Avos chapter 1, mishnah 11. Before us are the words of Avtalyon, the av beis din who served as part of a pair together with Shemayah. He too was a convert, and the two of them were the teachers of the famous Hillel. This mishnah is rather cryptic, and it is not typical of the mishnayos of Maseches Avos. Let us first read it, and immediately the subject will become clear:
"Avtalyon omer: Chachamim, hizaharu b'divreichem, shema tachuvu chovas galus v'sigelu limkom mayim ha'ra'im, v'yishtu hatalmidim haba'im achareichem v'yamusu, v'nimtza shem shamayim mischallel" - Avtalyon says: Sages, be careful with your words, lest you incur the penalty of exile and be exiled to a place of evil waters, and the students who come after you will drink and die, and the name of Heaven will be desecrated.
The approach of the Rishonim in explaining the mishnah:
Let us explain the mishnah according to the shared approach of the Bartenura, the Rema, Rabbeinu Yonah and the Meiri. According to their approach, the mishnah addresses teachers and rabbis and warns them to be clear and precise in their instruction, in order to prevent misunderstanding. For when the students come with preconceived notions and heretical ideas, or ideas close to that, they are liable to interpret what is said incorrectly, and such an interpretation can have disastrous consequences.
The basic model for this is the story mentioned in mishnah 3 of this chapter: Antigonos of Socho championed serving Hashem not in order to receive a reward. Two of his students, Tzadok and Baisos, distorted his words and claimed that there is no judgment in the future, no World to Come, and no ultimate consequence for a person's deeds. From them emerged the Tzedukim and the Baisusim, rival Jewish sects that denied the fundamentals of faith. These terrible results stemmed from a misunderstanding of the teacher's words, and this is the model that the Rishonim follow in explaining our mishnah.
Let us first explain their approach, and in the end we will see why this mishnah, despite its cryptic nature, carries practical and precise advice and application in our own times as well.
Explanation of the language of the mishnah:
"Hizaharu b'divreichem" - be careful with your words: explain what you are teaching clearly in order to prevent misunderstanding, for there are those who by their nature are inclined to interpret your words incorrectly.
"Shema tachuvu chovas galus" - perhaps for some reason you will come to a situation in which you are sent into exile, far from home and from your place of residence.
"V'sigelu limkom mayim ha'ra'im" - there, in the new place where you are teaching, is a place of bitter waters.
And what are these "evil waters"? Water in the Torah and in Torah literature always serves as a metaphor for Torah: "Water is nothing other than Torah," says the Gemara in Bava Kama and in other places. The meaning of the bitter waters, then, is that the Torah in that place is bad, inclined toward wickedness and evil - not literally bitter, but a place in which there is a tendency to distort the words of the Torah, and which leans toward heresy.
The possible historical background:
It is quite possible that Avtalyon is referring to a specific event - not necessarily to the example of Antigonos and his students Tzadok and Baisos, but to his own teacher, Shimon ben Shetach. As was mentioned in a previous recording, Shimon ben Shetach went into exile in the days of King Yannai, Alexander Yannai, who called himself king in Israel, leaned toward the Tzedukim, and drove the Perushim out of the city.
The Talmud Yerushalmi, as well as the Midrashim, bring the story that caused his exile: three hundred men accepted upon themselves nezirus. At the conclusion of the process they were required to come to Jerusalem and bring three offerings each - nine hundred animals in all - and they did not have the money to pay for them. Until they bring their concluding offerings they remain stuck in their nezirus: they cannot drink wine, cut their hair, and the like.
What did he do? Since accepting nezirus is a form of vow, binding like an oath, there is a possibility of annulling vows: a beis din can release a person from his vow when certain conditions are met, among them a 'petach' (an opening) and 'charatah' (regret) - for example, when the person did not understand from the outset the implications of his vow at the time he accepted it upon himself.
Shimon ben Shetach found a way to release a hundred and fifty of the three hundred from their nezirus, but the remaining hundred and fifty he could not release. He went to King Yannai - who was married to Shlomtzion, his sister - and said to him: "There are three hundred nezirim here who cannot bring their offerings. If you will pay for half, I will take care of the other half." Yannai agreed, and the problem was solved.
But the opponents of Shimon ben Shetach went to the king and said: "Shimon ben Shetach has deceived you. You paid for half of the animals, four hundred and fifty of them, and he paid nothing at all." Shimon ben Shetach was summoned to the king, and when he was rebuked he said: "What are you talking about? You handled half on the basis of what you have - money, and I handled the other half on the basis of what I have - my knowledge of Torah and my ability to release them from their vows." King Yannai was not impressed, and Shimon ben Shetach was driven out of the city, fled for his life, and eventually arrived in Alexandria.
Alexandria was the largest Jewish city in the Diaspora, a kind of leading cultural center of the Jewish world outside of Israel in that period, and also a very liberal environment in which Judaism was not simple in terms of its interpretation and its application. Voices and trends of heresy were widespread there, and therefore it is quite possible that this is precisely the model Avtalyon has in mind.
The idea is that those very same teachings that Shimon ben Shetach taught took on a different meaning in the two places. In pure Jerusalem, among his students, everyone was of good intent, committed in advance to do as their teacher said and to remain faithful to what we would call orthodoxy. In Alexandria this was not the case: those very same teachings that he brought with him, and that were drawn after him to that place, were interpreted incorrectly, and things went wrong. This is the place of the bitter waters.
"Vayishtu hatalmidim haba'im achareichem vayamusu" - and the students who come after you will drink and die. People would follow the teacher to his new place, and those very same students who had flourished spiritually and were pure in Jerusalem, in the complex and sophisticated world of the new place were influenced by other ideas, misinterpreted what their teacher had taught - and died. Their death is really because of their own sins, out of the misunderstanding and the mistaken interpretation of the Torah, and this is the punishment that clings to them.
"Venimtza shem shamayim mischalel" - and the name of Heaven is found to be desecrated. Beyond their death, which is a tragedy in itself, and beyond their spiritual death, there is a separate matter here: chillul Hashem, the desecration of God's name.
It is worth noting an additional point: the Torah establishes the punishment of exile for unintentional killing - a person who inadvertently killed another person goes into exile. This is not our subject here, but it is entirely possible that what is happening in our mishnah runs along the same lines: the teacher goes into exile for some reason, and now he himself is guilty of a kind of unintentional or mistaken death, since his words were interpreted incorrectly and caused the spiritual death of those students.
The idea here is not only that the World to Come of those students has been cut off, because they turned to a bad culture and became heretics, but also the very persistence of the heretical ideas: the fact that there are Tzedukim going around claiming that there is no soul, no World to Come and no world of punishment - that Jews take such a position is certainly an enormous chillul Hashem. The teacher who began to teach, but did not teach clearly and skillfully enough to prevent mistaken interpretation, ultimately becomes the backbone of a heretical movement of the Tzeduki type. And heresy, and people who push others outside of Torah and understand the Torah incorrectly, is itself a chillul Hashem. It emerges, then, that two bad things are happening here:
The students who follow the teacher die.
An ongoing chillul Hashem is created, which continues because of that improper and imprecise teaching.
Application in our times:
On the face of it, these words sound as though they are directed at a particular time and place, and perhaps even at specific events such as those involving Antigonus or Shimon ben Shetach. Yet it seems that they are highly relevant to every teacher and every rabbi in our own day, and this can be said from personal experience: you never know where your teachings end up. This is a recording - and who will listen to it? Who knows?
Students in Ramat Beit Shemesh in Israel come to a class already committed, pure in their motives, and looking to understand rather than to distort. But teaching in the cities and on university campuses is another experience entirely: in those liberal cities, well-meaning Orthodox Jews carry around in their heads a great many strange, unconventional ideas, deeply shaped by whatever philosophical, scientific or literary-cultural notions happen to be fashionable in their time and place. As a result they distort the teacher's words with no intention of doing so, and they can hardly help it, because they are viewing everything through the warped lens of a syncretic mixture: their Hegelian ideas about history, or Spinoza's ideas about one subject or another. Out of those strange ideas they hear in your words things that are simply not there, and that is an experience one has firsthand.
And so, even in the twenty-first century, the Mishnah is as relevant as ever: it advises teachers - for a student who is not a teacher this is a different matter - to be extremely careful in the way they present things, and to be aware that their listeners are liable to misinterpret them, whether deliberately or entirely unintentionally.
Be careful, when you set out to explain something from the Torah, not to create a mistaken impression. If you give the impression that you keep kosher for reasons of hygiene, or that you keep Shabbos because labor is hard work, people will misunderstand what you meant. They will say: "Nowadays keeping kosher is not a matter of hygiene, it is not relevant, so I do not keep a kosher kitchen," or: "Nowadays keeping Shabbos is not hard work, flipping a light switch is not hard work, so I may do it on Shabbos," and so on. From here we learn that one must be very careful - and this, it seems, is Avtalyon's advice in our Mishnah.