We come now to Mishnah 17 in chapter 3 (in some editions of the Mishnah it appears as 3:13), which records the words of the great Rabbi Akiva. Without going into the story of his life here, it is important to know that Rabbi Akiva is the meeting point and the source into which all the traditions of the Oral Torah that reached us converge.
The Gemara in Sanhedrin establishes that the foundational works of the Tannaim, the first written records of the Oral Torah, were compiled by different figures:
Stam Mishnah (an unattributed Mishnah) - Rabbi Meir.
Stam Tosefta - Rabbi Nechemyah.
Stam Sifra - Rabbi Yehudah.
Stam Sifrei - Rabbi Shimon.
And nevertheless the Gemara concludes: "V'chulhu aliba d'Rabbi Akiva" - all of them trace back at their root to their teacher, Rabbi Akiva. It emerges that Rabbi Akiva is the most significant of the later Tannaim as a source for the Oral Torah.
Five safeguards:
Our Mishnah lists five different areas in which a safeguard is required. A 'seyag' means a protective fence, as in the verse in Shir HaShirim, "sugah bashoshanim" - fenced in with roses. A fence keeps the harmful elements out and keeps what is good safely inside, and that is the function of the fences before us. Let us first read the entire Mishnah, and take note that although it lists five types of safeguards, its phrasing is not uniform - and that fact opens the door to explanation and expansion.
"Rabbi Akiva omer: sechok v'kalus rosh margilin l'ervah. Mesorah seyag laTorah. Ma'asros seyag l'osher. Nedarim seyag lifrishus. Seyag l'chochmah shesikah".
Laughter and levity accustom a person to immorality; the tradition, which is the Oral Torah, is a fence for the Torah; tithes are a protective fence for wealth; vows are a fence for abstinence and separation; and silence is a fence for wisdom. We will explain each of these below, one by one.
It is worth noticing two changes of wording: in the fifth safeguard the phrasing is inverted - it does not say "shesikah seyag l'chochmah" but rather "seyag l'chochmah shesikah"; while in the first safeguard, with which the Mishnah opens, the word 'seyag' is not mentioned at all.
"Sechok v'kalus rosh margilin l'ervah":
Both of these amount to letting oneself go in the presence of a woman who is forbidden to him. A person has natural social inhibitions, and this sort of behavior wears them down and loosens them. Not every case ends up out of control, but in every case that did end up out of control, the beginning was in that loosening up and laughter, which lead to flirtation and from there to more serious matters. This is a slippery slope, and therefore one must be especially careful with this protective fence.
Why did the Mishnah not use the wording "seriousness is a fence for ervah"? The reason is twofold:
Rigidity is not a virtue in itself. Seriousness is certainly a good thing, but a person should not be rigid, sullen and miserable; had the Mishnah said that seriousness is a fence for immorality, it would have implied that rigidity is a virtue.
Had the Mishnah said that avoiding immorality is the fence, it would have implied that refraining from levity is merely an added merit. That is not so: refraining from levity is a virtue in its own right, and not just a means to something else.
"Masores seyag laTorah" - the tradition of the text is a fence for the Torah:
The Bartenura explains that 'masores' refers to the tradition of how words are spelled in the Torah scroll - sometimes full and sometimes defective, with extra or missing letters. This precise spelling is the fence for the Torah, ensuring that the Written Torah is preserved. Others understand that it is not only a matter of full and defective spellings, but also of other aspects of writing a Torah scroll: open and closed sections, the divisions of the parshiyos, and at times the special marks that appear above certain words.
Either way, the point is that precise writing and spelling are essential to ensure that the mitzvos are fulfilled properly, since entire halachos are embedded in those extra and missing letters. This is not necessarily a derashah from a superfluous letter in the usual sense, but rather like the well known example the Bartenura brings from sukkah: the number of walls a sukkah requires is derived from the fact that the word is written three times in the Torah, some full and some defective, and it is the combination of the extra and missing vavs that teaches the number of walls. Without the precise spelling, these halachos could not be known.
We need to ask: what is the hava amina? On the face of it, a Torah scroll is a Torah scroll, so what is Rabbi Akiva teaching us? Two possibilities can be suggested:
Before a printed Chumash was found in every home and every shul, each person would write a Torah scroll for himself - a mitzvah from the Torah, the last of the mitzvos. It is possible that some were careless, thinking: what difference does it make whether I write it full or defective, it is the same word either way? To this the Mishnah says: it is not the same word. Besides ending up with an invalid Torah scroll, they would also end up distorting the halachos themselves.
Another possibility: the alternative of using translations. Just as today many people come to shul and, when learning, do not read the verses themselves but the translation alongside them, so too in the time of Chazal people in Eretz Yisrael spoke Aramaic and learned from the Aramaic translations, while outside Eretz Yisrael they spoke Greek and many used the Septuagint, since they could not read the original Hebrew.
According to this possibility, the Mishnah's novelty is that something is inevitably lost in translation. A good translation is certainly possible - and the proof is that there are halachos, such as Shema, that may be said in translation, so Chazal clearly accept that a faithful translation can be made - but one can never build a derashah of full and defective spellings and of extra and missing letters except from the original Hebrew text. The precise spelling of the original is what protects and guarantees that the halachos will be preserved.
Another straightforward explanation is brought in the 'Midrash Shmuel': 'masores' here does not refer to the writing of the letters in the Torah scroll, but to the oral tradition as a whole. The very fact that there is an Oral Torah, and that not everything is written down, is the fence for the Torah - it is what strengthens and ensures that people keep the tradition of the Torah alive. When something must be transmitted orally, a person is forced to review it, and that review becomes part of him and stays in his head. But when he knows that it is written down, he feels less obligated to review it, since he figures that when he needs it, it will be right there in front of him - and as a result he never learns it in the first place. It emerges that the Torah's being oral, counterintuitively, is precisely what ensures that it will not be forgotten.
"Ma'asros seyag la'osher" - tithes are a fence for wealth:
It says in Devarim: "Aser te'aser es kol tevuas zarecha" - you shall surely tithe all the produce of your seed. This is the tithe a person separates from his crop. On this the Gemara in Ta'anis expounds: "Aser bishvil shetis'asher" - tithe so that you will become wealthy. In other words, separating the tithe does not impoverish a person, despite the common assumption that one who gives away his money becomes poorer; on the contrary, it protects his wealth, and it is itself what makes him wealthy.
Astonishingly, the Gemara there says that in this matter a person is even permitted to test the Almighty: he may literally test Him by giving his tithes, and he will discover, to his delight, that he does not lose but gains. It should be noted that the commentators disagree as to whether the permission to test the Almighty applies to ma'aser kesafim as well, since giving a tithe from one's money is not a Torah obligation. In any case, the essence of Rabbi Akiva's words is: do not think that giving away produce or money will impoverish you - on the contrary, your money will stay in your pocket, and according to the Gemara in Ta'anis you will even become wealthy as a result.
"Nedarim seyag laprishus" - vows are a fence for abstinence:
A vow is a commitment a person takes upon himself, while abstinence means separating and holding oneself apart. The essence of the Mishnah is this: someone on a diet who resolves not to eat ice cream anymore may find himself in the company of people eating ice cream, or walking past the ice cream shop, and he will not withstand the temptation. Afterwards he wonders at himself: how did I eat that, I am supposed to be on a diet? This is a common phenomenon. By contrast, a person who has eaten meat, while everyone else at the table is eating ice cream, will not say to himself: everyone is eating, so I will eat too. Why not? Because he knows that there is a red line here that may not be crossed - the thing is forbidden to him, and it is simply not an option.
The vow the Mishnah is speaking about is a vow made against something that is permitted to a person. Rabbeinu Yonah stresses that this is a kind of last resort, a step taken after the fact: when a person has tried and not succeeded, and he keeps falling into the same trap again and again - eating the ice cream despite the diet and the doctor's instructions, or continuing to drink wine to excess and losing control, so that he needs to set up a barrier against wine - then he may use this tool. In his vow he declares that the ice cream is forbidden to him, or that the wine is forbidden to him, and this tool helps him fight his inclination and train himself not to eat and not to drink.
"Seyag laChochmah shetikah" - a fence around wisdom is silence:
Since this phrase is written out of order, many learn that the intent is not that silence makes a person wise, nor even that it necessarily keeps his wisdom safely inside. The point is that at the very least, by keeping silent, a kind of aura accompanies a person and he appears to be wise. The basis for this is the verse in Mishlei, that even a fool, if he keeps quiet, is considered wise. So too the Gemara in Pesachim 99 says: "Silence is fitting for the wise, and all the more so for fools."
We have already dealt with this twice in Maseches Avos: in chapter 1, mishnah 15, we learned in the name of Shammai, "Emor me'at va'aseh harbeh" - say little and do much, the virtue of refraining from excessive speech; and at the end of that same chapter, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said that he found nothing better for the body than silence. Here we are dealing with the fact that silence makes a person appear wise.
The Bartenura stresses that obviously this does not refer to refraining from speaking words of Torah, for it is a mitzvah of "v'hagisa bo yomam valailah" - you shall meditate on it day and night, and a person must be engaged in words of Torah at all times; and it is likewise clear that it does not refer to refraining from lashon hara and the like, since that is a Torah prohibition. We are dealing with optional matters - speech that is permitted but not necessary, such as sports, the weather and politics. In those areas it is better for a person to be silent, so that he not appear to be a fool.
There are those who learn that silence carries a real, positive benefit. For example, a person sitting in a shiur when a question occurs to him: if he interrupts, he will not hear the rabbi's words in full; everyone will hear him, but he will not hear what was meant to be said, and he stands to lose. Better to be silent and first seek to understand, before trying to be understood. So too when he is asked a question - he should not blurt out the answer immediately, but should think it through first.
According to this approach, silence does not merely make a person look wiser, it actually makes him wiser, because he weighs his words and says the right thing. His chances of being wise and of speaking wisely grow when he takes time for silence in order to think matters through in depth.
In summary: in this mishnah Rabbi Akiva lists five fences: levity and frivolity, which accustom a person to immorality, and from here the distancing from scoffing as a virtue in its own right; the Mesorah as a fence for the Torah - both in the precision of the spelling, full and defective, from which halachos are derived, and in the very fact that the Oral Torah is transmitted orally and is therefore constantly reviewed and not forgotten; tithes as a fence for wealth - "Aser bishvil shetis'asher" - tithe so that you become wealthy; vows as a fence for abstinence - a tool of last resort for drawing a red line where a person cannot withstand the test; and silence as a fence for wisdom - whether because it gives a person the appearance of a wise man, or because it prevents idle speech, or because it genuinely makes him wiser.