Unit 14 · Law and Story Together

Pirkei Avot opens with a list, not a law. Mishnah Avot 1:1 says that Moses received the Torah at Sinai. He passed it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. Each link is a teacher handing something to the next teacher.

Rabbinic tradition reads this chain as the path of the Oral Torah, the teaching that the rabbis held was given alongside the written Torah. The chain explains why the rabbis believed their teaching had authority. It says the words of the Mishnah stand in a line of teachers, not apart from them.

Historians read the chain in a different way. Many see it as a claim about authority made by the rabbis of the first centuries CE. They note that the Men of the Great Assembly are hard to date or describe from outside sources. Both kinds of readers agree on one thing: the chain shows what the rabbis valued most, which was passing teaching on.

Right after the chain, Avot 1:1 gives three sayings. Be deliberate, or slow and careful, in judgment. Raise up many students. Make a fence around the Torah. Each saying is short. Each has been explained in many ways by later readers, and each is still argued over in study halls today.

"Judge slowly" fits the Mishnah’s care for courts. Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 describes how judges warned witnesses in a capital case. They told them that a person who destroys one life is as if he destroyed a whole world. A slow judge is a merciful judge, because a fast verdict can ruin a person.

The fence is a rule that keeps a person far from breaking a bigger rule. For example, rabbinic law adds limits around Shabbat so that no one comes close to real Shabbat work. Some readers praise fences as wise care. Others, including some modern Jewish thinkers, warn that too many fences can hide the main rule. Both views are part of the conversation about Avot.

Avot 1:2 names Simeon the Just, whom the Mishnah calls one of the last of the Great Assembly. He said that the world stands on three things. The first is Torah, meaning study. The second is avodah, the service or worship once offered in the Temple. The third is gemilut chasadim, acts of loving-kindness.

Readers have noticed that kindness stands next to study and worship as a pillar of the world. Later rabbis told that after the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai comforted a student. He said that acts of loving-kindness could bring atonement as the Temple sacrifices had. That story is told in Avot de-Rabbi Natan, a companion work to Avot.

Later in the same chapter, Avot 1:18 gives a second set of three. Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel said the world stands on justice, truth and peace. Teachers often put the two lists side by side. One list is about what people do; the other is about what a society needs. The Mishnah keeps both lists, without choosing one.

After Simeon the Just and his student Antigonus, Avot turns to pairs. The rabbis called them the zugot, from the Hebrew word for pairs. The Mishnah names five: Yose ben Yoezer and Yose ben Yochanan; Joshua ben Perachiah and Nittai the Arbelite; Judah ben Tabbai and Simeon ben Shetach; Shemaiah and Avtalyon; and Hillel and Shammai.

Historians place the pairs in the last two centuries BCE, when Judea was ruled by Greek kings and then came under Rome. Each pair gives advice. Joshua ben Perachiah says in Avot 1:6: get yourself a teacher, acquire a friend to study with, and judge every person favorably. The last part means give people the benefit of the doubt.

Another Mishnah, Chagigah 2:2, says each pair had a leader called the nasi and a head of the court. The pairs set a pattern that the Talmud keeps: two teachers, two views, both remembered. The most famous pair, Hillel and Shammai, disagreed about many rules, and the Talmud records both sides.

Hillel lived around the end of the first century BCE and the start of the first century CE. Rabbinic stories remember him as patient and humble. In Avot 1:12 he says: be one of the students of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving people and bringing them near to the Torah.

Avot 1:14 is one of the most quoted lines in Jewish writing. Hillel asks three questions. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? The first question is about caring for yourself. The second warns against caring only for yourself. The third says do not wait.

Readers have taken the questions in many directions. Some read them as advice on study; others read them as advice on standing up for oneself and one’s community. Modern Jewish movements, from Orthodox to Reform, quote the saying often. Students can also argue with it, as Avot invites: when is "not now" the wiser answer?

Shammai is often remembered as the strict partner of Hillel. Yet in Avot 1:15 he says: make your Torah study fixed, say little and do much, and receive every person with a cheerful face. Many readers point out that this last line softens the picture of Shammai as harsh.

Avot 1:16 turns to Rabban Gamliel, a later leader. He advises: make yourself a teacher, remove yourself from doubt, and do not give your tithes by guessing. A tithe is a tenth of a harvest given as the Torah commands. Rabban Gamliel wants people to measure it, not estimate it, so no one is shortchanged.

Avot 1:17 gives advice from his son Simeon: silence is good, and study is not the main thing, but action is. The chapter ends at 1:18 with justice, truth and peace. Across chapter 1, the sayings move between study and deeds. Readers still debate which one Avot puts first, and the text lets both stand.

Chapter 2 opens with Rabbi Judah the Prince, called simply Rabbi. Rabbinic tradition credits him with editing the Mishnah around 200 CE. In Avot 2:1 he asks: which is the right path a person should choose? He answers that it is one that brings honor to the one who does it and honor from other people.

He goes on: be as careful with a light mitzvah as with a weighty one, because you do not know the reward of each. A mitzvah is a commandment. Rabbi’s point is humility. People cannot always tell which small act matters most, so every act deserves care.

Avot 2:2 gives a saying from his son, Rabban Gamliel. Study of Torah is good together with a way of earning a living. Readers often connect this to the rabbis’ own lives. Many of the sages in the Talmud worked with their hands, as farmers, builders or tradesmen, while they studied.

Hillel returns in chapter 2. In Avot 2:4 he says: do not separate yourself from the community. Do not trust yourself until the day you die. And do not judge your fellow until you have reached his place. Each line asks for humility about oneself and patience with others.

The line about judging links back to the first saying of Avot: be slow in judgment. Now the advice is personal. You cannot fully know why someone acted until you stand where they stood. Teachers often use it to talk about empathy, the skill of understanding another person’s point of view.

Avot 2:5 adds another famous line from Hillel. In a place where there are no people, try to be a person. The Hebrew word for person here, mensch in later Yiddish, came to mean someone decent and kind. When no one else steps up, Hillel says, you should.

Near the end of chapter 2, Rabbi Tarfon speaks. He lived around the time the Temple fell, in the late first and early second centuries CE. He says: the day is short, the work is great, the workers are lazy, the reward is much, and the master of the house is pressing.

Then he adds the line that many readers call the heart of Avot. It is not your duty to finish the work, but you are not free to stop doing it. The work is often read as Torah study, and also as repairing the world. The saying holds two ideas at once: the job is too big for one person, and each person must still do a part.

Different printed editions number these sayings differently. Some print them as Avot 2:15–16 and others as 2:20–21. Taylor’s 1877 translation follows its own numbering. When you cite Avot, name the edition you use. That habit helps readers find the same passage.

Pirkei Avot is a tractate of the Mishnah in the order of Nezikin, the order about damages and courts. Unlike most tractates, it has no Gemara in the Babylonian Talmud. It is almost all advice and very little law. A related work, Avot de-Rabbi Natan, expands on it.

Many Jewish communities have a custom of reading one chapter of Avot each Shabbat afternoon. The custom begins after Passover and runs to Shavuot, and in many communities it continues through the summer. For this reason, Avot is printed in many a siddur, the Jewish prayer book.

Avot in the Mishnah has five chapters. A sixth chapter, called Kinyan Torah, about acquiring Torah, was added from another early source. That gave six chapters for the six Shabbatot between Passover and Shavuot. Orthodox, Conservative and Reform prayer books all include Avot in some form.

In 1877 Charles Taylor, a scholar at Cambridge University in England, published Sayings of the Jewish Fathers. It gave the Hebrew text of Avot, an English translation and many notes. Because it is old, it is now in the public domain, so anyone may quote it freely.

Taylor’s English sounds old. He calls the Great Assembly the Great Synagogue, and he uses words like "thee" and "thou" in places. Newer translations use plainer English. A careful reader compares versions and asks what each translator chose. A single Hebrew word can be turned into English in more than one way.

For example, Avot 1:1’s first saying uses a Hebrew word that some render "deliberate" and others "patient" or "careful." Each choice gives a slightly different picture of the ideal judge. Readers in yeshivas, universities and synagogues all study translations side by side. That habit is itself an old Talmudic move: look closely at every word.

Ta'anit means fast. It is a tractate in the order of Moed, the order about set times and holidays. Most of it deals with a problem every farmer in ancient Israel knew. The rainy season comes in the fall and winter. If the rain was late, the whole year’s food was at risk.

Mishnah Ta’anit chapter 1 lays out steps. If the rain had not come by a certain date in the fall, some individuals began to fast. If there was still no rain, the court declared public fasts for the community. Each round was stricter than the one before. The Mishnah describes the steps with care, like a plan for an emergency.

The rabbis treated drought as more than bad weather. Rabbinic tradition reads the Torah’s promise of rain in its season, in Deuteronomy 11, as tied to the people’s conduct. A public fast was a way to stop, look at how the community was living, and pray together. Modern readers differ on how to read that link, and many focus on the fast as a call for shared action.

Mishnah Ta’anit 2:1 describes a public fast day. The ark with the Torah scroll was brought out to the town square. Ashes were put on it and on the heads of the leaders. Then the eldest among them spoke words meant to move the crowd and turn their minds to how they lived.

The elder said: our brothers, it does not say of the people of Nineveh that God saw their sackcloth and their fasting. It says God saw their deeds, that they turned from their evil way. He was quoting Jonah 3:10. In the book of Jonah, the city of Nineveh changes how it lives, and the threatened punishment does not come.

The point is sharp. A fast without changed behavior is empty, the Mishnah suggests. The words teach teshuvah, turning or repentance, as action, not just feeling. Readers link this teaching to the prophets, such as Isaiah 58, which asks for a fast that feeds the hungry and frees the oppressed.

The Gemara on Ta’anit tells a story set in Jerusalem while the Temple still stood. Pilgrims had come for a festival, and there was no water to drink. Nakdimon ben Gurion, a rich man of the city, went to a Roman official who owned water. He borrowed twelve wells of water for the pilgrims.

Nakdimon promised to give back twelve wells of water by a set day, or pay a huge sum of silver. The day came, and the wells were still empty. The official mocked him. Nakdimon went to the Temple, wrapped himself in his prayer shawl and prayed. The sky filled with clouds, and rain filled the wells.

The official claimed the sun had already set, so the deadline was past. Nakdimon prayed again, and the clouds parted so the sun shone. The Talmud says that is how he got his name, from a word for breaking through. This is aggadah, story in the Talmud. Readers take it as a lesson about generosity for strangers and about prayer, while scholars study it as legend.

Honi is called ha-Me'aggel, the circle-drawer. Mishnah Ta’anit 3:8 tells his most famous story. The people asked him to pray for rain, and nothing came. He drew a circle, stood in it, and swore by God’s great name not to move until God had mercy on the people.

The rain came in three kinds. First a few drops; Honi said he had not asked for that. Then a pounding storm; he had not asked for that either. At last he asked for rain of goodwill, blessing and grace, and the right rain fell. The story shows prayer as a kind of bold conversation.

The historian Josephus, writing in Greek in the first century CE, mentions a man called Onias who was known for praying for rain. Many scholars think Onias and Honi are the same man, and they date him to the first century BCE. The Mishnah and Josephus tell different stories about him, so historians read both with care.

After the rain, Simeon ben Shetach sent Honi a message. Simeon was head of the court and one of the pairs in Avot. He said that if Honi were anyone else, he would have put him under a ban, a formal punishment that kept a person apart from the community.

Then Simeon quoted Proverbs 23:25: let your father and mother be glad. He compared Honi to a son who nags his father until the father gives him what he wants. The words are part praise and part worry. Honi had been close to God, Simeon admitted, but he had also made demands and sworn an oath he might not keep.

Readers split on how to take this. Some say the Mishnah admires Honi’s closeness to God. Others say it warns against treating prayer like a bargain. Many teachers point to the structure: the Mishnah records the miracle and the objection together. That habit of keeping both voices is one of the Talmud’s marks.

The Gemara in Ta’anit 23a tells a longer tale. Honi saw a man planting a carob tree. He asked how long until it gave fruit. Seventy years, the man said. Honi asked if he expected to live that long. The man said: I found carob trees in the world. As my ancestors planted for me, I plant for my children.

Then Honi sat down to eat and fell asleep. A rock formed around him, and he slept for seventy years. When he woke, he saw the grandson of the planter gathering carobs. He went to the study hall and heard the students say their teachings were as clear as in Honi’s day. He said he was Honi, but no one believed him or gave him honor.

Honi was so hurt that he prayed to die, and he died. The Gemara says that Rava drew a lesson: either chavruta or death, meaning either companionship or death. A chavruta is a study partner. The story is read as about planting for the future and as about how people need to be known by others.

Yoma, meaning The Day, is the tractate about Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Most of it describes the high priest’s service in the Temple. Its last chapter turns to the fast. Mishnah Yoma 8:6 says that a sick person is fed on Yom Kippur if experts say it is needed.

Mishnah Yoma 8:7 goes further. If a building falls on someone, and it is not known whether the person is alive, or even who the person is, the rubble is cleared on Shabbat. If the person is alive, they dig on. Doubt is not a reason to wait; doubt is a reason to act.

The rabbis call this pikuach nefesh, saving a life. Rabbinic law holds that it comes before almost every other command, even Shabbat and Yom Kippur. There are a few exceptions the Talmud names elsewhere, such as not killing another person to save oneself. The rule shows the course’s thread of mercy written into law.

Yoma 85a tells of three sages walking together: Rabbi Ishmael, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah and Rabbi Akiva. A question was put to them. Where do we learn that saving a life pushes aside Shabbat? They all agreed on the rule. What they argued about was the proof.

Rabbi Ishmael pointed to the Torah’s law of a thief breaking in, in Exodus 22. Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah reasoned from brit milah, circumcision, which is done on Shabbat. If one part of the body overrides Shabbat, he said, surely the whole body does. That is a kal va-chomer, an argument from the lighter case to the heavier one.

Rabbi Akiva argued from Exodus 21 and the altar. Then the Gemara on 85b brings more proofs. One rabbi reads Exodus 31:16: break one Shabbat for a person so he can keep many Shabbatot. Each proof is tested and challenged. This is a sugya in motion: question, proof, objection and answer, all on behalf of a life.

Near the end of the sugya, Rav Yehudah reports a teaching of Shmuel, a Babylonian amora of the third century. Shmuel cited Leviticus 18:5: you shall keep My laws, which a person shall do and live by them. The rabbis read "live by them" as "and not die by them."

Shmuel said that if he had been there, he would have had a better proof. Rava later said that every other proof could be challenged, but Shmuel’s could not. The earlier proofs only work when a life is certainly at risk. "Live by them" covers even a case of doubt, like the rubble in Mishnah Yoma 8:7.

Centuries later, Maimonides wrote in his law code that the Torah’s laws are not meant as vengeance on the world but as mercy, kindness and peace. He also said that the leaders of the community, not strangers or children, should do the work of saving a life on Shabbat. Jewish readers across movements cite this teaching in hospitals and emergency services today.

Mishnah Yoma 8:9 draws a firm line. For wrongs between a person and God, Yom Kippur brings atonement. For wrongs between a person and another person, Yom Kippur does not atone until the wrongdoer makes peace with the one who was hurt. The day alone is not enough.

Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah drew this from Leviticus 16:30: from all your sins before the LORD you shall be clean. He read "before the LORD" as limiting the verse. Only sins before God alone are cleared by the day. A verse’s small phrase becomes a large ethical rule, which is a common Talmudic move.

This Mishnah shapes how many Jews prepare for Yom Kippur. In the days before it, many people ask family, friends and coworkers for forgiveness. Rabbinic tradition puts the burden on the one who did wrong. It is not enough to feel sorry in private; the hurt person has to be approached and set right.

The two tractates in this chapter do not keep halakhah and aggadah apart. Ta’anit gives rules for public fasts, then tells of Honi and Nakdimon. Yoma describes the Temple service, then rules on saving a life and on asking forgiveness. Law and story sit on the same page and shed light on each other.

Look at who each passage protects. The fasts protect a town facing hunger. Honi’s story asks for rain of blessing, not a flood. Mishnah Yoma 8:7 protects a stranger under rubble, even if no one knows who he is. Yoma 8:9 protects the person who was hurt, by making the one who hurt them come and make it right.

Readers across Judaism draw different lessons. Orthodox readers often stress the precise rules for when a life overrides Shabbat. Conservative and Reform readers often stress the ethics behind them. Academic scholars study how the stories and laws grew. All of them read the same pages, and that shared reading is part of the Talmud’s life.