We continue with Chapter 5 of Pirkei Avos, Mishnah 9 (in some versions, Mishnah 11). In the previous Mishnah we began with the Tanna's words, "Shivah minei pur'aniyos ba'in la'olam" - seven kinds of calamity come to the world, and we listed five of the seven. In this section we will complete the remaining two.
"Chayah ra'ah ba'ah la'olam":
The sixth calamity is "chayah ra'ah ba'ah la'olam" - wild beasts come and attack a community that has stumbled in the corresponding sin. Two sins are listed here: "al shevuas shav" - for a vain oath, and for chillul Hashem, desecration of God's Name, which is the most severe of all sins.
A vain oath is a false oath with no substance to it. There are four types, and even when the content of the words is true in itself, the oath does not take effect:
One who swears about something self-evident and known to all, about which there is no need whatsoever to swear.
One who swears about something that is plainly false, and therefore there is no room for an oath.
One who swears to do something that is entirely impossible to fulfill.
One who swears to do something that runs counter to the Torah, and the oath does not obligate him.
What is the measure for measure in this punishment? A vain oath takes the power of speech and abuses it in the most severe way. The power of speech is what distinguishes a human being from an animal, and once a person nullifies this advantage and turns it into something worthless, or even into something that works against him, the consequences arrive in two ways: first, animals come after him with their mouths and bite him; and second, they lose the built-in fear of human beings that they normally have. Ordinarily animals prefer not to attack a person but to flee from him, but that arrangement stops functioning when a person forfeits his unique standing by nullifying his power of speech.
As for chillul Hashem: the meaning of desecrating God's Name is pushing the Holy One, Blessed is He, as it were, outside of the world, as we explained in the previous Mishnayos. A person is protected from wild animals because he bears the image of God - there is a certain resemblance in him to the Holy One, Blessed is He, and from this flows the natural fear that animals have of him. Once he pushes the Holy One, Blessed is He, away, he diminishes himself in terms of that resemblance to the Creator, and consequently his ability to keep the animals at a distance is impaired and he becomes vulnerable to them.
The verse that makes this perfectly clear is in Psalms, Chapter 8: "Vatechasreihu me'at me'Elokim" - You made man only slightly less than God; "vechavod vehadar te'atreihu" - You crowned humanity with honor and splendor; "tamshileihu bema'asei yadecha, kol shatah tachas raglav" - man rules over everything on earth, and the verse concludes: "vegam bahamos sadai" - and also the beasts of the field. The idea is that precisely because we are slightly less than God, we rule over the animals. When a person diminishes himself by pushing the Holy One, Blessed is He, away from himself, his resemblance to the Creator is reduced, the animals are less subject to his feet, and he becomes exposed to them. This is the measure for measure.
"Galus ba'ah la'olam":
The seventh calamity is exile from Eretz Yisrael, the most severe of all the punishments. Today, sadly, many Jews live with the attitude of, "True, we are outside Eretz Yisrael, but we live in the Diaspora - so what?" The answer is that this is the worst-case scenario. Which sins cause a person to be banished from the Land? The most severe sins: "al avodah zarah, ve'al gilui arayos, ve'al shefichus damim" - for idolatry, forbidden relations and bloodshed, the three cardinal sins on account of which we lose our right to the Land. Alongside them the Mishnah adds a separate point: "ve'al hashmatas ha'aretz" - one who does not observe Shemittah properly. Exile is the result of the three cardinal sins: the Shechinah departs from the Land, and as a result we too are forced to leave.
The measure for measure is explained by the Meiri, and this is the substance of his words:
Idolatry: One who serves idols diminishes the presence of the Shechinah among Israel, since he turns away from the Holy One, Blessed is He, toward that which is not the Holy One, Blessed is He, and even opposes Him. Therefore, measure for measure, the Holy One, Blessed is He, removes the presence of His Shechinah from us, and the Land is left less invested with the Shechinah, more vulnerable and ultimately cut off from the Creator - and that is exile.
Forbidden relations: This is what causes a husband and wife to be divorced from one another. Therefore, as it were, the Holy One, Blessed is He, divorces His people from His Land and exiles us from it.
Bloodshed: This is what causes the soul to be severed from the body. Just as we have a body and a physical place in which we exist in Eretz Yisrael, with the Shechinah dwelling in it and ourselves connected to it, so too when the Shechinah is pushed out and the spiritual component is severed from the physical component, there is no longer any special bond between us and the Land, and we are disconnected and exiled from it.
Here we glimpse the importance and the nature of the Divine Presence resting in connection with the Land of Israel, and the immeasurable value of being here, present in the Land, with the opportunity to connect ourselves to the Holy One, blessed is He, and to His Presence here in the Land of Israel.
The second cause of exile is the neglect of Shemittah. This is stated explicitly in the rebuke in Parashas Bechukosai (Vayikra 26:34), after the expulsion from the Land: "Then the land will be appeased for its sabbaticals" - the land will be appeased regarding its years of rest; "all the days of its desolation" - all the days that it lies desolate, with no one working its soil, since the Jews have been driven out of it, and the land makes up the Shemittah years it lost; "while you are in the land of your enemies"; "then the land will rest and be appeased for its sabbaticals" - the land will rest as it should have, and be appeased for the sabbaticals it was denied.
So too our Sages teach that the seventy years of the first exile, the Babylonian exile, corresponded to the seventy Shemittah years that had not been observed. The measure for measure is straightforward: keeping Shemittah testifies that the Land belongs to the Holy One, blessed is He, that we trust in Him, that He directs the world, and that this is His world, to which we are subject and by whose direction we live. If we are not prepared to place our trust in Him, and we relate to the Land as our own land rather than as the land of the Holy One, blessed is He, then we forfeit the right to be here, and He drives us out, Heaven forbid.
Summary of the seven calamities and the seven categories of sin:
With this the first part of the Mishnah is complete. It is worth noting that there is no one-to-one correspondence between the calamities and the sins, but each side has seven categories. The seven categories of punishment are:
Famine of drought - famine caused by lack of rain.
Famine of turmoil and drought - a disordered famine, accompanied by drought as well.
Famine of annihilation - a situation in which people actually die of hunger, Heaven forbid.
Plague - an epidemic disease.
Sword - war.
Wild beasts - dangerous animals.
Exile.
Corresponding to them are the seven categories of sins listed in the Mishnah, as the Meiri enumerates them:
Failure to separate the required portions properly - Terumah, tithes and the like.
Sins for which an earthly court does not administer punishment, and which carry death at the hands of Heaven or kareis.
Failure to observe Shemittah in its various aspects.
Various forms of injustice - delaying judgment and perverting judgment.
A false oath.
Desecration of God's Name.
The three cardinal sins: idolatry, immorality and bloodshed.
"B'arba'ah perakim ha'dever misrabeh":
The Mishnah moves on to a new topic, and some hold that this is a separate Mishnah, since the coming section deals with matters counted in categories of four. The Tanna says: "B'arba'ah perakim ha'dever misrabeh" - there are four times in the Shemittah cycle when plague, if it is already present, intensifies, and more people die from the epidemic.
Let us first explain the underlying principle: the intensification of the plague comes as a result of people failing to care properly for the poor. And of course, when a poor person lives in an impoverished society and has nothing to eat, he may even die, Heaven forbid. Therefore, measure for measure: since society failed to care for the poor and they died, the members of that society die as well. There are four points in the seven year cycle when plague intensifies, because at each of them the Torah established a protective measure for caring for the poor.
The Torah's system for caring for the poor:
First, in every harvest of every crop there is an obligation to leave various gifts for the poor:
Peah - the corner of the field that is left unharvested.
Shichechah - sheaves that were forgotten during the gathering and left behind.
Leket - individual stalks that fall during the reaping, which may not be gathered up.
Peret - similar to leket, but with grapes: one or two that fall during the harvesting and remain on the ground.
Olelos - malformed clusters of grapes.
These five are food left for the poor from every harvest, so that they will find something to eat year after year.
Second, the seven year Shemitah cycle: six years in which the land is in the owner's possession and tithes are separated from it, and the seventh year, which is ownerless. Within the six years there are two smaller cycles of three years each. The order of separation, for example out of a hundred and two measures of wheat or barrels of wine:
Terumah to the kohen - about two measures, leaving a hundred.
Maaser rishon to the Levi - a tenth of the hundred, leaving ninety.
Maaser sheni or maaser ani - a tenth of what remains, about nine measures. In the first and second years of each small cycle (years one and two, four and five) this is maaser sheni, which is brought to Jerusalem; but in the third year of each small cycle (years three and six) those same nine measures are given to the poor as maaser ani.
And finally, the Shemitah year itself is a time of abundance for the poor: all the land becomes ownerless, and no one is permitted to restrict access to it. Consequently the poor are not limited to leket, shichechah and peah alone, but may enter any field and take from whatever grows there - the figs on the trees, the wheat in the field and the grapes on the vine.
This is the foundation of the Mishnah: when society does not care for the poor and does not properly observe these things, the result is an outbreak of plague. And these are the four times, and the reason for each one:
"BaReviis" - the fourth year of the seven year cycle, "mipnei maaser ani shebashelishis": the community did not properly give maaser ani in the third year, and therefore the plague comes in the year that follows.
"UvaShevi'is" - "mipnei maaser ani shebashishis": for not having given maaser ani in the sixth year.
"Uvemotzaei shevi'is" - the eighth year, "mipnei peiros shevi'is": for having restricted access to the produce of the Shemitah year and not declaring it ownerless as required.
"Uvemotzaei hechag shebechol shanah veshanah" - after Sukkos every year, "mipnei gezel matnos aniyim": Sukkos is the festival of the ingathering, and all the harvests are completed by then - the summer crops, the early ones and the late ones, all are reaped and gathered in. Therefore all the gifts to the poor - shichechah, peah, leket and the like - must be given by then, and if they were not given, the punishment comes after the festival.
In summary: in this section we completed the last two calamities: wild beasts, which come for a false oath and for desecration of Hashem's Name, measure for measure for squandering the power of speech and the Divine image within a person; and exile, which comes for the three cardinal sins and for failing to let the land rest. We summarized the seven calamities and the seven categories of sin that correspond to them, and we learned the four times when plague increases - all of them because of a failure to care for the poor, whether in maaser ani, in the produce of the Shemitah year, or in the gifts to the poor from every harvest.