Before us is the fourth mishnah in the fourth chapter of Maseches Avos, in which the Tanna teaches us a central principle in the work of character refinement: how far a person is required to go in distancing himself from arrogance.
The text of the Mishnah:
"Rabbi Levitas ish Yavneh omer: me'od me'od hevei shefal ruach, shetikvas enosh rimah" - Be exceedingly lowly of spirit, out of complete self-nullification, for the end and the future of every man is the worm.
The name of the Tanna:
Rabbi Levitas is mentioned in the entire Shas here and nowhere else. There are, to be sure, additional mishnayos in Pirkei Avos in the name of Elazar, but in the Talmud he does not appear again.
I would like to offer a theory that is entirely my own, and not much weight should be placed on it: the name "Levitas" is clearly not a Hebrew name, but rather the Latin word levitas, as it was spoken in the Roman Empire, which is the opposite of gravitas. In the previous mishnayos we dealt with the matter of honoring every person, and indeed "kavod," from the root meaning weight, is gravitas - a person who carries weight and substance with him. By contrast levitas, from the same root as levity and levitate, denotes a person who is light and light-headed. If so, "Rabbi Levitas" means literally, in Latin: Rabbi Light-headedness, Rabbi the Lightweight.
It is possible, and again - this is my own idea alone, that Chazal at times, when they have an extraordinary statement from the mouth of a particular person, present his name as if it reflects that very idea, and at times the Sages speak in the manner of sagi nahor, in a roundabout way, indicating the opposite of what is actually the case. So, for example, Shmuel HaKatan, who was surely called "HaKatan," the small one, at a time when he was the greatest of his generation. Here too, "Rabbi Light-headedness" according to the plain sense of the name, and it is precisely he who speaks about a matter that is as far from lightness as can be.
It is further said of him that he was "ish Yavneh," and the expression "ish" - the man of Yavneh - means that he was the leading rabbinic figure of that city. From here we may assume that this refers to a period preceding the establishment of the vineyard in Yavneh by Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai and the settling of the Sanhedrin in Yavneh, since afterward he was not the greatest of the generation.
"Me'od me'od hevei shefal ruach":
The Rambam in Hilchos De'os explains that within every single character trait there exists an entire spectrum, from one extreme to the other. And as we learned at the beginning of the second chapter of Avos according to the approach of the Bartenura, following the Rambam's view, the straight path that a person should choose for himself is the middle path - the midpoint between the two extremes.
The Rambam distinguishes there between two levels:
Anavah (humility): the midpoint of the spectrum of the trait.
Shiflus ruach (lowliness of spirit): the extreme of total self-nullification.
The Rambam establishes a principle: although in every character trait a person should aim for the middle path, the exception to this rule is anything connected to distancing oneself from arrogance. Arrogance is so evil and repulsive, so contrary to the Torah, and it pushes away the Holy One, Blessed is He - literally and also conceptually - and every person falls into this trap, which leads him to many sins. Therefore a person should not aim for the midpoint between arrogance and lowliness of spirit; rather, he must lean toward self-nullification. This is precisely the language of our Mishnah, and the Rambam quotes it.
What is a humble person? Someone who has risen above his ego: his decisions are not a function of who he is or of what people think of him, but solely of what is the right thing to do. He is an agent of Hashem's will, and who he is and what he is are simply not relevant; he is a conduit, and his sense of self does not enter the equation.
Of Moshe Rabbeinu it says in Bamidbar that he was "exceedingly humble," and the Rambam explains that the word "exceedingly" teaches that he was not merely humble. He did not only rise above his ego; he went far beyond that and was entirely devoid of selfhood, leaning toward lowliness of spirit. This is the intent of our Mishnah: the middle path is not enough. The "very, very" teaches that in this particular trait, the trait of haughtiness and arrogance, a person must lean as far as he possibly can toward self-nullification and rise completely above his ego, for the opposite is a trap that everyone falls into and it leads to very bad things.
It is worth noting, for the sake of completeness, that in Hilchos De'os (chapter two, halachah three) the Rambam lists not only distancing oneself from arrogance and leaning toward rising above the ego, but says that the same law applies to anger as well. It is quite possible that anger is nothing but an offshoot and expression of the sense of self and of arrogance, and it is possible that these are two separate traits; either way, from anger too one must distance oneself to the extreme.
"Shetikvas enosh rimah" - from second person to third person:
Notice that Rabbi Levitas opens in the second person - "Hevei shefal ruach", be of lowly spirit - and continues in the third person: "shetikvas enosh". He does not say that your own future is the worm, but that human beings in general go to the worm.
The reason for this: the word "tikvah" generally indicates anticipation of something positive, as it appears in the Israeli national anthem, "Hatikvah". It would therefore not be fitting to say that a person sits and anticipates, aspires and hopes for the worm. The Mishnah is not saying that your hope and aspiration is the worm - certainly not. Rather, it is reflecting on the human condition: for every flesh and blood person, the one thing he can truly anticipate - because it is a certainty - is that he will ultimately come to the earth in the grave and be consumed by the worm.
The commentaries explain that this is a tool for implanting self-nullification within a person: to understand that his physical part is nothing more than food for worms, and through that to know what he is and not to take himself too seriously, but rather to rise entirely above himself and above his ego, and to focus on what is right and meaningful - on what the soul requires as an agent to reflect and bring Hashem's will into the world.
In summary: In this Mishnah we learned from Rabbi Levitas of Yavneh that the trait of arrogance is an exception to the middle path: a person must lean to the extreme toward lowliness of spirit and self-nullification, just as it is said of Moshe Rabbeinu that he was "exceedingly humble," and so too regarding anger. The tool for reaching this level is contemplating "shetikvas enosh rimah" - recognizing the finality of the physical body, which brings a person to rise above himself and to focus on his mission of bringing Hashem's will into the world.