Pirkei Avot 1:11

Pirkei Avot 1:11

"Avtalyon said: Sages, be careful with your words lest you deserve to be exiled and are exiled to a place of bad waters. The students who come after you will drink of these waters and die, and G-d's Name will be desecrated."

This is a puzzling mishna.  First we must unravel the metaphor: what is the "place of bad waters" to which the sages who "deserve to be exiled" because of their careless words are exiled?  Since it is a place where the students who drink of these waters will die, and G-d's Name will be desecrated, it sounds like a place where doctrines that desecrate G-d's Name are taught.  Although we can't tell what these teachings are, they are not teachings that are intentionally blasphemous; rather, it is a place to which sages are exiled when they are careless with their words.  It is a place where false teachings are passed off as part of the transmitted tradition, and where students die metaphorically because they receive teachings that are not true to what has been passed down from Sinai, through the generations of prophets and scholars.

There is a great sense here that the teachings of Torah have a very specific, intentional meaning.  Today we tend to see any interpretation of the text encouraged, as if Torah speaks to all in different ways, and what is to be taken from it is subjective.  This mishna says that there is a true sense of the text, and it must be imparted by careful sages.

There is also a sense that the reason that careless words are so harmful is not just the words themselves, but rather the effect that they have in "exiling" sages from the community of faithful transmitters of the tradition.  Separation from the community leaves the careless sages unmoored from the salutary effects of the community of sages who are more faithful to the tradition.  This concept resonates with the earlier verses that urge us to find a good teacher and to sit at the feet of sages.  The connectedness to other sages helps even the wise stay faithful to the true sense of the teachings, and avoid "bad waters".