Do we think we’re ready for the second verse of Pirke Avot<\/i>? I hope so. Now, this is one of those verses that seems incredibly simple, but the problem (or one problem) is that it seems to mean different incredibly simple things depending on how you translate it. So. Here is a transliteration from the Hebrew:
\n
Simeon ha-tzaddik (hayah mis’yaray k’neset g’dolah) hu hayah omer, al shloshah d’varim ha-olam omehd: al ha-torah, v’al ha’avodah, v’al g’milut chasadim.<\/i><\/blockquote>
\nThose of you who went to Jewish summer camps or had cantors in charge of your Hebrew Schools may know a tune for this one. Or several tunes. You can find people singing them on YouTube and all, so I would have to say it’s a well-known verse. But what does it mean? I have three translations in front of me (R. Travers Herford’s, Judah Goldin’s and Joseph H. Hertz’s) and the Michael L. Rodkinson translation<\/a> is on-line, and the Chabad translation<\/a> is on-line as well. And they are all different.
\nLet’s start with Chabad: Shimon the Righteous was among the last surviving members of the Great assembly. He would say: The world stands on three things: Torah, the service of G-d, and deeds of kindness.
\nRodkinson: Simeon the just was one of the remnants of the Great Assembly. His motto was: \"The order of the world rests upon three things: on law, on worship, and on bestowal of favors.\"
\nHertz: Simon the Just was one of the last survivors of the Great Assembly: He used to say, Upon three things the world is based: upon the Torah, upon Divine service, and upon the practice of charity.
\nGoldin: Simeon the Righteous was one of the last members of the Great Assembly. He used to say: On three things the age stands—on the Torah, on the Temple service, and on acts of piety.
\nHerford: Simeon the Just was of the survivors of the Great Synagogue. He used to say: Upon three things the world standeth; upon Torah, upon Worship and upon the showing of kindness.
\nSo. The easy part is that it’s a saying of Simon ha-Tzaddik, tzaddik<\/i> indicating righteousness and so on, and although the history is a tiny bit murky (there were two High Priests named Simon), he is legendary figure of the late Temple days. Tradition indicates that he was the last High Priest who said the Name aloud in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur, and that since his death the Name has not been pronounced. So if we go back to the last verse, where we see the Oral Law handed down from the Divine to Moses to Joshua to the Judges to the Prophets to the men of the Great Assembly in a widening circle of wisdom, here we pick out an individual to stand for and exemplify the Oral Law, and to pass on its wisdom. From here on in, the saying will be attributed to individual sages, although of course there’s lots of room for skepticism concerning the accuracy of those attributions. My take on that sort of question is there is a purpose to identifying the saying with the sage, a literary or pedagogical purpose, and that purpose overrides historical accuracy, which is fine as long as you aren’t looking for historical accuracy.
\nAs for that next bit, he used to say<\/i> in the sense that he was in the habit of saying (according to Simeon ben Zemah Duran, a medieval commentator); he said it often, rather than he said it for a while and then stopped saying it.
\nThen there’s the three-legged stool of the world. I’ll break those down in separate notes again, shall I? torah<\/a>, avodah<\/a>, g’milut chasadim<\/a>.
\nTolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger hums while he types, which has got to be annoying for everybody.<\/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-11618","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\/11618","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=11618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18575,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11618\/revisions\/18575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}