{"id":11594,"date":"2008-11-01T11:46:11","date_gmt":"2008-11-01T15:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2008\/11\/01\/11594.html"},"modified":"2018-06-11T09:57:13","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T14:57:13","slug":"pirke-avot-before-we-begin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2008\/11\/01\/pirke-avot-before-we-begin\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirke Avot: before we begin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
All Israel have a portion in the world to come; as it is said and thy people shall all be righteous; they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified<\/i> (Isaiah 60:21<\/a>).<\/blockquote>\n

Well, and I suppose YHB will give a try to leading a study of Pirke Avot<\/i> here on this Tohu Bohu. We’ll see how it goes. Before we begin, I want to lay out a few of my hopes and wishes, just to get things started.\n

First of all, I hope that every Gentle Reader will feel free to comment on any and all of these passages. Actually, I hope that y’all will feel tremendous social pressure<\/I> to comment on the passages. Be one of us! One of us! I’d particularly like GRs to chime in with connections between the saying under discussion and sayings from sages, philosophers and theologians from other places, times and traditions. Or with connections to your own life.\n

Second, I hope that GRs will attempt to sympathize with the sages as they think about their words. I don’t want everybody to agree with everything we read (the sages certainly don’t want that, nor do they agree with each other very often), but rather than dismissing the saying entirely attacking it, I’d like us to try to find use in it. Yes, some of them will be wrongheaded, and the obvious (and probably correct) response is defensiveness, but that’s not the only response, and remember: you are alive, and they are dead, so you are already winning.\n

Third, I hope y’all will tell me if I’m going too slow. I am inclined for now to take only a verse or two at a time, and try to go into each one as deeply as we care to at the time, without feeling like we have to move on. I have no sense of how often I will write. There are something like 120 total verses (in six chapters); if I do two or three verses a week, and don’t miss many weeks, it’ll be a year’s work or so. If it gets to the point where you are skipping over the Pirke Avot<\/i> posts, or where you are thinking why doesn’t he finish those up and write about something more interesting<\/i>, I hope you’ll let me know.\n

OK, three is probably a good number to go on with. We’ll be doing a lot of threes, here, if we’re going to be serious about this.\n

Now, as for the quote up at the top: when we read the Pirke Avot<\/I> in shul, as it is part of the liturgy between Passover and Shavuout, we preface each chapter with the quote I quoted above, which comes from Sanhedrin<\/i> 10:1, except that it was probably a later addition. The context there is a list of those who do not<\/i> have a portion of the world to come, which begins with people who deny the Scripture and goes on to include, well, just about everybody.\n

This is the thing: there’s this tremendously wonderful idea: all Israel—all<\/i> has a portion in the world to come. Not the righteous few, not the remnant, not the powerful or the observant or the Rabbis or the Cohens, but all Israel. And then we have to start ruling people out. I suppose it’s the way things are, and it’s not like I’m all that focused on the world to come anyway, but I like the statement as it stands up there, stripped of its context, bold and outrageous. It’s a good introduction to our study this tractate, too, since it has both the compassionate nature and the stringent context, a hint at the hidden push and pull of the sages.\n

We’ll get to a famous quote, later, from a sage who said to keep two pieces of paper in your pockets. On one side, keep in your pocket a slip of paper that reads remember that for you, the entire universe was created<\/i>. In the other, keep a slip that reads remember you are dust, you came from dust, and you will return to dust<\/i>. The question is when you take them out and look at them.\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger goes ahead and starts a study group, and leaves the virtual door open. And there’s virtual tea in the virtual pot; help your virtual self.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[212],"class_list":["post-11594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scripture","tag-pirkeavot"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18564,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11594\/revisions\/18564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}