Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says, ‘On three things the world endures: On Judgement, on Truth and on Peace.”
Earlier we had read that Simon the Just said, “On three things the world stands: On Learning, on Service and on Lovingkindness.”
What is the difference between a world which stands on principles versus a world which endures because of principles?
The Sages propose that what the world stands on are the very foundations of the world’s existence. A world without learning, service to God, and acts of lovingkindness is world that collapses upon itself toward extinction.
Rabbi Pinhas Kehati says that with regard to Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel’s view that Judgement, Truth and Peace cause the world to endure, to last, to persist, if you will, is the “socio-political framework of the world…for without it the society would be filled with violence, and human civilization would disintegrate.”
The authors of Pirke Avot lived in radically tumultuous times. On one hand there was the seductive intellectual allure of Hellenism as exemplified by the vast empirical power of the Roman Empire. On the other hand there was Judaism’s enduring faith in God which had already not only survived but endured, despite unspeakable suffering and mass death, the empires of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia and Persia.
The survival of the Jewish people, in every age, requires endurance, to be sure. And a Judaism rooted in Judgement, Truth and Peace unleashes, in every generation, a lasting moral structure not only for our own people but for the entire world.
As we enter into the first Shabbat of this year’s Passover festival during violent, dangerous, painful, fraught times, remember with strength that we have always endured; remember with love that Judgement, Truth and Peace have sustained us generation after generation; and remember that the reason we have endured as we have is not only because we articulate the ideas that are our sacred inheritance but that we do them, we perform them, we reify them each day and every day, so that we and our world may live.
Shabbat Shalom