Avos 3:7

בס׳ד

אבות ג:ז

Rabbi Elazar of Bartosa says: Give Him what is His, for you and yours are His. And in fact this is what is said of David: “For everything comes from You, and from Your very hand do we give You offerings” (Divrei HaYamim 1, 29:14). Rabbi Yaakov says: One who is going along and repeating his studies and breaks off his studies to exclaim, “How lovely is this tree! How lovely is this field!” - Scripture suggests that he could bring disaster on himself.

רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר אִישׁ בַּרְתּוֹתָא אוֹמֵר, תֶּן לוֹ מִשֶּׁלּוֹ, שֶׁאַתָּה וְשֶׁלְּךָ שֶׁלּוֹ. וְכֵן בְּדָוִד הוּא אוֹמֵר (דברי הימים א כט) כִּי מִמְּךָ הַכֹּל וּמִיָּדְךָ נָתַנּוּ לָךְ. רַבִּי יעקב אוֹמֵר, הַמְהַלֵּךְ בַּדֶּרֶךְ וְשׁוֹנֶה, וּמַפְסִיק מִמִּשְׁנָתוֹ וְאוֹמֵר, מַה נָּאֶה אִילָן זֶה וּמַה נָּאֶה נִיר זֶה, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ:

        In many editions and manuscripts of the Mishnah, these two teachings are treated as separate mishnahs.  There is also some confusion about the name of the Sage mentioned in the second teaching.  Many texts record him as Rabbi Shimon.  The “Rabbi Yaakov” in question here is probably Rabbi Yaakov ben Korshai.  The gemara recalls him as the Sage who spent an entire night under Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel’s window reciting the laws of bird-sacrifices so that the Patriarch would be able to show his mastery of these laws when challenged by Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Noson (Bavli Horayot 13b).  His teachings in Avos 4:16-17 reveal the same skepticism about the value of creation as we find here.

        Rabbi Elazar of Bartosa was another Galilean, like Rabbi Halafta, who found his way to the community of the Sages.  He was a colleague of Rabbi Aqiva, whose traditions we’ll study later in this chapter of Avos.  There is a deep connection between Rabbi Elazar’s teaching in this mishnah and Rabbi Aqiva. We’ll explore it in a moment, after looking at the first teaching itself.

        This statement of Rabi Elazar’s contains the essence of the idea of avodas HaShem besimkhah, of serving our Creator with joy.  Since everything we have comes from HaShem, our mission in the world is to use what He has given us to glorify Him.  That is, serve God with the gifts He has given you, for you and all you have are His own possessions.  The quotation from David is exactly to the point, for in the pasuk he is talking about the sacrificial service in the Temple, in which all the offerings - animals, grain, wine, oil - came from the fields that God himself had brought to fullness.

        What does this have to do with Rabbi Aqiva?  In two places in the gemara (Bavli Kesubos 62b-63a and Nedarim 50a) the story is told of how Rabbi Aqiva’s wife, Rakhel, urged him to spend 24 long years away from home in Torah study.  When he finally returned with thousands of students there was a big parade in his town.  As Rakhel approached to greet her long-lost-husband, some of the students pushed her aside, thinking it was inappropriate for her to greet her husband in public.  Aqiva chastised them in these words: “Leave her be - mine and yours are hers!”  That is, all the Torah that Aqiva learned and shared with his disciples ultimately belonged to Rakhel, whose sacrifice made it all possible. Instead of pushing her aside, the disciples ought to have honored Rakhel as their benefactor.  So what do you think - which statement came first?  Did Rabbi Aqiva apply his friend’s teaching in a novel way, or did Rabbi Elazar draw the ultimate religious implication from Rabbi Aqiva’s praise of Rakhel?

        The confusion about who taught the second teaching of this mishnah is not nearly as great as the puzzle about how to interpret it. Why, after all, should a person who praises the beauty of God’s Creation be regarded as bringing disaster upon himself? Most meforshim suggest that the point lies in the fact that a person has broken off Torah study - the words of the Creator - to comment on the Creation.  Others connect it to the teaching of Rabbi Hananiah ben Hakhinai in Avos 3:4, that a person who “turns his thoughts to nonsense will surely bring disaster upon himself.”  They argue that the momentary distraction described here, which results in idle conversation and the possibility of disaster, leads invariably to total alienation from Torah and certain disaster.  I’ll return to this in a moment.

        A second problem that the meforshim wrestle with is: exactly which pasuk in the Bible (the mishnah uses the word hakesuv, not hatorah) does Rabbi Yaakov have in mind?  Some, noticing the quotation by Rabbi Dosetai in Avos 3:8, think the verse is Devarim 4:9: “lest these things pass from your mind all the days of your life.” Others, like Tosfos Yom Tov, mention an obscure verse in Iyov 30:3-4 which refers to people who “flee to a parched land…plucking salt and leaves of brush.”  The word “brush” is siakh, which can also mean “idle talk” (see Avos 1:5).  This fact leads the Rabbis in Bavli Hagigah 13a to interpret this as a reference to “those who interrupt their words of Torah with idle chatter.”

        Even if we could solve the problem of the exact pasuk that Rabbi Yaakov has in mind, we would still have to understand his basic point. Does he really mean that a person distracted from study by the beauty of the world is bound for disaster?  The only way I can make sense of this is if the distraction is more than a slight interruption and if it’s motivated by an abandonment of Torah for an immersion in the world-for-its-own-sake, he invites disaster.  This I can understand, for the love of the world’s beauty without embracing it as a gift of HaShem is ultimately idolatrous - the confusion of the Creation with the Creator.

        This interpretation makes sense in light of what Rabbi Dosetai ben Yannai teaches in the name of Rabbi Meir in the very next mishnah.

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