Parshat Tazaria Pirkei Avot
SERMON Parashat Tazria Pirkei Avot April 25, 2025
Rabbi David Edleson Temple Sinai South Burlington, Vermont
Pirkei Avot - The Ethics of our Ancestors
Between Pesach and Shavuot, it is a Jewish tradition to read a chapter of a special section of the Mishnah called Pirkei Avot. It means “Verses of the Ancestors” but is most often translated “Ethics of our Fathers.”
It is a collection of pithy aphorisms from the early rabbis about how what is a ‘good life’ in Jewish terms. The most Jewish thing about is that the rabbis don’t agree about what makes a good life. Some say study, others say kindness, others say purity and others say helping the vulnerable. There is not one set of ethics, but competing and conflicting sets of ethics that leave it to the reader to work our way through.
To follow this tradition, we are reading Pirkei Avot in our Torah Study on Shabbat mornings, so I wanted to bring some of what we are learning to our Friday night prayers.
First of all, what is the Mishnah?
Completed around the year 250 CE, the Mishnah is the first definitive collection of rabbinic law after the sack of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple by Rome in 70CE, and with it the loss of the sacrificial system and of the nation itself.
The Mishnah is the foundation of what we call Judaism today, but it was born out of a time of tremendous upheaval and turmoil.
Though Rome had been in control of Judea for almost 200 years, imposing crushing taxes, they still allowed the Jews a good bit of religious autonomy and self-rule.
The Temple continued to function as the center of Jewish religious life. This was the world of the Sadducees and they advocated for appeasing Rome and working with them to keep the Temple open.
Outside the Temple, there were now houses of prayer and study being created that today we call synagogues. This was the world of the Pharisees. Some of them believed in rebelling against the Romans, but most believed in a middle ground between appeasing Rome and fighting them.
And there were those who were dedicated to resisting the Roman occupation by any means necessary, and particularly through violence. The latter were called the Zealots.
The Sadducees and the Pharisees were able to work together through institutions like the Great Assembly and the Sanhedrin. The Zealots accused the others of being sell-outs. Some things never change.
When this Jewish infighting and violence triggered Rome to destroy Jerusalem and crush any rebelliousness, the Temple was destroyed and the Sadducees decimated. Most of the Jews in Jerusalem were killed or fled. The majority were no longer Jews.
In the aftermath of all this destruction, with the center of Jewish life gone and destroyed, it was far from clear that Jews and Jewish religious practices would survive. But Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai began to regroup in a small town south and inland from what it today is Tel Aviv called Yavneh.
They collected the teachings and laws of the leaders of the Great Assembly, like Hillel and Shammai, and the also created new forms of practice, like prayer and study and rituals that can be done in the home. These came to define Judaism.
But to me, the specific sayings of the rabbis are less impressive than the way they structured the material. They took the material they had and out of it, created famous “zuggot” or pairs of rabbis that argue and disagree with one another. Often one was said to be the President or Prince of the Great Assembly or Sandhedrin, and the other was the “Rosh Beit Din” or “Chief Justice” of the court.
The most famous pair is Hillel and Shammai who famously argued so much that God finally had to intervene and announce, “you’re both right.”
While the teachings in Pirkei Avot contain some very powerful ideas, what strikes me today is that they made sure that a range of ideas was represented, and that those who taught conflicting ideas were both seen as authorities and worthy of respect.
In other words, at a time of upheaval and fear, they could have easily become intolerant of disagreement and seek to kick out those they disagreed with. We know this impulse from the polarized times we are living in.
Yet, the rabbis did the exact opposite. Instead of editing out those ideas they didn’t like, the rabbis that compiled the Mishnah took famous legal scholars from the Jewish past and purposefully organized them into pairs that disagreed with each other. These pairs of arguing rabbis set the model for Judaism and Jewish discourse.
They also established a new kind of Jewish hierarchy: the meritocracy. Where leadership in the Temple had been hereditary, the famous rabbis include those who are very poor, like Hillel, as well as converts like Rabbi Akiva’s family, or former criminals like Reish Lakish. Yet, they could all rise to be head of the rabbinic courts through their scholarship combined with their empathy for others. The highest positions were given to those who had both great scholarship and great kindness.
This system of debate and argument is a feature, not a bug of Judaism, and one the world could really learn from today.
These rabbis teach us that we have to hold multiple truths at once, and that civility and respect are fundamental values even when there is profound disagreement.
They also show that the greatest wisdom comes not from one view or the other, not from ideological purity and litmus tests of loyalty, but through the interaction and debate of multiple views. We are not just better together; we are wiser together.
This is a value that is the foundation of democracy, and it is a value that we can feel slipping away.
So I invite you to join for Torah Study and the study of Pirkei Avot and learn what a beautiful, complex, and wise tradition you are part of.
Shabbat Shalom
David
