Pirke Avot, verse eighteen: peace

This may be the very last entry on the first chapter of Pirke Avot, you know. Or not. Or it could be the last entry of the whole series, if I decide I’m tired of writing about Pirke Avot. Or of the whole Tohu Bohu—I’ve been through a patch of not-enjoying-the-blog lately, if you hadn’t guessed, but I think, or hope, that I’m back. Still. One never knows, do one?

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).

The last leg of the last triple in the last verse is peace. Well done, unknown redactor! Well done, Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel.

If there is truth, well and good; if there is justice, well and good, but peace! Rabbi Jonah ben Abraham says that the benefits of peace are without limits, that all mitzvot are encompassed in it. And, of course, that all sins are encompassed in its absence. Peace between nations, peace between people. Surely, as Rabban Simeon says, it sustains the world, and without it, the world would fall.

And frequently does.

You know, I was talking about these three as being connected by this idea of empiricism, and drawing a contrast between the three legs of the tripod of Simeon the Just on that basis. But looking at it again, I am seeing that these three legs are aspirational. Peace is a good thing, certainly, and we have all, I hope, tasted at least a little of it. I have tasted a lot of it, comparatively; I’ve never fought in a war myself, and I haven’t been in a fistfight since I was eleven or so, and I don’t even get into a nasty arguments very often. I don’t have to struggle for resources, particularly. I don’t see violence in my neighborhood, and I don’t have to read about it or watch it on television or in movies if I don’t want to. I have so much peace. And I want more.

And the thing about peace, and truth, and justice, is that pretty much, no matter how much of them you have, either individually or communally, you can always have more. And you should always have more. And you should always be working to have more.

The Law, and worship, and even acts of lovingkindness are things that, yes, you will always fall short of your ambitions, but they aren’t what you might call infinitely scalable. Or at least I could make that argument, depending on certain definitions and contexts, that there is a difference in kind between the two sets. Even if we stopped the wars, and the fights between neighbors, which would be wonderful, there would still be conflicts in need of resolution. And even if we were able to build a justice system capable of resolving those conflicts, there will always be new cases, and new aspects of cases, and new contexts that will require a better, more just system. And no matter how much truth we know, there will always be more to know, more than we can know.

That shouldn’t lead us to despair. No, the fact is that there is always more ice cream in the bowl, always another song on the album, always another, um, bonus level in the video game. Always another metaphor in the blog note.

I like the idea that the world is supported by three legs that are aspirational, that the support itself is aspirational. That fits in largely with my sense of the world, and what (I imagine) Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel must have thought of the world. It’s not stable nohow. It’s not held up by pillars, it’s held up by dreams. The only way to sustain the world is by trying to have peace, and justice, and truth; we won’t fully succeed, but we won’t fully fail, either, and in that middle area, that wobble between stability and instability, in the continuous discontinuity of life, somehow, we can keep the Temple for another generation, for them to see it destroyed as we did, and to pass it along as we did.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.