This source sheet is part of the larger Ta’amei HaPardes Commentary, a project of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. This is sheet 9 of 9 on the topic of Mishnah.
Chapter One Summary - The Role of the Rabbis
Throughout this first chapter of the Mishnah, the text is incredibly transparent and informative about the Rabbinic enterprise. The first three mishnayot all use the word Adam or Bnei Adam and it is clear that the Rabbis see their overarching job as to translate the words of Torah into the lived reality of human beings; so that the Jewish people experience the Torah as woven into the fabric of their everyday lives. They create clear structures and blessings (M4) to frame the daily routine. At times they set limits (M1) and at others expand the law (end M2), all the while trying to both protect the Torah and the people. They ask questions (M1, 2), give answers (M1, 2), offer advice in real time (M1); and yet at other times do not refrain from giving their harsh opinions (M3). They learn from the behavior of priests (M1) and those who came before them and listen to the new ideas of students (M5). Overall, they desire a consensus of decisions (M3) and behavior (M3), so that people are unified in their practice (M4). However, they try to balance that with the difference in human needs (M1) and lifestyles (M2). They likewise show a willingness to preserve the minority or opposing opinion (M1,2,3), especially if that view has a meaningful idea behind it (M5). The Mishnah formulates the oral law into a unified legal system of behavior, and presents a clear path for the individual to stay connected to the past as well as to move forward in the present and continue to have an embodied relationship with the Divine.
Chapter One Summary – Content
The Torah painted a picture that the words of the Shema should be all encompassing and said all the time. This chapter limited that ritual to two times of day, evening and morning, and emphasized that the verses of the Shema served a dual purpose. The Shema is both verses from a text that is read as part of the larger corpus of written Torah and also a specific commandment that marks an individual’s experience of the Divine in the passage of time in their daily lives. These two themes are the major topics covered by the Rabbinic blessings which proceed the Shema. The idea of the truth of God’s redemptive hand in history serves to bracket the Shema on the other end. The Torah and its Rabbinic interpretation, along with the individual’s commitment to God and mitzvot, is the basis for the rest of the oral law presented in the body of the Mishnah.
Chapter One Summary – Themes
The chapter opens with a question of time that focuses on the rituals of the past and ends with a hope for the future time of redemption. When examining this chapter more closely it is clear that time is a central theme. The creation and definition of days and time is the work of God in the creation story in the book of Genesis. Possibly here at the beginning of the oral law, the Mishnah wanted to mirror the written law by also starting with a question of time and going from night to day. In this case, however, it is not God who distinguishes things in order to create time, but rather human beings who discern and distinguish night from day.
There are numerous different rubrics of time and the telling of time presented in this chapter. There is Temple time when the priests immerse and eat terumah, when the guard watches switch and when one can no longer eat the korbanot. There is time in nature when the pillar of dawn rises, when the sun buds over the horizon and there are the terms, morning, evening, day and night. There is clock time – three hours and midnight. There is organized time around the lives of humans – watches, bedtime, time to start the day. There are the times when people do mitzvot such as eating terumah and korbanot and reading Shema and Torah. There are milestones in life that mark time, such as feasts and celebrations. There is relative time such as before and after, long and short, from now and from here on. There is age, the time someone has lived – 70 years and an entire lifetime – all the days of their life. There is generational time of father and sons, princes, and the Nasi. There is the cognizance of time – human beings can distinguish its passage, create time buffers, and also lose track of time. There is personal time and communal time. There is formal time made up of hours, days, years and the existence of the world. There is one’s personal daily activity which then stretches out to become one’s whole life. There is world time – this world, filled with darkness, and the future redemptive one. And lastly there is the historical and national timeline of the Jewish people from when the Divine took them out of Egypt, to hopefully bringing the future days of the Messiah. The chapter discusses time in the lives of priests, party goers, guards, princes, rabbis, the Nasi, families, travelers, bandits, students, teachers and the regular Adam, person. We see people spending their time eating and partying, traveling and stealing, sleeping and awaking, standing and reclining, reading Torah and learning, blessing and arguing, guarding and talking, and questioning and answering. The chapter paints a varied picture of thriving human life and the ways humans spend time.
Why does the Mishnah spend so much time and effort speaking about time and how humans interact with it? What is so important about our understanding of time that the whole first chapter focuses on it even before the actual paragraphs of the Shema are delineated, something that only happens in Chapter Two?
With the loss of the Temple and the nation moving farther away from Jerusalem, the encounter with holiness of place no longer stood at the center of service to God. The Rabbis had to build a nonphysical structure; they had to create a new makom, place, to encounter the Divine. They solidified blessing compositions, which harnessed and connected the holiness of time and miraculousness of nature, and thus celebrated recognizing God’s hand in nature and in the passage of time – two things that continue constantly without the Temple. The continual relationship with God is built through marking time with the reading of the Shema daily, morning and evening, a constant service to God much like the tamid, always-sacrifice that burned in the morning and was left all night on the altar (see Yalkut Shimoni, Parshat V’Ethanan 835). Although reading the words of the Shema is not as all-consuming and above time as the verses themselves present, this ritual bookends the day. It indicates that all of the time between each reading is marked by the relationship laid out in the verses of the Shema, yet integrated into the natural ways human beings live their lives. And thus, the relationship with God is above time and within time, all the time and timeless all at once. One must see that God’s hand is in all time and timeframes, and that God’s relationship with the Jewish people – both as individuals and as a nation – stretches throughout time; it does not have an ad, a limit. This basic tenant of the limitless, timeless relationship between God and the Jewish people is the basis of the whole Mishnah. Without it there is no meaning nor basis for the rest of the code. It is for this reason that humans’ relationship to time is the first issue and theme presented.