Sunday, October 9, 2011

Pirkei Avot

 Well, seeing as how everyone blogged about what I would have blogged about and there's not really anything new going on, I had no choice but to open up Pirkei Avot and pick a random quote and have fun with it. 

Pirkei Avot Perek 2 Passuk 9 says: "Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai received the tradition from Hillel and Shammai. He used to say: If you have studied much Torah, do not take credit for yourself, because that is what you were created to do." 
I have a few questions for you guys to come up with lovely answers to:
1. Why do we never give ourselves credit? I feel like we're always bringing ourselves down and we're never good enough. When would we ever be satisfactory?
2. Why is the whole purpose of life to study Torah? What was the purpose of life before they got the Torah? There was none?  
3. If you don't study Torah a lot, do you not fulfill your purpose in life? We were actually created to study Torah?

3 comments:

  1. Racheli-
    I don't think it's that we are never giving ourselves credit. Rather, I think that we can't simply believe that we have "studied enough" because there is always more to learn. Even the most learned Rabbi's, who seem to "know everything," are learning more and more every day. So maybe this passuk is trying to teach us not to become too haughty and believe that we know the whole Torah, because that could mean that we are putting ourselves higher than G-d.
    Torah is our "guiding light" to growing and becoming a greater, more kadosh nation. Without it, there would not be a Jewish nation, the one chosen by G-d. I think before Matan Torah, G-d had different purposes then living through the Torah. Maybe a lot of it was test to see if they deserved to be His chosen nation. It could've also been a learning experience/or preparations to the challenges they would face as a nation.
    We were created in the image of G-d. We must serve G-d to the best of our abilities and a way of doing that is studying the Torah.

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  2. Alexa is right. There is always more to learn. Also, we should be humble... Judaism is about being selfless and good, ideally. We can always improve upon ourselves- Yom Kippur is an opportunity to do so. And Yom Kippur discusses korbanot... we've come full circle.
    We focus our lives on the torah because it teaches morals and ethics. The Torah shouldn't be thought of as a relgion, but as an actual way of living life. There shouldn't be you, your life, and then what religion you practice, but how you actually live your life. The thing about Judaism is that you have to be selfless to practice it, which is very hard, but that is why it is an ideal. We learn things from the torah that we never would have thought of, and things that we might not even understand, but G-d gave it to us so, selflessly, we follow the commandments.
    I cant really answer your last question. I think it is important for someone to though. It's hard to learn about things if basic ideas havent been explained first. Kind of like playing the piano before knowing what the notes mean on the paper. You just stumble around. Maybe a teacher can take a week to cover these crucial topics.

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  3. I agree with them. There are some commentaries that say that the reason why God created the world was to put the torah inplace. I think therefore that it is so emphesised on since its a part of our life, I think one can learn a lot from studying the torah, like morals and mitzwot, but I think that those who do not study torah also have a big purpose in life since personally I don't think life only depends on the torah. I think it is important for the Jews, but those who do not follow it can also change the world greatly.

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