Avos 5:18

בס׳ד

אבות ה:יח

Anyone who brings virtue to the community will not fall into sin. But one who causes the community to sin will not even have a chance for repentance. Moshe was virtuous and brought virtue to the community.  Therefore, the virtue of the community is credited to him, as it is said: “He performed righteous deeds for HaShem, and his justice remains in Israel” (Devarim 33:21). Yerovam sinned and caused the community to sin.  Therefore, the sin of the community is credited to him, as it is said: “And for the sins of Yerovam that he committed, and which he caused Israel to commit (Melakhim 1, 15:30).

כָּל הַמְזַכֶּה אֶת הָרַבִּים, אֵין חֵטְא בָּא עַל יָדוֹ. וְכָל הַמַּחֲטִיא אֶת הָרַבִּים, אֵין מַסְפִּיקִין בְּיָדוֹ לַעֲשׂוֹת תְּשׁוּבָה. משֶׁה זָכָה וְזִכָּה אֶת הָרַבִּים, זְכוּת הָרַבִּים תָּלוּי בּוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (דברים לג) צִדְקַת ה' עָשָׂה וּמִשְׁפָּטָיו עִם יִשְׂרָאֵל. יָרָבְעָם חָטָא וְהֶחֱטִיא אֶת הָרַבִּים, חֵטְא הָרַבִּים תָּלוּי בּוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (מלכים א טו) עַל חַטֹּאות יָרָבְעָם (בֶּן נְבָט) אֲשֶׁר חָטָא וַאֲשֶׁר הֶחֱטִיא אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל:

        The basic premise of this mishnah seems to be that the social impact of our actions is far more important to HaShem than our personal destiny.  A person who exercises communal leadership in a way that leads many to Torah, performs a teshuvah that can overcome any of his own sins.  This is because the virtues that he taught the community stand to his credit as if he himself had performed them. By contrast, a leader who entices the community into sin will find that tragedies he has caused will cancel his own attempts to atone for them. The entire weight of sin that he caused are accounted as if he had personally committed them.

        The principle is a provocative one, but the example of Moshe is troubling.  Isn’t Moshe precisely a counter-example to the mishnah’s principle?  Here is a man who gave Torah to Israel, and never in his life did anything but model perfect service of HaShem.  Yet for his impatient beating of a rock at Merivah, he was punished by HaShem and could not enter Eretz Yisroel (Bamidbar 20:9-13). Nothing he said or did by way of pleading with HaShem had any effect at all (Devarim 3:22-28).  In light of all that Moshe personally did by way of divine service, and in light of the fact that he alone was responsible for any mitzvahs observed by Israel in the midbar, shouldn’t we expect that a small fit of temper at a trying moment might be overlooked?

        We might be able to solve this problem by looking a bit more closely at the Hebrew words that underlie the translation, “the virtue of the community is credited to him”: zkhus harabbim talui bo. Most meforshim interpret the phrase as I’ve rendered it, and I am surprised that none of the gedolim I’ve consulted find this troubling. Indeed, most of them cite passages in the gemara (Bavli Yoma 86a) and Avos d’Rabbi Noson (A,40) that confirm the point.

        But it’s possible to read these Hebrew words as follows: “the merit of the community hangs upon him”.  That is, the mishnah is simply pointing out the basic notion of zkhus avos, the “merits of the ancestors”.  In this case, any merit that Klal Yisroel has in the eyes of HaShem is due to the labor of Moshe, who taught us Torah.  This in no way privileges Moshe in his relationship to HaShem. He still suffers for his own failures, as the Torah insists.    But WE benefit nevertheless from the after-effects of his devoted mesiras nefesh on behalf of all of us.

        This way of reading the mishnah solves the problem we have raised without causing difficulties in interpreting the final statement about Yerovam, the son of Shlomo HaMelekh who founded an idolatrous kingdom in Shomron after his father’s death.  His deeds divided the people into two and, in a real way, weakened the Davidic Empire.  The ultimate consequence of his sin was the destruction of his own kingdom in 722 BCE at the hands of Assyria, and the Exile of Yehudah in 587.  The sins he enticed the community into committing “hang upon him”, that is, the after-effects of his actions resonated long beyond his own lifetime.

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