Pirkei Avot Lev Shalem study, 1:1 - 1:3

Pirkei Avot opens with the transmission of Torah from Mount Sinai to the Sages, and moves on to philosophical statements from those Sages. While studying these first three Mishnayot, consider which qualities the writers hope to encourage in the reader and the Jewish people.

Regarding the transmission of Torah, R' Gordon Tucker says: "From the point of view of Rabbinic Judaism... we can't get a religious truth directly from God... And thus, what we see here at the beginning of Avot should be seen for what it is: a significant and far-reaching change in the very definition of religious truth. Unlike the truth of matters of fact being adjudicated in court, which cannot be allowed to be settled simply on the report of a third party, 'testimony' on matters of interpretation of Torah and God's will now gain in prestige when they are continuations---or paraphrases---of traditional teachings. The possibility of certainty about the divine will, which perhaps was always chimerical, has now been definitively pushed aside in favor of the stability of the tradition."
1: What do you find interesting about this chain of transmission, and in particular the chosen characters? Is anyone missing here? Considering the Great Assembly, what is the relationship between legal rulings and religious truth?
2: What can we say about the historical context of this shift from supposed knowledge of the divine to 'the stability of the tradition'?
3: 'Chimerical' is a pointed descriptor of certainty about the will of God. What might we say about the benefits and drawbacks of this perspective of certainty, and the benefits and drawbacks of a transition to trust in tradition rather than direct knowledge of the divine? How might the three statements of the Great Assembly inform this evolution?

R' Tamar Elad-Applebaum says on making a fence around the Torah: "The very sages who devoted their lives to the study of Torah... devoted the first chapter of Avot to limiting the power of Torah, so that Torah would be better able to play an active role within life."
1: What does a 'fence around the Torah' usually mean to you? Does it fit neatly with the idea of limiting the power of Torah with Rabbinic rulings? If not, how does this idea break with preconceived notions of Halakha?
R' Menahem Meiri: "When one speaks words of Torah, one should speak of them only at the appropriate time, in the appropriate measure, and in an appropriate place, and say things that are appropriate for one person to teach and for another to learn. As the sages say... 'Just as the blessed Holy One built a fence for [God's] words [so must we do as well].'"
2: How can we find a balance between learning Torah and fully participating in life? Where are the two the same, and where are they different?

[Break for discussion of other ideas]

R' Tucker: "Rabbi Karo wrote that Shimon the Righteous meant to convey the values that create a culture, whereas Shimon ben Gamliel listed the elements that maintain a culture... Contemporary times are not devoid of this phenomenon. We may, in our own day, often face a fateful choice of perspective: Do we think the times call for bold initiatives, or for guarded preservation?"
1: That question exactly, couldn't have phrased it better myself.

[Read poem from Aharon David Gordon]
R' Elad-Appelbaum: "Gordon outlines the basic challenge facing the Jew: to create a new, positive relationship with nature after a long history of being separated from it... it is this specific notion that is reflected in the statement of Shimon the Righteous... The idea that working the soil and serving God in the sanctuary are merely two sides of the same coin is basic to the Jewish worldview."
1: Is this a new perspective, or something that has been ingrained in Judaism since its inception? Does this stand in conflict with stereotypes of the ideal Torah scholar?
2: Consider moving into Avot whether the Sages provide advice on how to strike a balance between studying Torah and contributing to the other two pillars that hold the world up. Does the Torah itself (capital-T) provide advice on how to regulate study with other good deeds?

[Break for discussion of other ideas]

On the 'fear of Heaven', R' Elad-Appelbaum says: "The Hebrew word shamayim, here used as a circumlocution for God, literally means 'sky' or 'heaven' and has the formal structure of a dual noun... The sky can serve as a vast heavenly mirror into which people can look, to see themselves and each other. Indeed, it is because we can so easily see both our own faces and the faces of others in the vast array of stars in the nighttime sky---stars each so different from another and also unimaginably far apart---that we can understand that only all of these faces taken together constitute the full panoply of the human experience."
1: How can we see the 'fear of Heaven' as an inspiration to be in community, rather than act out of fear of a personal God?
2: Can we see service without expectation of reward as a spiritually radical idea? How might it relate to Rabbi Elad-Appelbaum's conception of the fear of Heaven?