Avos 2:12

בס׳ד

אבות ב:יב

Rabbi Yose says: Let your friend’s property be as precious to you as your own; Discipline yourself to study Torah, for knowledge of it isn’t your birthright; And may all your actions serve heaven.

רַבִּי יוֹסֵי אוֹמֵר, יְהִי מָמוֹן חֲבֵרְךָ חָבִיב עָלֶיךָ כְּשֶׁלָּךְ, וְהַתְקֵן עַצְמְךָ לִלְמֹד תּוֹרָה, שֶׁאֵינָהּ יְרֻשָּׁה לָךְ. וְכָל מַעֲשֶׂיךָ יִהְיוּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמָיִם:

        Rabbi Eliezer (Avos 2:10) has already advised us to protect our friends’ honor as our own.  But why does Rabbi Yose now tell us to treat our friends’ property as we would our own?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to point out that material possessions of any kind are of no real value compared to the possessions of the spirit we acquire through Torah and mitzvahs?  The advice should be: “have no regard for your own property; and pay no attention to that of your friend!”

        Rabbi Moshe Alashkar, one of the great teachers of the Spanish Exile, has a good solution that is quoted in the Midrash Shmuel. Rabbi Yose’s advice is a kind of training against the “wicked eye” that Rabbi Yehoshua has mentioned in the previous mishnah.  One interpretation of the phrase “wicked eye” is “resentment,” an unhealthy preoccupation with what others have.  That resentment is a direct result of failing to remember that possessions are ultimately of little value.  

        Rabbi Yose’s second teaching seems to contradict a point made by his teacher, Rabbi Yohanan.  In Avos 2:8 Rabbi Yohanan reminds us not to take our attainments in Torah study as some sort of honor, since “that’s why you were created.”  So how can Rabbi Yose now tell us that the Torah isn’t our birthright? Don’t we sing every Simhas Torah that Torah tziva lanu Moshe, morashah kehillas Yaakov (“Moshe taught us Torah, a heritage for the Congregation of Yaakov”)?  It’s not hard, really, to see what Rabbi Yose is saying.  Torah was given to us as a possession, but we must actively master it through careful and diligent study.  It only becomes OURS when we learn it.  It won’t just fall into our laps without our active engagement with it.  This way of looking at Rabbi Yose’s comment also helps us connect it to his first teaching.  We should honor our friends’ possession of Torah as much as our own.  That is, don’t let resentment of your friends’ mastery of Torah paralyze your own efforts!

        Rabbi Yose’s final teaching seems obvious - of course, everything we do should be intended as service of HaShem.  Doesn’t this go without saying?  The Midrash Shmuel has a remarkable interpretation of this advice that throws a whole new light on it.  He links the thought to Rabbi Yose’s second teaching about Torah study.  Part of our service to HaShem, says Midrash Shmuel, should include the study of the world’s religions!  “It’s not farfetched,” he says, “to claim that Rabbi Yose is cautioning us to be diligent in studying foreign wisdom that is not our inheritance…We need to study and understand other religions in order to know how to answer Jews who reject Judaism in favor of others.  And this will lead to the Sanctification of the Name of Heaven.”  One way of preserving the honor of Torah in a non-Jewish world is to know how to interpret the meaning of Judaism in ways that will help alienated Jews understand the treasures in their own backyard.

        Here’s a true story.  One time after teaching my course in Introduction to Western Religions, one of my students came up to me and said: “I think I was raised sort of Reform.  Now I think I understand how much my parents cheated me!”  I told her that it would be better for her to understand the pressures that made her parents do what they did rather than resent them.  But she should also look for a deeper engagement with HaShem through her own Judaism.

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