Chapter 1
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| SHAMMAI SAID: MAKE YOUR TORAH FIXED; SAY LITTLE AND DO MUCH; AND RECEIVE ALL MEN WITH A CHEERFUL COUNTENANCE. |
Shammai was the contemporary and counterpart of Hillel. The two scholars were as far apart in temperment as they were in their attitudes towards the Halacha. While Hillel approached the halacha in a more lenient fashion, Shammai generally took a more stringent approach. While Hillel was a more receptive person to all people, Shammai showed less tolerance to supposed frivolities.
The famous example quoted is the one where the stranger approached Shammai and asked him to teach him the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai apparently considered this a cynical request, and drove him off. Upon approaching Hillel with the same question, Hillel's reception of the man was with kindness and simplicity. His response was by quoting the Torah... Love your neighbor as yourself, and interpreted that to mean... Do not do unto others that which is repugnant to you. This is the basic, and the rest is commentary. Go learn.
The two great scholars had huge followings of students who continued their approaches. They flourished in the 1st century of the Common Era, a time a severe troubles with Rome. Because of these external disturbances and the political unrest in Judea, scholarship began to falter, resulting often in less than excellent studies. Differences in understanding developed, inducing more debate in the halacha. This situation was recognized as demanding an eventual resolution by the leaders of the succeeding generations to edit and codify the Halacha. Such was the work completed by Rebbe Yehuda Hanasi, in the 2nd century CE, some 150-200 years later. His work is called the Mishna.
Those mishnas, which were collected, reviewed and edited by Rebbe Yehuda Hanasi, were included in the Mishna. Those that were not, but were nonetheless studied by the scholars throughout Israel in their various yeshivos, were called Braisos, meaning 'external', since they were external to the Mishna. The student of Rebbe Yehuda Hanasi, Rebbe Chiya, later collected these.
The Mishna is the more authoritative, because of the analysis and review it underwent. The Braisa, then, was less authoritative, and in the event of a conflict between the two, the Mishna governs. The expression the Talmud uses to exemplify this idea is: If Rebbe (Yehuda) didn't learn it, from where would Chiya derive it?
There is a later text in the Mishna worded in this form: Fix a time for (the study of) Torah. The wording of our Mishna here is different. It reads: Make your Torah fixed.
This conveys a different meaning from the first thought. We are not concerned here with setting an appointed regular hour for study... although that is the secret of study... consistency. We are concerned with one's conception of relative values.
To the question we are always asking ourselves and are constantly making decisions about... how shall I, as a Jew, live in a secular modern world?
There is a world outside that is exciting with novel advances in science, arts and literature. It is also a world that is sexually permissive, is pervaded with drugs, a society with over 50% divorce rate, wife and child abuse, incest, teen pregnancy, an alarming increase in AIDS... and there is a Torah world that doesn't experience these phenomena. Where it may exist in the Torah world it is statistically insignificant.
The world outside is alluring... seductive... easily beckoning and winning new adherents among those who know no other way or because it is the path of least resistance and appeals to the lower greater common denominator of humanity.
It harnesses and reins in unbridled passions and desires. It says... eat, drink, but in measure, and only certain foods. It restrains the free run of emotions...avoidance of sexual contact between the sexes until the proper time, marriage... and imposes limitations *during* marriage, niddah. It vetoes any threat or abuse to one's body, prohibiting placing one's health and life in danger through environment or ingestion of drugs or other poisons.
It challenges the libertarian who says, "I am the master of my own life!" by saying... you’re not! You cannot take your own life, nor can you take the life of someone inside you! It restrains the anxiety that drives a man to try to grab the whole world for himself... Shabbos, a day he must desist from the pursuits of acquisitiveness, and learn that in spite of his fears, his financial well being depends on a higher Power, G-d.... And more ropes, more bonds, that encircle and confine his "freedom".
These are the choices we are faced with daily! How to navigate these stormy seas?
Some chose to say that Torah is irrelevant in this "modern age" of science and enlightenment, and have opted to break those shackles of Torah and plunge into the world around them... with all the "freedom".
Some saw beauty in Torah's message but are pulled onto the bandwagon of our contemporary civilization...so they seek a blend. Theologically they become an amalgam of everything, in a so-called Judeao-Christian culture, and in practice it means, be a Jew inside your house and a man outside your house (as if a Jew and a man were incongruous).
To them it means if you want to keep a Jewish home... do it in the privacy of your home. On the outside, when you mix with the Scots and the Joneses, if they go the MacDonald’s, you go too. If they go skiing on Saturday, it's ok for you to go too. It's pleasure... and after all, the Sabbath is a day of pleasure too! And so on and so forth. The result is... that the home will not remain Jewish. It creates a dichotomy in attitudes and practice. Children are confused, and then there is no rationale for them to do things that just don't make sense, and which Joey and Sammy do differently.
Shammai directs us toward the answer. He says "MAKE YOUR TORAH FIXED!" The values you set in life will find their fulfillment only if your Torah remains firm and is not compromised, diluted and distorted.
It is truth about what is best for mankind. It is a manual given to man by the One who made man and how to fix what is broken and needs repair. It is more than that. It is a secret formula keeping those who follow its rules healthy in body, mind and spirit. Its goal is to attain a society whose members respect themselves, others and G-d; a society whose only policeman is one's conscience and whose only force is self-control. After all, who knows better what is best for man, and how best to achieve it, than the One who made him?
Shammai says... make your Torah fixed... and adjust all other values by it. Live by the laws, the mitzvohs of the Torah and bring your Torah with you into the world. It has a message that will influence all its hearers for the better.