Excerpted from Foundation of Faith: A Tapestry of Insights and Illumination on Pirkei Avot based on the Thought and Writings of Rabbi Norman Lamm, The Gibber Edition, edited by Rabbi Mark Dratch, co-published with Ktav Publishing
Chapter 2, Verse 1
R. [Yehuda HaNasi] says: Which is the straight path that a person should choose for himself? Whichever path is honorable for the person adopting it and brings honor from other people. Be as careful with an easy commandment as with a difficult one, for you do not know the rewards given for commandments. Also, weigh the loss [that may be sustained through the fulfillment] of a commandment against the reward [that may be obtained] for [fulfilling] it. And [weigh] the gain [that may be obtained through the committing] of a transgression against the loss [that may be sustained] by [committing] it. Consider three things and you will not come to sin: Know what is above you: A seeing eye, a hearing ear, and a detailed record of everything you do.
The Right Way and The Good Way
Two great Sages of Israel each ask a question and give an answer about a matter of transcendent importance to us. Both the questions and the answers are similar to each other; yet there are slight differences. These differences prove significant.
R. Yehuda HaNasi asks, “What is the right way that a man ought to choose for himself?” and the gist of his answer is “tiferet” – that which is dignified for the one who does it, and is seemly and becoming in the eyes of his fellow men.
Rabban Yoḥanan b. Zakkai, several generations earlier, said to his students, “tze’u ure’u eizohi derekh tovah sheyidbak bah ha’adam, go out and see: what is the good way to which a man ought to cling?” And his students brought him several answers. One said unbegrudging generosity. Another said being a good friend. A third answered neighborliness. A fourth replied foresight. But the answer that Rabban Yoḥanan b. Zakkai accepted because it includes all four qualities is that brought by the fifth student: lev tov – a good heart.
Both R. Yehuda HaNasi and Rabban Yoḥanan b. Zakkai asked how a man ought to live his life. Their answers are not worlds apart, but they are not the same. The differences are important. For the difference is that between an abstract and theoretical formulation on one hand, and an intensely personal, real question on the other.
Look at how they formulate the question. R. Yehuda asks “what is the right way;” Rabban Yoḥanan b. Zakkai asks “what is the good way.” One emphasizes rightness, and the other emphasizes goodness. The former question is almost a Socratic one in a Platonic dialogue. The “right way” is basically a philosophic conception. It requires a critical and objective evaluation; it is something which preoccupies the mind. The latter, however, is a subjective issue which engages the whole personality; it involves the heart and soul as well as the mind. It is an existential challenge on which we stake our whole life, where the risks are not measured in terms of academic sophistication, but in terms of eternity won or eternity lost, meaning in life found or meaning in life discarded. Eizohi derekh yesharah is a question about religion. Eizohi derekh tovah is the actual search of religion itself.
The verbs they use are also consistent with their lines of reasoning. R. Yehuda HaNasi asks for the right way which a man ought to choose. When you are looking for the way that is yesharah – impersonal, objective and abstract – then you use the word yavor: an intellectual decision, an academic choice, the result of a cool and calm mental process.
But when you look for the way in life that is tovah – personal, subjective, of flesh and blood reality – then you use the word yidbak: to cling, a spiritual cleaving which involves the whole personality and life of the individual. Yavor, to choose, means – even as the element of objectivity is referred to in our current language – to be “detached.” Yidbak, ‘“to cling,” however, means to be “attached.”
Their answers continue along the same line. R. Yehuda stresses tiferet – glory or dignity – while Rabban Yoḥanan b. Zakkai stressed lev tov – the good heart which includes the other qualities. Tiferet – dignity or majesty – is primarily an aesthetic quality, which is best expressed in decorous quiet and solemn silence. Lev tov, which includes the other attributes of goodness, is something which is tested and refined in the strenuous crucible of practical life when a man must grapple with real difficulties and emerge triumphant over them.
The question and answer of R. Yehuda HaNasi is similar to that of an ivory tower schoolman, pondering the lofty issues of ethics. The question and answer of Rabban Yoḥanan b. Zakkai are those of a great human being caught up in the rush of life’s activities and agonies, intensely searching in the debris of life’s convulsive failures for the good way so that fallen man may rise again.
Indeed, these two sainted Sages of Israel each, in his question and answer, reflects his own life and times. R. Yehuda HaNasi lived in “normal” times – if there ever were such. His was an era of peace and relative prosperity. The Talmud speaks of R. Yehuda HaNasi and his friendship with the Roman Emperor Antoninus, where only a generation or two earlier Jews had suffered horribly the persecutions of the Roman Hadrian. R. Yehuda HaNasi was a man who combined Torah and material greatness. His was a time of calm and quiet. Rabban Yoḥanan b. Zakkai, however, lived through a time of ḥurban – the destruction of the Holy Temple. He himself was barely saved by a ruse from the flaming city and the crumbling temple. His was an era of national cataclysm, radical change, uncertain transition. He and his contemporaries were beset by unprecedented tensions. It was a time when life cries out demanding not calm, philosophic discourse, but answers that strike to the core of a man’s heart.
And the entire departure of one from the other can be summed up in two very small words that we slurred over in our original quotation. R. Yehuda HaNasi simply asks and answers; that is all. Rabban Yoḥanan b. Zakkai asks and answers – but he introduces his statements with these two words: tze’u ure’u – go out and see, go out and search, go out and look.
What he meant to tell his students and us is: in a time of national catastrophe, when the glorious past seems so distant, the present so oppressive, the future so grim, mere questions and answers are insufficient, and mere formulations of “the right way” are inadequate. In times of this sort there must be tze’u ure’u – a search not for philosophic propositions, but for flesh and blood living models of Jewish behavior. You must not only define the right way; you must see before your eyes a representative of the good way. One can choose the right way; but he can cling to the good way only if he “goes out and sees.” That is why our rabbis taught us “aseh lekha rav,” that a man should always seek a rabbi, a teacher. That is why they instructed us gadol shimushah yoter milimudah, that experiencing the personality of the teacher is greater in value than the information he imparts verbally. That is why the entire Jewish tradition has raised the rank of Torah shebe’al peh, the oral law, to that of Torah shebikhtav, the written law, or even higher. For Scripture is essentially a book; one can learn from it without the presence of a second personality. One can be inspired by it to the point where he “chooses” the “right” way. But the personal experience and depth is lacking. The oral law, in its original sense, cannot be transmitted by a book alone. It requires two personalities meeting each other in dialogue. The student must have a teacher who will transmit to him the great oral tradition of our faith. In that manner he learns not only the values that can be articulated, but those values that can only be experienced. He must see before his eyes a living representative of the cumulative tradition of Israel. He must be engaged not only by ideas, but by examples; not only by words, but by ways of life – so that he will not only choose the right way, but cling and cleave to the good way.
