Ethics or Wisdom, it's still Avot

It's the Pirke(i) Avot season

For the uninitiated, Avot (or Avos for some) is a tractate of the Talmud that primarily contains sayings of early luminaries. Avot is Hebrew for Fathers, in this case, a generic term equating to "elders."

These comments - divided into 6 chapters - can be studied any time, but traditionally are Shabat topics from Passover to Rosh HaShana. There are numerous translations both in book form and online. If you want to find a few, I suggest you search for "Avot" and "Avos"; leave "Pirkei" out of the equation due to spelling variations.

Avot is guaranteed to make a reader think. Sometimes there is general agreement, sometimes not.

The personalities quoted in Avot are very human; some of their remarks need to be considered in the light of the times, or perhaps on which side of the bed the fellow got up. There are statements which we will read and can apply in today's world and there are others that will cause us to wonder "what prompted THAT remark."

Most variations of the Avot theme omit details about the participants' lives; who were these guys, anyway.

I once asked Sender Haber, a young rabbi in Norfolk VA, who was "Yohanon" sans patriarchal or professional attribute. I knew of Yohanon the Sandler and Yohanon of Jerusalem and the more famous Yohanon ben Zakkai, but just plain "Yohanon"? Mi who? Who is he?

R. Haber wandered over to a bookshelf, pulled out a small volume, opened it in the middle to "Yohanon" and invited me to "take your pick."

Turns out, my name was one of the most common - no, "popular" - of the time; there's nothing "common" about a person named Yohanon.

I didn't have time to sit and pour over the book - it was in Hebrew and even though Hebrew is 25 percent shorter than English, I read that language at least 25 percent slower and there were "places to go and people to see."

Somewhere along the line I found a book in English titled "Masters of the Talmud" (both Bavili and Yerushalmi) that, lo and behold, provided a brief biography of the attribute-less Yohanon as well as most of the others who populate the Talmud.

So now I sit with a copy of Avot in my hand and Masters of the Talmud nearby; two books that never will be out-dated.

Trivia

There is/was a bust of Shamai in the JTS library in NYC.

There is a book called "Like a driven leaf" about "haAchar" (who is identified in "Masters")

Hillel's instruction to writers: "Do not say something that is not readily understood in the belief that it will ultimately be understood," or, as James Thurber noted much later, "A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense."

Ben Zoma would say "Who is wise? One who learns from every man."

Yossei the son of Yohanon of Jerusalem still gets the ladies upset with his remark "Do not engage in excessive conversation with a woman. This is said even regarding one's own wife--how much more so regarding the wife of another." But taken in context . . . As I wrote earlier, "sometimes there is general agreement, sometimes not."

Avot always is interesting and I'm always glad when Pesach rolls around and it is "officially" time to dust off the copies of Avot and to consider the comments of the Fathers.

Yohanon
Yohanon.Glenn @ gmail.com