On to the third of four parts, because he’s Hillel so he get’s an extra one.
He used to say: A name made great is a name destroyed; he that does not increase shall cease; he that does not learn deserves to die; and he that puts the crown to his own use shall perish.
Does this seem a bit harsh?
Some of the commentary says that we are talking, here, about spiritual death, that the fellow who refuses to learn is spiritually dead, or that the person who cuts himself off from the tradition (by refusing to learn it) cuts himself off from the community, which therefore treats him as if he were dead.
There is a tradition, much made use of in films and books about shtetl life, that if your children leave the path of traditional Judaism you not only ostracize the child but say Kaddish for them and treat their memory as if they had died. It’s a vicious and horrible tradition, and I’m against it, but it does exist, and I think that the people who perpetuate it found support in this verse.
So, not actual killing, but ostracizing and metaphorical death. Still seems harsh.
I’ll just throw out two things, neither of them really softening this verse, but there it is, what’s there is there. First, I’ll just say there is a big difference between saying that Chaim Yankel deserves death and saying that it is right or just to kill Chaim Yankel, or even to say Kaddish over him. I’m guessing that the term used (in Aramaic, rather than Hebrew, which is particularly odd here in this portion of the verse) is a legal one, the equivalent of saying that failure-to-learn is a capital crime. If that’s true, then suggesting that some particular person is guilty of failure-to-learn is a very serious matter, requiring witnesses and so on and a very high standard of evidence.
Another is that although the statement is phrased as a moral judgment, it could be viewed as an observation, similar to the first two. People who give up on new learning or new experiences have given up on life; I saw my grandparents give up on learning and on life at more or less the same time, although the bodies took a bit longer to catch up. Furthermore, if life is for learning, if the purpose of life is learning and growing and embiggening, then withdrawing from those things is withdrawing from life; it’s like saying that a player who goes home in the fifth inning deserves to lose. Of course he does. The game is there, and he is there, and at that point is it even a punishment to lose?
And one more thing, before I move on to the bonus clause: it seems that in Aramaic, as in Hebrew, the verb for learn and teach are the same.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
It’s the same verb in Southern, too: “That’ll learn ya, durn ya.”