This is going to be another fun romp through translation hell. We’re starting with Hertz:
Shemayah and Avtalyon received the tradition from the preceding. Shemayah said, Love work; hate lordship; and seek no intimacy with the ruling power.
Judah Goldin agrees. R. Travers Herford translates it as hate mastery, Jacob Neusner as hate authority, Rodkinson as hate to attain superiority, and the Chabad as loath mastery over others. These are all similar, except to the extent the translator makes it explicit that it is one’s own mastery that is to be hated, not other people’s.
But what’s the Hebrew, you ask? s’na et ha-rabanut. Hate the… rabbinate? Hate being a Rabbi? That’s what the Hebrew says, and it seems to me a bit disingenuous not to take account of that. They aren’t wrong, I think, as the meaning is clearly something like don’t seek the title of Rabbi, rather than hate the rabbinate, which would make no sense in the context. And even don’t seek the title of Rabbi would be misleading, since at the time of Shemayah, the term appears to have been restricted to people with substantial legal authority. On the other hand, I get a similarity between those people who having been granted a Ph.D., insist on being addressed with the title Dr. all their lives. There’s nothing terribly wrong with it, and it is certainly a title to which the degree recipient is entitled, but the sort of person who insists on that title is not the sort of person you want to be.
Maimonides said that when a person is appointed the head of a community, it is assumed that he is corrupt. And it’s not just that the people in the community assume that he is corrupt, people outside the community, in other communities, or further up the heirarchy, and even the Court of Heaven itself presumes corruption. To take on mastery of others is to expose yourself to this suspicion, and it is to be avoided whenever possible.
And yet, who are the Avot but the people who exposed themselves to that very thing? The heads of the Great Assembly, the heads of the Sanhedrin, Judah the Prince, the judges of the religious courts, the heads of the schools of learning, the heads of the great councils. Are we to presume that they, too, are corrupt?
I think I’m going to go ahead and say yes. We are to assume that the corruption inherent in authority, in a great name, in mastery over others, is as tempting to them as to anyone. In a different context, Rabbi Jehudah pointed out that Saul, when he was told that he would be king of Israel, hid himself rather than be anointed, and had to be found and brought out. Once he was king, though, he was willing to commit murder rather than be deposed. It’s in the nature of things. Not that I’m saying that the great sages were corrupt, just that it seems to me entirely appropriate to suspect them of corruption, and even to require evidence against corruption before believing in their virtue.
That’s one of the reasons that I think it’s terribly important to have that footnote, or whatever, to make it clear that Shemayah is not only talking about the Roman nobility or the French aristocracy, but about himself and his colleagues. Like the previous generation, this is advice for judges and their students; Shemayah’s advice is easier to translate into our own lives, but also easier to miss the point of. Because Shemayah is not saying avoid authority, but hate it; even hating it, you may be compelled to do it, and may not virtuously avoid it.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.