Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Dani's (attempt to be) Daily Pirkei Avot - day 2

א,ב שמעון הצדיק היה משיירי אנשי כנסת הגדולה. הוא היה אומר, על שלושה דברים העולם עומד--על התורה, ועל העבודה, ועל גמילות החסדים.
Are these three things in any specific order? Is there a priority?
Maybe this is according to the order of life : one begins to learn Torah at an early age , then as he gets older he begins to understand what it means work (working in terms of making parnasa and Avodat Hashem) and ultimately he is able to give to those in need.
On a different note, the Rabeinu B'chayei explains that the mitzvoth from the Torah are divided into three things that the world stands on which are three kinds of mitzvoth that the world stands on- the mitzvot of the mouth (positive speech, brachot etc.)- this refers to Torah, the mitzvoth of the heart- this refers to Avoda, and the mitzvoth which are actions- this refers to g'milut chasadim. He continues to explain that the mitzvot of the heart extend from the mitzvoth of the mouth.
Finally, in his sefer (on Pirkei Avot), " Hu Haya Omer" , Rav Shalom Schwadron explains the order of the words: "Torah" being written before "Avoda"
He explains that we need to understand what Chazal mean when they say that Hashem yearns for our tefilot (avoda she'balev). In Tanach, before Matan Torah, we see several cases where specific characters went through suffering , ultimately leading them to daven to Hashem. For example, the Midrash states that Hashem made the Imahot (matriarchs) barren because He wanted the tefilot of the Avot. Their tefilot brought them closer to Hashem. Another example is shown by the suffering of Bnei Yisrael in Mitzrayim. All their pain and affliction led them to daven and cry out to Hashem as well, which ultimately brought them to Matan Torah. However, after Matan Torah, we actually see Hashem's yearning for His children to delve into Torah,as opposed to getting close to Him through tefila because Torah is the "ikar" (basis) of our lives and the basis of our relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu and everything else in life is dependent on Torah. This shows us that closeness to Hashem through living a Torah lifestyle is higher than closeness to Hashem through avoda (tefila) and that is Torah comes first in the above Mishna.

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