Beginning a new project

With the new year, I have decided to start a project of reading consecutive verses in Pirkei Avot and giving my interpretation of them.  Although I was raised in the Reform movement, two of my children are Baal T'shuvah, and I feel post-denominational.  I am a member of Temple Judea, a Reform congregation in Palm Beach County, but my daughter and son in law are modern Orthodox, I have a son studying at Yeshiva Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem, and another son who has learned at Aish in Jerusalem, my parents were raised Conservative, and I sometimes learn with a local Orthodox rabbi.  I am intrigued by what happens when mature, newly energized modern Jews encounter Torah (in the broad sense, including the oral tradition) today in a way that is honest to themselves.  It strikes me that until recently, most non-Orthodox modern Jews have not taken Torah seriously, and most Orthodox Jews have not come to Torah from a modern perspective.  Today there is a powerful return to the tradition that offers the potential of new efforts to approach Torah from a modern perspective.  This is not new; Maimonides, Moses Mendelson and Mordecai Kaplan, among others, have brought immense knowledge of secular thought to Torah.  However I am not aware of much recent literature in which Jews raised in secular knowledge encounter Torah with serious attention.  That is the area where I would like to experiment.  I know that I will make mistakes, but that is inherent in the nature of the exercise: I am coming from a background which is more outside of Torah learning than inside it.  Others can write more authoritative interpretations; I hope to write a fresher one, insofar as it comes from an authentically modern, diaspora perspective.

It seems to me that the most promising place to start is Pirkei Avot.  I know of no more accessible text that is firmly embedded in the tradition.  Other tractates of Talmud seem to demand intense effort to understand, and often seem puzzling and unsatisfying.  By contrast, any page I turn to in Pirkei Avot seems relevant and rewarding.

So that is where I will start.  Hopefully the start will create a habit that will cause me to continue, and possibly, to continue to a siyum, a finish of a small portion of the body of what I understand as Torah.

Pirkei Avot, 1:1

"Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it Joshua. Joshua transmitted it to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly. They [the Men of the Great Assembly] said three things: Be deliberate in judgment, raise many students, and make a protective fence for the Torah."

The first sentence gives us the pedigree of the source of the advice which is to come: it came from the men of the Great Assembly, who received the Torah from the prophets, the elders, Joshua, Moses, and ultimately, from Sinai.  Yet the next sentence oddly does not claim that the advice to come is from Sinai; rather, it is from men who received the revelation at Sinai.  It is mediated by the human mind, but not just any human mind: it is the collective mind of the last group to have received the revelation at Sinai at the same time.  After them, the understanding of the revelation at Sinai is dispersed over the greatest Rabbis of different times, and the reader must know enough to figure out who they are.

When we read the advice, it is immediately clear that this is not advice for the average person.  Although the first instruction, to be deliberate in judgment, could be advice to any serious Jew, the second and third, to raise many students and make a protective fence for the Torah, are clearly for the next group to which the revelation at Sinai is to be transmitted.  The second instruction, to raise many students, is designed to maximize the dispersion of the revelation, and the third instruction, to make a protective fence for the Torah, is designed to preserve the purity of the revelation.  The two are in opposition: the more that the revelation is dispersed, the greater is the risk that it will be adulterated; the purer the message, the more difficult it will be to disseminate.  The mediating factor is the first instruction: to be deliberate in judgment, for by being deliberate in judgment, we can balance the instruction of maximizing dispersion with the instruction of maintaining the purity of what is transmitted.

The unspoken, overarching instruction is to pass on Torah to others.  The verse instructs some of us to transmit the revelation at Sinai to other Jews.  Those of us who respond are the next link in the chain, extending from Moses to the men of the Great Assembly, and now to us, and the purpose of the chain is to disseminate Torah.