Rabbi Nechunyah ben Hakkanah said, “All who take upon themselves the yoke of Torah, the yoke of the government and the yoke of social interaction are lifted from them. And all those who break off the yoke of Torah, have placed upon them the yoke of the government and the yoke of social interaction.”
Pirkei Avot 3:5
The sages of old, the rabbis of the mishnah and talmud, lived in trying times. Jewish sovereignty was limited by the Roman Empire. There was division among the Jewish polity about how to deal with that lack of independence, which caused great infighting among Jews - those who wanted to fight the Romans (Zealots) as the Maccabees had fought the Syrian Greeks; those who wanted things to stay as they were (Sadducees); those who thought the whole system was corrupt and were waiting in the desert for God to sort it out (Essenes); and those who imagined a new way without sovereignty, and without the Temple (Pharisees). Each not only engaged with the Romans in the way they thought best, but also fought viciously with the others. Over the first century of the Common Era, the Essenes disappeared, the Sadducees lost the Temple and became the Karaites, the Zealots rebelled and rebelled until the Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem renamed, and the Pharisees developed the rabbinic Judaism that we inherited today. Rabbinic Judaism, led by Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, reached an accord with the Roman government: you let us study and adapt Judaism to a model of study, prayer, and commandments, and we will cede higher governmental authority to you. (For example, they downplayed the rebellious nature of the Maccabean revolt, and lifted up the miracle of the oil that lasted for eight days.) By and large, this strategy was followed by most Jews until the rise of the modern state of Israel in the 20th century.
If we take Rabbi Nechunyah’s message at face value, perhaps the way that the rabbis first intended, the idea was that those who engaged in Torah study would not have to worry about anything else - to withdraw from society into Yavneh, where the first yeshivot were created. As history progressed, there was a development of separation, where those who lived in the world of Jewish study ignored the larger world around them, to bury themselves in study. The statement was a warning - if you lift your head up from the text, you will be overwhelmed by society - both the government and those around you.
Perhaps in modern times, we need to understand this statement in a different way. The rabbis viewed that living by halachah - the idea that everything in life was guided by the mitzvot, and that there was a mandated path for each moment - was accepting the yoke of the Torah. In return for God freeing us from Egypt - the yoke of slavery, we willingly placed ourselves under the yoke of God’s covenant at Mount Sinai.
But, what is a yoke? We think of the heavy wood bars placed over a team of oxen that forces them to work, but that yoke is what allows two to work together, and accomplish what they could not on their own. The yoke is a means by which we can pull together and complete what might have been insurmountable tasks. For example, it would be impossible for you or I to create the system of roads, bridges, and tunnels that reach from our houses to New York City, where so many members of the congregation once (or still do) commute to work (or the internet that many of us are using to work from home). Yoked together by our government, we have the ability to give a little of what we have so those roads can be built and maintained so that we can work and earn the money to live and support our families. The yoke of Torah can be onerous - we are told to love our neighbors as ourselves. If we would reject that yoke, we would still be required, per Rabbi Nechunya, to support others - both through the government and through our personal interactions. Perhaps the message of this adage for us is that even if we wished to retreat into ourselves, we still have a responsibility for those around us.
In these turbulent times, with neighbor sometimes fighting with neighbor, and even within families, it would behoove us to remember that no matter how we choose to live - by Torah or not, or, like most of us, balanced somewhere in between, we still need to pull together to get things done. Especially at this moment, when some of us are asked to stay in our homes, others are asked to put themselves at risk - to provide healthcare; to farm, transport, package, cook, and distribute food; to maintain public safety; and, even, to care for the infrastructure which makes all this possible. No matter what yoke we wear, we should remember that we are all pulling together. If we can figure out a way to pull in the same direction, imagine how far we can go.
Rabbi Abraham
