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Tractate Avot. Chapter One.
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Mishnah [1]
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We have already explained, at the outset of our discourse on this volume, the character of the transmitted tradition and how it came to be. Our aim here is nothing more than to expound these moral teachings, and to urge the acquisition of certain of their character traits that are of great benefit, just as we shall dwell at length on warning against certain vices that are exceedingly harmful. The remainder I shall explain merely as to its wording and some of its meanings, for it is, apart from a few cases, plain in meaning.
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*"Be deliberate in judgment":* that is, that they should be slow in rendering a ruling and not hasten to decide it quickly, until they have fully grasped it, so that meanings may become apparent to them which do not appear at first thought.
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*"And make a fence for the Torah":* meaning the rabbinic decrees and rabbinic enactments that keep a person far from transgression, as God (exalted be He) said, "And you shall keep My charge" (Lev 18:30), and they said in interpreting this, "Make a safeguard for My charge" (BT Yevamot 21a).
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Mishnah [2]
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He says that by means of knowledge—which is the Torah—and by means of the moral virtues—which is acts of loving-kindness—and by means of compliance with the commands of the Law—which is the sacrifices—the world's well-being is perpetuated, and its order and existence in the most complete manner.
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Mishnah [3]
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*Peras* designates the recompense that one bestows upon someone to whom one owes no obligation; rather, one does this by way of grace and beneficence, like one who says to his servant, or to his young son, or to his wife, "Do such-and-such, and I will give you a dinar or two." This is the difference between *peras* and *sakhar*, for the wage (*sakhar*) is determined by obligation.
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This excellent man said: Do not serve God on the condition that He bestow good upon you and grant you favor, so that you would covet the reward and serve Him for its sake; rather, serve Him as servants who do not covet any favor or beneficence. By this he intended that they should be those who serve out of love, as we have explained in the tenth chapter of Sanhedrin (M. Sanhedrin 10).
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And along with this, he does not free them from fear, and so he said: Even though you are those who serve out of love, do not cast off fear altogether—*"and let the fear of Heaven be upon you"*—for the command to fear has also come in the Torah, namely His saying, "The Lord your God you shall fear" (Deut 6:13). And the Sages said: "Serve out of love, serve out of fear" (cf. BT Sotah 31a). And they said: The one who loves does not neglect what is commanded, and the one who fears does not transgress what is prohibited; so fear has a great role in the negative commandments, and especially in the revealed-tradition statutes.
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Now this Sage had two disciples, the name of one of whom was Tzadoq and the name of the other Boethus. When they heard him utter this saying, they went out from before him, and one said to the other: The master has plainly declared that there is neither reward nor punishment, and that there is no hope of recompense at all—for they did not grasp his intent (peace be upon him). So each one led the other astray, and they forsook the Law, and a faction gathered around the one and a faction around the other, and the Sages call them the Sadducees and the Boethusians.
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And since they could not assemble multitudes on the basis of the belief they had arrived at—for this evil belief divides those who are united, so how could it unite those who are divided?—they resorted to affirming the very thing they were unable to deny before the masses, who would have killed them had they spoken it openly; I mean, the text of the Torah. So each of them, before his sect, made it appear that he believes in the text of the Torah but rejects the transmitted tradition, claiming that the transmission is not authentic.
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This was so that all the obligations conveyed by tradition, and the rabbinic decrees and enactments, would fall away from them—since they were unable to reject the whole of what is written in the text and conveyed by tradition—and so that the door of reinterpretation might be opened wide to them; for once interpretation is returned to one's own discretion, one makes light of whatever one wishes and burdensome whatever one wishes, according to one's aim, since one does not believe in the foundational principle at all but seeks only something that will pass muster with some people.
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And from that time arose these accursed sects, the whole company of the sectarians who are called in these lands—I mean Egypt—Karaites, and whose name among the Sages is Sadducees and Boethusians; they are the ones who initiated impugning the transmitted tradition and reinterpreting the texts according to whatever seems strong to each individual, without submitting to any sage whatsoever. This is contrary to His saying (exalted be He), "According to the Torah which they shall teach you... you shall not turn aside" (Deut 17:11), etc.
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Mishnah [4]
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*"A meeting-place":* a house of assembly, meaning that you should make your house an appointed place for the gathering of the Sages continually, like synagogues and study halls, so that when one Sage says to another, "Where shall we meet with you?"—that is, "If we wish to meet with you"—he may say to him, "At the house of so-and-so."
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Mishnah [5]
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*"Let it be wide open":* that he should have a door open toward the path of travelers, so that every traveler driven by some need, or pained by hunger and thirst, may enter the house at once.
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*"And let the poor be members of your household":* he says that it is fitting that your hired servants be the weak and the destitute, rather than purchasing slaves. Likewise the Sages disliked the acquiring of slaves and preferred employing the weak, and that they be sustained by the food and income of every person.
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And it is known that conversation with women is, for the most part, only about matters of intercourse; therefore he said that excessive conversation with her is forbidden, for *"he brings evil upon himself"*—meaning, there accrues to him a vice of character within his soul, namely lust. *"And he neglects the words of Torah":* this is plain, since he has occupied his time with another occupation. *"And in the end he will inherit Gehinnom":* because of the disobedience to which that conversation leads, so that he becomes deserving of punishment for it.
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Mishnah [6]
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*"Acquire for yourself a teacher":* even if he is not worthy to be your teacher, nevertheless make him your teacher, so that you may rely upon him for instruction and thereby attain knowledge—for a person does not learn from himself as he learns from another; rather, what he learns from another is more firmly fixed and clearer to him, even if that other is his equal in knowledge or beneath him. Thus they explained in interpreting this counsel.
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And his saying *"and acquire for yourself a companion":* he expressed it with the word "acquisition" (*shira*, purchase) and did not say "make for yourself a companion" or "associate with companions" or the like. The aim is that a person ought of necessity to take for himself a friend, so that by this all his affairs may be set right, as they said, "Either companionship or death" (BT Taanit 23a). And if he does not find one, he must strive for it, and even draw the other toward friendship at first until he becomes a friend; and he should keep pressing toward this aim until friendship with him becomes possible—as the masters of moral counsel say: "When you befriend, do not befriend according to your own character, but befriend according to the character of your friend."
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So when each of the two friends relies upon this counsel, the aim of each will be to fulfill the aim of his companion, and thus their two aims together will undoubtedly be one and the same thing. And how excellent is the saying of Aristotle: "The friend is another self."
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Friends are of three kinds: the friend of utility, the friend of pleasure-and-ease, and the friend of virtue. As for the friend of utility, it is like the friendship of business partners, or the friendship of the king and his soldiery. As for the friend of ease, it is of two sorts: the friend of delight and the friend of tranquility. The friend of delight is like the affection of males for females in marriage and the like. As for the friend of tranquility, it is that a person should have a friend with whom his soul is so at ease that he guards himself from him in neither deed nor word, and lets him in on all his affairs, the good of them and the foul, with no fear of him—that any deficiency might befall him in all this, whether in his own eyes or in another's; for when the soul attains, through some person, tranquility to this degree, it greatly takes its ease in conversing and befriending him.
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And the friend of virtue is that the desire of the two of them, and the intent of both, be for a single aim, namely the good, and that each one wish to be aided by his companion in attaining that good for them both together. This is the friend whose acquisition was commanded, and it is like the friendship of the teacher for the disciple and the disciple for the teacher.
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*"And judge every person on the scale of merit":* its meaning is that when a person is unknown to you—you do not know whether he is righteous or wicked—and you see him doing some deed or saying some word that, if you construe it one way, is good, and if you construe it another way, is evil, then interpret it favorably and do not suppose evil of him.
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But if the person is known to be righteous and is renowned for good deeds, and you see him do a deed all of whose outward signs indicate that it is an evil deed, and it cannot be judged a good deed except by a very great stretch and a remote possibility, then it is incumbent to construe it as good, since there exists some possibility of its being good, and it is not permitted to suspect him; concerning this they say, "Whoever suspects the innocent is smitten in his body" (BT Yoma 19b, BT Shabbat 97a).
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Likewise, if he is wicked and his deeds are notorious, and then we see him do a deed all of whose indications show it to be good, but there is in it a very remote possibility of evil, then it is incumbent to guard against him and not to believe him good, since there is in him the possibility of evil, as it is said, "When he speaks graciously, do not trust him, for there are seven abominations in his heart" (Prov 26:25). And when he is unknown and the deed inclines toward one of the two sides, then it is incumbent, by way of virtue, to judge him on the scale of merit, whichever of the two sides it may be.
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Mishnah [7]
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*"Do not associate with a wicked person":* in any kind of friendship whatsoever, so that you do not learn from his deeds. We have already explained in the preceding chapters that one acquires vices through mingling with the wicked.
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And he said that when you have sinned, or have seen a sinner, do not feel secure and say that God punishes only in the world to come; rather, do not despair of retribution in the present world for that sin.
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Mishnah [8]
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*"Those who arrange [cases for] judges":* these are people who study legal disputes so that they become advocates for litigants in their suits. They pose questions: "If the judge says such-and-such, answer with such-and-such; and if the opposing party claims such-and-such, then the response is such-and-such"—as though they were arraying the judges and the litigants before themselves. For this reason they were called *"those who arrange [for] judges,"* as if they had arranged the judges before them.
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So he forbade resembling them, meaning that one should prompt one of the two litigants with an argument that will benefit him, telling him, "Say such-and-such," or "Deny in such-and-such a manner." Even if he knows that the man is wronged and that his adversary is suing him falsely through the prevailing of falsehood, it is not permitted for him to prompt him with an argument that would save him by any means.
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Mishnah [10]
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*"Authority":* sovereignty. In these three counsels lies the well-being of religion and of the world. For through the lack of a trade one's circumstances become straitened, so that one plunders and acts unjustly. And through seeking high office, ordeals and hardships in the world befall a person, for he is envied and opposed, and his religion is corrupted, as they said, "Once a person is appointed to office below, he becomes wicked above" (cf. BT Yoma 22b).
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Likewise, intimacy with the ruling power: safety from it in the world is remote, and it corrupts one's religion, since one looks only to what will bring one near to him. You know the story of Doeg—and this although the king from whom he sought nearness was "the anointed of the Lord" and "the chosen of the Lord" and a prophet.
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Mishnah [11]
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*"The evil waters":* an allusion to sectarianism (*minut*). He said: Guard yourselves in your speech before the masses, and let there be in it no ambiguity or place for reinterpretation, lest there be there deviant people who reinterpret it according to their own beliefs, so that the disciples, having heard it from you, fall away into sectarianism and suppose that this was your belief; and there would be in that a profanation of the Name of Heaven, like what befell Antigonos of Sokho with Tzadoq and Boethus.
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Mishnah [12]
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They said that Aaron (peace be upon him), when he perceived or was informed of some person that he was inwardly evil and had a transgression in hand, would hasten to greet him and befriend him and converse much with him; and that person would feel shame at himself and say, "Woe to me! Had Aaron known my inner state and what I do, he would not have deemed me worthy even to look upon, let alone to speak with me; but since I am in his eyes the image of a virtuous man, I shall make his good opinion of me come true." So he would repent and turn back, and become one of Aaron's disciples and of those who benefited from him. God said in describing him with this noble trait, "In peace and uprightness he walked with Me, and many he turned back from iniquity" (Mal 2:6). And it was toward this well-known quality of his that Hillel aimed.
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He also said: When a man's name spreads wide and grows great, herald its cutting off. And he used to say also: One who does not increase in learning, God puts him to death; but as for one who does not learn at all, he deserves to be killed. *"And one who makes use of the crown perishes":* meaning, one who takes the Torah as a livelihood—this is his aim in this saying, as will be explained in this tractate. And it was said, by way of a mnemonic sign, *"the disciple of another scholar":* meaning that it is not permitted for him to employ a scholar's disciple, unless he is his own disciple.
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Mishnah [13]
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He said: If I myself am not the one who moves my soul toward the virtues, then who shall move it?—since there is no external mover, as we explained in the eighth chapter—seeing that I am the one who inclines my soul to whatever direction I wish. That is, whatever deed I have performed of the deeds of the good. Then, as though belittling himself, he said *"what am I?"*—meaning, what thing has come from me? Here I am, I have not attained perfection, even though I have come to know this principle.
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Then he returned and said: And if I do not acquire the virtues now, in the season of youth, when shall I acquire them—in the season of old age and decrepitude? No, for the removal of one's established dispositions is difficult at that time, since the acquired habits will by then have grown strong and firmly entrenched, whether virtues or vices, as the wise man said, "Train up a youth according to his way" (Prov 22:6), etc.
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Mishnah [14]
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He said: Make the study of Torah the foundation, and let all else of your occupations be subordinate to it; if it falls out, it falls out, and if it does not fall out, there is no harm in its lapsing. And they said: "The righteous say little and do much," like Abraham, who only said "a morsel of bread" (Gen 18:5) but then brought butter and milk and the calf and three measures of fine flour (cf. Gen 18:6-8); "but the wicked say much and do not perform even a little," like Ephron, who in speech said "the whole I give" (cf. Gen 23:11), yet in deed would not relinquish even a single dinar of the price (cf. Gen 23:15-16).
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*"And a pleasant countenance":* with graciousness and a cheerful face.
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Mishnah [15]
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This [counsel] here, to take for oneself a teacher, is not for the sake of instruction but for the sake of legal rulings. He said: Make for yourself a particular person as a teacher whom you may follow regarding the permitted and the forbidden, so that you may be raised above doubts—after the manner of their saying in the Jerusalem Talmud, "Go bring me an elder from the market upon whom I may rely, and I will permit it to you" (cf. JT)—and likewise [the counsel] to refrain from setting apart the tithes by estimation, since that is among the doubtful matters.
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Mishnah [16]
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The wise man said, "In a multitude of words transgression is not lacking" (Prov 10:19), and the cause of this is that most speech is superfluity and sins, as we shall now explain: that when a person multiplies his speech, he sins of necessity, for there will be in his speech—if only a single word—something not fit to be said. And among the marks of the learned is paucity of speech; they said, "A fence for wisdom is silence" (M. Avot 3:13). And abundance of speech is among the marks of the ignorant, and "the voice of a fool comes with a multitude of words" (Eccl 5:2). And the Sages said that paucity of speech is a token of nobility of stock and of one's being of distinguished lineage; they said, "The sign of [good] lineage is silence" (cf. BT Pesachim 3b).
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It is told in a book of ethics that a certain ascetic was seen to keep silence so much that he would speak only very little, and he was asked: What is the cause of your excessive silence? He said: I examined speech and found it divided into four parts. The first part is speech that is wholly harmful, with no benefit—such as reviling a person, uttering obscenity, and the like—and to speak this is sheer madness. The second part is speech that contains harm from one side and benefit from another, such as praising a person in order to derive some benefit from him, while in that praise there is something that incenses his enemy and thereby harms the very one he praised; one must abandon this for the sake of that, and not speak with this part of speech either. The third part is speech that has neither benefit nor harm in it, like most of the common people's talk—how the city wall was built, how such-and-such a palace was built, the description of the beauty of so-and-so's house, the abundant produce of such-and-such a city, and the like of these superfluous sayings; he said: speech of this part is likewise superfluity with no benefit in it. The fourth part is speech that is wholly beneficial, such as speech about the sciences and the virtues, and a person's speech about what concerns him of that by which his life subsists and his existence continues; with this one ought to speak. He said: So whenever I hear speech, I examine it; if I find it of this fourth part, I speak it, and if it is of those [other parts], I keep silent from it. The masters of ethics said: Consider this man and his wisdom, for he dropped three-quarters of speech—and this is a wisdom by which one ought to be instructed.
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And I say that speech, according to what our Law requires, divides into five parts: the obligatory, the prohibited, the discouraged, the recommended, and the permitted. The first part, the obligatory, is the reading of the Torah, the teaching of it, and the study of it; these are positive commandments that are obligatory—"and you shall speak of them" (Deut 6:7). The second part is speech that is forbidden and prohibited, such as false testimony, lying, slander, defamation, and reviling; and the texts of the Torah indicate this part. Of it is foul-mouthedness and the "evil tongue." The third part is discouraged speech, namely speech in which there is no benefit for a person in himself, and neither obedience nor disobedience, such as most of the common folk's talk about what has happened and what has been; this the Sages call "idle chatter," and the virtuous strive to abandon such speech. Of this part also is that a person should disparage a virtue or praise a vice, whether of character or of intellect.
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The fourth part is the recommended, namely speech praising the intellectual and moral virtues, and disparaging the vices of both kinds, and stirring the soul toward the former by discourse and verse, and restraining it from the latter by those same means; likewise praising the virtuous and lauding them for their virtues, so that their conduct may seem good in people's eyes and they may follow their path; and disparaging the wicked for their vices, so that their deeds and their memory may seem foul in people's eyes and they may shun them and not walk in their way. This part—namely the teaching of virtuous character and the warning away from base character—is sometimes called "proper conduct" (*derekh eretz*). The fifth part, the permitted, is speech about what concerns a person of his commerce, his livelihood, his eating, drinking, clothing, and the rest of what he needs; this is permitted, with neither recommendation nor discouragement.
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In this part paucity of speech is praiseworthy for a person, and against multiplying it the books of ethics give warning. As for the forbidden and the discouraged, there is no need in their case for speech or counsel that one ought to be silent about them once and for all. But as for the obligatory and the recommended, if a person were able to spend his whole life speaking of them, that would be the ultimate goal; yet along with this two things are needful for him. One is that he have deeds matching his words, as they say, "Pleasant are the words that issue from the mouths of those who do them"; and concerning this meaning he said here, "Not the study is the principal thing, but the deed" (M. Avot 1:17). The other thing is conciseness: that one aim to multiply meanings with little speech, not the reverse—this is their saying, "Let a person always teach his disciple by the short way" (BT Pesachim 3b).
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And know that poems composed in any language whatsoever are to be evaluated only by their meanings, and they follow the same course as the speech we have divided. I have explained this—though it is self-evident—because I have seen elders and men of distinction of our nation who, when they attend a wine gathering or a wedding or the like and someone wishes to sing Arabic verse, even if the theme of that poem is the praise of courage or generosity—which is of the recommended part—or the praise of wine, they object to it with every kind of objection and do not permit hearing it; yet when the singer sings some Hebrew muwashshaḥ, they do not object and do not deem it grave, even though this speech may contain what is prohibited or discouraged. This is sheer ignorance, for speech is not forbidden, permitted, recommended, discouraged, or commanded with respect to its language, but with respect to its meaning.
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If the theme of that poem is a virtue, its recitation is obligatory in whatever language it may be, and if its theme is a vice, abandoning it is obligatory in whatever language it may be. Indeed, in my view there is here an added consideration: that if there are two muwashshaḥs with a single theme—stirring the faculty of lust, praising it, and gladdening the soul with it, which is a vice—and one of the two muwashshaḥs is in Hebrew and the other in Arabic or a foreign tongue, then hearing the Hebrew one and speaking it is more strongly discouraged by the Law, on account of the excellence of the language, for it ought not to be employed save in the virtues. And especially if there be joined to this the employing of a verse from the Torah or from the Song of Songs in that theme; then it passes from the category of the discouraged into the category of the forbidden and prohibited, since the Law has forbidden making the words of prophecy into kinds of song amid the vices and base things.
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And since we mentioned the "evil tongue" among the categories of forbidden speech, I shall expound it and mention concerning it some of what the Sages said, for people are in great blindness regarding it; and it is the gravest transgression that a person continually commits—especially in light of what the Sages said, that "the dust of the evil tongue" (cf. BT Bava Batra 165a) is something a person does not escape any day; and would that there were not the "evil tongue" itself! The "evil tongue" is the describing of people's faults and defects and the disparaging of a person of Israel by any means of disparagement, even if it be a defect that he indeed has—for the "evil tongue" is not lying about a person and ascribing to him what he did not do, since that is called "spreading a bad name about one's fellow." Rather, the "evil tongue" is disparaging a person even by deeds he truly performed; and the one who utters it sins, and the one who hears it sins, as they said, "The evil tongue slays three: the one who utters it, the one who hears it, and the one of whom it is uttered" (cf. BT Arakhin 15b). And they said, "The one who accepts it is worse than the one who utters it."
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And "the dust of the evil tongue" is innuendo about a person's faults without explicit statement. Solomon said concerning innuendo—and concerning the one who insinuates while making it appear that he has no knowledge of what was understood from his words, and that he did not intend this but some other aim—he said, "Like a madman who casts firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the man who deceives his fellow and says, 'Was I not jesting?'" (Prov 26:18-19). And a certain Sage praised the handwriting of a particular scribe, presenting it before a large assembly, and the master rebuked the one who had praised that scribe's hand and said to him, "Desist—this is part of the evil tongue! For you are causing him to be disparaged by your praising him before the multitude, among whom are some who love him and some who hate him; and the one who hates him, when he hears his praise, is driven to mention his faults." And this is the utmost in remoteness from the evil tongue.
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The text of the Mishnah [reads]: "The decree against our fathers in the wilderness was not sealed except for the evil tongue" (cf. M. Arakhin 3:5)—meaning the story of the spies, of whom it is said, "And they brought forth an evil report of the land" (Num 13:32), etc. And they (peace be upon them) said: If these, who brought forth an evil report only about trees and stones, deserved of punishment what they deserved, then one who speaks in disparagement of his fellow—how much the more so! The text of the Tosefta [reads]: "For three things retribution is exacted from a person in this world, and he has no share in the world to come: idolatry, sexual immorality, and bloodshed—and the evil tongue is equal to them all" (cf. Tosefta Peah 1). And they said in the Talmud that in the sin of idolatry there came the expression of greatness, namely His saying, "This people has sinned a great sin" (Exod 32:31); and in the sin of sexual immorality there likewise came the term of greatness, namely his saying, "How then can I do this great wickedness?" (Gen 39:9); and in the sin of bloodshed the term of greatness likewise came, namely his saying, "My iniquity is greater than I can bear" (Gen 4:13); and in [the case of] the evil tongue there came the term of "greatnesses" *(plural)*...