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WorkMaimonides

The Commentary to Mishnah Aboth

Maimonides on the sayings of the sages, including an attack on salaried scholars that he knew most rabbis would resent.

by Maimonides73 passages held

  • Hebrew, a translation held here
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Original title
Kitāb al-Sirāj: Avot
Original language
Arabic

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Overview

The rabbinic scholars of Maimonides' day had imposed fixed charges on individuals and whole communities for their own support, and taught people that paying them was a duty. Avot, the Mishnah's collection of the sages' moral teachings, says in its fourth chapter that the Torah is not to be made a spade to dig with. Maimonides wrote that he had meant to pass over the saying, because its meaning was plain and because what he had to say would displease most of the great scholars of the Law, perhaps all of them; then he changed his mind, called their practice a misreading of the saying and pointed to the sages of the Talmud who had lived in poverty and worked with their hands, and allowed scholars only small privileges, such as having their goods sold first in the market. Maimonides himself would later live by medicine, not by his learning. The commentary belongs to the Commentary on the Mishnah he completed in Egypt in 1168 in Judaeo-Arabic, and it opens with the Eight Chapters, his essay on ethics. The commentary then goes through Avot's five chapters saying by saying, reading the sages through the essay's ethics of the mean. On the warning against speaking too much, he divides speech into five kinds, from the commanded and the forbidden to the merely permitted, and adds that a song is judged by what it says and not by its language: a coarse song in Hebrew is worse than the same song in Arabic, because the holy tongue should serve only what is good. Samuel ibn Tibbon, the translator of the Guide for the Perplexed, put the commentary into Hebrew, and Arthur David put it into English in 1968.

Key concepts

What are the three kinds of friend in this commentary?

Maimonides borrows them from Aristotle: a friend for benefit, like two business partners; a friend for comfort, someone to rest with and confide in; and a friend for virtue, where both want the good and help each other toward it. Avot says to “acquire” a friend, he notes, because a friend is worth working and even paying for, by giving way to the other's wishes until the love is firm.

What does “judge every person favourably” mean here?

It applies with full force to a stranger. When someone you know nothing about does something that could be read as good or bad, read it as good. A person known to be righteous gets the benefit of the doubt even when the act looks bad. But someone known to be wicked who seems to do good should still be watched and not trusted on the strength of one good deed.

What is the difference between a wage and a gift in Avot?

A wage is owed for work done; a gift is given out of kindness by someone who owes nothing, as a father might promise his small son a coin for an errand. Antigonus, an early sage, told his pupils not to serve God like servants hoping for even such a gift. Maimonides reads this as service from love, and adds that two pupils who misunderstood it founded the Sadducee and Boethusian sects.

Why does Avot say to “make yourself a teacher” even of an equal?

Because what a person learns from someone else stays with him better and is clearer than what he works out alone. So Maimonides reads the saying as advice to take a teacher even when that person is no wiser than you, or less wise, and to treat him as your teacher anyway. Studying alone is good; studying with another, he says, makes the learning last.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Torah Is Not a Spade

May a scholar live off the learning he teaches? Maimonides breaks his own resolve to stay silent and answers no, knowing that most rabbis of his day would take offence.

Avot warns against making the Torah a spade to dig with, and Maimonides reads it plainly: learning is not a tool for earning a living. The scholars of his day had read the saying away and set fixed charges on individuals and communities for their own support, teaching people that paying them was a duty. He answers with the sages of the Talmud, Hillel among them, who chopped wood or worked a trade and lived in poverty. A scholar may accept small courtesies, never a salary for his learning.

  • torah study
  • work
  • livelihood
  • greed
  • charity
  • religious authority

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Five Kinds of Speech

How much of what we say each day is worth saying? Commenting on the warning against too many words, Maimonides sorts all speech by what the Law makes of it.

Speech, Maimonides writes, falls into five kinds: commanded, like studying the Torah; forbidden, like lies, curses and slander; useless, like chatter about how a king lives in his palace or how someone got rich; desirable, like praise of the virtues; and permitted, the talk of trade, food and clothing, best kept short. He quotes a sage who tested every word before speaking and found three quarters not worth saying. What a song says decides its worth, not its language: a coarse song in Hebrew is worse than the same song in Arabic.

  • ethics of speech
  • slander
  • education
  • moral education
  • wisdom
  • moral character

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Lower Than Low

If every virtue is a middle between two extremes, why does Avot tell people to be exceedingly humble? Maimonides finds here the one trait the pious refuse to balance.

Humility, Maimonides says, is properly the mean between pride and self-abasement, and with other traits a person leans slightly away from the worse extreme. With pride the pious went all the way, leaving no room for it at all. He tells of one asked for the happiest day of his life. It was on a ship, lying in the lowest place among the bundles, when a passenger who thought him worthless stood up and urinated on him, and he felt no hurt, because no pride was left in him to wound.

  • humility
  • arrogance
  • virtue ethics
  • habit
  • moral character
  • virtue

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Within this work

passages held
73
distinct concepts
156
by passages held, corpus-wide
#572

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “humility” and “virtue ethics”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 11 pairings. 64 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
humilityvirtue ethics6
intellectual virtuevirtue ethics4
educationvirtue ethics3
humilitytorah study3
afterlifetorah study2
educationtorah study2
afterlifeeducation1
divine justicehumility1
educationethics of speech1
educationintellectual virtue1
ethics of speechvirtue ethics1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. Commentary on the Mishnah: Tractate Sanhedrin (Kitāb al-Sirāj: Sanhedrin)

    One tractate of Maimonides' first great book, the Commentary on the Mishnah, including the introduction to Perek Helek in which the Thirteen Principles first appear; held in the medieval Hebrew translation printed in the Vilna Talmud.

     HE
  2. Eight Chapters on Ethics (Shemonah Perakim)

    Maimonides' ethics set out in eight chapters, opening his commentary on the tractate Avot in 1168; the Mishneh Torah's laws of character later restate its doctrine of the mean as law. Held in Joseph Gorfinkle's English of 1912.

     EN
  3. Mishneh Torah: Foundations of the Torah (Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah)

    Where the Mishneh Torah begins: Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah, the opening section of its first book, the Book of Knowledge (Sefer ha-Madda); held alone, its ten chapters in Simon Glazer's English of 1927.

     EN
  4. Mishneh Torah: Human Dispositions (Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot De'ot)

    The second of the five sections of the Book of Knowledge, between the Foundations of the Torah and the laws of Torah study; held alone, its seven chapters in Simon Glazer's English of 1927.

     EN
  5. Mishneh Torah: Repentance (Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot Teshuvah)

    Closing the Mishneh Torah's first book, the Book of Knowledge, Hilkhot Teshuvah is the last of its five sections; held alone, its ten chapters in Simon Glazer's English of 1927.

     EN
  6. The Commentary to Mishnah Aboth (Kitāb al-Sirāj: Avot) you are here HE
  7. The Guide for the Perplexed (Dalālat al-Ḥāʾirīn)

    Maimonides' last major book, addressed to a single reader and completed in Fustat around 1190, a decade after the Mishneh Torah had made his name. Held here in Michael Friedländer's English of 1904, with the letter to Joseph.

     EN
  8. Treatise on Logic (Maqāla fī ṣināʿat al-manṭiq)

    Traditionally the earliest of Maimonides' writings; held in Moses ibn Tibbon's Hebrew, all fourteen chapters, from a Warsaw printing of 1928.

     HE
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