The second part of the triple of Rabbi Yose the priest is (it seems to me) clearer and more straightforward:\n
Rabbi Yose says: Let thy fellow’s property be as dear to thee as thine own. Make thyself fit for the study of torah, for it will not be thine by inheritance<\/strong>. Let all thine actions be for the sake of heaven.<\/blockquote>\n
I’ll mention again here the thing about inheritance in our Scriptures, that it is both very important and viewed skeptically. Cain does not inherit from Adam; Abraham does not inherit from his father; Ishmael does not inherit; Esau does not inherit, but neither do we see Jacob inheriting; Joseph does not inherit, but neither do his brothers; Moses’ sons do not inherit; Eli’s sons do not inherit; Jonathan does not inherit; Absolom does not inherit. Those that do inherit (Solomon being prominent among them) often squander their inheritance.\n
What is the inheritance of the Jew? The Torah. I include the Oral Torah in this, of course, but also the accumulation of tradition and commentary. But really, our inheritance is the opportunity to study it and live in it; we are no more born knowing Torah than we are born knowing how to fly.\n
Obvious? Yes. But then, I grew up learning those things that only came to me as an inheritance: I learned the kaddish<\/i> because my father said it on Friday nights, I learned a handful of blessings that my mother said, I learned my aleph-bet at Hebrew School that my parents paid for, I learned to daven<\/i> at the junior service they drove us to most Saturdays, I learned a bunch of Moishe Pipik stories and some jokes and some inflections that are also part of that inheritance. And I’m afraid I pretty much thought that was it. When I left home, I had done very little on my own to prepare myself for the study of Torah. I was lucky; in college I happened to come across a wonderful religion prof, one of those life-changing teachers people blather on about for the rest of their lives. Just by chance, really, and more because I was interested in learning something about Christianity (which I had inherited almost no knowledge of, other than a few dribs and drabs by my cultural Americanism) than because I felt it was incumbent on me to prepare myself for the study of Torah.\n
I didn’t know anything about the Talmud, really, other than a handful of stories and the Pirke Avot<\/i>. I didn’t know anything about any of the early commentators. I knew next to nothing about the Sages. I knew very little about the prophets. And what I knew, I didn’t know very well or very deeply.\n
That was my inheritance, you understand. There is one, and it is a good one, and I’m grateful for it. I’m trying to leave my children a similar one, on the whole (albeit with more midrash and less shoah), and if I succeed in that, it will be wonderful. So Rabbi Yose is overstating things a bit. But I thought at the time that I was done—or at least I think that’s what I thought. That I had inherited my Jewishness, and that was enough. It wasn’t. And that’s what Rabbi Yose reminds me.\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger is born into the tribe, and then has to bear himself the rest of the way.<\/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-12289","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\/12289","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=12289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18841,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12289\/revisions\/18841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}