Pirkei Avos - 081 Make A “Rav” For Yourself (Part One)

Introduction: Learning From All People

In the Mishnah in Pirkei Avos (1:2), Reb Yehoshua ben Perachia says, “Make for yourself a Rav (teacher), acquire for yourself a friend, and judge every person favorably.”

What does it mean to make for yourself a “Rav”?

The Rambam and the Maharal both explain this to mean that the Mishnah is  careful to say “make” for yourself a teacher, not to “acquire” one, but when it  comes to friends, the Mishnah instead says that you should acquire him, rather than to “make” for yourself a friend. Therefore, they explain, the Mishnah says to “make” for yourself a Rav, just like how you have to “make” for yourself a sukkah.

The Maharal, and others, also explain that the Mishnah is not referring to one’s primary teacher (“rebbi muvhak” – the teacher that you have learned most of your wisdom from). A person doesn’t choose his rebbi muvhak; the rebbi muvhak makes himself into the teacher of his student.

Rather, the Maharal explains, “Make for yourself a Rav” in the Mishnah refers to the fact that a person should learn from all people. Therefore, the Maharal explains, each person you meet can become your teacher, since you can learn from each person. That is the meaning of “make for yourself a teacher” – make each person into someone whom you will learn from.

The depth of “Make for yourself a teacher” is thus to learn from all people – not just to learn from how others speak, and not just to read the sefarim which they produce, but even to learn from others’ simple actions.

This is what the Maharal explains.

How Do We Know Who Our Rav Is?

We need to reflect on this matter, that a person has to “make for himself a teacher”. There are many issues that people have with this statement of the Mishnah. We will try to understand this matter through the lens of Daas Torah [from the Torah’s perspective, and not from our own ideas], and we will try to clarify this matter a bit.

If a person needs a Rav\Rebbi, simply speaking, he must look for a Rav\Rebbi and make that person into a Rav\Rebbi for himself. If you think about it, though, it’s perplexing. How do you choose a Rav\Rebbi for yourself, when there is no Rav to begin with to guide you in your thinking?!

This question is a gnawing issue to anyone who seeks a Rav in his life. How is it possible for a person to make someone else into his Rav? Who says we can trust someone to be our Rav over us? Even if he’s a prominent person, who says that he is the Rav who is meant for one’s particular soul? Even after we find a Rav, how do we know if the Rav is taking the correct path in life?

In order for us to “make” for ourselves a Rav\Rebbi, we first have to choose him. That is simple to understand; if we never choose a Rav for ourselves, then we will never make for ourselves a Rav. So we obviously have to choose for ourselves a Rav first, before we are able to have a Rav. But how do we choose a Rav? Who is guiding in the first place, since we don’t have a Rav to help us choose…?

To make the question even stronger, a Rav\Rebbi is on a higher level than me. How am I able to take him upon myself as my Rav? Because I think that the Rav is correct and knows a lot? How can I make such a decision?! Who am I to decide that this person is my Rav, when I am not one to be able to validate his wisdom? How am I, a human being limited in my comprehension, able to decide such a thing? Who says that this person is supposed to be my Rav\Rebbi? And even if he is meant to be my Rav, who says that his rulings are the truth? And even if he’s a Rav who speaks the truth, who says that this Rav’s methods are meant for my particular soul?

And even if this Rav is meant for my soul, maybe that changed? Maybe that was only yesterday, and not today…?

When it comes to having faith in Hashem, that’s very understandable. Hashem is Perfect, so I can have blind faith in Him. But a Rav is only a human being; how can I trust him to be my Rav? After all, Reb Yochanan Kohen Gadol went off the derech on the last day of his life (according to one opinion of our Sages). So even if the Rav I have chosen for myself is a great person and he is meant to be my Rav, there is no guarantee that he will stay righteous, and therefore, how do I know as of today that my Rav is still supposed to be my Rav??

How is it possible for a person to figure out who his Rav is? This is not just a side issue that people have. It is the question of all questions, and it bothers anyone who thinks.

The Difficulty In Choosing For Ourselves A Teacher

The word rav is related to the word ribuy, “many”, and it is also related to the word riv, argument. This hints to us that every rav is potentially a controversial rav, because a person has to go through much internal questioning about who his rav is.

Korach was only able to argue on Moshe Rabbeinu because he couldn’t come to terms with the concept of having a rav. He fought and argued with Moshe, because since Moshe was the rav, it was inevitable that there would be some riv (argument) about this.

The very concept of a rav is that he is someone who, as prominent as he is, invites riv\argumentsfrom others. When people try to make for themselves a Rav, they go through a riv in their soul – they feel a battle going on inside. People aren’t able to clarify if a certain Rav is supposed to be their rav, and they feel a great argument going on inside their own soul as they try to clarify: “Is this person my rav…?”

The truth is that this power of the soul, riv, is rooted in the soul’s power of safek, doubt. People have the tendency to doubt things, to be skeptical about things. For example, a person might even be learning Torah a whole day, and after some time, he begins to doubt if he’s doing the right thing or not. From where does this come from? Why do people doubt themselves even when they are doing the right thing? It is because there is a nature in the soul to doubt things. It is the power of riv\safek in the soul – the tendency in people to have an inner struggle with things and be skeptical about things, unable to decide if they are doing the right thing or not.

The very concept of a Rav is that he is someone who is above the student’s level. Therefore, it is very hard to be able to choose a Rav for yourself, because if he’s beyond your understanding, how do you decide that he’s meant to be your Rav? It’s not possible for us to determine who can become our Rav. Who are we to decide this?

The Mishnah elsewhere says “Make for yourself a teacher, and remove yourself from doubt.” Once we have for ourselves a Rav, we will no longer have doubts; but how do we get to that point in the first place? What are we to if we are having trouble choosing who our Rav is – who helps us decide this? Trying to choose a Rav creates an inner turmoil in our soul, a “riv”.

Even if a person has a Rav, it’s not always because he chose the Rav; he might be simply acting in a habitual manner (melumadah). Indeed, we cannot choose our Rav.

What is the solution??

The Answer: Seeing Each Person As A Revelation of the Shechinah

To know the answer, let us think into the words of the Rambam and the Maharal we quoted, that the Mishnah is not addressing a rebbi muvhak (one’s primary teacher), but rather how one must learn from all people. Let us think about what this means.

What is the difference between one’s primary teacher and any other ordinary person we come across? We know that a rebbi muvhak is someone whom a person has learned most of his wisdom from. In other words, a rebbi muvhak is someone whom you place complete trust in, and therefore, the wisdom that is learned from a rebbi muvhak is directly from the rebbi. But with an ordinary person that we learn wisdom from, we understand that we aren’t learning from him on a personal level, but rather, from the facts of wisdom we see being revealed.

The superficial understanding of this is that since each person possesses some wisdom, it only makes sense that there is what to learn from everybody. But there is really more to this. When a person doesn’t have a Rav, and he instead learns from what each person has to impart, then he’s actually learning directly from Hashem – and everyone that he encounters are merely His messengers to impart wisdom.

So when we learn from each person’s wisdom, we indeed are not learning from him on a personal level; the wisdom we learn from each person is not supposed to be attributed to that person whom we are learning from. Rather, the way to understand this is that whomever we learn from is imparting to us wisdom that’s coming directly from Hashem, and in this way, each person can be our teacher. The true definition of a Rav\teacher is that the Rav is revealing a hidden wisdom out into the open; he’s taking something that’s already there and showing it to us. He’s not teaching us his personal wisdom – he is merely revealing to us the already existing wisdom of Hashem. This is the “Rav” referred to in the Mishnah – learning from each person, because each person can reveal Hashem’s hidden wisdom to us.

The prime example of this is Moshe Rabbeinu, of whom it is said, “The Shechinah spoke from his throat.” Whenever a person is learning something from his Rebbi\teacher, he has to view the Rebbi as someone who represents the Shechinah! If a person doesn’t have this understanding, then he will not be able to choose for himself a Rav\Rebbi. But if we realize that each Rav\Rebbi can be Hashem’s messenger to us, than we will be able to choose for ourselves a Rav.

Let us sharpen the discussion a bit more.

We really cannot trust anyone in the world, not even the holiest people, to rely upon their wisdom. After all, “Even in His holy ones, He does not trust.” We cannot rely on any human being, no matter how great he is, and assume that he is always correct and teaching us the truth.[1] So how can we rely upon any Rebbi to teach us?

The answer is, that, indeed, we cannot rely on any person to guide us – that is, if we view the person as simply being a person. But if we look at someone else as a tool to transmit to us the word of Hashem, then we aren’t believing in the person – we are believing in the wisdom of Hashem that can be revealed in that person.

Even Moshe Rabbeinu, the teacher of Klal Yisrael, was but a tool to reveal Hashem’s will to the world. He was a means for us to receive Hashem’s wisdom, as the “Shechinah spoke from his throat.” (Moshe has the same numerical value in Hebrew as the word ratzon, will.)

The Meaning of Emunas Chachamim\Believing the Words of Our Sages

There is a concept called emunas chachamim, to believe in the words of our Sages. To believe in our Sages’ words doesn’t mean to simply believe in the wisdom of the Sage, but to believe that the Sages’ wisdom serves as a tool to reveal Hashem’s will. Emunas chachamim means to believe in the Shechinah that is communicating to us, via the words of the Sages and all Torah authorities. For this reason, the Mishnah elsewhere says “fear your teacher as much as you fear Heaven.” In every Rav, there is a fear of Heaven – he is a means to communicate the Shechinah to us.

Let us return to our very troubling question: How do we choose for ourselves a Rav? The answer to this is based on what we have seen from the Rambam and the Maharal, who have explained that the Mishnah is referring to learning wisdom from all people. It does not mean that we can simply rely on other’s wisdom per se, but rather, we can view each person as a tool to reveal Hashem’s will to us. So when we learn from others’ wisdom, we aren’t learning from the information they are saying, but rather, we are learning from others in the general sense, that all people can be a tool to reveal Hashem’s wisdom. And once we believe in others’ wisdom in the general sense, we can then come to believe in the various details that they are imparting, as a result.

So “Make for yourself a teacher” means to view each person as a Rav, because we are able to see in each person the revelation of the Shechinah. Understandably, a rebbi muvhak is also to be seen as a revelation of the Shechinah, but on a higher level than the usual, since there are different levels of a rav.

That is the answer to the very bothersome issue; it is hard to accept. Of course, if someone never thinks about it, it won’t bother him, but for someone who does think, it’s a hard answer to accept. But this is the answer.

There are people who only believe in Gedolim (foremost leaders of the generation), but they don’t believe in accepting wisdom from anyone who’s not an accepted Gadol. Such people are missing true emunas chachamim, because as we explained, emunas chachamim is essentially to see how each person can be a revelation of the Shechinah.

The Way To Learn From A Rebbi

This leads us to the following point. If someone is learning by a certain Rebbi and views the Rebbi to be a wise person – but he doesn’t believe that the Rebbi can be a transmitter of the Shechinah – then he is simply receiving information from the Rebbi, and he is missing the source of the wisdom. He is missing a belief in his Rebbi – he is missing emunas chachamim. He’ll receive wisdom from his Rebbi, but he won’t connect with the Rebbi. And what will happen when he merely receives knowledge from his Rebbi, but he isn’t confident in his Rebbi? He will come to doubt his Rebbi.

Emunas chachamim, to believe in Torah Sages [and Torah authorities] is not to believe that the rebbi we are learning from is a wise person. It is rather to believe that the Rebbi is receiving a channel of wisdom from Heaven. It is for a person to connect himself to the source of wisdom in his Rebbi.

This is the meaning of “Make for yourself a teacher, and remove yourself from doubt.” In other words, if we believe in the teacher that he can transmit to us Hashem’s will, we can then be rest assured, and then we will be removed from all doubt.

When We See Imperfections In Our Teachers

However, even if a person believes that his Rebbi can be a conduit of the Shechinah, he can still encounter another issue: he sees faults in his Rebbi.

The greatest Rebbi in history was Moshe Rabbeinu, yet, there were some people who had grievances against him. This is a human weakness that exists by all people, even by those who have a Rebbi: we tend to see deficiencies in our teachers, even if it’s only a small deficiency we notice.

What should a person do if he notices a fault in his Rebbi? Should he simply try to focus on his Rebbi’s good points? This is a weak approach, and it will not really work.

The answer is, as the Mishnah says: “Make for yourself a teacher”. In other words, the Mishnah is addressing us even when we see doubts in our teacher. If we look at our Rebbi as merely a wise person, then we will prefer only a Rebbi whom we find to be to our liking, but if we see that the Rebbi isn’t similar to our liking, we will end up focusing on his weaknesses. (Of course, we will notice his good points to…) This is obviously not the intention of the Mishnah. Rather, we are supposed to have emunas chachamim and see the Rav as a revelation of the Shechinah. We are able to see our Rebbi as if he’s perfect! Of course, no one is perfect, and there is no Rebbi who is perfect. But when we have emunah that the Shechinah can speak from our Rebbi to us, then we can rely on our Rebbi – because the Shechinah is, after all, perfect.

Along these lines, the Maharal explains that “make for yourself a teacher” connotes that the Rebbi is already made and complete for us. It doesn’t mean that the Rebbi is perfect; it means that we can see perfection being revealed through him, because we can have emunah that the Shechinah can speak from him. Thus, every Rebbi is already “complete” for you, and you only have to believe in him.

There are many rabbonim (Torah authorities) in Klal Yisrael. Throughout all the generations, there have always been doubts about rabbonim, because how do we know if the Rav is imparting to us the wisdom of G-d? This is an especially strong point, for we know that even Hashem does not trust the holiest tzaddikim, as we mentioned before. So how can we be confident in any Rav?

The answer is: When we see only good in others. Bilaam proclaimed, “I do not see any sin in Yaakov.” He saw that in essence, there is no evil in the Jewish people, and that there is only G-dliness revealed in us. Therefore, even if we see some deficiency in a Rav, we must remember that there is a G-dliness in every Jew. We can enter a world in which we see only good.

Therefore, “Make for yourself a teacher” is not just a means for us to avoid doubts. There is another point contained in this, and it is contained in the words of the Mishnah, “I have learned much from my teachers…and from my students, I have learned the most of all.” When a student sees only good in his Rebbi, and he sees no bad in him, he actually uplifts his Rebbi into becoming a completely good being!

This is the depth of emunas chachamim. When we believe in the words of our teachers, it is not simply as a means for us to be able to receive knowledge from them. It is rather that because we place trust in them, we uplift our own teacher in doing so. Until we have this inner perspective, we see our Rebbi as having much good in him, along with some bad; when we attain the inner perspective, we see our Rebbi as having only good qualities in him, and if we have this belief, we indeed uplift the Rebbi to an entirely good place.

If we achieve this perspective, we are essentially revealing total good on this world, which is a mixture of good and evil; we reveal complete good amongst the huge mixture of good and evil going on in the world.

“Make for yourself a teacher.” The Hebrew word for “make” is asey, which is related to the word asiyah, action. The Mishnah is hinting to us that even as we living in this world of action – asiyah, the lowest realm – which is a world that is mostly bad and contains only a small amount of good – if we make for ourselves a Rav, we reveal complete good amidst this world. When we reveal complete good amidst this world, we achieve the greatest rectification for this world, asiyah.

This is the amazing depth behind the concept of emunas chachamim. It is to reveal belief in the complete good in another, amidst this current world of asiyah, which is mostly evil. When we make for ourselves a Rav, not only do we connect to the middos and wisdom of the Rav, but we connect as well to his deeds.

In the future, we will once again return to the state of before Adam’s sin, in which he had no Rebbi – a level in which there was no need for any teacher, because all the wisdom can be learned from within ourselves.