Pirke Avot, verse 14: ma or mi?

We are on Pirke Avot 1:14, the famous one.

He used to say, If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?

The thing I find startling about this bit (’she-ani l’atzmi, ma ani?) is that it asks not mi ani but ma ani, not who am I? but what am I? I would have expected the question in the second part to parallel the question in the first part, and since the questions seem to be largely the same, the fact that it isn’t quite the same seems to mean something. It isn’t parallel in the beginning part, either; it doesn’t actually ask what if there is onlyani li, only yourself for you but what if there is only ani.

Going back, then, to the first part, the mystics take the ani and the li to be the two parts of the self, the inner and outer, or the mind and body, or the animal and angelic parts of human nature. If your better self cannot control your bestial self, then who will? I am deeply suspicious of any of that two-selves stuff. It always seems to me a fundamental error, a way to claim that humans aren’t really the way they are, that the better self is more human, more real, more worthy than the animal self. Yes, it can be a useful metaphor, but I remain suspicious.

Keep that idea in mind, though, and look at this next sentence. If there is only you, what are you? Are you fully human without other humans? Or, perhaps, are you fully human without the Divine? Are you a what, rather than a who, a thing, a stone, unless and until you have a dodi li, whether we mean a human or a Divine love? Or, perhaps, can we say that an ani without a li is no ani at all? To follow a little further down this path, the two selves are not separate nor meant to be separated, that the animal self is for your angelic self as much as vice versa, and that withdrawing the one from the other turns you from a who to a what.

Or do I mean withdrawing at all? Because I’m not convinced. Again, I don’t know Hebrew well enough to make any claims at all that the traditional translation is not the correct one: Rabbi Hertz is the way to go for accuracy. But when the verse says l’atzmi, the word I know from the root ayin tzadi mem is in Yom Ha-Atzma’ut, the day of Independence. Do we mean independence? Looking it up (thank you Google for leading me to some bat-mitzvah speech) we can see the roots are bone, or as an adjective mighty, drawing from the idea of strength and power. The Hebrew word for independence, as a nation, then, is tied to the word for strength, which isn’t surprising altogether, although of course it’s a fallacy to argue that etymology has a lot of current meaning.

Still, if we’re getting to Hillel, we can look at his word, and what it might have connoted to him. And as much as I’m tempted by independent (If I am independent, what am I?), I don’t think that’s what was going through Hillel’s mind. Oddly enough, there are two meanings of that ayin tzadi mem root pulled up by Mr. Strong and his crew: mighty, as I said, and idiomatically closed, as in eyes. If I close my eyes, what am I? If I am mighty, what am I?

Only, it can’t quite be powerful, as such, because you would translate that with chazak, if you were going in that direction. But I think the connotation is there, and is important as well. Not just if I am only for myself, but if I am for myself independently, for my own power, for my bones, with closed eyes… and isn’t that a temptation? To be a what, rather than a who, a thing of bone and power, blind and mighty and separate and invulnerable. But Hillel reminds us of the cost of that, of being the ani without the li (and vice versa), for who will be for me, who will be my Beloved, human or Divine, if that’s who—and what—I am for myself?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.