We’re on a longish Hillel verse, where he is playing with his doubles and his balances and his whatnot.
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.
The more Torah, the more life. This is where we switch, without any sort of warning, from the doubles that have one good thing and one bad thing to the doubles that have one good thing and another good thing. Rabbi Jonah ben Abraham (thirteenth century) makes the claim that unlike worrying over money, which shortens a persons life, worrying over your studies cannot bring about anything bad. Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true? Alas, an all-nighter studying Rashi has the same effect on one’s immune system as an all-nighter studying the history of East Asian pornographic woodcuts. Sorry.
The more the company of scholars, the more wisdom. The Hebrew here is the more yeshiva, the more wisdom. There are a lot of ways to interpret that—the longer one stays in the company of scholars before going out on one’s own? The bigger the yeshiva? The more yeshivas in a town? The more the students congregate in the yeshiva, rather than studying individually? At any rate, Hillel is saying that you can’t go to far in that direction; moderation is not the path to wisdom there.
The more counsel, the more understanding.Again, one might think that whereas taking counsel from one person, or two, or even three would be good, that the more counsel you seek the worse the marginal utility until the search for counsel becomes actively counterproductive. Reading one commentary, good, reading five, good, but is reading twenty better? I think Hillel is here saying that it is better, that there does not come a point where your understanding has reached its limit. Yes, if you are making a judgment in a case, there will be a practical point where you have to stop listening and actually deliver the judgment, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t keep seeking counsel on the matter and continue to learn and understand more about it. Even after it is too late to be useful in that circumstance, there may come another similar case, but with smaller feet.
The more charity, the more peace.This is an interesting one. The more tzedakah, the more—what? The more happiness? The more health? The more community spirit? The more love? Whether you translate it as charity or righteousness, it isn’t obvious that it will be paired with shalom. But it is. And I think it should be. Is it empirically true? Is it a practical path to the end of conflicts, in Gaza or Kashmir or Darfur? I don’t know. I think it’s worth trying, but I don’t know. Still, even if it lacks empirical validity, I think it’s an important philosophical pairing, even if only to make the kind of tautologies that I find so annoying. If you want peace, work for tzedakah; the true tzedakah is the tzedakah that leads to shalom. If your righteousness (or for that matter your charity) leads to conflict, then, Gentle Reader, ur doin it wrong.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.