Pirkei avot who is a wise man

Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? Rate this:. Like this: Like Loading Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:. Email Address never made public. Follow Following. Nafka Mina Join 87 other followers. Sign me up. Already have a WordPress. They redefine concepts of strength, wealth, honour, in ethical terms, making them about our personal moral behaviour.

This text is so widely quoted, so well known, in fact, that something may have seemed out of place to you when I recited it a moment ago. Something was, indeed out of place. Rabbinic literature poses this direct question three times, and each time gives a different answer, each of which has some insight for us today.

Less well known is a variant version of the list found in the Babylonian Talmud. In Tractate Tamid we find a, probably deliberate, misquoting of the Pirkei Avot original. Which literally means, the one who sees what is born. This is not what Ben Zoma says the answer is, and the Talmudic commentators, as you would imagine, go all out on this fact, trying to work out why.

But before they do so, they also need to work out what on earth it means: the one who sees what is born. One answer is provided by the sixteenth-seventeenth century Talmudist Samuel Edels, known as the Maharsha. He suggests that this means the wise person sees the purpose for which he or she was born, that is to serve God.

Most commentators explain that wisdom lies in the ability to foresee, to look forward. Repentance and good deeds are a shield against punishment. Rabbi Yochanan Hasandlar said: every assembly which is for the sake of heaven, will in the end endure; and every assembly which is not for the sake of heaven, will not endure in the end.

Rabbi Shimon said: There are three crowns: the crown of torah, the crown of priesthood, and the crown of royalty, but the crown of a good name supersedes them all. Rabbi Mathia ben Harash said: Upon meeting people, be the first to extend greetings; And be a tail unto lions, and not a head unto foxes. To ink written upon a new writing sheet. And he who learns when an old man, to what is he compared? And he acknowledges the truth: If he realizes he has lost an argument, he admits it And the reverse of these [are characteristic] in a clod.

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