Ethics of the Sages: Pirke Avot—Annotated & Explained

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Ethics of the Sages:

Pirke Avot—Annotated & Explained

2006 First Printing

Translation, annotation, and introductory material & #169; 2006 by Rami Shapiro

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mishnah. Avot.

Ethics of the sages : Pirke Avot—annotated & explained / translation & annotation by Rami Shapiro.

p. cm. & #8212; (SkyLight illuminations series)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-1-59473-207-2 (quality pbk.)

ISBN-10: 1-59473-207-8 (quality pbk.)

1. Mishnah. Avot—Commentaries. I. Shapiro, Rami M. II. Mishnah. Avot. English. III. Title.

BM506.A2 2006

296.1'234707—dc22

2006023420

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Manufactured in the United States of America

SkyLight Paths Publishing is creating a place where people of different spiritual traditions come together for challenge and inspiration, a place where we can help each other understand the mystery that lies at the heart of our existence.

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My love of Pirke Avot comes from my love of the man who first introduced it to me, Dr. Ellis Rivkin of Hebrew Union College. I first heard him at the HUC campus in Jerusalem in the summer of 1975, before I had entered rabbinical school. His teaching opened worlds to me and in me that I never suspected existed in either Judaism or myself. He was my professor, guide, mentor, and friend for the five years of my rabbinic training and has remained all these over the decades since. I don’t know if he knows how much he shaped me. I hope this book makes him proud.

Contents

Introduction

A Word on Translation

Biographical Sketches of the Rabbis in Pirke Avot

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Epilogue

Glossary

Suggested Reading

About SkyLight Paths

Copyright

Introduction

Pirke Avot, literally Chapters of the Fathers but often referred to as Ethics of the Sages, has been my steady companion for over forty years. I first stumbled across an English translation in the second-floor stacks of Johnson’s Used Bookstore in my hometown, Springfield, Massachusetts. I would spend hours sifting through the piles and piles of books and magazines that crammed the shelves and rose in great heaps on the tables that filled this musty loft almost to bursting. It was my Treasure Island, my Magic Kingdom.

I remember finding a copy of Judah Goldin’s Living Talmud, his translation of Pirke Avot. At the time, 1967 or 1968, the book was only four or five years old, but this particular copy was already well worn, with a fractured spine and fraying pages. I was not particularly interested in the Talmud, but something about the book called to me. I bought it and walked to the courthouse steps to sit and read it. It was not my father’s Talmud.

Instead of the deep debate and, to me, all-too-legalistic obsessions of the Rabbis, Pirke Avot is a compendium of pithy, insightful, and engaging sayings on what matters in life, and how to live it with dignity. While some of the references escaped me, the vast majority of the teachings were clear and compelling. I read the book in no more than an hour or so. I then stuffed it into the back pocket of my Levi’s and walked to the bus stop to go home.

As I walked I kept thinking about what I had read. I pulled the book out of my pocket, flipped to the teaching that I was thinking about, and reread it. On second reading I found something more. The same was true on the third and fourth reading as well. As Ben Bag Bag says, Turn Her and turn Her, for all things are in Her (5:26). While the her refers to Torah, the Five Books of Moses, the same can be said for Pirke Avot as well.

I have turned this book over and over, and it never fails to instruct and surprise. I made my first translation, a self-published book called Teachings, in the 1980s, and Bell Tower published my Zen-like interpretive version in 1993. This version you are reading is more accurate, moving my interpretation to the commentary on the facing page.

How I understand what the text says, then, is easily discovered in the pages of translation and commentary. What the text is, why it matters, and what it means is the subject of this short introduction.

What Is Pirke Avot?

Pirke Avot is the ninth of ten tractates found in Nezikin, the Book of Damages, which is the fourth volume of the six-volume Mishnah. The Mishnah (from the Hebrew word shanah, to repeat, as in To repeat what one has learned from one’s teacher) is the first authoritative collection of rabbinic teaching. Redacted during the first two decades of the second century CE by Yehudah HaNasi (Judah the Prince, or president of the Sanhedrin, the rabbinic court), material in the Mishnah spans a five-hundred-year period from the scribes in the time of Ezra to the tannaim (the early rabbinic sages). Commentary on the Mishnah by later Rabbis called amoraim (from amar, to say or retell), who lived between 200 CE and 500 CE in both Israel and Babylonia, is called Gemara (from gamar, to complete). Together, Mishnah and Gemara compose the Talmud, the Learning, which is the heart of Rabbinic Judaism.

Unlike the rest of the Mishnah, Pirke Avot has no Gemara, no rabbinic amplification by the amoraim. And, unlike the rest of the Talmud, Pirke Avot lacks any legal or narrative content. It is simply a compendium of sayings primarily dealing with how best to live your life.

Spanning a period from the second century BCE to the second century CE, Pirke Avot collects the ethical insights of the five zugot (pairs), the leaders of the Sanhedrin, and forty-three sages who came after them. The Sanhedrin, from the Greek synedrion, meaning sitting together, is the seventy-one-member council of Jewish sages. The Sanhedrin was led by a Nasi (Prince), who functioned as the president, and an Av Bet Din (Father of the Court), who acted as vice president. The sixty-nine additional members sat in a semicircle when debating issues brought before them. The zugot comprised a Nasi and an Av Bet Din. The five zugot were as follows:

Yose ben Yoezer and Yose ben Yochanan (prior to 160 BCE)

Yehoshua ben Perachyah and Nittai of Arbel (c. 130 BCE)

Yehudah ben Tabbai and Shimon ben Shatach (c. 100–75 BCE)

Shemayah and Avtalyon (first century BCE)

Hillel and Shammai (end of first century BCE to just prior to 30 CE)

Originally Pirke Avot consisted of five chapters. A sixth chapter of post-Mishnaic material was added by Babylonian Jews, who instituted the custom of reading Pirke Avot between the festivals of Pesach (Passover; marking the Exodus from Egypt) and Shavuot (marking the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai). The sixth chapter, which deals primarily with Torah study, was added as supplementary reading for the Sabbath before Shavuot.

Why Does Pirke Avot Matter?

The answer to this question is simple: without Pirke Avot, Judaism disappears. To be more precise, without the first sentence of Pirke Avot, Judaism disappears.

Judaism as we know it, and as Jews have defined and followed it for the past two thousand years, is Rabbinic Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism rests on the notion that the early Rabbis were not simply interpreters of Torah, but recipients of a Torah all their own. Rabbinic Judaism holds that God gave two Torahs to Moses on Mount Sinai: a Written Torah, the Five Books of Moses, which was