Pirke Avot, verse fifteen: saying and doing

I was thinking, before I started in on this Pirke Avot business, that I would do two or three verses a week. Not so much. We’re on the second part of the verse, in Herford’s translation

Shammai said—Make thy Torah a fixed duty. Say little and do much; and receive every man with a cheerful expression of face.

The rabbis give Abraham as an example of promising little (Genesis 18:5 I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on and doing much (18:8 And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set [it] before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat.). It’s an interesting question, though. Let’s take the four categories:

• Say much and do little: this is clearly a bad thing.
• Say little and do little: this is not great because it leads to little being done, but on the other hand there is a basic honesty to it.
• Say little and do much: as long as the much you’re doing is good, it’s presumably good to do much of it.
• Say much and do much: again, you are doing much, which is presumably good, and you are being honest about what you are doing, which is also presumably good.

So why the particular advice to fall in the third category, rather than the fourth? Well, one could say that saying you will do something has an element of hubris, and that whether you will or no, the thing may not be done. The crick done rise, and your big plans gang agley, and where’s your honesty now? On the other hand, by saying much to begin with, you make it a bit hard to chicken out later. Several of my friends have had some success by posting to do lists on their personal blogs and then publicly crossing the items off the list: saying much leads to doing much. Easier to claim that the crick done rise and so I can’t do laundry if there’s nobody expecting you to find a damn’ way, damn it, because you said you would. This connects, it seems to me, with the idea of having a fixed time for Torah. You don’t have to say you have a fixed time in order to have a fixed time, but (for me at any rate) it helps fix the time to say the time.

And, of course, there is some overlap between doing and saying; there are lots of occasions in our public life where failing to speak up is failing to do. Mostly saying ain’t doing, but a general admonishment to say little has to be tempered, it seems to me, with a recognition that sometimes the little should be more than a little.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.