Well, the last time we got together to discuss the Pirke Avot, we were discussing Hillel. And we’ll keep at it. This verse is in Aramaic, rather than Hebrew; Hillel and the others of his time would have used both, but it’s an interesting choice. It does make some nice rhymes in the original (Ch’gid Sh’ma, avad Sh’may; u’d’la mosiq, yosiq), but I suspect he could have had similar effects in Hebrew if he wanted. The use of vernacular is therefore deliberate, but why? I don’t have an answer, but I’ll keep it in mind as I go forward.
Judah Goldin’s translation.
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.
Rabbi Nathan connects this idea of a name made great with the earlier idea of intimacy with the ruling power, and the idea of keeping your head down. I can’t say I like that connection much, mostly I’m afraid because I don’t like that earlier verse all that much. I think there’s a broader warning, here, about fame and name.
Here’s a name: Phelps.
Here’s another: Carnegie.
And another: Washington.
Even in the best circumstances, I think that a name made great is a name destroyed. A name made great is necessarily a name connected to much that’s outside the control of the name-bearer, including sometimes his own actions.
Here’s another: Alice Paul. When I was in college, the women’s center was named after Alice Paul. Then it wasn’t named after her. Then it was. Then it wasn’t, again. Then there was a dorm named after her, amid a lot of argument. In it all, her great name was destroyed in the sense that (a) it became a football kicked around a game of social politics that had little to do with her, and (2) all the bad things she had done or said were repeated and repeated and repeated, until it was hard to keep the image of a flawed human of immense achievement but rather of some sort of villainous wretch.
Now, having said that, I still find Alice Paul inspiring. I find Andrew Carnegie inspiring, in his way, though without forgiving him his part in a variety of terrible things. His name was destroyed in a different way than Alice Paul; the name Carnegie has become split apart from the man, to the point where people attending concerts in Carnegie Hall or checking books out of Carnegie Libraries or attending Carnegie Mellon University don’t know anything about him and don’t care. As for the name of Bush—I can’t say I find anything very greatly inspiring in any of the family, but I do feel, I have to say, a bit of sympathy with Prescott Bush, whose policies on many things were forward-thinking and correct. He died in 1972, a great name in Connecticut, and his son had served in the US House and was at the time US Ambassador to the United Nations. He must have been very proud of his name, thirty-odd years ago.
And what about Hillel himself? There is no greater name among the sages, and he has been an inspiration for two thousand years, to rabbis and to people like me. Surely Hillel, through his teaching, has been responsible for millions of people returning to the Torah.
And yet, of course, we know almost nothing about Hillel himself. Like Andrew Carnegie, the name survives but is destroyed, the meaning attached to a handful of sayings, like this one, interpreted by people like me.
All of which is to say that a name made great is a name destroyed, not even a warning but a truism, because the greater the name, the more is separates from the person. And yet, that is not an excuse for failing to be great, is it?
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.