Avos 2:5

בס״ד

אבות ב:ה

He used to teach: A fool has no fear of sin; An ignorant person can’t be pious; A shy person can’t learn; An impatient person can’t teach; A money-grub can’t become wise; And where there are no decent people, struggle to be a decent person yourself.

הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אֵין בּוּר יְרֵא חֵטְא, וְלֹא עַם הָאָרֶץ חָסִיד, וְלֹא הַבַּיְשָׁן לָמֵד, וְלֹא הַקַּפְּדָן מְלַמֵּד, וְלֹא כָל הַמַּרְבֶּה בִסְחוֹרָה מַחְכִּים. וּבְמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ:

        

        Hillel’s teaching continues.  First, he points out five character handicaps that hinder our development as complete human beings. None of them are “innate” flaws that we are born with.  All of them result from our own decisions and failures to make the richest use of the tools of spiritual development that the Torah gives us.

        What is a fool, anyway?  Isn’t a fool a born fool?  And, if so, isn’t that HaShem’s responsibility rather than the fool’s?  Finally, why would a fool have no fear of sin?  A look at the Hebrew word behind the word “fool” might help us make some sense of what Hillel has in mind.  The Hebrew isbor.  It literally means “an empty cistern.”  It’s the same word that Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai uses in Avos 2:8 to describe his disciple, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus: “A plastered cistern that doesn’t lose a drop.”  In contrast to a person, like Rabbi Eliezer, who savors every drop of Torah they are exposed to, the fool let’s it all drain away.  Hillel’s fool, then, is not a simpleton or a person of low intelligence. A fool is a person who is exposed to refined spirituality, but chooses emptiness in order to pursue fleeting desires and immediate gratifications.  The very choice testifies to a person who “does not fear sin” since such a person doesn’t even admit the existence of sin or of the world of holiness that is harmed by it.

        And why can’t an ignorant person be pious?  Does Hillel mean to say that you can only serve HaShem in total devotion if you know all the halakhos of milk and meat?  Many Hasidic masters, and the Baal Shem Tov was the first among them, devoted themselves to showing that davka the ignorant person, the am ha-aretz, could be as close to HaShem as a learned person.

        No, Hillel is not saying that ignorant people can’t serve HaShem in devotion.  In fact, according to a teaching cited in Midrash Shmuel, he’s saying much the opposite: “We should realize that the status of the Tzaddik is midway between the Wicked Person and the Hasid.  Now, a person who is ignorant, but who possesses moral virtues and a sense of social responsibility, will be unable to move from the level of Tzaddik to that of a Hasid — but nothing prevents an ignorant person from becoming a Tzaddik!”

        This conception of the Tzaddik is exactly the idea of the Benoni, the “intermediate person,” discussed by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, in his book Tanya.  There is a certain level of human perfection that is attainable only by very special people. Hillel calls this the Hasid, while the Alter Rebbe calls it the Tzaddik.  An ignorant person, in Hillel’s view, can’t be a Hasid because his very ignorance is a disability.  But whether one is a Hasid or not has nothing to do with service and devotion to HaShem. This is possible for anyone (except the fool!), regardless of learning.  The best most of us can hope for — learned and unlearned alike — is to be what the Alter Rebbe called a Benoni and what Midrash Shmuel calls a Tzaddik!

        Hillel’s doubts about the ability of a shy person to learn are based on his experience teaching Torah.  For him, shyness is far more difficult to conquer than ignorance.  Hillel is not talking about normal “shyness.”  Rather, he means a crippling sort of self-image that makes us feel we are unworthy or unable to enter into relationship with people and unworthy of HaShem’s attention.  Part of the cure of this distorted self-image is, in fact, learning to see oneself as a potential vessel of HaShem’s precious gift of Torah.  The Torah is not given to the learned alone, but is given to each of us equally — a recognition of the preciousness of each of us.  Asking the first question is the first step in accepting the truth of our own value; it is the first step to self-affirmation before your teacher and a declaration of readiness to discover yourself in a relationship with the Creator of the World and the Giver of Torah.

        As much as the too-shy person damages himself or herself, the impatient teacher is worse, for the impatient teacher causes disappointment and pain in the pursuit of Torah.  I have spent my life as a teacher and have seen in my own students how signs of impatience from me make them afraid to ask a question for fear of being wrong.  At those times I was the living model of Hillel’s impatient teacher.

        What about the money-grub?  The Hebrew words, hamarbeh biskhorah, really refer to someone who “overdoes commerce.”  This person’s inability to become wise isn’t much of a mystery.  In his desire for the thrill of the “deal,” he begins to see all of reality as something to be exploited for his own self-advancement.  His desire to accumulate wealth has overcome his actual need for the basic necessities of good food, shelter, clothing, education, and so forth. Work for all of these is part of pursuing Torah with a worldly occupation (Avos 2:2).  But the mindless amassing of wealth for its own sake transforms our own scale of values.  Eventually, we forget that our purpose in the world is, as Rabbi teaches (Avos 2:1), to see past its apparent “reality’ to what is abiding and truly real — the way of Torah and the service of HaShem.

        Hillel summarizes his discussion of these traits of character with advice that had to wait for the invention of Yiddish to be properly translated.  He says that where no one is an ish — in Yiddish, a mentsch — YOU have to be one!  As Rambam and Tosfos Yom Tov point out, Hillel knows that being a mentsch all alone is no easy thing. The Mishnah’s word “struggle” is hishtadel.  This is the Aramaic word that the Targum uses to translate Yaakov’s “wrestling” with the strange messenger of HaShem (Bereshis 32:25).  Sometimes, being a decent person, a mentsch, involves taking great personal risks.  People won’t WANT you to be a mentsch, because your ability to do so points out their own shortcomings.  People will say that you’re trying to be arrogant and self-important.  But if you know what decency is you have to stand for it — even if people around you try to make you doubt yourself.

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