We continue in the first chapter of Maseches Avos, and now we meet Shimon HaTzaddik. Shimon HaTzaddik is the earliest of the Tannaim, the first of the names of the Tannaim brought in the tractate, and according to Chazal he lived in the time of Alexander the Great. He served as Kohen Gadol, according to tradition for forty years, and he even went out to greet Alexander when he came to Jerusalem. That event is dated to around 332 BCE, and from here we learn that Shimon HaTzaddik lived in that period as well.
This dating raises a difficulty: the Bartenura understands that Shimon HaTzaddik served as Kohen Gadol immediately after Ezra, while Ezra lived roughly a hundred years earlier. Some hold, among them Rashi, that Shimon HaTzaddik was not originally counted among the Men of the Great Assembly, but rather was the last of those who remained from that distinguished body. In any case, the Mishnah defines him as "mi'she'yarei Knesses HaGedolah" - one of the remnants, that is, the last of the Men of the Great Assembly.
The Mishnah continues: "Hu hayah omer" - "He used to say." In today's Hebrew this is a perfectly ordinary construction meaning "he was accustomed to say," and it seems that modern Hebrew borrowed it from the language of the Mishnah; but in the time of the Mishnah it was an unusual construction, and the commentators need to explain it. They explain that it refers to something he was regularly accustomed to say, like the expression of the Gemara elsewhere: "hayah margela befumei" - it was habitually on his lips. Shimon HaTzaddik said many things, but this statement was on his lips more than any other.
"Al sheloshah devarim ha'olam omed" - "The world stands on three things":
The commentators point out here that the final Mishnah of the first chapter uses this same phrase - "the world stands on three things" - and lists three different things (Reish Lakish). So that the two Mishnayos should not contradict one another, they explain that the intent here is different from what is said there. The Bartenura, and likewise Rabbeinu Yonah, understood that these are the three things for whose sake the world was created. And indeed there are different versions of the text: Tosafos and the Midrash Shmuel bring another reading of our Mishnah - "the world was created for three things," meaning that the world was created for the sake of these three things.
"Al haTorah" - according to the Bartenura, the world was created so that the Jewish people would receive the Torah.
"Ve'al ha'avodah" - this refers primarily to the actual service in the Beis HaMikdash, and in the Mishkan that preceded it: the offering of the korbanos and the like; and secondarily also to the service of the heart, which is prayer. In our times, when the Beis HaMikdash does not stand, prayer - Shemoneh Esrei and the like - takes the place of the service in the Mikdash.
"Ve'al gemilus chasadim" - acts of kindness.
The commentators bring verses to demonstrate why the world was created essentially for the sake of these three things. So, for example, regarding kindness it says: "Olam chesed yibaneh" - the world was built out of kindness and goodheartedness. Chazal emphasized that gemilus chasadim is greater than tzedakah, since tzedakah is done only with a person's money, whereas gemilus chasadim is done either with his money or with his body and his own personality. The kindness we are speaking about, then, is conducting oneself with warmth, mercy and goodness toward others, and the Bartenura brings the classic examples: visiting the sick, burying the dead, gladdening a bride and groom, and the like.
The approach of the Tiferes Yisrael:
Up to here we have followed the path of the Bartenura and Rabbeinu Yonah, according to whom these are the purposes of creation, and it is understood that a person must connect himself to them. There is a further approach, the most explicit and clear of them all, found in the Tiferes Yisrael - a commentator from the nineteenth century, author of 'Yachin' and 'Boaz'. He explains that when we say the world was created, the intent is a person's own World to Come, which is created here in this world: your own world is built and rests upon your activity in these three areas.
In other words, a person is placed in this world, and his purpose is to refine his soul by means of his body. As one of my teachers, Rabbi Ben Tzion Yakobs, told me, the body is like an office in which the soul does its work. The soul has three arenas of work:
Torah - perfecting itself in the way it thinks and sees the world, through wisdom.
Avodah - according to the Tiferes Yisrael this does not mean prayer alone, but the observance of all the mitzvos: whenever a person fulfills a mitzvah and serves Hashem, that is avodah.
Gemilus chasadim - doing good for others.
The emphasis of the Tiferes Yisrael is that this is not because others need you, for the Holy One, blessed is He, could have provided for them without you; the point is that you are required to be a person who possesses a spirit of generosity, mercy, goodheartedness and care for others - as a way of refining yourself. It emerges that the building of your World to Come is accomplished by perfecting the mind through Torah, the heart through avodah, and the rest of the personality - your relationship with other people - through gemilus chasadim.
A lovely idea appears in the Shoshan LeDavid as well: "gemilus chasadim" is stated in the plural, unlike the word "chesed" which is in the singular, because it is possible to do kindness with the wealthy and with the poor alike. Wealth does not cancel out a person's other needs: the poor man needs money, but the wealthy man needs other kindnesses in every possible dimension - emotional support, completing a minyan, joining in his celebrations, a shoulder to cry on, and all those things that every human being needs, whether rich or poor.
This is what the Tiferes Yisrael is pointing to: a person must become the kind of person who stands ready to help, to offer support, to have emotional room for others and to be emotionally present for them.