The Distractions of a Beautiful Spring Day

Rabbi Melanie Aron

April 20, 2002

Many of the teachings of Pirke Avot, Ethics of our Fathers, a section of the Mishnah that is read each year between Passover and Shavuot, are so sensible, that even if they were not written down, we would still come up with them from our own experiences. Pirke Avot teaches us things like: "when you judge people, give them the benefit of the doubt", and "the reticent do not learn and the hot tempered should not teach."But others pose a challenge for us, and sometimes even seem to contradict other Jewish teachings.

One of the strangest statements by a rabbi in this book is Rabbi Shimon's statement ( in some versions attributed to Rabbi Jacob). 'One who walks along the way and is studying and then breaks from his learning and says: "How beautiful is this tree." and "How beautiful is this ploughed field" Scripture reckons him as if he has incurred guilt with his life."

What is going on here? We actually find three statements in this chapter that end with the words chayav benafsho, literally causes himself to incur guilt through his soul. The first concerns the person who wakes up in the middle of night and doesn't use the time productively to study Torah. The last concerns someone who forgets his learning, that is doesn't take steps to insure that he retains what he has already learned. In between them is our statement, seemingly about the person who on a beautiful spring day like today, gets distracted in looking up from his books. Does Rabbi Shimon or Rabbi Jacob really believe he has made himself liable for the death penalty- which is what these words in Hebrew might be translated to mean?

Some explain that this mishnaic teaching is very old, from the time when all of this was an oral law. The man in question was reciting the law he had memorized. If he interrupts himself in the middle then the law will be lost as he is the walking book of his time, a concept that might be familiar to you from Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451. That's interesting but even so that seems a little extreme. After all, we are told in general to enjoy the beauty of this world. There is even a blessing to be said when one sees budding trees or beautiful flowers: Baruch Atah Adonai eloheinu melech haaolam shekachah lo ba-olamo Blessed are you Adonai our God who has created such in this world.

Is the problem here that someone sees the trees and flowers and doesn't say a blessing? Perhaps that is the literal meaning but certainly this must be teaching us something more.

Rabbi Fonrobert, writing about all three passages, sees a relationship between these commandments and the concluding verse of this section: "Only take heed to yourself and guard your soul diligently lest you forget the matters that your eyes have seen."

She writes: "Ultimately we transgresses against ourselves when we tear ourselves from our attentiveness to our own Torah. We are transgressing against ourselves, our own lives, if we compartmentalize, and we look at the beautiful tree forgetting the connection of this sight with our own inmost Torah."

Perhaps the sin is looking at nature only as a distraction, as something unconnected with our study of Torah and our spirituality. As another rabbi expressed it: when we don't know how to respond to nature's wonders with awe, we deaden our souls a little bit.

Perhaps we can learn from the Midrash Tanchumah: The wicked are considered dead even when they are alive" that is they are spiritually dead, oblivious to all the bounties that God bestows upon humankind, but the righteous are always alive to bless and thank. May we count ourselves among them.