Avos 4:2-3

בס׳ד

אבות ד:ב-ג

Ben Azai says: Rush to perform a “minor” mitzvah as you would for a “major” mitzvah, and run from transgression - for a mitzvah brings with it another mitzvah, while a transgression brings with it another transgression, since the reward of a mitzvah is another mitzvah and the reward of a transgression is another transgression. He used to teach: Do not despise a person or demean any object, for there isn’t a person without his moment or an object without its place.

בֶּן עַזַּאי אוֹמֵר, הֱוֵי רָץ לְמִצְוָה קַלָּה כְבַחֲמוּרָה, וּבוֹרֵחַ מִן הָעֲבֵרָה. שֶׁמִּצְוָה גּוֹרֶרֶת מִצְוָה, וַעֲבֵרָה גוֹרֶרֶת עֲבֵרָה. שֶׁשְּׂכַר מִצְוָה, מִצְוָה. וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה, עֲבֵרָה: הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אַל תְּהִי בָז לְכָל אָדָם, וְאַל תְּהִי מַפְלִיג לְכָל דָּבָר, שֶׁאֵין לְךָ אָדָם שֶׁאֵין לוֹ שָׁעָה וְאֵין לְךָ דָבָר שֶׁאֵין לוֹ מָקוֹם:

                Shimon ben Azai pursued a spiritual path rare among Jews - he was a visionary ascetic who renounced the temptations of sexual life altogether (Bavli Yevamos 63b and Sotah 4b).  It isn’t clear why he felt compelled to renounce married life and its spiritual and physical rewards.  But part of his motive seems to have been his hunger for the extremely powerful religious transformation promised to those who could enter the Orchard of mystical flight.  His exclusive focus on this goal made all other aspects of normal life seem unimportant to him. Ironically, it is his asceticism which might have been his physical undoing.  Of the four Sages known to have experimented in this domain of spirituality, he is the one who lost his life (we discussed this in Avos 4:1).  Perhaps his asceticism had made his body so delicate and fragile that it couldn’t bear the emotional excitement induced by his vision?

        As we study ben Azai’s teachings in light of what we know about his life and fate, we should be puzzled.  Nothing in his mishnah above seems to point toward an ascetic attitude, hatred of the body, or even a mystical frame of mind. But this, too, is a trait of ben Azai.  In Yevamos 63b he offers an argument for the primacy of the commandment to be fruitful and multiply, even though he confesses that he cannot muster up the desire to fulfill it!  So here we have a Sage whose life and teachings seem out of kilter with each other.  This may be yet another clue as to why the ascent to the Divine Throne proved so devastating to him - he hadn’t yet integrated his own teachings into the substance of his life.

        Ben Azai’s first teaching contains an important truth about human behavior - much of our activity is habitual and unreflective.  We tend to do what we have done, to act in patterns that seem familiar rather than to continually revise and re-evaluate our lifestyles.  This is why it is so crucial to make the life of mitzvahs so habitual.  Each time we perform a mitzvah it enhances the likelihood that we will perform another, and another, and another.  By the same token, each transgression we commit increases the chances that we will become habituated to a life of transgression.

        The “reward” of either behavior is simply the increased disposition created in us to continue the same behavior.  In this sense, our free will is crucial as the originating point of the first decision - and each continuing decision - to perform the commandment rather than the transgression.  we create ourselves over and over through our habits.  The challenge of our freedom is to choose the right habits.

        Ben Azai’s second teaching continues the theme of his first, but addresses a more general aspect of the role of freedom in our relation to the human and natural worlds.  Our tendency to be contemptuous of other people or demeaning in our relation to the objects of creation is normally based upon habit and prejudice rather than acute attention to the reality of the person or object before us.  A person comes into our view and we “type” them almost immediately and think we know all their possibilities.  We use objects of nature routinely or destroy them at will without a second thought of some reality or purpose they might have beyond our immediate purposes.

        Shimon ben Azai advises us here to be extremely wary of this tendency to impose our preconceptions on the world of HaShem’s Creation.  Each person is an infinite world above and beyond the brief moment of our interaction with him or her.  Their “moment” might not be designed for our benefit, but there is a divinely planned instant in which that person will fulfill a unique  role in the order of Creation. To despise such a person in light of our own sense of priorities is, ultimately, an idolatrous attitude in which we pretend to know what HaShem knows.

        The point extends to the order of the non-human world as well. The mishnah’s word for “object” is davar, which literally means “thing” or “word” ( for another meaning, see Avos 5:16).  Since the world was Created by the Ten Utterances of HaShem ( Avos 5:1), we are entitled to interpret this statement as a reference to the divine origins of everything that exists.  Some important consequences follow from this.

        As many meforshim point out, it is easy to demean bugs and other pests that make human life uncomfortable.  It is easy to see an open field as “useless” unless it is “developed” as a commercial site.  As stewards of Creation, however, our task is to try to envision the role that “useless” creations play in the cosmic frame of reference.  Before “placing” a natural object in our own utilitarian frame of reference, we have to first explore its “place” in the order of relations between Heaven and Earth.  We have to be humble enough before Creation in order to allow it to be free over-against our own designs for it.

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