Musar for Pirkei Avot 4:4

And there is another excellent modesty — to study in the presence of the very young and ask them to explain something that he, the teacher, does not understand. And he should not say, "How can I study in the presence of youngsters and how can I seek and expect to find an answer from him when he is younger than I?" And on this subject it is said: "From all my mentors I have learned" (Ps. 119:99). And further did our Sages say: "Be exceedingly humble" (Aboth 4:4), in the presence of all men. Not before the great alone must one be humble in spirit, but also before the small.

והאיש משה עניו מאד מכל האדם . "Moses was more humble than any other human being." We can appreciate the value of the virtue of humility after we see that the only praise the Torah accords Moses, the father of all prophets, the man who maintained closer contact with G–d than anyone before him or since, is the reference to his humility. This teaches us to try and practice this virtue to the extreme. We are reminded of the Mishnah (Avot 4,4) which says: "be very very humble." When the Torah here says "more than any other human," we know of three humble people, Moses and Aaron who had said of themselves: "נחנו מה," who are we? (Exodus 16,7); then there was Abraham who said of himself: ואנכי עפר ואפר, "and I am only dust and ashes," (Genesis 18,27). Finally, there was King David, who said of himself: ואנכי תולעת, "and I am a worm." The most humble one of them all was Moses, since he did not even compare himself to anything else, but said:"We are nothing!" This is what the Torah meant when it said “מכל האדם”. The three letters in the word אדם, are the first letters respectively of אברהם, דוד, משה.

We have learned: "whether one has acted in error or whether he has acted deliberately it is all one and the same where the result is the desecration of G-d's Name" (Avot 4:4).

The righteous spies that Joshua sent out repaired the metaphysical damage caused by ten of the original spies whom Moses had sent out. The "hope" for the future of the Jewish people was summarized by the תקות חוט השני, whereas the damage caused by the original spies can be described as symbolizing the statement of our sages that תקות אנוש רימה, that the only thing humans have to look forward to is to become worms (man's body in the grave). All this because they abused their power of speech to libel G–d and the land of Israel. At the root of their corruption lay their desire to occupy positions of influence within the nation. All that the above teaches is to follow very carefully the advice of our sages in Avot 4,4, "be very very humble, seeing that man's prospects are only to decay!" The spies who had started out by being described as אנשים, i.e. men of stature, ended up by being considered "אנוש," the lowest appellation of humans.

Having praised the virtue of modesty and humility, we must try to understand the statement of Rabbi Chiyah son of Ashi in Sotah 5a that a "Torah scholar must possess one eighth of an eighth" (of pride). This statement is followed by one of Rabbi Hunna son of Rabbi Joshua who says: "This amount of pride crowns him just like the beard is a crown of the ear of corn." The deeper meaning of this statement is related to the eight manifestations of pride we have listed and corresponding to which we recite eight (respectively 7) times מה in the רבון prayer every morning. Our sages have said on numerous occasions that the number "one" is not really part of any count. It follows that if a Torah scholar possesses only "one" of eight parts of pride this is hardly something to be concerned about. The problem is that the eight manifestations of pride are all rooted in the same source, i.e. the head, as we have pointed out. In such a situation, even a small amount such as one eighth becomes significant because it contains some of all the eight aspects. This is why Rabbi Chiyah does not want the תלמיד חכם to cultivate more than 1 /8th of 1 /8th i.e. 1/64th of pride. The only reason even this small amount of pride or self-confident bearing is permitted to the scholar is so that the people for whom he is to represent authority should not misconstrue his humble bearing as indicating an inability to lead.

Verse 14, הן לה' אלקיך, which commences with the word הן, alerts us to the fact that the letters in this word have no partners. All other letters in the alphabet can be combined with another letter to form the number ten or one hundred except these two. The letter ה is an allusion to this present world, whereas the latter י alludes to the World to Come. Five times ten is fifty, a reminder of the 50 gates of בינה. The word הן is a reminder that all our activities in this world must be oriented towards the World to Come. The fact that these letters have no "mate" means that G–d is One and has no partner. The expression שמי השמים in the same verse alludes to the eternal existence of Israel on the ישראל and ישרון level. The words הארץ וכל אשר בה at this point tell us that the universe, i.e. הן, is made up of both Heaven and Earth. רק באבותיך חשק י-ה-ו-ה. The letters in the word חשק form an acronym of the first letters in the description of the vowel pattern חולם שוא קמץ of the four-lettered name of G–d. Maimonides, who usually advises the golden mean, states that when it comes to humility a person should practice extremism, i.e. become as humble as is possible. This is also why the advice to practice humility given in tractate Avot 4,4 is prefaced with the unusual "מאד מאד." [The author sees allusions in the vowel patterns, especially the difference between Cholam-Kometz on the one hand and Sheva and Chirik on the other. The former alludes to the World to Come, the latter to the Here and Now. Ed.] The author illustrates his point and applies it to the virtue of humility versus pride and arrogance.

The Mishnah quoted from Avot 4,4 concludes by reminding us that all we have to look forward to in the grave is רימה, i.e. worms. The editor of that Mishnah implies that this is so only when the person in question has not adopted the lifestyle suggested by the author of the Mishnah, and has instead adopted a high profile, i.e. רמה קרנו. In other words: Employing the wrong vowel in this world results in the wrong vowel becoming your destiny after death.

The Baal HaTurim draws our attention to the opening verse of our פרשה, and compares it with the last verse in the previous פרשה which speaks about performance of the commandments. He arrives at the conclusion that whereas the commandment has to be performed in this life, the reward for its performance, עקב, will have to await the Hereafter. Whereas the Baal HaTurim arrives at the same conclusion as the Talmud in Eruvin 22a where the word היום is stressed as opposed to the מחר, i.e. the Hereafter, when the reward is to be collected, he derives it from a different nuance in the text of the Torah. The reason may be that the Baal HaTurim found some problems with the exegesis of the Talmud. Had the interpretation of the Talmud been correct then all the Torah had to write in 7,11 is the whole verse without the word לעשותם at the end Furthermore, the Torah could simply have written לעשות instead of לעשותם. It seems therefore that the suffix ם is to contrast the difference between לעשותם and לעשותך. The difference between these two wordings is an allusion to the motivation which governs performance of the commandments. The Torah does not want us to perform the commandments for the sake of the eventual reward but לעשותם, for their own sake, i.e. לשמה. The fact that a new פרשה begins with the reference to the reward emphasizes that the reward is a corollary, a consequence of performance, but is not in a relationship of על מנת, "on condition that," to our performance of the מצוה. The humility implied in performance of the commandments on the basis of לעשותם (as we have explained the word) is further underlined by the Torah in 7,7: לא מרובכם מכל העמים .. כי אתם המעט מכל העמים, "It is not because you are the most numerous of all the nations that G–d took a liking to you….indeed you are the smallest of all the nations, etc." There was no need for the Torah to write that we are not the most numerous nation and to follow it up with the statement that we are the smallest nation. The last statement would have sufficed. The Talmud Chulin 89a concludes from this that the Torah's choice of language means that G–d likes us because, even when we are granted importance by G–d, we do not make this a pretext to become haughty, but we deprecate ourselves, behave humbly and modestly, ממעטים את עצמכם. This is reinforced in the lesson that Rabbi Levitas in Avot 4,4 urges us to heed: מאד מאד הוה שפל רוח, "Be exceedingly humble in spirit."