Avos 5:20

בס׳ד

אבות ה:כ

Yehudah ben Tema says: Be fierce as a leopard, Swift as an eagle, Fleet as a deer, And ferocious as a lion, In doing the will of your Father in Heaven. He used to teach: The arrogant belong to Gehinnom, but the meek to the Garden of Eden. May it be Your will, HaShem our God, that you rebuild Your city speedily in our days, and place our destiny with Your Torah.

יְהוּדָה בֶן תֵּימָא אוֹמֵר, הֱוֵי עַז כַּנָּמֵר, וְקַל כַּנֶּשֶׁר, וְרָץ כַּצְּבִי, וְגִבּוֹר כָּאֲרִי, לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹן אָבִיךָ שֶׁבַּשָּׁמָיִם. הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, עַז פָּנִים לְגֵיהִנֹּם, וּבֹשֶׁת פָּנִים לְגַן עֵדֶן. יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶיךָ יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ שֶׁתִּבְנֶה עִירְךָ בִּמְהֵרָה בְיָמֵינוּ וְתֵן חֶלְקֵנוּ בְתוֹרָתֶךָ:

        From this point until the end of Perek 5, there are a lot of textual variations between various manuscripts of the Mishnah, on the one hand, and, on the other, those versions of the Mishnah found in Makhzor Vitri and other siddurim.  The order followed here is the one found in most printed editions of the Mishnah.

        Many historians of the Mishnah’s text believe that Avos 5:21-22 (which immediately follow the present mishnah) were not originally part of the Mishnah.  Why not?  Notice that the final lines of our mishnah are the familiar prayer for the restoration of Yerushalayim, yehi ratzon milfanekha.  This is not actually part of Mishnah Avos.  It was probably added by a pious scribe who had completed his manuscript.  It was preserved by other copyists, just as now in the siddur we find yet another addition that is not part of the Mishnah itself - the prayer of Rabbi Hanania ben Akashya: “The Blessed Holy One wanted to heap merits upon Israel.  Therefore he gave them much Torah and many commandments, as it is said: ‘HaShem desires his Righteous Ones, thus He has magnified his Torah and glorified it’.”

        

Yehudah ben Tema’s first teaching has been made famous by being quoted as the opening lines of Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher’s Arba Turim and Rabbi Yosef Karo’s Shulkhan Arukh (Orekh Hayyim 1:1). The greatest of the recent halakhic codifiers introduced their works with this stirring challenge.  Why does Yehudah ben Tema charge us to serve HaShem with virtues appropriate to animals rather than those embodied by human heroes such as Avraham, Moshe, Dovid, and so on?  His point, it seems, is to teach us that the highest service of HaShem lies in the total transformation of our animal nature through Torah and mitzvahs.  The traits of animality deep within us all threaten to destroy our avodah until they are harnessed by our conscious will. This insight lies at the heart of the Alter Rebbe’s teaching about the constant struggle of the nefesh behamis (the “animal soul”) and the nefesh elokis (“divine soul”).

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