We’re almost at midsummer and we’re still on Chapter Two. And I’m afraid to say it doesn’t look like I’m speeding up at all. Rather the reverse. Let’s see if I can at least get through one long verse today:
He used to say:
The more flesh, the more worms.
The more possessions, the more worry.
The more wives, the more witchcraft.
The more maidservants, the more unchastity.
The more slaves, the more robbery.The more Torah, the more life.
The more the company of scholars, the more wisdom.
The more counsel, the more understanding.
The more charity, the more peace.If one acquires a good name he acquires something for himself.
If one acquires for himself knowledge of the Torah he acquires for himself life in the world to come.
Let’s start with the details and work our way up to a grand understanding of the verse. The first five verses are clearly warnings against materialism; is there anything to be gained by delving more deeply into the images?
The more flesh, the more worms. I can’t remember the exact image from the volume I read in my youth, but the image in my head, which must have been drawn from that, is of the decomposing corpse of an immensely fat man. It’s worth remembering that a man with a belly was a successful man; until quite recently, the stigma was on being skinny, as a sign of poverty. Oh, yes, fat also connoted laziness, sure. But Hillel’s point assumes the listener wants to have some flesh on his bones, that he would not otherwise want to leave a skinny corpse.
Unless, and I didn’t think of this until I saw that Jacob Neusner translated vashar as meat, that we are not talking about human flesh at all, but the animal flesh in your diet. You can’t (in Roman times) really keep meat very well; you can salt it and cure it and smoke it, but if a greedy person has a slaughtering bill bigger than his stomach, then it follows that the more meat, the more worms. I like this better, as in our culture, this makes it more obvious that it is the pursuit of something wanted which, when pursued past the point of reason and moderation, leads to the acquisition of something unwanted.
The more possessions, the more worry. Particularly in how to spell possessions. Doesn’t it look like there are too many esses there? Anyway, this is pretty straightforward. Although, it occurs to me, at the time of the Rabbis, wealth after a certain point was tied up in land and rent, which had to be taken care of actively if it weren’t to diminish. I tend to think of it as the lock-on-the-door idea that when you have a house full of valuable and expensive things, you have to worry about people stealing them, but I suspect that Hillel was talking about something more active. To follow along with this idea, for years I thought that this verse didn’t strike modern (American) affluent listeners very deeply, as (a) they had locks on their doors anyway, and (2) the bulk of their wealth was tied up in investments and pensions that didn’t require a great deal of worry. In the last few months, however, I’ve been reminded that the more investments, the more worry…
The more wives, the more witchcraft. Joseph Hertz points out that none of the stories of the great and holy Rabbis mention more than one wife (at a time); it is perfectly legal at the time, but frowned upon. Of course, bachelorhood is frowned upon even more; it’s not considered an active sin like, say, pork eating or murder, but it’s a sin of omission. A wife is a Good Thing (her value is above rubies, after all), but the more wives the more witchcraft. Er, Hillel is assuming that witchcraft is a Bad Thing, by the way. Sorry about that.
The more maidservants, the more unchastity. Or lewdness, or lust. This is not necessarily on the part of the maidservants, but upon the part of the master. Or the master’s sons, or his male servants. What’s interesting here (at the moment) is the suggestion that having one maidservant in the house is not likely to lead to lust, but having, say, three is asking for trouble. I might have thought the other way. On the other hand, Hillel may be referring to the sort of person who hires more servants than there is work, just to boast of a large staff (as it were). In that case, the more maidservants, the more idleness, and the idleness is what leads to the unchastity.
The more slaves, the more robbery. Or, perhaps, Hillel is not just talking about an individual and his household, but a community. A community with a lot of maidservants will have a lot of unchastity, in part because they are postponing marriage and householding, which could allow sex lives without lewdness. And having more slaves in a community will lead to more robbery, as the better avenues for economic stability are cut off. One trusted slave, treated according to the Law, might well be an advantage. Even two. But the Law, followed carefully, makes it difficult to hold many slaves (say, to economically work a plantation with mostly serf labor), so the landowner will cut corners, thus robbing the slave of his rights, which in turn leads to a greater chance of the slaves stealing from him, or from each other, or from neighbors, in an attempt to get ahead in a world that is screwing them. And a community with many slaves will be even worse, the lopsided nature of the community would tend to deprecate the Law generally and the ordinary social norms.
We’ll get to the positive verses in the next note, then, shall we?
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.