Here we go, with the last verse of the chapter:
Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel says: By three things is the world sustained: By justice, by truth, and by peace, as it is said, Truth and justice and peace judge ye in your gates (Zechariah 8:16).
Y’all probably remember that back in verse two, a different Shimeon, Shimeon the tzaddik, said that the world rested on shloshah d’varim; torah, avodah and g’milut chasidim. Those were the three things ha’olam omehd, that the world stands on. Rabban Shimeon ben Gamaliel says that there are three things ha’olam kayam, on which the world, er, stands on. Whatever the difference is, it seems obvious to me that the verse-two tripod refers to the relationship between the world and the Divine, whilst the verse-eighteen relationship refers to more worldly, one might even say secular values. Or not, as we will presumably be looking into.
The number 18 is an interesting one in Hebrew numerology, one of the few word-numbers that most Jews are familiar with. For those who know nothing about the Hebrew numbering system, the letters have numerical values, just as in Roman Numerals V=5 and C=100. Except that in Roman Numerals only certain numbers have values, while in the Hebrew system every number has a value, the first ten letters having values 1-10, the next nine go by tens 20-100, then the last three filling in at 200, 300 and 400. The order of the numbers is irrelevant, so any word in Hebrew has a single number value derived by adding up the values of the letters. The word bayit, for instance, house, is bet yud tav or 2+10+400=412. Now, mechaneh, or camp, comes out to 103, so we see that by building four walls, we multiply our camp by four and turn it into a house. And yet we can add yet another camp, the camp of the Divine, and turn our home (412) into tefilah which is 515. And what is a house with that extra camp? If we add the names of Isaac (208) and Rebecca (307), we see that it is the marriage of two pious people that turns a home into a fit place for prayer.
Which is nonsense, of course. Rebecca and Isaac are preposterous role models for a happy home, or even a pious one. The point, though, is to have a good time manipulating the numbers and the relationships between them and playing with the little pencils.
Eighteen, then, is 10+8, which is a yud and a chet, which happen (if put together in the right order) to make the word chai, or life. This is a very important word in our liturgy, and by connection the number eighteen is a significant, one might almost say lucky number. Although it isn’t luck, quite: we don’t do things by eighteens to try to improve our fortune, just to add a layer of symbolism. So one might give a birthday gift of $18, or the shul might ask for a donation of $18 (or $36) for a fundraiser, or something of that nature. I don’t think it’s an accident that there are eighteen verses in this first chapter of the Avot or that there are (notionally) eighteen links in the chain of authority between the Great Assembly and the Fall of Jerusalem. And I think it’s reasonable to look on this verse, the last to precede the destruction of the Temple, as the bottom rung on the notional ladder, and the earlier tripod of Torah, worship and lovingkindness as the higher.
On the other hand, that doesn’t make justice, truth and peace less important. Or any easier to achieve. I am inclined, however, to say that the emphasis is that in times of trouble, we should bring the pursuit of justice, truth and peace to the prominent position. That we should be reminded in our times of crisis and dislocation that although, of course, we cannot neglect Torah, worship and lovingkindness, neither are those things going to clear away the rubble when the Temple is knocked down.
Only—the Temple is always being knocked down, in every generation our Temple is destroyed. The flight from dislocation is a fool’s game.
But how about this…even in the endtime, the world will still rely on Torah, worship and lovingkindness. In our time, perhaps, Shimeon-not-called-the-tzaddik may have harder and more useful advice.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
Nearly three years after this posting, the chorus I joined last fall (and am still in after all these months) is rehearsing a setting of part of this verse (it’s just the part–in Hebrew–said by Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel, without the quotation from Zecharaiah).