We begin our study of Pirkei Avos with Chapter 1, Mishnah 1. It is a famous Mishnah, and its opening section lays out the basic framework of the chain of transmission of the Torah, and especially of the Oral Torah. Why open precisely this way? The commentators explain: Pirkei Avos is indeed full of practical advice, ethical guidance, and ideas about self-improvement and Torah study, but the point that must be emphasized is that these principles come all the way from Sinai itself. They are not the wisdom sayings of some nation or other, but the tradition of Israel passed down from generation to generation.
In this lesson we will focus on explaining the words themselves and how the Rishonim understood them, rather than on expansions beyond that, and alongside this we will set out the historical context.
"Moshe kibel Torah mi'Sinai, u'masarah li'Yehoshua":
The two verbs stand opposite one another: "kibel" (received) and "masarah" (transmitted it). The essence of transmission is a complete handing over - the one transmitting gives over everything, nothing is left behind, and that is indeed how the tradition was passed on in its full entirety.
But Moshe Rabbeinu, who received the Torah from the Holy One, blessed is He, received it specifically with the word "kibel." Moshe Rabbeinu was great, and the Teacher - the Holy One, blessed is He - is great, but there is an unbridgeable gap between the infinity of Hashem and His Torah and the finiteness of Moshe. Moshe Rabbeinu is the greatest vessel in the world for receiving the Torah, but as a finite being he can only receive according to his capacity, and great as he may be, he is not infinite. Therefore Moshe received all that he was able to receive, and no more than that, and hence the wording "kibel."
The words "mi'Sinai" are also precise: had the Mishnah meant to say that Moshe received the Torah at Mount Sinai, it should have said "b'Sinai" (at Sinai). The wording "mi'Sinai" (from Sinai) refers to the Holy One, blessed is He, transmitting it to Moshe Rabbeinu during his stay there for forty days the first time, to receive the Torah.
What is included in the "Torah" that Moshe received?
The Gemara in Berachos (page 5) expounds the verse in Shemos (24:12): "And Hashem said to Moshe, come up to Me to the mountain and be there, and I will give you the tablets of stone, and the Torah and the mitzvah which I have written to teach them." On the face of it the abundance of words is puzzling, and the Sages expound that each expression refers to a different portion that was given over to Moshe Rabbeinu:
"Luchos ha'even" - the Ten Commandments, which Moshe received on the tablets, tablets of sapphire that the Holy One, blessed is He, Himself, as it were, made for him.
"V'ha'Torah" - the Written Torah. Even though it was written later, over the forty years in the wilderness, as Moshe transcribed it word for word from the mouth of Hashem, its essence was already given to him at Mount Sinai.
"V'ha'mitzvah" - what the Gemara calls "Mishnah," which is the Oral Torah: the explanation of all the mitzvos of the Torah.
"Asher kasavti" - the content of the rest of the books of Tanach. There are twenty-four books in Tanach, of which five are the Chumashim of the Torah, and the remaining nineteen are Nevi'im and Kesuvim, in which Moshe Rabbeinu also had a share.
"Lehorosam" - a term of instruction, guidance and halachic ruling, an allusion to the Gemara.
In short: the Sages understand that at Mount Sinai the entire body of Torah was revealed to Moshe Rabbeinu, or at the very least all of its principles, including the thirteen hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is expounded (according to Rabbi Yishmael) - principles by means of which one can derive and decode further halachos from the Torah, and even generate new halachos and applications, so that the Oral Torah can grow. All of this Moshe Rabbeinu received, and this is what he transmitted to Yehoshua: Yehoshua receives all the principles of the Torah and the thirteen principles of exposition, how to derive further halachos and principles from the Written Torah that Moshe would later write.
"Vi'Yehoshua la'zekeinim":
Who are these elders? In Machzor Vitry, an ancient prayer book, fifteen men are listed as included in the category of "elders," and they are in fact the Judges - those judges who appear in the book of Shoftim, the second of the Early Prophets, which comes after the book of Yehoshua:
Osniel ben Kenaz, Ehud ben Gera, Shamgar ben Anas, Barak ben Avinoam (the husband of Devorah), Gideon, Avimelech, Tola, Yair the Gileadite, Pinchas (who lived a very long life), Yiftach, Ivtzan (who is Boaz of Megillas Rus), Elon, Avdon, Manoach and Shimshon.
The Rambam, in his introduction to the Mishneh Torah, also lays out the chain of transmission, and based on a different source in the words of Chazal he counts forty generations from Moshe Rabbeinu until the sealing of the Talmud by Rav Ashi. According to this count, he compresses the stage of the Elders into a single person: Pinchas, who was already alive in the times of the Chumash and lived so long that he bridged this entire gap on his own.
The next generation in the Rambam's count is Eli the Kohen. According to the Bartenura, Eli already belongs to the next group, the Prophets, whom the Mishnah goes on to mention. According to the Arizal, Eli is still counted among the Elders, and according to that view the Rambam would have two figures included among the Elders: Pinchas and Eli the Kohen.
"Zekeinim linvi'im":
The Elders, who are the Judges, transmitted the Torah to the Prophets. The order of transmission from teacher to student, according to the Rambam's count, begins with Eli and Shmuel - Shmuel was Eli's student and lived with him from a young age - and after them: David, Achiyah, Eliyahu, Elisha, Yehoyada, Zechariah, Hoshea, Amos, Yeshayahu, Michah, Yoel, Nachum, Chavakuk, Tzefaniah, Yirmiyahu and Baruch ben Neriah.
Yirmiyahu was the prophet at the end of the era of the first Beis HaMikdash, and he wrote most of Megillas Eichah. His student and faithful scribe, Baruch ben Neriah, was also involved in producing his writings and accompanied him. These are the final generations of the Prophets.
"Unevi'im mesaruha l'Anshei Knesses HaGedolah":
The Men of the Great Assembly, as far as the Rambam's count is concerned, are represented by Ezra the Scribe of Tanach and by Shimon HaTzaddik, who was the last of the Men of the Great Assembly, and whom we will reach in the next Mishnah.
The word "mesaruha" seems at first glance to be superfluous: at the outset the Mishnah says "umesarah liYehoshua," and from then on it uses a shortened form - "viYehoshua lizkeinim, zekeinim linvi'im" - so it would have been enough to say "unevi'im l'Anshei Knesses HaGedolah." The commentators address this: one might have thought that the Men of the Great Assembly were of a lesser stature, and therefore did not receive the transmission in its entirety. The Mishnah therefore repeats the language of transmission to teach us that they too received it in its fullness. And some explain that the complete transmission was made to all one hundred and twenty Men of the Great Assembly together, and not to individuals.
Why were they called the "Great Assembly"?
The Men of the Great Assembly are the focal point of the second half of our Mishnah, and the Gemara says that they were called this because they restored the greatness - the greatness of the Holy One, blessed is He. The Gemara explains: Moshe Rabbeinu in Sefer Devarim describes the Holy One, blessed is He, as "the great, mighty and awesome God," three descriptions together.
In Yirmiyahu, however, we find "the great, mighty God" without "awesome," and in Sefer Daniel "the great and awesome God" without "mighty." Yirmiyahu witnessed the destruction, and Daniel lived in the interim period between the two Batei Mikdash, in the Persian exile. They experienced the hiding of the Divine face and the concealment of the Holy One, blessed is He, and therefore they could not express His full honor with all three descriptions as we say in the Shemoneh Esrei prayer.
The Men of the Great Assembly restored this honor, as Chazal put it: "they returned the crown to its former glory" - they restored the crown to the honor it had before. For in the book of Nechemiah it says once again, "And You, our God, the great, mighty and awesome God," all three descriptions as of old, and it is from this verse in Nechemiah that we have the wording of our prayer.
This is not merely wordplay. The point is that during the exile the human experience of closeness to Hashem was lost, and when the Men of the Great Assembly gathered, it was restored.
We do not know all one hundred and twenty members of the Great Assembly, but many of them are known to us, and they are the last of the great prophets: Ezra, Mordechai of the Purim story, Chaggai, Zechariah and Malachi, the last of the prophets, as well as Daniel, Chananyah, Mishael and Azaryah.
Our Sages of blessed memory tell us that at the beginning of the Second Temple era the Men of the Great Assembly had to struggle with the inner drive people felt toward idolatry. In the days of the First Temple they could not survive alongside it, and so they prayed that this evil inclination be removed. But the moment a person's sixth sense of craving for spiritual connection is taken away, he also loses the ability to experience the Holy One, blessed is He, directly as a prophet does, and from this point prophecy comes to its end.
This means that a major transition in the Jewish experience takes place in the time of the Men of the Great Assembly. The Jews had experienced exile, and most of them would remain in exile; to this very day the majority of the Jewish people has not returned to the Land of Israel, and perhaps only in the 21st century are we approaching that point, depending on how you count. They had lost their prophets, and had no one left to turn to, and from now on they turn to the writings of the Torah themselves. The texts of the Torah become the central focus from which guidance is received, and no longer the prophets.
Therefore the Men of the Great Assembly, among other things, are the ones who fixed most of Tanach, and they are the ones who instituted prayer. For the Jewish experience would have to continue even without the Beis HaMikdash - even though in the Second Temple period the Mikdash was functioning again in the Land of Israel, most Jews were far away from it, and Jewish life no longer revolved around the Mikdash alone as it had in the days of the First Temple. This is how they dealt with this transition in Jewish life and in the Jewish experience.
And another central concern faced them: when Ezra returned to the Land of Israel, he found that the Jews who had remained there had lost their way - they had married non-Jewish women and no longer kept Shabbos. Ezra, with the help of Nechemiah, brought them to rebuild Jerusalem; the Mikdash functioned again, they sent away their non-Jewish wives, they strengthened Torah observance and instituted decrees that would ensure Shabbos was kept properly.
But they still had to raise a generation of Jews strong in their Judaism and in their observance of the mitzvos, a generation capable of taking the Torah and strengthening it and its observance. For this reason the Men of the Great Assembly focus on establishing a Jewish experience in the Land of Israel during the Second Temple period - an experience centered on Torah, strong and enduring. Accordingly, the three pieces of advice they give all revolve around the effort to ensure that the Torah would be strengthened, that its observance would be strengthened, and that it would be successfully transmitted to future generations, despite the challenges they faced.
"Heim amru shloshah devarim" - "They said three things":
In fact the Men of the Great Assembly said far more than three things - they are the ones who instituted the berachos and the prayers, the Kiddush and Havdalah texts and much more. But these three things relate in a special way to ensuring the observance, the transmission and the survival of the Torah.
"Hevu metunim badin" - "Be deliberate in judgment":
This is an instruction to judges: be deliberate - do not rush. The word "metunim" comes from the same root as "hamtanah," waiting, and the meaning is: be measured in your judgment, think matters through deeply and carefully, and judge each case on its own merits. For from now on, without a prophet, every single case must be investigated, and every ruling serves as a precedent for future cases. We want the Torah to be respected, enforceable and grounded in reason, and therefore every ruling handed down by the Sanhedrin or by the judges must be well reasoned and well weighed, since it is going to become a precedent for the rulings that follow it.
"Veha'amidu talmidim harbeh":
The word "ha'amidu" catches our attention: it is the causative form of "amad," to stand, meaning to cause students to stand. The simple reading is that the educator's task is to bring his student to independence, to stand on his own two feet - just as Chazal said regarding the kindling of the Menorah, that its flame must rise on its own. So too every student must be able to stand on his own, and the goal of an educator, and of a parent in his role as educator, is to cultivate independence, until he is no longer needed. Success is when you have transmitted to your student or your child what you needed to transmit, to the point that they no longer need you. This is hard for a teacher and for a parent, but one should not want to be needed; one should want the child to stand on his own two feet.
And what is meant by "many students"? There is an obvious advantage to a multitude of students: the spread of the tradition and the spread of Torah knowledge, which serve as a safety net so that Torah will not be forgotten, and which create Torah awareness in the wider community. There is also a natural benefit to the teachers themselves, since students ask good questions, sharpen the rabbi and raise issues that would never have occurred to him without them.
Famous are the words of the Gemara in Ta'anis (daf 7), where Rabbi Chanina said: "Harbeh lamadeti merabosai, umechaverai yoser merabosai, umitalmidai yoser mikulan" - I have learned much from my teachers, and from my colleagues more than from my teachers, and from my students more than from them all. The benefit of many students is not only for the students and for the transmission of Torah, but for the rabbi himself.
The Bartenura highlights here an additional, hidden layer, one that might escape a reader unfamiliar with the background: an ongoing tension existed in the Jewish community over how elitist an approach to take regarding who is entitled to be part of the tradition and to learn Torah. There were indeed schools of thought that held one should invest only in the very finest, people capable of mastering the tradition because they have the ability and the skills to understand the Torah, to live by it, to master it and to transmit it - and only they should be taught.
The most famous illustration of this is the Gemara in Berachos (daf 28): Rabban Gamliel in Yavneh was temporarily removed from office and Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah was appointed in his place. Rabban Gamliel used to say that no one was permitted to come and learn in the beis midrash in Yavneh unless "tocho keboro" - his inside matches his outside, meaning that he had already achieved significant standing and possessed self-mastery. Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, who was far younger than he, took a different approach: he opened the doors wide and said that anyone who wishes to come and learn - let him come. And it is said that on that day they had to add three hundred benches to the beis midrash, and this is the famous day on which all the questions were answered and Maseches Eduyos was built.
The Gemara there clearly rules in favor of the more open approach: when Rabban Gamliel was alarmed and saw how many wished to learn while he had been keeping them out, he said that he had seen a dream in which he was told that he was right. Says the Gemara, in truth he was not right at all, and the dream came only to settle his mind, but in practice it is better to let anyone who wants to learn - learn.
This is stated even more explicitly in Avos DeRabbi Nassan, a commentary from the era of the Tannaim on Pirkei Avos itself, where the view of Beis Shammai at the beginning of the Tannaitic period is brought, Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel. Beis Shammai held like the approach of Rabban Gamliel, that only the very best should come and learn in the beis midrash, and in their words: "Al yishneh adam ela lemi shehu chacham ve'anav uven avos ve'ashir" - a person should teach only one who is wise, humble, of good family and wealthy. Four criteria:
"Chacham" - that he have the capacity to learn, for if he cannot learn, what point is there in his study.
"Anav" - humble, and it seems that this includes good character traits in general, whose essence is humility.
"Ben avos" - that he have lineage and roots; he is not a convert and not the son of a woodchopper, but comes from a home of Torah scholars.
"Ashir" - wealthy, and wealth is not a goal in itself, but rather that one who is not independently wealthy will be forced to invest a great deal of time in earning a living, and will not be able to sit and learn.
Beis Shammai's position, then, was that one should focus only on the person who has the capacity to sit and learn all day, and thereby to master the tradition, and only he should be admitted to the beis midrash.
Beis Hillel, by contrast, held that everyone should come and learn: "Sheharei poshim hayu bahem beYisrael, veniskarvu letalmud Torah, veyatzu mehem tzaddikim chassidim uchesheirim" - there were many sinners in Israel, and they drew close to Torah study, and many of them ultimately emerged as righteous, pious and upright people. And this is the intent of our Mishnah, that the gates should be opened to everyone who learns Torah, in the way of Hillel, and whoever increases students is praiseworthy.
"Va'asu seyag laTorah":
The third component, likewise meant to ensure that the Torah would never again be trampled and that it would be strengthened: a "seyag" is a protective fence, a railing. Make a protective fence for the Torah - this refers to the enactments and decrees of the Sages, which were designed to protect the Torah from being violated. Take, for example, the laws of shevus on Shabbos: all those rabbinic enactments of Shabbos that forbid various things which are permitted by Torah law, because we do not want a person to come to desecrate Shabbos inadvertently. And therefore even what we call today a rabbinic prohibition is not to be done - one does not climb trees and the like, lest one come to perform a forbidden labor.
In summary: In this Mishnah we learned the chain of transmission from Sinai onward - Moshe, Yehoshua, the Elders, the Prophets and the Men of the Great Assembly; we examined the precise wording of "kibel", "mesarah" and "miSinai", and the teaching of the Sages in Berachos which shows that the entire body of Torah was given to Moshe at Sinai. We identified who the Elders and the Prophets were according to Machzor Vitry and the Rambam, the reason for the name "the Great Assembly", and the historical transition from the era of prophecy to the era of Torah scholarship. And finally we examined the three pieces of advice - "Hevu mesunim badin", "Vehaamidu talmidim harbeh" and "Vaasu seyag laTorah" - all of which are directed toward ensuring that the Torah be preserved and transmitted to the coming generations.