
So my point is—no no, I’m not here, I’m not here to make fun of the Mishnah. I’m just trying to explain to you that the Mishnah is not doing what the Rambam thinks it’s doing. The Mishnah is not giving an unbroken chain of transmission, because it’s giving like this most schematized thing.
The Prophetic Period to Anshei Knesset HaGedolah: Another Gap
Yeah, there were the Moshe and *Yehoshua*, and then there was the *Zekeinim* and the *Nevi’im*, and after the *Nevi’im* there was something called *Anshei Knesset HaGedolah* [the Men of the Great Assembly]. Again the huge gap, because the last *Navi* was—well, you could pretend that the last *Navi* was the first of the—but then until *Shimon HaTzadik*, more or less agreed upon that there’s a gap of 200 years, nobody really disagrees with that. Maybe you could make the gap smaller to make it like only one generation, 70 years, still a gap. There’s still someone in between.
*Shimon HaTzadik* was *me’Anshei Knesset HaGedolah* [from the Men of the Great Assembly], but that doesn’t mean he literally wasn’t the times of *Ezra* [Ezra the Scribe]. Nobody thinks that. He wasn’t the times of Alexander [the Great]. The places that we know that there’s a gap, or people know that we know there’s something going on from—
The Core Methodological Point: The Mishnah Provides No New Information
I didn’t say that these gaps are real. I’m just saying that if your purpose is to convince people—it doesn’t say—I didn’t say it, it’s not my claim. Whoever—I’m not claiming anything. I’m just claiming that if the Mishnah—very nice, I’m not saying it’s not true. I’m just saying, of course, it doesn’t say anywhere, and there’s no remnant in the *Nevi’im*, that the *Nevi’im* functioned as some kind of authoritative transmitters of the Torah. That’s something that I’m invented.
Student: Yeah, like, but then even the Gemara doesn’t like conceptualize it as like—
Instructor: And they authorize the next generation of *Hoshea* [Hosea] to *Amos*. Like, hello.
Student: But the problem is also that Dustin jumps from *Achiyah* to *Ahiyah*.
Instructor: Very good. Okay, they met. Some of them met.
Clarification: Not Disputing the Truth of the Tradition
Now listen, this is not the problem. My problem is I’m not here to argue with the Mishnah. Everything is true all the way until the things that I tell you are *Yishmael* [Ishmael], *peshat* [simple interpretation], and Talmud, and Shabbat. It’s true. It’s an unbroken chain. I can assume that. Like, why not? Of course people give their interpretations, but that’s legit. That’s no question.
I’m just saying that the Mishnah is not trying to convince you of its authenticity by doing this Muslim thing of giving you the whole chain of names, because it doesn’t do that! The Rambam does that, the Rambam is trying to do that.
The Rambam’s Chain: More Convincing, But Still Limited
Now of course, to me that’s not very convincing, because if you would have like one name that’s not mentioned anywhere and you say, this was the guy that we got from, then that’s a witness to your tradition. But if your whole list is based on texts, and thank you very much that we got the same texts—I mean of course there’s like internal evidence of the texts having some contradictions—I’m not contradicting, I don’t think that, I think the tradition is true.
Much better because he’s telling you things that nobody would know of course for the—for the things—and some things that he knows he’s giving you an actual tradition. Maybe that tradition was also written down in the yeshiva. Of course, you know, after some generations it’s very hard to remember anything if it’s not written down. But he’s giving you something real. He’s giving you information that you would not have had other than that.
The Mishnah’s Chain: Common Knowledge, Not Forensic Proof
The Mishnah is not—the Mishnah itself is not giving you any information you would not have known if you just grew up in the Mishnah’s times. Everyone knows *Shimon HaTzadik* was the first *Tanna* [early rabbinic sage], and then the—
[End of chunk 3]
Pirkei Avot: The Meaning of “Avot” as Principles and the Organization of the Mishnah
Critique of the Rambam’s Reading: Comparison with the Sherira Gaon
So, the Shurigans [likely referring to the Sherira Gaon’s Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaon] do a more better job in this. Much better, because he’s telling you things that nobody would know, of course, for the Goyenim [non-Jews], for the things, and some things that he knows, he’s giving you an actual tradition. Maybe that tradition was also written down in the Yeshiva. Of course, you know, after some generations, it’s very hard to remember anything if it’s not written down, but he’s giving you something real, he’s giving you information that you would not have had other than that.
The Mishnah itself is not giving you any information you would not have known if you just grew up in the Mishnah’s times. Everyone knows Shimon HaTzadik [Shimon the Righteous] was the first and then there was this list of the Zogos [Zugot: pairs of rabbinic leaders] was like a known list. These are like the primordial so-called—these are not unknown figures we wouldn’t have heard of. You wouldn’t have—but the Ravid HaNasi [Rabbeinu HaKadosh: Rabbi Judah the Prince] heard of—that’s the Ravim’s [Rambam’s] question. The Ravim’s big question when he tries to give this argument is why did Ravid HaNasi only mention the last few generations before him and not the whole thing, and he gives an answer which is maybe a reasonable answer, but what it doesn’t answer is that the Ravid HaNasi didn’t have this question.
The Speaker’s Argument Against the Rambam’s Proposition
So this is me arguing against the Rambam’s proposition that the purpose of the first few Mishnahs [Mishnayot] and B’rik Ovis [Pirkei Avot] is to give us the witness of tradition for the truth of the Hirsh Ba’al Peh [Torah She’baal Peh: the Oral Torah]. I don’t think that’s a very convincing argument. I think it makes sense in the Rambam’s context. Both the Rambam is facing these problems. Of course, in the times of the Tanarim [Tannaim: Mishnaic sages] there were also people that denied the authority, but not in the same way.
Digression: The Tzeddukim and the Karaites
I think the Rambam conflates the Tzedukim [Tzeddukim: Sadducees] and the Qura’im [Karaites] in a wrong way, starkly wrong, and also there’s not really good evidence—you know that there’s no evidence in Hazal [Chazal: the rabbinic sages] that the Tzedukim didn’t believe in the Hirsh Ba’al—it was invented by the Rambam. They didn’t believe in—they had Makhlouks [Machlokot: disagreements]. Nobody—they also didn’t believe in Nisr Hamhaim [Techiyat HaMeitim: resurrection of the dead] and so on. They didn’t believe in a bunch of things, yes, which you know, who the Quran says—yeah, no, the Tzedukim had disagreements. They didn’t believe in Malachim [angels]. They didn’t believe in a bunch of things.
Student: But the Sufis—
Instructor: Josephus has like a list of dogmas, what they don’t believe in. But what I’m saying is that there’s no—the Rambam’s—this is all totally sidetracking—but Dramas [Rambam’s] formalization of Tzedukim as a kind of proto-Qarayim [Karaites], and he literally conflates them as the same group—maybe he didn’t literally think of that, but he thinks that they’re the same structure and says that these are people that are Protestants. They believe only in the written book, the written law—is not really true.
What is true is they have, you could say, their own traditions. Of course everyone—Karayim also have their own traditions. But there are Makhloykes in Nalokha [Machlokot in Halakha: halakhic disagreements]. They had Makhloykes with their Prushim [Perushim: Pharisees] or whatever you want to call them, the mainstream—so what we call the mainstream at least—about the interpretation of the Torah. But they didn’t have this point that you should not have interpretations. There’s no evidence for that, and it’s not true. They had their own interpretations, sometimes more literal and sometimes less literal. There’s no—there’s nothing. I mean, some things, like we say, there’s no source for the Torah to disagree with it. But they disagree with it in a Protestant way, like it doesn’t say, so therefore it’s not true. That was just an argument. And we think that’s a good argument. We have to answer that argument. It’s a good argument.
Realize, Halachim HaShmash Pesina [Halakha L’Moshe MiSinai: law given to Moses at Sinai] is like the clodge [kludge: a workaround solution] that answers this kind of argument. We have nothing to say. Okay, listen, we don’t know either why it says, but this is what our fathers did, so we’re doing it. But generally we do try to answer it, right? All these stories—we try to answer because our tradition does believe—of course we don’t have tradition that’s about bad, but part of the tradition is that we argue based on these texts.
Okay, I’m getting into very sidetracked things. Point is, dectomized discussion [the Tzeddukim discussion]—if the Mishnah is trying to answer the Tadukim [Tzeddukim], firstly there were no such Tadukim in the times of the Mishnah. They were in the times of the Rambam. Secondly, even if there were—make sense—even if there were, this would be a bad answer.
What the Ram [Rambam] does is a somewhat good answer, but what the Mishnah does is definitely not a good answer. Therefore, for me, it’s like Loewy claims that Pirkei Ovis is not here, that the first purpose of the Ram claims of Pirkei Ovis is lo nachon [not correct]. This is a sheen in Rambam [a reading/interpretation by the Rambam], but I hope we’re allowed to argue with Rambam.
The Legitimacy of Disagreeing with the Rambam on Pshat
Student: Why is sheen? Are we allowed to?
Instructor: I might leave, but—
Student: You’re going to leave?
Instructor: See how it’s going. Whenever it comes to pshat [the plain meaning] in the—I want to tell you a rule, the rule that I learned from Rav Shmuel Aben-Tibba [Rav Shmuel Ibn Tibbon: the Rambam’s translator and student]. When it comes to the truth, the Rambam was always right. When it comes to Pesach and Pesachim [pshat in pesukim: the plain meaning of verses], it’s usually wrong.
So now, Rav Shmuel Aben-Tibba himself—this is the book that I was reading this morning as preparation for this year, and maybe we’ll get to the part that we’re trying to get to—but Rav Shmuel Aben-Tibba, which was like the Rambam’s premier student in some ways, at least a premier European student, and the Rambam had zero students in Egypt, or maybe one that he wrote the murder [Moreh: the Guide for the Perplexed] to and it didn’t work out. But his main student wrote on the Rambam comments. Like, after translating, he sometimes wrote comments. And on one thing, he says, I don’t know what’s going on. The Rambam must have been sleeping when he wrote this. He literally used the most extreme language. And of course, he says that he’s a great man, but I think that he misread it, because it doesn’t say what he says. It says opposite, whatever.
So we have a tradition for—that you could argue with the Rambam for sure, and Pshatan the Mishnah [pshat in the Mishnah]. The Rambam is not always right about that. It doesn’t mean there’s flaws. His ideas are wrong, but it doesn’t mean that his readings are sometimes wrong.
The Positive Thesis: “Avot” Means Principles
So like I said, Rambam’s goal of trying to establish the authority of Tarshav Pe’eh [Torah She’baal Peh], very nice goal. But him saying that this is what the empirical Ovis [Pirkei Avot] is doing doesn’t convince me. If it convinces you, you could let me know.
Linguistic Evidence for “Avot” as Principles
So therefore, I don’t—although like you told me, the language of Ovis [Avot] meaning like the great sages does exist. It says Ovis Olam [Avot Olam: fathers/sages of the world] a few times. In Mishneh it’s once, and in Medrash [Midrash], more times. And so on. So it’s possible. But even more possible, what’s more probable and matches more into Lashon HaMishnah [the language of the Mishnah] is this language that we have at least four or five times, like you said, the Savoram [Savora’im: post-Talmudic sages] in the beginning of Avakama [Bava Kamma] and some other places, mostly in Avakama, right?
The Conceptual Framework: Avot and Toladot
Roda Sahal [Rashi] still gets to try to explain this. It counts the Aves [Avot] as principles, right? In Greek, Aves is a principle, right? Like I said before, a generalization, a kind, a clal [kelal: a general rule], or something, just another word that’s not in the Torah, right? Clal, an all, right? Clal just means an all, a whole, right? Or av [father/principle], as distinct of like a one, a ben [son/derivative], like a ish [individual], which is like the child of the induction, right? Like, hoiloda [tolada: derivative], like, do we have the language of giving birth to prepositions? Yeah, of course we do.
Something called Binyan Av [constructing a father-principle]. Did you hear of it? One of the main things, like if you read K’lelai Lacha [Klalei HaTalmud: principles of the Talmud], that’s what’s called Midas Adrash [Middot Adrash: hermeneutical principles]. Midas Adrash, again the word Midas is also a general word. But Midas Adrash, which is like the main innovation of Chachamim [the Sages]—there are 13 of them and different lists of them. Like basically all of the 13 are the doctrine. I know people disagree with this. Basically all of them are different kinds of ways of generalizing things to understand them or to give birth to new things.
And one of the main ones, like klal leprat [kelal u’frat: a general rule and a specific case], klal is just a—klal means when you have the Pesach [Pasuk: verse] itself giving you a general rule, generality, right? Then there’s something called binyanav [Binyan Av]. Binyanav is creating a father out of—this is an analogy, right? Induction, right? You see, binyanav mekos ve’echet [Binyan Av mi’katuv echad: constructing a principle from one verse] or binyanav mekos ve’echet [mi’shnei ketuvim: from two verses] and so on. Binyanav means, if I have an example, I could make that example into a av and then av mekos ve’echet and so on, right?
Tolder [Toladah] means the result of the syllogism that’s called father. So this is a very classical rabbinic language for principles or greater premises or rules, generalities that give birth to particular rules are called oves and tolders [Avot and Toladot]. So oves and tolders—so therefore, that’s what I’m saying, I think all of them—maybe because our shavah [Gezerah Shavah: argument by analogy] is just an analogy, but yeah, that’s why you can’t do, because your analogy has to usually be based on a deduction. Usually an analogy is only worth something if it’s based on some kind of hidden generality or deduction kind that it’s talking about. That’s why if you think you can make a Zereshava [Gezerah Shavah] yourself, you can’t, because usually when there’s a Zereshava it’s just an Asmachta [mnemonic support], just giving you the analogy, but you have to know the actual deduction behind the analogy. This is a basic—
Conclusion: Pirkei Avot as “Chapters of Principles”
Now, therefore, oves generally means principles. So I claim that the most important oves is the most important principles of what? The most important principles.
The Organizational Principle of Pirkei Avot
Now, as to the fact that Pirkei Oves, at least in the beginning, is organized by generations, that’s just a principle of organization because you have to understand, that goes back to what I was saying, that Rabbeinu HaKadosh [Rabbi Judah the Prince], and definitely the kind of aphorisms that he’s quoting here, right? There isn’t a good way to organize them.
How Rabbeinu HaKadosh Organized the Mishnah
If you have Masechetes [tractates], like, imagine—I don’t know if this is like a start, but imagine Rabbi Danasi [Rabbeinu HaKadosh] having this like long encyclopedia of about all kind of stuff, and jumbled around. Like if you look at the Sefta [Tosefta], like one of the different Seftas is less organized than the Mishnah. Definitely did a lot of work of organization. Now, and what does he do? He takes this big, right, Rabbi Danasi and Raman [Rambam] did something similar, literally, like the Chaznishah [Mishneh Torah], Raman works with index cards, he must have, actually we know, we have some of his index cards in the Genizah [Cairo Genizah], right?
Evidenes [Rabbeinu HaKadosh] is going with his index card in this list of Rameh’s [Tannaitic] statements, and he mixes himself six big boxes, and within these six big boxes he has little boxes, and he starts—I promise you that he did that, either in his head or with literal boxes, I don’t know, how did he do it? He has these boxes, Evidenes has six big boxes, he’s a gree [wealthy/important person], he can afford boxes, and maybe he had a staff, I’m sure he had a staff, he had a staff probably working for him, and they get, whenever someone comes and says, may I say something? He says, okay, what is this about? Oh, this is about some mitzvah [commandment], okay, into the moed [Moed: festival laws] box. And then he takes the whole moed box and he divides it up to the 12 moseks [masekhtot: tractates] of moed. How do you think it worked? It wasn’t magic. That’s how you work, right?
So now, for most of that, that’s why sometimes there’s something in the wrong place. It goes like, it got into the wrong box. What do you want from him?
Student: No, I’m serious.
Instructor: Like, he’s a human, right? Or it’s like, the best place. It’s very hard to organize everything think perfectly or impossible or useless.
Student: Yeah, I don’t know if it’s of course—I don’t think it was the first what a mistake—no way.
Instructor: So no, so I’m telling you what about my theory is like this. This is my theory that I’m making up right now. If you want to disagree with my theory is like this, is being given on what I think is like this. By the way, there are other books that are organized on this principle, so—
The Organizational Principle of Pirkei Avot: Why Ethical Aphorisms Are Arranged by Generation
The Challenge of Organizing Ethical Material
Instructor: Or it’s like the best place. It’s very hard to organize everything perfectly. Or impossible or useless. Yeah, I don’t know. Of course, I don’t think it was the first. Maybe the first mission was also a mistake.
Student: What do you mean a mistake?
Instructor: No way. No, I’m telling you. My theory is like this. This is my theory that I’m making up right now if you want to disagree with it. My theory is like this. It’s being given. But I think it’s like this. By the way, there are other books that are organized on this principle.
So, for every subject of law, generally, he has, and sometimes there’s even a little agoda [aggadah: narrative/non-legal material] that he thinks, ah, this belongs to Masechet Rosh Hashanah [the tractate on the Jewish New Year], let’s wrap it in that box. Okay. Or Masechet Ketubot [the tractate on marriage contracts], or wherever. No problem.
Now, there’s all these… now he has also, there’s, by the way, there are for sure more statements that he cut out of his thing. Okay, he has some kind of principle that tells him what’s important enough to be in his main canon book. Okay. Now there’s a bunch of things that he judges, on the one hand this is very important, on the one hand it belongs in the canon. You can’t just leave it in a midrash [rabbinic interpretive literature]. There’s going to be a midrash about lev tov [good heart]? No, no, no. It’s got to be in the Shisha Sidrei Mishnah [the six orders of the Mishnah], the whole masechta [tractate]. It has to be in the Mishnah.
Now okay, so let’s make the whole masechta organized, putting together all these ethical sayings, right? Aphorisms. These sayings that they said about how to live your life. Very important.
The Problem of Internal Organization
Okay now, how do you internally organize that? Now in general when you organize the Sukkah [tractate on the festival booth], you kind of organize in a very logical way. Two perakim [chapters] about lulav [palm branch used on Sukkot], two perakim about sukkah [the booth itself], one perek about the order of the avodah [Temple service] and Simchat Beit HaShoevah [water-drawing celebration]. Everything works.
How do you organize Pirkei Avot [Ethics of the Fathers]? Do you have a better way to organize it? I challenge you. Tell me how. If I give you the list, you can do it yourself. By the way, I’ve got colleagues working on such things. I’ll give you all the statements of the ancient Tannaim [early rabbinic sages] about ethics, and you organize them for me. Put them together.
The Biblical Precedent: The Book of Mishlei (Proverbs)
You know something? I have a biblical work to show you how impossible this is. Have you ever heard of the book of Mishlei [Proverbs]?
Student: What is Mishlei?
Instructor: A compendium made by Chizkiyahu’s [King Hezekiah’s] staff. That’s explicit there. I didn’t make this up. Bible criticism? Chizkiyahu HaMelech [King Hezekiah]! Anshei Chizkiyahu HaMelech [the men of King Hezekiah] had a staff. He was a great king. He was rich.
Student: Of course, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah.
Instructor: He was a rich guy, yeah. And he, like many rich people, like kings, he sees himself also in some sense as the teacher of the people. He doesn’t just think he’s there to fight their wars. He’s also there to teach them. And he inherits a box of manuscripts ascribed to Shlomo HaMelech [King Solomon], or mostly to Shlomo HaMelech, I don’t know. And they’re just random aphorisms, right?
“Ben chacham yesam achav, ben kesil tugat imo” [A wise son gladdens his father, but a foolish son is his mother’s grief]. Oops, next one. “Me’evet tipesh” [something about a fool], whatever, “yimloch beben me’evish” [will rule over…], whatever.
The Structure of Mishlei
And there’s two and a half… the beginning, the first two chapters of Mishlei are actually longer things, and the last one is. But besides for that, most of them are like this. And what does he do? He does nothing. He just puts them all together in a big book and he publishes it. And he makes sure to try to not have duplicates. There’s actually some duplicates that he got through. Sometimes it’s the same, literal same pasuk [verse] twice. Or wolf by a word [off by a word]. Obviously just a different version of the same thing. That’s all.
People have tried to do a thematic organization of Mishlei. It’s actually pretty hard. I’ve tried it myself. It can be done, but it’s not clear that you gain a lot by doing it. It becomes boring. Four times the same thing. At least if you’re reading, oh, again.
Student: I think also it would be the organization putting his interpretation in too much.
Instructor: Of course. All organizations are interpretations. Some of them are obvious. Sukkah belongs in Sukkah, it’s not a chiddush [novel insight]. Love me [I mean].
Student: You could say that.
Instructor: Very little organization is implied by the content when you read some of the… even Kohelet [Ecclesiastes] I think is harder because this might have a narrative going on somehow. But yeah, when you mentioned Mishlei, I’m like, so very good, so very good.
The Proof from Mishlei: Editorial Work in Biblical Books
So I’m proving to you, wait listen, so I’m proving to you from the book of Mishlei, which was explicitly… every biblical book, by the way, is edited. Nobody should delude themselves that they landed somehow from heaven the way they are. Human books. Books don’t happen by themselves. They get edited.
By who? I don’t know. Moshe Rabbeinu [Moses our teacher]? He wrote thirteen [Torah scrolls] one day by himself? Seriously? By a miracle? One of the greatest miracles in history and we don’t know about it?
The Midrash About Moshe’s Writing Staff
It says in the midrash they wrote thirteen sifrei Torah [Torah scrolls]. No, it means the Torah, or it’s a midrash. I don’t know if you have to believe this midrash, but it’s a midrash. And the midrash is assuming that Moshe Rabbeinu had a writing staff.
The Rambam [Maimonides] says this, and he almost explicitly says it this way. There’s some other midrash said, yeah, it must have been an eis [emergency dispensation], so then that’s how he would have been able to write on Shabbos [the Sabbath]. And midrash, and I remember, and somewhere, and it’s like it was Shabbos because Moshe Rabbeinu died on Shabbos famously. It says in a different midrash. And how can you write on Shabbos? That it says it was an eis. By an eis you let it write on Shabbos.
This is called making gag al gag [roof upon roof], shtuyot b’Torah [nonsense in Torah study]. Unfortunately, it’s just obviously, if you assume that Moshe Rabbeinu published the first Torah and he gave thirteen for each shevet [tribe] to have, it makes sense. So no problem. So he obviously had a writing staff, and they copied, and some of them had mistakes, and they have to fix it. That’s what we have chazarah [review/correction] for, to fix the mistakes. And so on.
Returning to the Main Point
Anyways, where am I getting to? Am I saying… so obviously, Mishlei is… but Mishlei, for Mishlei, nobody can dispute it. It says explicitly, “asher he’etiqu anshei Chizkiyahu” [which the men of Hezekiah copied/compiled]. So, “gam eileh mishlei Shlomo” [these too are proverbs of Solomon]. In other words, we found another scroll somewhere, let’s add it to our book.
So, and it’s not possible to edit it thematically. Or at least very hard, it’s not worth it.
The Solution: Generational Organization
So now, we’re doing the Mishlei, right? We discussed, Mishlei is the biblical version of Avot, sort of the same genre, the same kind of theme, it’s talking about the same thing. How does he organize it? You have a way for him to organize it? All the shtiklach [pieces] about Torah should go on one perek [chapter]. And all the shtiklach about mitzvot [commandments] should go on another one. What are you going to do? It doesn’t even make sense because there isn’t…
The Brilliant Idea: Organization by Generation
So he had a brilliant idea. And he’s not the first one to have this idea. There’s many ethical works that are… later, classical works that work out like this. He’s going to organize it by generation.
We’ll have the sayings of the… Of course, the closer generations can get jumbled because there’s not really a difference, but he knows that, you know, because there’s too many people in each generation, so it’s like, yeah, it becomes jumbled. But Antigonus Ish Socho [Antigonus of Socho] who wasn’t the same, wasn’t the same generation as Shimon HaTzaddik [Shimon the Righteous], who wasn’t the same generation as Anshei Knesset HaGedolah [the Men of the Great Assembly], who wasn’t the same as what’s his name later or whoever.
So very simple, he’ll tell you the story. And remember, and there’s other reasons we discussed, ethics gets learned by example. The value of an ethical aphorism is sometimes that a great person said it, and even more than the depth of it. If I would tell you some of the things I’d say in Mishlei and say that, what’s the guy, Yogi Berra said has said that, and you’re like, oh cool. But if I tell you that and think it’s just I said, and you’re like, wow, must be something. So it gives it weight.
The Organizational Principle Is Not the Primary Goal
So, but this is basically… but that’s another thing. But first of all, I’m just saying, this is this principle of organization. I don’t know of a better way to organize a book of ethical aphorisms than telling you… no, people write Chassidic stories. Guess what? Generally, Martin Buber wrote a compilation of Chassidish stories. Just go from the Baal Shem Tov [founder of Hasidism] and the Maggid [the Maggid of Mezeritch]. Why? Is he trying to prove the tradition of Chassidus from Baal Shem Tov to him? Maybe. Who knows? But probably, this is just the only way to organize things like this. He’s doing aphorisms. He’s doing aphoristic stories, stories that mean something to him. That’s the best way to do it.
So now, in order to give you this organization, he gives you the structure. The first Mishnah just gives you Moshe [Moses], Yehoshua [Joshua], that’s all. As simple as that. Yeah, just the structure to make sense. Just like Kabbalah [received tradition]. Why are we talking about Kabbalah? Oh look, is the story. This is how I see this history of the intellectual tradition that I’m inheriting. And I’m going to tell you each one of them.
But my goal, obviously the goal of Masechet Avot is to tell you what they said, is to tell you these sayings. It’s obviously not the goal of Masechet Avot to give you the account of the tradition. I think it’s obvious to anyone that reads it. 95% of it is that. It’s just that its framing is this because that’s the best way of organizing it.
Student: Seems very reasonable to me.
Instructor: I think people make a mistake. I think people take this organization for granted. Right.
The Difficulty of Canonical Organization: The Example of Rambam
And the same thing for the Rambam. Why does Rambam say arba mitzvot [four commandments]? Because what are you… he just needs to start making sense of it. Yeah, it’s a great… if you actually ever try organizing canonical things, it’s very hard.
Student: True.
Instructor: And people ask the Rambam, the Chazon Ish [Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz] said the Rambam forgot something. How about you write a Rambam and forget as few things as he forgot? And the Chazon Ish, I’m like, there’s a firm way of saying it. The Rambam was a miracle anyway, so you don’t ask Chazon Ish for miracles. Something like that.
They just mean to say, of course. That means I can’t do it. But honestly, nobody else has even tried. Or people have tried, and you can see the results. They’re much worse.
The Deeper Point: Ethics as a Distinct Subject Matter
Okay, so that’s the theory of Pirkei Avot. Now, what do I have to say? Now, what do I have to say next? Okay, but there is still a… The second reason was to teach you the ethics. That’s why I agree with that reason.
Student: What?
Instructor: I think the goal is to get to what it says in the book, you said.
Student: In which book?
Instructor: That one.
Student: Okay.
Avot as a Distinct Tractate Teaches a Fundamental Lesson
Instructor: So now, but what we discussed until now was the reason, the way we got into this whole long, nice chat was to discuss that there’s a subject matter called ethics. That’s the important thing.
So although internal to the subject matter is very hard to give a structure, the Rambam does, we could give a structure, but the Rebbi [Rebbi Yehudah HaNasi, compiler of the Mishnah], at least if you’re organizing the ancient aphorism, it’s very hard to give a structure to them. But there is a structure in the sense that Avot is a distinct masechta, that it’s not just part of everything else. That is something that Rebbi teaches us. And in very big chiddush [novel insight].
We don’t find Masechet Mishnah [a tractate called “Mishnah”], maybe as being a distinct book teaches us this. But it’s not something you can’t take that for granted either. There being a subject area called the good life, right? It’s not the same subject area, subject matter, as you know, just Shabbos or Eruvin [laws of Sabbath boundaries] or even in general.
Avot as the Foundation for All Other Tractates
You could even say something like, if Avot mechila dika told us [if Avot is what teaches us], then Avot is the Avot [foundational principles] for the rest of the other 62 books, or 60 books if you count the Nezikin [damages] as one. Guess what? Avot, where’s it told us? All the rest of the Mishnah, right? Isn’t that Hillel’s [principle], right? Oh, the ikar [essential principle] of it.
Masechta Avos as a Distinct Ethical Discipline: The Earliest Commentary and the Problem of the Bavli’s Silence
The Status of Avos Among the Tractates of Mishnah
It’s not the same subject area, subject matter, as, you know, just Shabbos or Eruvin, or even in general, you could even say something like, if Avos Makhladika [Avos of Damages] told us, then Avos is the Avos for the rest of the other 62 books, or 60 books, if you count the Zikin [Damages] as one. Guess what? Avos, where’s it told us? All the rest of the Mishnah. Right? Isn’t that…
Student: They all say things like this.
Instructor: Exactly. All the, basically, right, and possible, like all the, possibly.
Student: Wait, then that’s not the worst. Wait, possibly, possibly, each one of the Mishnah Yisrael, many of them are answers to the question, what is the principle of the Torah? Everyone has a different version. There’s very different, many of the clicks on this.
Instructor: Yeah, that’s not a Mishnah, right? That’s a story.
Student: I know, but you’re saying he’s doing this type of thing.
Instructor: Yeah, yeah, you see them… You can imagine Sladegan saying from others. Yeah, like, seems to be a different answer than Hillel’s answer. And there’s two versions of that in others, right? Obviously, this was like a question. Obviously, like, it was one of the questions that the nom [Tannaim: early rabbinic sages] were worried about. Like, what are the three things, or three maybe is like a number that’s useful. Like, what are the things that the world stands on? Like, what consists a good society, basically, right? That’s what Rambam [Maimonides] translates, at least. And, like, some guy said, or something, and the other guy said…
It shows you what the questions were, right? So at least the fact that Avos exists as a thematic unit in the Mishnah shows that there is such a subject and it might, if you accept my chat on Avos and Talmud, might show you that this is the most important subject. It might. Can’t promise you what it might just.
Student: It’s interesting though that it’s not subject to the same level of, like that it exists as an aphoristic work instead of a…
The Aphoristic Nature of All Mishnayos
Instructor: Okay, so wait, so wait. Remember that all Mishnahs exist as aphoristic works.
Student: For the missionaries, that’s not a cancer. I was just wondering, you said this last week and no one talked about it. It has endless form, just not taken in a sense seriously. They’re all, Shabbos afternoon in the summer is for him. Hello.
Instructor: It’s interesting. The way it was studied, it was studied a lot, but also not seriously. Because many people don’t know how to do ethics seriously, which is, I guess, better than nothing.
So that’s the claim. Now, the statements also tend to stay at the level of generality and not very often well because the Talmud, that’s the Talmud. Like you can’t do a specific thing, specific thing, there is a chain of reasoning that, or at least the middle part of the chain of reasoning.
Student: So wait, are you asking the question of why there isn’t Gemara [Talmudic commentary]?
Instructor: Yeah I guess, like how, yeah, I suppose, like how do we…
Student: Alright, so wait, remember that, what did he [Rebbi/Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi] make? He wrote Mishnayes [plural of Mishnah]. Very good.
The Shared Questions Within Masechta Avos
Now, interesting point that I want to tell you now. Okay? Okay? So, wait, wait, listen. I’ve got a bombshell for you. If you really want. Okay? Okay? So, if you read Mishnayes without Gemara, Avos is at least as important as—I mean it’s a small Masechta [tractate]—at least as important as Sukkah. It’s not a huge Masechta, so maybe Kelim [Vessels] is more important if you go by length, but you shouldn’t. Why would you do that? But it’s at least as important as any other Masechta in existing as like a distinct subject matter of inquiry.
And if you actually read the content of Masechta, and I’ll make another point, if you read the content of Masechta, you would know, you will see that there are shared questions amongst at least many of the Mishnahis. Very important thing to notice. Yeah, like, the Mishnahs are, like, there’s a very close one: what’s the best thing, right?
This means that Tannaim had ethical philosophical discussions, sometimes based on Pesukim [biblical verses], sometimes not, saying, right, what did, what did Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai tell the students? This is literally what Socrates’ inquiries went around people asking people, right? And this was a subject of inquiry in [unclear]. Wasn’t it? One of the greatest teachers of Torah ever and he had a bunch of things, he had five students and he gave them an assignment. It doesn’t say if they did it with or without books or not. And they did that also of course. But like it says “suru” [go out] means go find out what is the good way to live. They came up with all kind of answers, and where did these answers—they didn’t say “I have an answer” because it says they must have thought and said “I think that this is the best thing.”
And if you would ask him, okay and what is Hilchot [laws], what is Kelim about? Obviously something related to this because this is the best thing. This is the correct path. What is the correct path? Imagine a contest manager said a boy said, what is the correct path to go and to a man, by Adam [a person], right? Like Rambam said, it doesn’t say Yisrael [Israel], right? Of course, the Bible makes a weird account about that. But Rambam said that the Torah is for Adam [humanity].
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s Question to His Students
And Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai asked the students, tell me what is the straight path that a man should follow? Sheyidbak [that he should cling to], I don’t know how you say Sheyidbak, should follow?
Student: Yeah, don’t say the word cleave, it doesn’t mean nothing. It reminds me of a clover.
Instructor: I said cling.
Student: Cling? Also sounds weird, right? We don’t use this idiom. It’s not idiomatic. It’s not idiomatic English.
Instructor: Okay, so whatever. What is the straight path, okay? If I told this story about Confucius, it would make just as much sense, right? He was all about the straight path. If I would tell you a story about Aristotle, also, literally, okay, of course, this imagery of straight path is very basic. Buddha was asked the same question, right? What is the straight path?
And the answers that they give also can be translated into any language, like “good eye” [ayin tovah]. I don’t know what he means by ayin tovah [good eye], but whatever it means. Something very basic and human. And if you were asked Rabbi Eliezer, who says ayin tovah [good eye], so ayin tovah and Bava Kamma [first tractate of Damages], I would say, what do you mean? Bava Kamma is all about having a good eye, don’t take out other people’s things. If you do, if you break them, pay for them. What do you mean?
The Fundamental Error: Reading Answers Without Questions
But what I’m trying to show you from all of this is just that, and this is a very big mistake that we make. Because we read, like you say, oh, this is written aphoristically. Which means that it’s written, it gives you the answer. So sometimes it gives you stories where you see there’s a question also. But some of them just have the answer without the question. But you take that to mean that there wasn’t a philosophical, which means human reason, people discussing. Of course, you can make proof text. That’s as good as anything. But discussion of people actually asking questions and giving answers. That’s what learning is, what we call Talmud. Learning.
The Mishnah is the result of Talmud. Some of the Mishnahis, or some of them are the result of tradition. But the Mishnah is the result of Talmud. So people ask these questions. And we read the Mishnahis just as the answer without the question. The speed, you can’t answer without a question.
The Danger of Questions Without Answers and Answers Without Questions
Like I have the opposite part of the Torah of the people with the Rambam, you know, like there’s this, because you might get stuck on the question and forget, you fall asleep before you get to the answer, you know there was a guy that became a hypocrite [apikores: heretic] from reading about Abarbanel [Don Isaac Abarbanel, 15th century Jewish commentator] because Abarbanel has lists of questions and every week he would read it and he has good questions on the Torah and he would fall asleep before he got to the answers. And like, now I think that’s the opposite, that many people or amei ha’aretz [ignorant people] from reading the answers without the questions. And many Jewish books they just write the answers without the questions.
But I’m showing you, in other words, there’s a shared set of questions. Maybe there’s more than one. Maybe we could, we should try to figure out if this question is the same question as Rebbi’s question of, is it the same exact question? Do they mean the same thing? Do they mean it’s different? We should discuss this. But these are, that’s what a discipline is. A discipline is just a set of concerns about a certain defined area and people discuss it.
Student: Is a set of questions about what is a melachah [forbidden labor on Shabbat] and which melachos are a problem and so on?
Instructor: For sure, for sure, right. Yes, everyone agrees. Like I’m thinking what defines a discipline when you make them a sect, what you’re organizing around is a set of questions. That’s what a discipline is, right? So this is around the basic questions, questions. The obvious questions.
If you never thought of the question and you only know the answers because you’re such a frum guy [religious person] that always knows the answer to everything, unfortunately, you don’t know nothing.
Student: I think that’s the way it was taken, when we say not seriously, is that it was taken by the question.
Instructor: Right, I think that’s a good definition. I agree. A good definition of saying that people complain that Drush [homiletical interpretation], like most of what passes for Jewish thought, is just people saying stuff without responsibility, that’s another way of saying they don’t ask questions, they only give answers. And if you don’t know what the question is, you don’t even have a way to check if the answer is a good answer. You can just say whatever you want.
And it’s on us now. It’s no dialectic. Figure out what they mean and make them make sense. That’s it. So, that’s how very good.
The Problem: Why No Bavli Gemara on Avos?
So now, now use, ask a kushya [question/difficulty] on me. I am giving you this very interesting, nice, if it would be only Mishnah in the world, it would make kind of sense. Since there’s also Talmud Bavli [Babylonian Talmud] in the world. And the Talmud Bavli didn’t even fit, find an important rite of his parish on Pirkei Avos [Chapters of the Fathers]. It’s also put very weirdly in the Bavli.
So wait, I want to tell you something interesting. Do you know what’s the first Masechta in Shas [the six orders] that has Gemara on it? Out of the Shishas [six orders] in the Mishnah. Which has the earliest commentary? Expanding it. Which one?
Student: The answer feels like it’s not breakfast.
Instructor: Gemara was written how long after the Mishnah of Shalmi [unclear]? Kind of a few hundred years later, right? Which Masechta in the Mishnah is? And this Masechta, which was written maybe earlier, maybe after, nobody knows. I mean, the Rambam says it was after the Mishnah, but in the same generation. Other people think it was maybe it’s the drafts from the Mishnah. Okay, that’s not, but that’s the kind of commentary, just basically a version of the Mishnah.
The Earliest Commentary: A Work Expanding Avos
But a work that is an explicit commentary, expansion of the Mishnah, expansion of the questions, expansion of the answers, expansion of different sayings that expand on it, basically what Talmud, in some sense, basically does.
The Jewish Question of Survival: What Do You Save When Everything Is at Stake?
Avos d’Rabbi Nasan: The Missing Gemara for Pirkei Avos
Instructor: They mention Mishnah, but they’re probably also contemporary with Mishnah mostly, or sort of. It has to be Ovis, right? All right. It has to be Ovis. Okay, and?
Did you hear of a book called *Ovest Rabnasan* [Avos d’Rabbi Natan: a commentary on Pirkei Avos]? Nobody really knows who wrote it and when. But it’s called Rabnasan. Rabnasan was a rabbi of a rabbi. Whoever gave it the name *Ovest Rabnasan*, that’s not Babli, right? Naseb Abli was the Bedanasi’s teacher, right? So according to the tradition at least. And there’s a lot of research about who wrote it and there’s two versions of it and all kinds of stuff. In any case, it’s definitely a particular thing. It’s definitely something that doesn’t exist—there’s no obvious, there’s no Baruch Hasdara B’Nasim or anything similar to it for any other Masechta [tractate]. There is actually *Al-Awas Dara B’Nasim* [Avos d’Rabbi Natan]. Masechta’s Avas and Pereshtan [Pirkei Avos and its commentary]—maybe there’s no Gemara [Talmudic commentary] because they thought it already existed. The fact that they’re showing them didn’t take it seriously, that’s on them. That’s literally the story from the time of the Midas comes. I’m just continuing, right? I’m unquoted. I’m taking it seriously, of course.
That’s one example, but there’s many. *Al-Awas Dara B’Nasim* is full of—historically, does it consider? Depends who you ask, I don’t know. I think that historically it’s possible that some of it, like I said, definitely might be—like everything, it might have been compiled, edited, finally and so on. But it definitely has like a work that it’s possible that it’s really work. I don’t know. I think that’s the more I want to talk about this. Whoever called it Rav Nassim must have thought that it was very early. And Mahzavitri [Machzor Vitry] says he doesn’t know, but he thinks that because it’s thought that Rav Nassim wrote it, it’s a messiah [Mishnah-era text]. Of course, maybe the version that we have had more editorings and so on. But in any case, it’s probably earlier to the Talmud, before the Talmud. Seems like. So there you go. Very serious messiah.
The Status of Avos: Bare Minimum or Luxury?
Instructor: It’s always like this. I just think that obviously it’s a luxury, though. Is that? It’s like a little bit of a luxury in a sense.
Student: Why?
Instructor: Because in a sense it’s the bare minimum, but also in a sense it’s not. I don’t think Jews think that obviously is what keeps them going. I don’t know, I don’t like these kind of theories.
Student: I’m not sure that I like that.
Instructor: Why?
Student: Because I think for Jews I think it precedes Al-Quds [the particular Jewish content]. I think it does not in terms of importance. I think it’s in terms of basics—like let’s make this thing called Jews and we just—
Instructor: Oh okay, okay, okay. That’s the answer.
Student: What you’re saying is the answer to the question that we asked last week or even on the group a little more.
Instructor: I’m not trying to answer. I’m just trying to say in terms of—
Student: No, no, I think you’re right and I might as well, I might as well say it, but I don’t know. But in other words, we have to ask this question: is it true that it’s like if you’re doing, if you’re doing—right, I guess this is, by the way, this is a real question. I don’t have the answer to it.
The Jewish Question: A Survival Scenario
Setting Up the Dilemma
Instructor: Very serious Jewish question. We’ve been, we did enough work on Jewish questions in the previous month. I can’t repeat everything, but one version of the Jewish question is this—Jewish question for the Jews, not for the Germans. Let them figure out their questions.
One version of the Jewish question is like this: Imagine you grow up, you find yourself in a kind of Holocaust-like [situation]. Like 24,000 of your students died, okay, imagine. You’ve got five people, and it’s either this succeeds—this group of five people succeeds—and whatever the project of Torah or Jewishness (don’t say Judaism, that’s a German word) is going to survive, or it won’t. But remember that it’s possible that it won’t, because otherwise we wouldn’t have these stories. The question doesn’t make sense. If you assume that everything just happens by itself, you’re not living in the world that I am living in, right? Or any of the people who saved you, right? Because you have to actually do something. You have to believe that it won’t happen if you don’t do it.
The Paradox of Mashiach and Human Agency
Instructor: So very weirdly, Moshiach [Messiah] has to be the smallest mom in the B.S.M. [b’koach, in potential], because otherwise that Moshiach will come on Sabbath. I don’t know, he won’t come. You got to do it. It’s just whatever. It’s a real basic paradox. That’s what it means. That’s what it means. Because as long as everyone’s like, “Moshiach, come take care”—well, who’s going to be this Moshiach? Some other guy that’s… You’ve got to be… At some point, someone’s got to wake up and say, “No, Moshiach won’t come. He will come if I do it.” In *Bekoi Deshishme* [b’koach d’shishme: by the power of his name/in potential], right?
Sophie’s Choice: What Do You Prioritize?
Instructor: So if you find yourself in a situation—and possibly, you know, people after the Holocaust found themselves in a situation, possibly there’d be the… If I keep the situation, according to this story, which I’m not sure what it refers to exactly, historically, there were such situations. There were many such situations in history. And okay, now I’ll imagine that you are actually, you have actually received the full Yiddish [Jewish] education. You know everything that there is to know about being a Yidd [Jew]. But then it takes a world, right? With the desantishibot [yeshivos/houses of study] in order to have the full everything. You need to have the whole world. You need to have whatever, you need everything.
Now you don’t really have everything. You have barely, you’re going to—whatever you’re going to prioritize to the extreme, that’s what you’re going to have. Whatever you’re going to think is a little less important, you’re going to lose it, because you don’t have the resources to do everything.
Now there’s a real question: what do you save? This is like this question, do you save your child, your son or your daughter? Something like that. This is Sophie’s dilemma. It’s a real serious dilemma. This is another question also of what could be salvaged after it’s lost.
Student: Essentially, no, it’s not lost. If it’s already lost, then when you’re doing *Yesh Ma’ayim* [something from nothing].
Instructor: I don’t know. I’m talking about the last guy. Like there’s one. It says you have mitzvahs [commandments] against the time of mitzvahs. Wait. That’s the last guy.
Student: Well, there’s a part of, just to be clear, part of your deliberations are going to be based on how much, how do we say, part of your deliberations will be based on what you could do, right?
Instructor: Sometimes the answer is not what should be done, but what could be done, right? Then you don’t have a question. Then if you have this extreme case of choice of actually your savior son or your daughter—if your son can run and your daughter can’t run and you’re going to run, you don’t have a question anymore, even though it might have been more important to save your daughter or the opposite, whatever. I’m just making assumptions here, right? So that’s then this question is solved for you by the circumstances, okay?
But even that is a question: what do you think is possible to be saved, right? Okay, you’re not going to know how to solve Judaism. I know you’ll find out actually.
[Technical Interruption]
Student: It says 5% or something. God, why? Something is weird. Why is it taking so much battery?
Instructor: You can plug it in once. You could. You could. Plug it in. Nobody’s stopping you. Here’s a plug. Here’s a plug. Plug it in. We should plug it in. I don’t know what’s with the battery, but isn’t there batteries for that reason? Plug it in. You have to plug in the plug, but the other side, there’s like a thing on the floor. Obviously, some people, the sheikh might come and be on that side of the thing. Let’s see if it works. No, no, just plug it right on the floor. Sorry, you have to go all the way to the floor. We have to put whatever. Okay. Does it help?
Student: Yeah, it’s plugged.
Instructor: Okay.
The Universal vs. the Particular in Yiddishkeit
Framing the Fundamental Question
Instructor: So you have the story. Very serious question for Mashiach. Which part of this? So do you say it? Now, this is a weird one way of saying this question, and I don’t have an answer to it. I think you should think about it. Everyone on YouTube should think about it. Maybe we shouldn’t ever ask this question publicly.
The question is like this. Obviously, I mean, let’s assume, or let’s make another assumption. Let’s assume that there are two parts to Yiddishkeit. There’s the universal—we call it this way, these are not good words, and we have to talk about this in a minute—there’s the universal part and the particular part, right?
The Universal Dimension of Torah
Instructor: In some sense the Torah is for Adam [any human being]. Any man who will be Mekah [accept/fulfill] the Passover will have a better life. That’s what it says in the Torah, okay? And which means in some sense it’s an answer to a set of human questions. There are human questions: how to live life? Same question Socrates or Confucius or Aristotle or any of Buddha or anyone asked. Moshe [Moses] was asking an answer—
The Tragic Choice Between Universal Ethics and Jewish Particularity: A Historical and Philosophical Analysis
The Equivalence of the Aseres HaDibros and Sheva Mitzvos B’nei Noach
Instructor: In other words, you should be, you should, let’s say, the *aseres hadibros* [the Ten Commandments], right? Something like *sheva mitzvos b’nei Noach* [the seven Noahide laws]. By the way, people like saying *sheva mitzvos b’nei Noach*. Can you tell me which of the *aseres hadibros* and not the *sheva mitzvos b’nei Noach*? It’s not?
Student: Yeah. Are there any?
Instructor: They’re the same thing.
Student: Oh, a *goy* [non-Jew] doesn’t have to do the Kabbalah besides the Shabbos, that’s the only one.
Instructor: So 9 out of the 10 *dibros* [commandments] are as I’m expecting. Seriously, a *goy* does not respect his father? Because it’s not one of the… Like, don’t be such a *litvak* [Lithuanian-style rationalist Jew]. A *goy* is not a *litvak*.
Student: No, I’m just saying.
Instructor: *Sheva v’al Noach* [the seven Noahide laws] is just a formulation, but obviously a *sheva v’al Noach* just works just as well, more or less. And by the way, a *goy* should keep Shabbos too. It’s on Sunday, who cares? Let him do it on Sunday.
So listen. This is not my…
Student: No, no, no, I’m not going to call Ari. He’s going to ask you, why did that?
Instructor: I’m going to once say something—hello, I can’t talk to you with everyone at once, okay? I’m talking to you now. I’m just saying, I’m just saying that when people say—because if it sounds like a *goyish* [non-Jewish] thing, but you see, sounds quite Jewish, but it’s basically the same general moral principles. And of course we had a *shita* [position/approach] over here that the *Yidden* [Jews] are not happy with the *aseres hadibros* for that reason. But anyways, like the Rabbis were not happy with the *aseres hadibros* anyways.
The Central Tragic Dilemma: Which Commandments to Prioritize?
But this is the question: Do you focus on the *aseres hadibros*, which basically everybody agrees with? Okay, you’re right, Shabbos maybe not. But that’s 9 out of 10, okay? Every *goy* agrees with the 9 out of 10 and says that he agrees or doesn’t agree with or should agree with. And do you focus on that? Because that’s very important. You’ve got to have *lo sirtzach, lo signov* [don’t murder, don’t steal]. Or do you focus on particular Shabbos?
Let’s do it like that. Do you focus on the one *davar* [thing/commandment] that says *oy* [woe] to a *ben u’ven’cha* [you and your children] for you? A *goy* who doesn’t keep Shabbos. You’re definitely not an evil person if you don’t keep Shabbos, right? It’s not the same *lav* [prohibition]. Like in the human sense, right? You’re a bad Jew but you’re not a bad person.
Which one do you save? Do you have an answer to this question?
Student: Which one do I save?
Instructor: You’re Jewish. If I could get my kids to do one of two things, either to not be murderers or to keep Shabbos, which one should I do?
Student: And then to trade off.
Instructor: You have to imagine, if you think that you can get both all the time, we don’t have questions. We’re having extreme, tragic questions.
The False Assumption That Ethics Come “For Free”
But that’s exactly the point of them being universal. That’s exactly—if you teach them don’t kill, they will not keep Shabbos. If you don’t kill Shabbos, so one—that’s what people assume. People, *Yidden* generally assume that you get for free. But Shabbos is the thing that’s in danger. That’s what they assume.
That’s where—just to be clear, people think that I think that it’s wrong. You know how I know it’s wrong? Because in the Torah it said—and I know a bunch of *Yidden* that are murderers. And not only I know them, like this is like very ancient problem. And it’s not clear that focusing on Shabbos to the exclusion or to more than—gets you for free. You assume people have—even a *goy* shouldn’t do this. Hey, shouldn’t. But *tza’ar* [suffering/difficulty] isn’t free. I don’t even know if you’re free, but let’s see. *Tisha* [nine] then, whatever. There’ll be some murders, but at some point we’ll get the people. Maybe. Maybe no.
The Empirical Reality of the Trade-Off
Well, so wait, so there might, there might even be a trade off. Now this is, this is where it’s tragic. I think this the real tragedy. And in a certain sense, a lot of the choices that the Jewish people—like we know modern Jewish history. Modern Jewish history is basically the choice to do two things.
We have inherited, like, a part of the tradition that’s very triumphalist. I’m very happy of saying that we made the right choice. Maybe yes, maybe not. But it’s not cool to let *khoizik* [make fun of/mock] on the other side. It’s very serious. And people have literally had this choice.
Do I make my children not be murderers or thieves? Okay? Let’s take a note. How about that? Do I care less about them being murderers and more about them being *shomer Shabbos* [Shabbos observant]? Or do I care more about them being not murderers and less about them being *shomer Shabbos*? And you’re going to get what you choose. You’re not going to get both.
Everyone thinks, just to be clear, the more universal kind also think that Shabbos is free. They think the opposite. They think, “What do you mean I’m a Jew? I keep Shabbos.” Turns out you don’t. If you don’t make it, you don’t have the bandwidth.
The Problem of Limited Bandwidth
If you were—possibly if you have like a real society and you have whatever, you could do, you have the—you’re rich enough to do both. But if you’re in, if you’re in a restricted set of circumstances, you don’t have the bandwidth to do both. You’re going to have one. And for the rest, you’re going to have whatever, whatever the, whatever the default, either in your society or default of human nature. That’s what you’re going to get. You’re not going to get both. Okay?
And there was a very serious choice that, you know, we’re faced by and maybe are still—I’m not sure. But nowadays there’s no human, there’s nothing. I don’t know, we’re still faced by a different state now.
Contemporary Application: Fundraising for Yeshivas
Should you raise money in a way to build yeshivas that’s going to be *over lo sirtzach, lo signov* [transgressing don’t murder, don’t steal]? Should you raise money to do *lo sirtzach, lo signov* to raise money for yeshivas?
Student: Wait, what? *Lo sirtzach* more miles of fundraising for yeshivas?
Instructor: Okay, you’re a little—yeah, I know, but you’re a little more too purist for me already. I’m going to look back what I did.
Student: No, yeah, because you could say something like should you whatever—
Instructor: I don’t want to, I’m not going to give concrete examples because everyone, everyone can understand that myself. I hope there are choices made and there’s explicit choices made. And most of the time people that make these choices—one of my things is people make these choices without recognizing those tragic choices. This is what’s like—
The Nature of Tragic Choices
There are two people that had the choice that one saved his son and one saved his daughter. And everyone got what they wanted. This guy’s daughter was alive and that guy’s son is alive. And for the rest of their all their [lives] are arguing: “Your grandfather was a *shagetz* [wicked person], he killed his son.” “Your grandfather was a *shagetz*, he killed his daughter.” None of them—they both did horrific choices. In other words, to be human is to face tragic choices sometimes.
Society’s Denial of the Tragic
We live in a society that denies the tragic in a lot of ways and we don’t recognize such a thing as tragic choices. But there are. Unless you’re God where you can have everything, a human being can only have usually one of two.
Student: I don’t recognize the *parshios* [Torah portions] a lot of things about women.
Instructor: Yeah, yeah, it’s true. But whatever, also the general, also the American side we live in, also the specific Jewish version of it doesn’t recognize tragedy as existing.
So everyone, every politician tells you, “I’m going to make peace, and we’re also going to not die.” Another guy says, “I’m going to kill all the enemies, and we’re also going to have peace.” Why can’t they each say, “Yeah, there’s both of these things, and I make the tragic choice to be bad in this way and good in this way, because it’s more important”? You have to make those arguments. But nobody’s recognized that, because we have a very few, very little attunement to the tragic in life. And that’s because we all think that we’re God, and God can be perfect.
God can both be a *chassid* and a *litvak* at the same time. Human beings can be one of the two, badly. But the best of both, that’s for God to be. Anyways, that’s a different *derusha* [sermon/discourse].
The Historical Reality of the Tragic Choice in Jewish Life
And back to where I am, there’s this tragic choice faced by the *Yidden*. It was faced by many people for, I guess, for hundreds of years. I know people explicitly wrestling with this dilemma. Do I make my children good people and bad Jews, or bad people and good Jews? And you can’t get both.
I mean, everyone thinks that they’re going to get both, but in reality you’re making this choice. Maybe if a miracle happens, *Moshiach* [the Messiah] comes, you can get both. I think maybe the job of *Moshiach* is to get both. But meanwhile we don’t get both.
The Problem with “Jewish Ethics from Sinai”
Now, one argument—and I think this is the explanation—last week we left off on a question and I think I have to justify the people a little, at least explain one version of where they’re coming from. There’s all this talk specifically in modern times, all this talk among Jewish thinkers about Jewish ethics. Jewish ethics is what *lo signov* [don’t steal] was talking about. But there’s the oldest talk about we have ethics from Sinai, right? There’s the title of our article book: we have ethics from Sinai, not ethics like Aristotle has, right? Okay, right?
And although if you open that *Ethics from Sinai* book, you see very little Sinai in it. That’s by the way, that’s also why it needs the *Mashiach* [Messiah], because it doesn’t say anything from the Torah. It just says things—well look, we’re proud of the tradition, that’s what Sinai is. But—
And why do they do this? Why are they not happy? Let’s say someone says most of the Torah they just don’t steal and don’t kill. What do you mean? And we have discussed why a *goy* doesn’t steal. Yeah, did you hear the story that your children told you on *Shavuos* [the holiday of Shavuot] about how the *goyim* [non-Jews] do want to steal and kill? Oh, it’s not true in reality? Okay, so maybe we won and the *goyim* don’t steal. Maybe we’re just in an island that pretty much people are all still stealing and killing. Anyways.
Student: Yeah, each one has a different one. No problem.
Instructor: That’s the story. That story is saying that what are we? We’re the guys that don’t steal and don’t kill. That’s what *na’aseh v’nishma* [we will do and we will hear] is for. But all the kids say this story and they think it means we learn—we the guys that don’t sometimes—we do, but not, you know, like that’s the difference, right? If that’s not apparently true then okay, maybe it didn’t work or something. That’s a problem.
The Reality of the Trade-Off in Practice
So what I’m saying is that this was a very tragic choice and I think people—because of this thought—I think in many ways most of the time this question goes like, “Eh, just ethics, I can do that. We can do something better. We can *chok* [decree] a *lulav* [palm branch used on Sukkot].” But turns out we can’t do ethics.
So you made a choice. Maybe it’s true that this was this—I can’t—maybe it’s an empirical question if you could do it this way and have some both. I’m not sure. But this is a real choice.
The Spectrum of Jewish Responses Throughout History
And like in general in some very broad sense, everything we call—I don’t know how do you call it—left wing Judaism, liberal Judaism, all the way back up to the guys that converted to Christianity in the Crusades, all the way up there, okay? All the way up to the people in Spain that converted. That we have this like very famous—also very—don’t ever do this. I gave this to Rav Shach once, okay?
Everyone—Rav Shach loved quoting the Rebbe Yosef Yaavetz that said, “Oh, the smart people converted.” They—people were faced with a tragic choice for themselves and their family and chose something that seemed like the best out of the worst choices for them. Who are you to judge them? Not to judge them—I don’t even know how to tell them that they’re wrong.
I could justify the other choice too. Don’t worry, I’m here because some people did the other choice. But you could like—oh, there were philosophers? Well, maybe they were philosophers. They did the right thing because of that. They were not fanatics for some particular thing. Of course they cared for their children being good. But they were made of *hajj* [perhaps referring to a pilgrimage or journey].
You could be a good guy and a good Christian and you could be dead and a Jew. Or maybe there’s also not—the chances of him being a good Jew are not very great. You’re going to travel to who knows—you don’t know where. Do you even know that your children won’t be dead?
The Tragic Dilemma of Jewish Identity: Ethics, Observance, and Long-Term Faith
The Core Existential Choice and Its Historical Context
The Nature of the Tragic Choice
Instructor: You don’t even know they’re that. Everything is a huge gamble. Is it such a crazy choice? It’s a tragic choice, but it’s not crazy. You can’t go around being like triumphalist over that.
But so in any case, and people explicitly, if you read Arab Anel [Abarbanel], for example, who’s in that generation, he’s one of the inventors of this kind of argument. Not the inventor, like the Barama [Ramban] before him, or whatever famously stole the stuff, said arguments like that. And that generation of people, they start thinking arguments like this, and it for sure grows out of this real dilemma that people have.
King Ferdinand and the Appearance of Civilized Christianity
You’ve got the king Ferdinand seems like a nice guy. Okay, I’ve told you he wasn’t really a nice guy but he pretends to be a nice guy, good human being. He just, well, a bad human being, he expelled the Jews, but he pretends to be a good Christian. He’s the opposite, he’s only a good Christian, not a good human being, and not even a good Christian, he’s just a liar. I told you Machiavelli uses him as an example of a prince that pretends to be religious for political purposes.
But the point is not—now, the point is that, let me just finish my drusha [discourse/sermon], and Neil, tell me your drusha.
The Historical Evolution of the Dilemma
Ancient Times vs. Medieval Europe
The point is that people were faced by this real dilemma. Like, in different societies, it’s not a dilemma. Because if you live in, obviously, if you live in, like, I don’t know, Moshe Rabbeinu’s [Moses our Teacher’s] time, I don’t know, wherever, yeah, the people around you are murderers and thieves, and you’re trying not to be. And maybe one of the ways that you make your children not murder and thieves is by keeping Shabbos [the Sabbath]. Very basic, no problem.
But now you live in this world where people are very civilized. This is Europe. This is the West. The West basically means quasi-Jews, let’s face it, people that have inherited the tradition of Socrates and Abraham. What’s wrong with that? Are they like Socrates and Abraham? That’s the question. And they literally say the God of Abraham, and they’re kind of decent people. Are they really as decent as we are? Who knows? I don’t know. These are like local questions. But they’re trying to be decent humans, and they read Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. And you’re saying, what’s wrong with that? Oh, we have something even better. Okay, but are you going to give up on that for this?
The Anxiety That Generates New Arguments
This is the dilemma that people have. And this is why we have this whole thing saying, well, if we’re just about being good people, we might as well be Christians. And in order, because of this anxiety, which I think there’s a truth to that, like there must be something, or there must be a point to keeping Shabbos. And maybe the point is that ultimately the only people that keep Shabbos don’t murder. Maybe it takes a thousand and a half years to figure that out. That’s a question. I don’t know. But in any case, it’s possible.
The Long-Term Argument and Its Radical Nature
By the way, this is not the argument that Abraham [Abarbanel] makes. If he would say this argument, I would be pretty happy, but it’s a very radical argument to make because it’s also like prophecy. You have to know that. I think that’s an argument. It’s an argument. It’s definitely an argument. I don’t know. At this particular decade in history where we are, it’s the argument that seems to be reasonable, at least to people. It didn’t seem reasonable to people 50 years ago or 400 years ago, 200 years ago. Actually, precisely 70 years ago, it seemed reasonable. For some reason it doesn’t often seem reasonable to people, and I guess it’s a question still.
The Parental Anxiety About Children’s Future
But this is the question, and this is the anxiety that causes people to say, I don’t know if my children will be murderers. Probably they won’t, I hope. I hope if they’ll keep Shabbos they’ll also bech lal masai monos [in any case], somehow. They also won’t be murderers.
The Flawed “Distinctiveness” Argument
The Problem with Focusing Only on Differences
But why focus is going to be on, I think there’s another thing, which I think is a wrong argument, but this is another argument that there is, like, the point of Judaism can’t be to be a good human being, because everyone has to be that. So we have to focus on the differences, that are not like other people.
The Pirkei Avos Problem
And then, well, what do you mean we have Pirkei Ovis [Pirkei Avot: Ethics of the Fathers]? Pirkei Ovis is a cache [kashe: a difficulty/problem]. Pirkei Ovis is a cache on this theory. What are you telling me that the point of Yiddishkeit [Judaism] is just the Quran film, which is what it doesn’t do? Pirkei Ovis says that the point of Yiddishkeit, Hillel said the point of Yiddishkeit, and Jesus said the same thing.
So, oh, Terence says, he didn’t mean it in that way. He didn’t mean that you should do Ovis [Avot] like Aristotle said. He meant you should do Ovis like, oh, Boshukal [b’shukal: in a different way], it’s in that way. What does that mean exactly? I’m not sure it means anything.
The Real Reason for the Argument
All it means is, that’s why I said last week, I’m not sure that means anything. I think what it means is to not tell your children this. Because if you tell them that, they might choose to convert to Christianity.
Student: And then the kids will kill all the Jews. Maybe.
Instructor: I don’t think the kids kill all the Jews. Whatever, that’s why it’s long-term. That’s true. It’s not true that any Nazis were descendants of Jews. Or any important ones.
Student: That’s what long-term means, right? Long-term means—
Instructor: Why do you know? You know that some Nazis were from the Crusades? Is that what you want your kids to be? All the way in the Crusades. Who knows?
The Question of Long-Term Responsibility
It’s really, I discussed this, it’s just a real question if you could even take responsibility on a thousand years of your descendants. I think you, we discussed this question, that’s why we have this blind faith in Judaism that of course you can’t decide that anyway. This is the answer to that question of why people even said these things that we have a difficult time explaining what they are.
Respecting Both Choices
The answer is that they made this tragic choice. I have a lot of respect for people that made the other choice also. What should I do? Seems to me it’d be a reasonable choice. I don’t know if someone literally really, I honestly don’t know the answer. Like, I don’t know if it’s a practical question because like I said sometimes the reality just tells you you basically only got one choice or you just do nothing.
The Impossible Hypothetical
But if someone tells you I have two choices: either your children will grow up to be horrible human beings but they will keep Shabbos, or they’ll grow up to be decent human beings and not keep Shabbos, I don’t know that anyone has a very clear way to answer that question. Or at least of course if you look at sheikh narach [Shulchan Aruch: the Code of Jewish Law], by the way, the answer obvious is it people think it is. I don’t think it is.
The Question of Minhag vs. Universal Law
Student: Is this the reality? But it’s not true. It’s not a minig [minhag: custom]. Shabbos is a kind of a minig, in the sense of it’s something specific to the Jewish people. It’s a minig to steal. No, it’s not a minig to steal.
Instructor: It’s a minig to steal. Not a minig to steal. Look, also a minig to Shabbos. Whatever. I’m not talking about that. I’m going to the mikvah [ritual bath] on Jabba’s question. It gets to Ramazan [Ramban].
The Ramban’s Nuanced Position
This is the question. And all the drushas [discourses] that we discussed last week were basically choosing one side of that question. And the Ramazan, of course, wasn’t. People say, oh, the Ramazan was on the other side. Of course he wasn’t on the other side.
The Ramban’s Actual View
The Ramazan might have actually, like we discussed last week and people were upset, I think the Ramazan did think that there’s nothing very wrong with being a good, decent Muslim. He himself might have acted that way. And of course he thinks he should try to become a Jew, but that’s from the Tzadidish [Sephardic] guide.
Student: Why? Why? Yeah, why share a culture? Why share a culture?
Instructor: Eh, be real. You don’t become Muslim. Al-stashir [outwardly pretend]. I didn’t say that. I’m just saying that, like, yeah. I’m just saying that, like, one of the reasons why he’s more lenient than this is because of this. Don’t tell anyone. Like, he thinks that you should, if it’s an honest, you should pretend to be a Muslim. And what it means to say, just be a decent human being. Don’t be so worried about this. Of course, if you could, Jews are better than that. You should follow the Jewish law. But it’s because of that.
Those Who Argue the Opposite
And the people that are explicitly saying the opposite is because they’re so, but I can’t say that now I’m seeing this, that side because it does. But other people have explicit, almost explicitly said the other side. And this is what they mean when they say that ethics has to be Toyota Messina [Torah MiSinai: Torah from Sinai] and so on. And yeah, that’s, I don’t have an answer to the question. Don’t tell me the answer. I don’t know the answer.
The Messianic Long-Term Argument
Student: You know, the answer you say that the answer is that it’s that he always went, went one way.
Instructor: Maybe, maybe not. I just think that Jews believe in Moshiach [Messiah] sometimes means, not always, but sometimes means. To believe that long term, we’re going to long term. I think we explicitly give up, right? We did terrible, the Europeans beat us in a million ways all throughout, the Christians beat us in every way, so many different ways throughout the years. What did we actually save though by saving Judaism?
Waiting for Ultimate Vindication
I didn’t say we got to our future yet. I didn’t say that we missed all those waves. We missed all the waves. We missed some of the Muslim waves. We missed all the Christian waves. We’re still waiting for our ultimate culmination that we’ll actually do all that stuff. But it’s long term. It’s a long term game. That’s the argument. I’m not saying I can’t prove this right or wrong. I’m just saying I think that’s the argument.
Distinguishing This from the Original Arguments
That’s a argument. It’s not their argument, just to be clear. It’s Rabbi Pritzker’s argument. That’s a good argument. I’m not against it. I mean I can’t swear by it, but it’s a argument.
The Truth-Based vs. Utilitarian Framework
They try to make better arguments because they try to not give, no, you remember that all the people we’re discussing are not utilitarians yet. They still think in terms of truth and therefore they’re trying to say they know we have the truer universal ethics also.
Student: But that’s the point. It’s true because it has that potential. Not politically.
Instructor: I don’t think, I think that the people that have come, like, okay, this is a whole different, it’s a good question. In any case, it’s a good question. I’m just saying that this is what it’s about. I don’t know the answer. I don’t know the answer. How would I know the answer?
Conclusion
Student: You can shut it off. Sure. You can shut it off. I’ll have to get the share.
Instructor: Oh, now you give it.
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*[End of transcript]*