Avos 4:4

בס׳ד

אבות ד:ד

Rabbi Levitas of Yavneh says: Be exceedingly humble of spirit for the human hope is the maggot. Rabbi Yohanan ben Baroka says: Whoever desecrates the Name of Heaven in secret will be punished in public.  By mistake or on purpose - it’s all the same as far as desecration of the Name is concerned.

רַבִּי לְוִיטָס אִישׁ יַבְנֶה אוֹמֵר, מְאֹד מְאֹד הֱוֵי שְׁפַל רוּחַ, שֶׁתִּקְוַת אֱנוֹשׁ רִמָּה. רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן בֶּן בְּרוֹקָא אוֹמֵר, כָּל הַמְחַלֵּל שֵׁם שָׁמַיִם בַּסֵּתֶר, נִפְרָעִין מִמֶּנּוּ בְגָלוּי. אֶחָד שׁוֹגֵג וְאֶחָד מֵזִיד בְּחִלּוּל הַשֵּׁם:

        Little is known about the lives of the two Sages who share this mishnah, other than that they studied in the Vineyard of Yavneh.

        Rabbi Levitas’ estimate of human importance is not unique to him.  As early as the days of Shimon the Tzaddik, a scribe and Sage by the name of Yehoshua ben Sira wrote almost the same words in his book, The Wisdom of ben Sira (7:17).  Although ben Sira’s book is not found in our Tanakh, a Greek version of this book was part of the translation of the Tanakh used by the Greek-speaking Jews of Egypt before the Destruction of the Temple.  Ben Sira’s views are often quoted with approval by the Sages of the Talmud.  In fact, we find ben Sira’s and Rabbi Levitas’ view of human possibilities shared by many Sages in Mishnah Avos as well (for example, Rabbi Akavya ben Mahalalel at Avos 3:1).  An even more sober antidote to human self-importance is transmitted by the great Palestinian Amoraic Sage, Rabbi Yohanan, in the Talmud Bavli Sotah 5a.  There he notes that the letters of the Hebrew word “human” (aleph-dalet-mem) stand for “dust” (efer), “blood” (dam), and “bitterness” (marah), while those for “flesh” (bet-sin-resh) stand for “shame” (bushah), “stench” (serukhah), and “worm” (rimah).  Pretty sobering!

        The Midrash Shmuel agrees with Rabbi Levitas’ advice against pride, but he does raise an important question.  What can it possibly mean to say that the “human hope” is the maggot?  One suggestion he rejects is that we hope for death of the body in order to enjoy the eternal life of the spirit.  Even if this is so, he says, the “human hope” is ultimately life in the World of Truth, not the “maggot”.  Why does Rabbi Levitas stress the maggot?  The answer according to the Midrash Shmuel, is that Rabbi Levitas is speaking about pride that is rooted in a worship of materiality for its own sake.  If we recall that the very thing we take pride in is something that will become food for worms in its time, we will learn to turn our attention to more abiding sources of self-respect.  In particular, he has in mind those coming from Torah, which elevates human action to the status of something that brings the world of matter closer to the world of spirit. The more humble we become of spirit, by recalling the low destiny of the body, we become closer to the life of the soul.

        Rambam’s discussion of Rabbi Levitas’ brief teaching about humility takes up many pages.  He reports the following striking story: “I once read in a book of ethics about a certain saint who was asked: ‘what was the happiest moment of your life?’  He replied: ‘I was once traveling in a ship.  I was lodged in the humblest of holds and dressed in rags.  Now on this ship there were many merchants and wealthy people, but I was sequestered in my little space.  Now one of the passengers got up to urinate.  And my miserable state so impressed him that he exposed himself and urinated all over me.  I was truly amazed by his arrogance.  But, in fact, I didn’t regret his action at all, and it didn’t arouse in me any sort of reaction.  Just then I exulted that I had reached a point that that sort of insult from such a jerk could have no effect upon me.’  Now, there is no doubt that this is the most extreme form of humility!”  Who of us can even IMAGINE embodying this sort of humility?  Would we really WANT to?

        It may be difficult to imagine being as humble as Rambam’s saint.  But meforshim have had even more difficulty explaining the apparent confusion in the teaching of Rabbi Yohanan ben Baroka.  The concept of “desecration of the Divine Name” (hillul HaShem) is, by definition, a public act.  It involves a willful violation of the Torah in full view of the public, with the intention of causing onlookers to doubt the Torah’s promises of punishment.  Examples of hillul HaShem include public participation in idolatry, sexual immorality, or violations of Shabbos.  Some Sages in the gemara extended the concept to include all sorts of unseemly behavior performed by a Sage in public that might cause people to wonder how a Torah scholar could behave dishonestly or crudely (Bavli Yoma 86a).  But just about everyone agrees that hillul HaShem is a public, not a private, act.

        So how can Rabbi Yohanan ben Baroka speak of desecrating the Name in private?  One possibility, mentioned by such meforshim as Rabbenu Efraim, is that Rabbi Yohanan is speaking imprecisely here. What he means is a person who does an act in privacy that would desecrate the Name if it were performed in public.  The Tiferes Yisroel suggests another possibility - at issue here is a person who plans privately to perform an act of desecration in public.  I am most convinced by the solution of the Tosafos Yom Tov, who argues that what we have here is a person who violates the Torah in private in a way which requires the participation of another person.  An illicit sexual relationship would be an example.  Even though the act is “private” it implicates another person who may come to question the reality of Providence.  This is the sort of person who will be punished in public as a demonstration.

        But now there’s a second difficulty.  Is there really no difference between an inadvertent desecration of the Name and a premeditated one?  The Torah itself makes this distinction, permitting an inadvertent sinner to bring a sacrifice in expiation, while the willful sinner will suffer kares, a premature death (Bamidbar 15:22-31).  Rashi and Rambam independently hit upon a similar solution to this puzzle.  The idea is that both the inadvertent and the intentional desecrator will receive a public punishment, but the punishment will be appropriate to the person’s intentions.  The inadvertent sinner’s punishment purges him of the transgression and restores him to his former unblemished relationship to HaShem, while the unrepentant sinner will suffer extirpation as required.  The point is that tshuvah transforms the punishment of the sinner into a reconciliation.  This public reconciliation is crucial, for it will restore in all onlookers confidence in the ultimate promises of HaShem.

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