{"id":11598,"date":"2008-11-01T16:31:29","date_gmt":"2008-11-01T20:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2008\/11\/01\/11598.html"},"modified":"2018-06-11T09:57:12","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T14:57:12","slug":"pirke-avot-bring-up-many-disci","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2008\/11\/01\/pirke-avot-bring-up-many-disci\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirke Avot: Bring up many disciples"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We’re discussing Pirke Avot<\/I>; I started with some general ideas about the discussion before we began<\/a>, and now in order to facilitate some sort of coherent discussion that can be joined in and followed, I’ve broken the first verse into four notes. Here’s the verse:
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Moses received the Law on Sinai and delivered it to Joshua; and Joshua to the Elders; and the Elders to the prophets; and the prophets to the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be not hasty in judgment; Bring up many disciples<\/strong>; and, Make a hedge for the Torah.<\/blockquote>
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I broke out the first sentence<\/a>, and then had a note on hasty<\/a>, this note about disciples, and another one about the hedge<\/a>. I hope this isn’t confusing. YHB is making it up as we go along, you know.
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One of the differences between the School of Shammai and the School of Hillel is that the former says that a teacher should be very choosy about who he teaches, while the latter says that anybody should be eligible. As a democrat (I mean, as a believer in democracy, politically and socially and whatnot), I’m on Hillel’s side. But you have to look at Shammai as not so much wanting to keep the knowledge (and therefore the authority, the positions of power and the status) in a small group of wealthy aristocrats as stating that there are plenty of worthy people to teach, so why not teach the best? Well, and that other thing, too.
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There’s a story that most Jews know and I believe that it has become well-known among Christians as well. An asshole goes to Shammai and demands, mockingly, to be taught all the Law whilst standing on one foot. Shammai beats the asshole with a stick and throws him out. Then the asshole goes to Hillel, and again demands to be taught all the Law whilst standing on one foot. Hillel looks at him and quietly says That which is hateful to you, do not do to other people. That is the whole of the Law; the rest is commentary.<\/i> And, in the story, the asshole is humbled, and comes to study with Hillel, and becomes Jewish, and everybody is happy, and there is hot cider when it’s cold out. So that<\/i>’s all right.
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This is actually only one of several stories where some obnoxious goy<\/i> comes to both Shammai and Hillel and one returns his obnoxiousness and the other is pleasant and persuasive. And when the two houses differ in interpretation of the Law, the version that is binding is usually Hillel’s. And there’s a sense in which Hillel becomes the role model for rabbis and for Judaism generally and that’s a good thing. But the Talmud points out that Shammai did have better students.
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But enough about Hillel and Shammai, we’ll get to them later. The point is that the advice to raise up many disciples does not necessarily mean to maximize quanitity, but to spread the wisdom around. As we said even before the beginning, all Israel have a portion in the world to come<\/i>. How much more so, then, does all Israel have a portion of the Torah?
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Furthermore, as will be discussed later, a sage should bring up many disciples for the good of all Israel, but also for the good of the sage himself. Teaching something is the best way to learn, after all. And it’s just generally a bad thing to keep yourself apart from other people. There are a few holy hermits in the tradition, but it’s viewed as an aberration, not a matter of pride. The relationship between teacher and pupil, which is one of the most powerful and passionate relationships in the world, is a source of tremendous virtue. Well, and sin, too, of course. So you can read this as a warning that you shouldn’t avoid the opportunity for sin by avoiding the opportunity for virtue. To bleed over into the next saying, you should not view your students across a hedge, but should make your students into a hedge themselves.
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And to go back to the first, and look at the three: what are the active duties of a member of the Great Assembly? To adjudicate in cases brought to him, to bring up disciples to be new members of the Great Assembly, and to legislate for the daily lives of the people so as to prevent violation of the eternal Law. The three sayings in this verse govern those three active duties. The sages should just deliberately, and should view the law with caution, but when it comes to disciples, here we are urged to abundance.
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Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger already starts in with Hillel and Shammai. Does anybody think that Shammai got a bit of a bad rap? I mean, I’m glad he lost so often, but you’ve got to give the man his props.<\/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-11598","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\/11598","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=11598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18567,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11598\/revisions\/18567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}