Consideration of the transvaluation of value brings us to the successor-system’s counterpart category, that is, the one that in context forms the counterpart to the Mishnah’s concrete, this-worldly, material and tangible definition of value in conformity with the familiar, philosophical economics.1 We have now to ask, what, in place of the received definition of value and the economics thereof, did the new system set forth?
The transformation of economics involved the redefinition of scarce and valued resources in so radical a manner that the concept of value, while remaining material in consequence and character, nonetheless took on a quite different sense altogether.2 The counterpart category of the successor-system, represented by the authorships responsible for the final composition of the Yerushalmi, Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana, concerned themselves with the same questions as did the conventional economics, presenting an economics in function and structure, but one that concerned things of value other than those identified by the initial system. So indeed we deal with an economics of the rational disposition of scarce resources that addressed something other than real estate.
But it was an economics just as profoundly embedded in the social order, just as deeply a political economics, just as pervasively a systemic economics, as the economics of the Mishnah and of Aristotle. Why so? Because issues such as the definition of wealth, the means of production and the meaning of control thereof, the disposition of wealth through distributive or other media, theory of money, reward for labor, and the like—all these issues found their answers in the counterpart-category of economics, as much as in the received and conventional philosophical economics. The new “scarce resource” accomplished what the old did, but it was a different resource, a new currency. At stake in the category meant to address the issues of the way of life of the social entity, therefore, were precisely the same considerations as confront economics in its (to us) conventional and commonplace, philosophical sense. But since the definition of wealth changes, as we have already seen, from land to Torah, much else would be transformed on that account.
So in the formation of the counterpart-category of value other than real value but in function and in social meaning value nonetheless, we witness the transformation of a system from philosophy to religion. We err profoundly if we suppose that in contrasting land to Torah and affirming that true value lies in Torah, the framers of the successor-system have formulated an essentially spiritual or otherwise immaterial conception for themselves, that is, a surrogate for economics in the conventional sense. That is not what happened. What we have is an economics that answers the questions economics answers. But it is a system that has chosen Torah-learning as its definition of that scarce resource that requires a rational policy for preservation and enhancement. Land produced a living; so did Torah. Land formed the foundation of the social entity, so did Torah.
The economics concerning the rational management and increase of scarce resources worked itself out in such a way as to answer, for quite different things of value from real property or from capital such as we know as value, precisely the same questions that the received economics addressed in connection with wealth of a real character: land and its produce. Systemic transformation comes to the surface in articulated symbolic change. The utter transvaluation of value finds expression in a jarring juxtaposition, an utter shift of rationality, specifically, the substitution of Torah for real estate. We recall how in a successor-document (but in none prior to the fifth century compilations) Tarfon thought wealth took the form of land, while Aqiba explained to him that wealth takes the form of Torah-learning. That the sense is material and concrete is explicit: land for Torah, Torah for land. Thus, to repeat the matter of how Torah serves as an explicit symbol to convey the systemic worldview, let us note the main point of the now-familiar passage:
The successor-system has its own definitions not only for learning, symbolized by the word Torah but also for wealth, expressed in the same symbol. Accordingly, the category-formation for worldview, Torah in place of philosophy, dictates, as a matter of fact, a still more striking category-reformation, in which the entire matter of scarce resources is reconsidered, and a counterpart-category set forth. When “Torah” substitutes for real estate, what, exactly, does the successor-system know as scarce resources, and how is the counterpart-category constructed?
Let us begin with a simple definition of “value.” While bearing a variety of inchoate meanings, associated with belief, conviction, ideal, moral preference, and the like, the word to begin with bears an entirely concrete sense. Value means that which people value, under ordinary circumstances, what they hold to be of concrete, tangible, material worth. What is “of value” conventionally is what provides a life of comfort and sustenance and material position.3 In commonplace language, “value” (as distinct, therefore, from the vague term, “values”) refers to those scarce resources to the rational management and increase of which economics devotes its attention: real wealth.4 This means, in our contemporary context, capital, and in the context of Aristotle’s and the Mishnah’s economics, real estate.5 Then when I speak of the transvaluation of value, I mean that the material and concrete things of worth were redefined—even while subjected to an economics functioning in the system as the counterpart to the initial economics of the Mishnah and of Aristotle. In the successor-writings ownership of land, even in the Land of Israel, contrasts with wealth in another form altogether, and the contrast that was drawn was material and concrete, not merely symbolic and spiritual. It was material and tangible and palpable because it produced this-worldly gains, e.g., a life of security, comfort, ease, as these too found definition in the systemic context of the here and the now.
It follows that, while in the successor system’s theory of the component of the social order represented by the way of life, we find an economics, it is an economics of scarce resources defined as something other than particular real estate.
Why do I insist that these questions are economic in character? It is because they deal with the rules or theory of the rational management of scarce resources, their preservation and increase, and do so in commonplace terms of philosophical economics, e.g., the control of the means of production, the definition of money and of value, the distribution of valued goods and services, whether by appeal to the market or to a theory of distributive economics, the theory of the value of labor and the like. But while the structure remained the same, the contents radically would differ, hence the transvaluation of value. It was as if a new currency were issued to replace the old, then declared of no value, capable of purchasing nothing worth having. In such an economics, there is far more than a currency-reform, but rather a complete economic revolution, a new beginning, as much as a shift from socialism to capitalism. But the transvaluation, in our case, was more thorough-going still, since involved was the very reconsideration of the scarcity of scarce resources. Both elements then underwent transvaluation: the definition of resources of value, the rationality involved in the management of scarcity. In a word, while real estate cannot increase and by definition must always prove scarce, the value represented by Torah could expand without limit. Value could then increase indefinitely, resources that were desired and scarce be made ever more abundant, in the transformed economics of the successor-system.
While responding to the same questions of that same part of the social order with which the received category concerned itself, the economics that emerged in no way proves discontinuous with the received economics. Why not just another economics than the philosophical one we have considered? The reason is that so abrupt and fundamental a reworking will be seen to have taken place that the category—way of life—while yet an economics—nonetheless is now a wholly-other economics, one completely without relationship to the inherited definition of way of life (manner of earning a living) as to both structure and system.
For at stake is not merely the spiritualization of wealth, that is to say, the re-presentation of what “wealth” really consists of in other-than-material terms.6 That would represent not an economics but a theology. For example, the familiar saying in tractate Abot, “Who is rich? One who is happy in his lot,” simply does not constitute a statement of economics at all. Like sayings in the Gospels that denigrate wealth, this one tells nothing about the rational management (e.g., increase) of scarce resources, it merely tells about appropriate moral attitudes of a virtuous order: how life is worth living, not answering an economic question at all. On the other hand, the tale that contrasts wealth in the form of land and its produce with wealth in the form of Torah (whatever is meant by “Torah”) does constitute a statement of economics. The reason is that the story-teller invokes precisely the category of wealth—real property—that conventional economics defines as wealth. If I have land, I have wealth, and I can support myself; if I have Torah, I have wealth, and I can support myself. Those form the two components of the contrastive equation before us. But then wealth is disenlandised, and the Torah substituted for real property of all kinds. That forms not a theology, nor an economics in any conventional sense, bur, rather, an anti-economics. The same will be seen to be so in politics.
Take, for example, the as in the following explicit statement that a sentence of the Torah is more valuable than a pearl:
Y PEAH 1:1 XVII (TRANS. BY ROGER BROOKS)
If I have words of the Torah in hand, there are scarce resources in my possession that I otherwise do not have: security, for example, against whatever demons may want to harm me in my sleep.7
Why do I insist that these kinds of stories deal with scarce resources in a concrete sense? Because in both cases cited to this point the upshot of the possession of Torah is this-worldly, concrete, tangible, and palpable. The rewards are not described as “filling treasuries in the heart,” nor do they “enrich the soul,” nor are they postponed to the world to come (as would be the case in a kind of capitalistic theology of investment on earth for return in heaven). The tale concerning Aqiba and Tarfon, like the one involving Rabbi and Ardaban, insists upon precisely the same results of the possession of wealth of value in the form of “Torah” as characterize wealth or value in the form of real estate. The key-language is this: “Go, buy us a piece of land, so we can get a living from it and labor in the study of Torah together.” Tarfon assumes owning land buys leisure for Torah-study; Aqiba does not contradict that assumption, he steps beyond it.
Then one thing forms the counterpart and opposite of the other—anti-economics, economics, respectively—but both things yield a single result: wealth to sustain leisure, which any reader of Xenophon’s handbook on economics (estate management, in his context) will have found an entirely commonplace and obviously true judgment. That explains why the form that wealth in the successor-system now takes—Torah rather than real estate—presents a jarring contrast, one that is, of course, the point of the story. And as a matter of fact, as we shall see in just a moment, that jarring contrast will have proved unintelligible to any authorship prior to the second stage in the formation of the canonical writings and explicitly contradicts the sense of matters that predominates in the first stage: the Torah is not to be made “a spade to dig with” (whatever that can have meant). In Tarfon’s mind, therefore, real (in the theological sense) value is real (in the economic sense) wealth, that is, real estate, because if you own land, you can enjoy the leisure to do what you really want to do, which (as every philosopher understood) is to study (in the sages’ case) the Torah together. But to Aqiba, in the tale, that is beside the point, since the real (in the theological sense) value (in the economic sense, that is, what provides a living, food to eat for instance) is Torah (study), and that, in itself, suffices. The sense is, if I have land, I have a living, and if I have Torah, I have a living, which is no different from the living that I have from land—but which, as a matter of fact, is more secure.
Owning land involved control of the means of production, and so did knowing the Torah. But—more to the point—from land people derived a living, and from Torah people derived a living in precisely the same sense—that is to say, in the material and concrete sense—in which from land they could do so. That is alleged time and again, and at stake then is not the mere denigration of wealth but the transvaluation of value. Then the transvaluation consisted in [1] the disenlandisement of value, and [2] the transvaluation of (knowing or studying) the Torah, the imputation to Torah of the value formerly associated with land. And that is why it is valid to claim for Torah the status of a counterpart-category: the system’s economics, its theory of the way of life of the community and account of the rational disposition of those scarce resources that made everyday material existence possible and even pleasant: an economics of wealth, but of wealth differently defined, while similarly valued and utilized.8
For as with Aristotle, when the authorship of the Mishnah conducted discourse upon economic questions, they understood wealth in entirely this-worldly terms. The Torah formed a component in the system of hierarchical classification, not a unit of value or a measure of worth. By contrast, as we shall see, in the successor-system portrayed by the Talmud of the Land of Israel, Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and their companions, the concept of scarce resources was linked to the conception of Torah and so took on altogether fresh meanings, but in exactly the same context and producing exactly the same material consequences, e.g., having food to eat and a dwelling for shelter, with the result that we have to redefine that which serves the very category, “economics,” altogether. Why is this necessary? It is because of those transvaluations, already cited, of value stated explicitly and baldly in the contrast between land and Torah. When the successor-documents contrast the received value with the value they recognize, then we must ask about the formation of the counterpart-category and consider how to make sense of that category.
Accordingly, I have now to show that when our authorship spoke of Torah, they addressed the issues of scarce resources in the way in which, when the authorship of the Mishnah or Aristotle spoke of real wealth, they addressed those same issues. Then we require an account of the goods and services assigned the status of “scarce resources,” and thence we shall define the theory of rational disposition that in the successor-system constitutes the economics. The questions are the same. But they are addressed to different things of value, different scarce resources altogether, and the systemic goal is to make abundant what has been scarce.9
Since Torah—left undefined for the moment—now forms the definition of wealth,10 a question immediately confronts us. It is, has that sense of the word really changed so considerably from its representation in the first stratum of the literature that we must impute to the word meanings represented as both fresh and simply not considered in the initial economics of the first Judaism? That is to say, was Torah in the Mishnah not that same ultimate value that it became in the successor-system? If it was, then any claim that Torah has replaced real estate as the definition of value and worth—the transvaluation of value in a very concrete sense—is simply beside the point. In the initial system—it may be claimed—Torah stood for something of ultimate worth, right alongside real property and its equivalents, each in its own context, each for its own purpose.
I have now to turn back to the issue of the standing and meaning of Torah in the Mishnah and to demonstrate that in the Mishnah, Torah, now to be defined as Torah-learning, in no way functions as a scarce resource; in no way occupies the position, as a statement of real worth and value, that it gained in the successor-system and in the writings that adumbrate it. In the Mishnah, if I know Torah, I enter a certain status, since knowledge of Torah forms part of the taxic structure of the Mishnah’s social system. But if I know the Torah, I have still to earn a living, and scarce resources are defined, we already know, by real estate and equivalents.
To make that point stick, I have now to show that, in the Mishnah, Torah stands for status but produces no consequences of a material order, or, as a matter of fact, even for one’s caste-status. It is the simple fact that studying the Torah is deemed an action to which accrues unlimited benefit. This is made explicit:
M. PEAH. 1:1A-E
(TRANS. BY ROGER BROOKS, IN NEUSNER, MISHNAH, PP. 14-15).
A. These are things that have no specified measure: the quantity of produce designated as peah; the quantity of produce given as firstfruits, the value of the appearance offering, the performance of righteous deeds, and time spent in study of Torah.
B. These are things the benefit of which a person enjoys in this world, while the principal remains for him in the world to come: deeds in honor of father and mother, performance of righteous deeds, and acts which bring peace between a man and his fellow.
C. But the study of Torah is as important as all of them all together
The study of Torah, or knowledge of the Torah, is equivalent to a variety of other meritorious actions, e.g., designating produce as “corner of the field” for use by the scheduled castes; bringing an offering of high cost; honoring parents. Among these comparable deeds, study of the Torah enjoys pride of place. But the rewards are not worldly, not material, not palpable. If I know the Torah, I enjoy a higher status than if I do not; but I have still to work for a living.11
Knowledge of the Torah did not define the qualifications of the highest offices, for instance, a member of the priestly caste could be high priest and not have mastered the Torah:
A. If the high priest was a sage, he expounds the relevant Scriptures of the Day of Atonement, and if not, disciples of sages expound for him. If he was used to reading Scriptures, he read, and if not, they read for him
Not only so, but the Mishnah knows nothing of using holy funds to support disciples of sages, e.g., M. Meg. 3:1: Townsfolk who sold a street of a town buy with its proceeds a synagogue, and so on. Mishnah-tractate Sheqalim, with its account of the use of public funds for the Temple, never supposes that disciples of sages associated with the Temple may be paid from the public funds represented by the sheqel-tax.
This underlines the simple fact that in the Mishnah it is not assumed that a disciple of a sage gets support on account of his Torah-study, and it also is not assumed that the sages makes his living through Torah-study, or other Torah-activities. Knowledge of the Torah or the act of study enjoys no material value. For instance, an act of betrothal requires an exchange of something of value; among the examples of value the act of study or teaching of the Torah is never offered, e.g., “Lo, thou art betrothed to me in exchange for my teaching you [or your brother or your father] a teaching of the Torah” is never suggested as a possibility. So Torah-learning is not material and produces no benefits of a material character. Sages’ status may derive from knowledge of Torah, but that status is not confused with the material consideration involved in who may matter whom. In M Qid. 4:1 sages do not form a caste. “Ten castes came up from Babylonia,” but the “status” of sage has no bearing upon his caste status. Then what difference does Torah-study or Torah-knowledge make? It is, as I have stressed, one of taxic consequence and one of status, but with no bearing whatsoever upon one’s livelihood. Here are the important statements of the taxic value of knowledge of the Torah, and in them all, what is gained is not of a material or concrete order at all:
M. BABA MESIA 2:11
In this passage Torah-learning has not attained practical consequence. That is to say, there is no theory that, because the master has studied Torah, therefore the master does not have to earn a living (“carrying heavy burdens”). The same is so in the following:
M. HORAYOT 3:6-8
3:6 A. |
Whatever is offered more regularly than its fellow takes precedence over its fellow, and whatever is more holy than its fellow takes precedence over its fellow. |
B. |
[If] a bullock of an anointed priest and a bullock of the congregation [M. Hor. 1:5] are standing [awaiting sacrifice] — |
C. |
the bullock of the anointed [high priest] takes precedence over the bullock of the congregation in all rites pertaining to it. |
3:7 A. |
The man takes precedence over the woman in the matter of the saving of life and in the matter of returning lost property. |
B. |
But a woman takes precedence over a man in the matter of [providing] clothing and redemption from captivity. |
C. |
When both of them are standing in danger of defilement, the man takes precedence over the woman. |
3:8 A. |
A priest takes precedence over a Levite, a Levite over an Israelite, an Israelite over a mamzer, a mamzer over a Netin, a Netin over a proselyte, a proselyte over a freed slave. |
B. |
Under what circumstances? |
C. |
When all of them are equivalent. |
D. |
But if the mamzer was a disciple of a sage and a high priest was an am haares, the mamzer who is a disciple of a sage takes precedence over a high priest who is an am haares. |
What is explicit here is that knowledge of the Torah does not change one’s caste-status, e.g., priest or mamzer or Netin, and that caste-status does govern whom one may marry, a matter of substantial economic consequence. But it does change one’s status as to precedence of another order altogether—one that is curiously unspecific at M. Horayot 3:8. Hierarchical classification for its own sake, lacking all practical consequence, characterizes the Mishnah’s system, defining, after all, its purpose and its goal! Along these same lines, the premise of tractate Sanhedrin is that the sage is judge and administrator of the community; knowledge of the Torah qualifies him; but knowledge of the Torah does not provide a living or the equivalent of a living. No provision for supporting the sage as administrator, clerk, or judge is suggested in the tractate.
What about knowledge of Torah as a way of making one’s living? In the list of professions by which men make a living we find several positions. First is that of Meir and Simeon:
MISHNAH QIDDUSHIN 4:14
E. |
R. Meir says, “A man should always teach his son a clean and easy trade. And let him pray to him to whom belong riches and possessions. |
G. |
“For there is no trade which does not involve poverty or wealth. |
H. |
“For poverty does not come from one’s trade, nor does wealth come from one’s trade. |
I. |
“But all is in accord with a man’s merit.” |
J. |
R. Simeon b. Eleazar says, “Have you ever seen a wild beast or a bird who has a trade? Yet they get along without difficulty. And were they not created only to serve me? And I was created to serve my Master. So is it not logical that I should get along without difficulty? But I have done evil and ruined my living.” |
One’s merit makes the difference between poverty and wealth, or one’s sinfulness. A more practical position is that which follows in the continuation of the passage:
K. |
Abba Gurion of Sidon says in the name of Abba Gurya, “A man should not teach his son to be an ass driver, a camel driver, a barber, a sailor, a herdsman, or a shopkeeper For their trade is the trade of thieves.” |
L. |
R. Judah says in his name, “Most ass drivers are evil, most camel drivers are decent, most sailors are saintly, the best among physicians is going to Gehenna, and the best of butchers is a partner of Amalek.” |
The third view is that of Nehorai, who holds that Torah suffices as a means for making a living:
Does Nehorai tell us that if we study the Torah, we will have all our worldly needs met, as Aqiba tells Tarfon that Torah is the counterpart of real estate but a more secure investment? I think not. Quite to the contrary, precisely why Torah works as it does is made explicit at R: “It keeps him from evil when he is young.” That is to say, the position of Meir and Simeon is repeated, only in a fresh way. If I know the Torah, I will not sin. The conception that, if I study Torah, I automatically get the food I need to eat and the roof I need for shelter is not at issue here, where our concern is with being kept from evil in youth and enjoying God’s blessing in old age on account of keeping the Torah—a very different thing, as we shall see presently.
The first apologia for the Mishnah, tractate Abot, takes the view that one should not make one’s living through study of the Torah. That is made explicit in Torah-sayings of tractate Abot, where we find explicit rejection of the theory of Torah-study as a means of avoiding one’s obligation to earn a living. Torah-study without a craft is rejected, Torah-study along with labor at a craft is defined as the ideal way of life. The following sayings make that point quite clearly:
M. ABOT 2:2 AND 3:17
2:2 A. Rabban Gamaliel, a son of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch says: Fitting is learning in the Torah along with a craft, for the labor put into the two of them makes one forget sin. And all learning of the Torah which is not joined with labor is destined to be null and causes sin.
3:17 A. R. Eleazar b. Azariah says, “. . . If there is no sustenance [lit.: flour], there is no Torah-learning. If there is no Torah-learning, there is no sustenance.”
Here there is no contrast between two forms of wealth, one less secure, the other more. The way of virtue lies rather in economic activity in the conventional sense, joined to intellectual or philosophical activity in sages’ sense. Again, Xenophon will not have been surprised. The labor in Torah is not an economic activity and produces no solutions to this-worldly problems of getting food, shelter, clothing. To the contrary, labor in Torah defines the purpose of human life; it is the goal; but it is not the medium for maintaining life and avoiding starvation or exposure to the elements. So too, Tosefta’s complement to the Mishnah is explicit in connection with M. Gittin 1:7A, “a commandment pertaining to the father concerning the son:”
T. QIDDUSHIN 1:11E-G
It is to circumcise him, redeem him [should he be kidnapped], teach him Torah, teach him a trade, and marry him off to a girl
There clearly is no conception that if one studies Torah, he need not work for a living, nor in the Tosefta’s complement to the Mishnah does anyone imagine that merit is gained by supporting those who study the Torah.
Yohanan ben Zakkai speaks of Torah-study as the goal of a human life, on the one side, and a reward paid for Torah study, clearly in a theological sense and context, on the other. That the context of Torah-study is religious and not economic in any sense is shown by Hananiah’s saying, which is explicit: if people talk about the Torah, the Presence of God joins them to participate:
M. ABOT 2:8, 2:16, 3:2
2:8 A. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai received [the Torah] from Hillel and Shammai. He would say: If you have learned much Torah, do not puff yourself up on that account, for it was for that purpose that you were created.
2:16 A. He would say: It’s not your job to finish the work, but you are not free to walk away from it. If you have learned much Torah, they will give you a good reward. And your employer can be depended upon to pay your wages for what you do. And know what sort of reward is going to be given to the righteous in the coming time.
3:2B R. Hananiah b. Teradion says, “[If] two sit together and between them do not pass teachings of the Torah, lo, this is a seat of the scornful, as it is said, Nor sits in the seat of the scornful (Ps. 1:1). But two who are sitting, and words of the Torah do pass between them – the Presence is with them, “as it is said, Then they that feared the Lord spoke with one another, and the Lord hearkened and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him, for them that feared the Lord and gave thought to his name (Mal 3:16).” I know that this applies to two. How do I know that even if a single person sits and works on the Torah, the Holy One, blessed be He, set aside a reward for him? As it is said, Let him sit alone and keep silent, because he has laid it upon him (Lam. 3:28).
Do worldly benefits accrue to those who study the Torah? The rabbi cited in the following statement maintains that it is entirely inappropriate to utilize Torah-learning to gain either social standing or economic gain:
M. ABOT 4:5
B R. Sadoq says, “Do not make [Torah-teachings] a crown in which to glorify yourself or a spade with which to dig. So did Hillel say, “He who uses the crown perishes. Thus have you learned: Whoever derives worldly benefit from teachings of the Torah takes his life out of this world.”
I cannot think of a statement more likely to startle the author of the story involving Aqiba and Tarfon than this one, since Aqiba’s position is precisely the one rejected here. It is the simple fact that the bulk of opinion in the Mishnah and in tractate Abot identifies Torah-learning with status within a system of hierarchical classification, not with a medium for earning a living. Admittedly that is not the only position that is represented. The following seems to me to contrast working for a living with studying Torah and to maintain that the latter will provide a living, without recourse to hard labor:
M. ABOT 3:15
A. R. Nehunia b. Haqqaneh says, “From whoever accepts upon himself the yoke of the Torah do they remove the yoke of the state and the yoke of hard labor. And upon whoever removes from himself the yoke of the Torah do they lay the yoke of the state and the yoke of hard labor.”
But the prevailing view, represented by the bulk of sayings, treats Torah-study as an activity that competes with economic venture and insists that Torah-study take precedence, even though it is not of economic value in any commonplace sense of the words. That is explicitly imputed to Meir and to Jonathan in the following:
M. ABOT 4:10
4:10 A. R. Meir says, “Keep your business to a minimum and make your business the Torah. And be humble before everybody. And if you treat the Torah as nothing, you will have many treating you as nothing. And if you have labored in the Torah, [the Torah] has a great reward to give you.”
4:9 A. R. Jonathan says, “Whoever keeps the Torah when poor will in the end keep it in wealth. And whoever treats the Torah as nothing when he is wealthy in the end will treat it as nothing in poverty.”
Torah-study competes with, rather than replaces, with economic activity. That is the simple position of tractate Abot, extending the conception of matters explicit in the Mishnah. If I had to make a simple statement of the situation prevailing at ca. 250, sages contrast their wealth, which is spiritual and intellectual, with material wealth; they do not deem the one to form the counterpart of the other, but only as the opposite.
And that brings us to consider the re-presentation of wealth in the successor-documents and to seek a richer sample of opinion than the story that ended the preceding chapter and that, I maintain, frames the new economics of the successor system. A system that declares forbidden using the Torah as a spade with which to dig, as a means of making one’s living, will have found proof for its position in the numerous allegations in Wisdom literature that the value of wisdom, understood of course as the Torah is beyond price: “Happy is the man who finds wisdom . . . for the gain from it is better than gain from silver, and its profit better than gold; she is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her . . . .” (Prov. 3:13-15). That and numerous parallels were not understood to mean that if people devoted themselves to the study of the Torah and the teaching thereof, they would not have to work any more. Nor do the praises of wisdom specifically contrast Torah-learning with land-ownership. But in the successor-writings, that is precisely what is commonplace. And the conclusion is drawn that one may derive one’s living from study of the Torah: then a spade with which to dig, as much as a real spade served to dig in the earth to make the ground yield a living.
The issue of scarce resources in the context of a society that highly valued honor and despised and feared shame was phrased not only in terms of material wealth but also of worldly repute. Knowledge of the Torah served as did coins, that is, to circulate the name of the holy man or woman (Abraham or Sarah, in this context), all figures to whom, quite naturally, heroic deeds of Torah-learning and - teaching were attributed:
GENESIS RABBAH XXXIX:XI.5
“Coinage” is meant to be jarring, to draw an ironic contrast between true currency, which is the repute that is gained through godly service, and worldly currency; king’s use their coins to make their persons and policies known, so do the saints. But this is not, by itself, a saying that assigns to Torah the value equivalent to coins.
But, of course, it cannot make such an assignment, since the value imputed to Torah-study and teaching compares not to (mere) currency, which, in the context of Aristotelian and Mishnaic economics, bore the merely contingent value of a commodity, but only to land. So can we find in the successor-writings clear affirmations, beyond the one now cited concerning Tarfon and Aqiba, that compare land with the Torah? For one thing, the Torah serves as Israel’s deed to the land, and, it must follow, knowledge of the Torah is what demonstrates one’s right to possess the one resource found worth having:
GENESIS RABBAH I.II.1.
1. A. |
R. Joshua of Sikhnin in the name of R. Levi commenced [discourse by citing the following verse]: “‘He has declared to his people the power of his works, in giving them the heritage of the nations’ (Ps. 111:6). |
B. |
“What is the reason that the Holy One, blessed be he, revealed to Israel what was created on the first day and what on the second? |
C. |
“It was on account of the nations of the world. It was so that they should not ridicule the Israelites, saying to them, ‘Are you not a nation of robbers [having stolen the land from the Canaanites]?’ |
D. |
“It allows the Israelites to answer them, ‘And as to you, is there no spoil in your hands? For surely: “The Caphtorim, who came forth out of Caphtor, destroyed them and dwelled in their place” (Deut. 2:23)! |
E. |
“‘The world and everything in it belongs to the Holy One, blessed be he. When he wanted, he gave it to you, and when he wanted, he took it from you and gave it to us.’ |
F. |
“That is in line with what is written, ‘. . . . in giving them the heritage of the nations, he has declared to his people the power of his works’ (Ps. 111:6).. [So as to give them the land, he established his right to do so by informing them that he had created it.] |
G. |
“He told them about the beginning: ‘In the beginning God created . . .” (Gen. 1:1).” |
While pertinent, the passage is hardly probative; all we have here is the linkage of Torah to land, but for merely instrumental purposes. Not only so, but the conception of riches in the conventional philosophical sense certainly persisted. “Abram was very rich in cattle” is understood quite literally, interpreted in line with Ps. 105:37: “He brought them forth with silver with gold, and there was none that stumbled among his tribes.”12
Along these same lines, “Jacob’s riches” of Gen. 30:43 are understood to be material and concrete: sixty-thousand dogs, for example.13 One may interpret the story of the disinheritance of Eliezer b. Hyrcanus on account of his running off to study the Torah with Yohanan ben Zakkai as a contrasting tale, therefore. The father intended to disinherit the son from his property because he had gone to study the Torah but then, impressed by his achievements, goes and gives him the whole estate.14 But that would require us to read into the story a symbolic transaction that is not explicit. So too the allegation that “Torah” is represented by bread does not require, and perhaps does not even sustain, the interpretation that Torah-learning forms a scarce resource that provides bread and that is worth bread and that serves as does bread:
GENESIS RABBAH LXX:V.1
A. “. . . will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear:”
B. Aqilas the proselyte came to R. Eliezer and said to him, “Is all the gain that is coming to the proselyte going to be contained in this verse: ‘. . . and loves the proselyte, giving him food and clothing’ (Deut. 10:18)?”
C. He said to him, “And is something for which the old man [Jacob] beseeched going to be such a small thing in your view namely, ‘. . . will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear’? [God] comes and hands it over to [a proselyte] on a reed [and the proselyte does not have to beg for it].”
D. He came to R. Joshua, who commenced by saying words to appease him: “‘Bread’ refers to Torah, as it is said, ‘Come, eat of my bread’ (Prov. 9:5). ‘Clothing’ refers to the cloak of a disciple of sages.
E. “When a person has the merit of studying the Torah, he has the merit of carrying out a religious duty. [So the proselyte receives a great deal when he gets bread and clothing, namely, entry into the estate of disciples].
F. “And not only so, but his daughters may be chosen for marriage into the priesthood, so that their sons’ sons will offer burnt-offerings on the altar. [So the proselyte may also look forward to entry into the priests’ caste. That statement will now be spelled out.]
G. “‘Bread’ refers to the show-bread.’
H. “‘Clothing’ refers to the garments of the priesthood.’
I. “So lo, we deal with the sanctuary.
J. “How do we know that the same sort of blessing applies in the provinces? ‘Bread’ speaks of the dough-offering [that is separated in the provinces], ‘while ‘clothing’ refers to the first fleece [handed over to the priest].”
Here too, we may reasonably interpret the passage in a merely symbolic way: “bread” stands for Torah-learning, because just as bread sustains the body, so Torah-learning sustains the soul. That and similar interpretations offer plausible alternatives to the conception that Torah-learning now forms that scarce resource that defines value in the way in which land for Aristotle or Israelite-occupied land in the Land of Israel for the Mishnah forms the final arbiter in the identification of scarce resources.
But there are passages that are quite explicit: land is wealth, or Torah is wealth, but not both; owning land is power and studying Torah permits (re)gaining power. To take the first of the two propositions in its most explicit formulation:
LEVITICUS RABBAH XXX:I.4.
The sale of land for the acquisition of “merit in the Torah” introduces two principal systemic components, merit and Torah.15 For our purpose, the importance of the statement lies in the second of the two, which deems land the counterpart—and clearly the opposite—of the Torah.
Now one can sell a field and acquire “Torah,” meaning, in the context established by the exchange between Tarfon and Aqiba, the opportunity to gain leisure to (acquire the merit gained by) the study of the Torah. That the sage has left himself nothing for his support in old age makes explicit the material meaning of the statement, and the comparison of the value of land, created in six days, and the Torah, created in forty days, is equally explicit. The comparison of knowledge of Torah to the merchandise of the merchant simply repeats the same point, but in a lower register. So too does the this-worldly power of study of the Torah make explicit in another framework the conviction that study of the Torah yields material and concrete benefit, not just spiritual renewal. Thus R. Huna states, “All of the exiles will be gathered together only on account of the study of Mishnah-teachings.”16
Not only so, but the sage devoted to study of the Torah has to be supported because he can no longer perform physical work. Study of the Torah deprives him of physical strength, and that contrast and counterpart represented by land and working of the land as against Torah and the study of the Torah comes to symbolic expression in yet another way:
LEVITICUS RABBAH XI:XXII.1
These stories about how a mark of the sage is physical weakness are included only because they form part of the (in this instance, secondary) composition on Eleazar b. Simeon. But they do form part of a larger program of contrasting Torah-study with land-ownership, intellectual prowess with physical power, the superiority of the one over the other. No wonder sages would in time claim that their power protected cities, which then needed neither police nor walls. These were concrete claims, affecting the rational utilization of scarce resources as much as the use and distribution of land constituted an expression of a rationality concerning scarce resources, their preservation and increase.
In alleging that the pertinent verses of Proverbs were assigned a quite this-worldly and material sense, so that study of the Torah really was worth more than silver, I say no more than the successor-compilations allege in so many words. Thus we find the following, which faces head-on the fact that masters of the Torah are paid for studying the Torah, so confirming the claim that the Torah now served as a spade with which to dig:
PESIQTA DERAB KAHANA XXVII:I
The obvious goal, the homily at 1.E, surely stands against my claim that we deal with allegations of concrete and material value: the imputation to the learning of the Torah of the status of “scarce resources.” But, as a matter of fact, the whole of No. 2 makes the contrary position explicit: wages are paid to Torah-teachers. The following makes the same point:
Y. NEDARIM 4:3.II.
A. |
It is written, “Behold, I have taught you statutes and ordinances” [Deut. 4:5]. |
B. |
Just as I do so without pay, so you must do so without pay. |
C. |
Is it possible that the same rule applies to teaching Scripture and translation [cf. M. Ned. 4:3D]? |
D. |
Scripture says, “Statutes and ordinances.” |
E. |
Statutes and ordinances must you teach without pay, but you need not teach Scripture and translation without pay. |
F. |
And yet we see that those who teach Mishnah collect their pay. |
G. |
Said R. Judah b. R. Ishmael, “It is a fee for the use of their time [which they cannot utilize to earn a living for themselves] which they collect.” |
True, this transformation of Torah-study into something of real worth is rationalized as salary in compensation for loss of time. But the same rationalization clearly did not impress the many masters of the initial system who insisted that one must practice a craft in order to make a living and study the Torah only in one’s leisure time. We see the contrast in the two positions quite explicitly in what follows. The contrast between the received position and that before us is found at the following:
Y PEAH 1:1.VII.(BROOKS)
D |
It is forbidden to a person to teach his son a trade, in as much as it is written, “And you shall meditate therein day and night” (Joshua 1:8.) |
E. |
But has not R. Ishmael taught, “‘You shall choose life” (Dt. 30:19)—this refers to learning [Torah] and practicing a trade as well. [One both studies the Torah and also a trade.] |
There is no harmonizing the two views by appeal to the rationalization before us. In fact, study of the Torah substituted for practicing a craft, and it was meant to do so, as A alleges explicitly. In all, therefore, the case in favor of the proposition that Torah has now become a material good, and, further, that Torah has now been transformed into the ultimate scarce resource—explicitly substituting for real estate, even in the Land of Israel—is firmly established.
That ultimate value—Torah-study—surely bears comparison with other foci of value, such as prayer, using money for building synagogues, and the like. It is explicitly stated that spending money on synagogues is a waste of money, while spending money supporting Torah-masters is the right use of scarce resources. Further, we find the claim, synagogues and school houses—communal real estate—in fact form the property of sages and their disciples, who may dispose of them just as they want, as any owner may dispose of his property according to his unfettered will. In Y. Sheqalim we find the former allegation, Y. Megillah the latter:
Y. SHEQALIM 5:4.II.
A. |
R. Hama bar Haninah and R. Hoshaia the Elder were strolling in the synagogues in Lud. Said R. Hama bar Haninah to R. Hoshaia, “How much money did my forefathers invest here [in building these synagogues]!” |
B. |
He said to him, “How many lives did your forefathers invest here! Were there not people who were laboring in Torah [who needed the money more]?” |
C. |
R. Abun made the gates of the great hall [of study]. R. Mana came to him. He said to him, “See what I have made!” |
D. |
He said to him, “‘For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces’! (Hos. 8:14). Were there no people laboring in Torah [who needed the money more]?” |
Y. SOTAH 9:13.VI.
Y. MEGILLAH 3:3:V.
A. |
R. Joshua b. Levi said, “Synagogues and schoolhouses belong to sages and their disciples.” |
B. |
R. Hiyya bar Yosé received [guests] in the synagogue [and lodged them there]. |
C. |
R. Immi instructed the scribes, “If someone comes to you with some slight contact with Torah learning, receive him, his asses, and his belongings.” |
D. |
R. Berekhiah went to the synagogue in Beisan. He saw someone rinsing his hands and feet in a fountain [in the courtyard of the synagogue]. He said to him, “It is forbidden to you [to do this].” |
E. |
The next day the man saw [Berekhiah] washing his hands and feet in the fountain. |
F. |
He said to him, “Rabbi, is it permitted to you and forbidden to me?” |
G. |
He said to him, “Yes.” |
H. |
He said to him, “Why?” |
I. |
He said to him, “Because this is what R. Joshua b. Levi said: ‘Synagogues and schoolhouses belong to sages and their disciples.’” |
Not all acts of piety, we see, are equal, and the one that takes precedence over all others (just as was alleged at Mishnah-tractate Peah 1:1) is study of the Torah. But the point now is a much more concrete one, and that is, through study of the Torah, sages and their disciples gain possession, as a matter of fact, over communal real estate, which they may utilize in any way they wish; and that is a quite concrete claim indeed, as the same story alleges.
No wonder, then, that people in general are expected to contribute their scarce resources for the support of sages and their disciples. Moreover, society at large was obligated to support sages, and the sages’ claim upon others was enforceable by Heaven. Those who gave sages’ disciples money so that they would not have to work would get it back from Heaven, and those who did not would lose what they had:
Y. SOTAH 7:4.IV.
Such contributions form the counterpart to taxes, that is, scarce resources taken away from the owner by force for the purposes of the public good, that is, the ultimate meeting point of economics and politics, the explicit formation of distributive, as against market, economics. Then what is distributed and to whom and by what force forms the centerpiece of the systemic political economy, and the answer is perfectly simple: all sorts of valued things are taken away from people and handed over for the support of sages:
PESIQTA DERAB KAHANA V:IV.2
Now what is at stake in the scarce resource represented by Torah-study? It cannot be a (merely) spiritual benefit, when, in consequence of giving money to sages so they will not have to work, I get rich. Not only so, but the matter of position is equally in play. I get rich and I also enjoy the standing of sages, sitting next to them. So far as social position intersects with wealth, we find in the Torah that wealth that, in this systemic context, serves to tells us what we mean by scarce resources: source of this-worldly gain in practical terms, source of public prestige in social terms, validation of the use of force—in context, psychological force—for taking away scarce (material) resources in favor of a superior value. The entire system comes to expression in this story: its economics, its politics, and, as a matter of fact, its philosophy. But all three are quite different from what they were in the initial structure and system.
No wonder then that sages protect cities. So it is claimed that sages are the guardians of cities, and later on that would yield the further allegation that sages do not have to pay taxes to build walls around cities, since their Torah-study protects the cities:
PESIQTA DERAB KAHANA XV:V.1
The reference to Esau, that is, Rome, of course links the whole to the contemporary context and alleges that if the Israelites will support those who study the Torah and teach it, then their cities will be safe, and, still more, the rule of Esau/Rome will come to an end; then the Messiah will come, so the stakes are not trivial.
The disenlandisement of economics, the transvaluation of value so that Torah replaced land as the supreme measure of value and also, as a matter of fact, of social worth—these form (an) economics. It is, moreover, one that is fully the counterpart of the philosophical economics based upon real estate as true value that Aristotle and the framers of the Mishnah constructed, each party for its own systemic purpose. If we have not reviewed the components of the economics of the Torah—the theory of means of production and who controls the operative unit of production of value, the consideration of whether we deal with a market- or a distributive economics, the reason is that we have not had to. It is perfectly obvious that the sage controlled the means of production and fully mastered the power to govern them; the sage distributed valued resources—supernatural or material, as the case required—and the conception of a market was as alien to that economics as it was to the priestly economics revised and replicated by the Mishnah’s system. Enough has been said, therefore, to establish beyond reasonable doubt the claim that in the Torah we deal with the system’s counterpart category, its economics.
And yet that very fact calls into question my insistence that what we have is not (merely) another economics, with a different value, but a counterpart economics. For I claim that what we have is a systemic counterpart, not the same thing in another form: an anti-economics and the transvaluation of value, not merely the redefinition of what is to be valued. Obviously, I have reservations that have led me to insist that the systemic economics forms a counterpart to, but not a parallel and a mere replication of, another economics. A shift from valuing land to valuing liquid capital, or from valuing beads to valuing conches, for that matter, would not require the invention of the category, counterpart-economics, or the rather protracted argument offered earlier concerning the movement from the subject to the predicate of the operative language of definition. Why, then, my rather odd claim that we have an economics that is transvalued, not merely redefined?
It is because economics deals with scarce resources, and the disenlandisement of economics in the successor-Judaism has turned upon its head the very focus of economics: scarcity and the rational confrontation with scarcity. To land rigid limits are set by nature, to the Holy Land, still more narrow ones apply. But to knowledge of the Torah no limits pertain. So we find ourselves dealing with an economics that concern not the rational utilization of scarce resources, but the very opposite: the rational utilization of what can and ought to be the opposite of scarce. In identifying knowledge and teaching of the Torah as the ultimate value, the successor-system has not simply constructed a new economics in place of an old one, finding of value something other than had earlier been valued; it has redefined economics altogether. It has done so, as a matter of fact, in a manner that is entirely familiar, by setting forth in place of an economics of scarcity an economics of abundant productivity.
Disenlandisement thus transvalues value by insisting upon its (potential) increase as the definition of what is rational economic action. The task is not preservation of power over land but increase of power over the Torah, because one can only preserve land, but one can increase one’s knowledge of the Torah. So, to revert to the theoretical point that in context seemed so excessive, the economics of the initial system concerns the rational disposition of the scarce resource comprised by particular real property; the rational increase of the potentially-abundant resource comprised by Torah-learning is—serves and functions as—the economics of the successor-system.
1which, as we have seen, the Mishnah set forth but the successor-documents did not develop.
2Let me recapitulate a point made earlier but important here. Does that fact then suggest the new system’s theory of the social order set forth no economics at all? After all, there is no reason that a theory of the social order required an economics at all, since a variety of theories of the social order of the same time and place other than Aristotle’s and the Mishnah’s—Plato’s for one, the Gospels’ for another, the Essene Community at Qumran’s for a third—managed to put forth a compelling theory of society lacking all sustained and systematic, systemically pertinent attention to economics at all. I insist, however, that the successor-system put forth a theory of the way of life that must be characterized as an economics, not as a theology that made reference, by the way, to topics of economic interest but an economics. It was, however, one involving a different value from the ultimate value, real property, characteristic of Aristotle’s and the Mishnah’s economics.
3I define matters narrowly in economic terms, rather than encompassing such valid considerations of sociology as status, since my claim to demonstrate a counterpart-category requires a rigorous and rigid definition of economics. It would be facile and self-serving to introduce into political economy considerations of status; that I can readily demonstrate shifted, but so what! But later on we shall have to concede the social embeddedness of the new economics of the successor-system, in a way in which, in our consideration of the initial system, we never had to do. The economics of the Mishnah, I show in The Politics of the Mishnah, is disembedded from the politics, so that we have a politics and an economics but not a political economy in the way in which Aristotle’s system sets forth a political economy. But the economics of the successor-system is profoundly embedded in its politics (and in its philosophy, as a matter of fact), so the system is a much more tightly integrated one than the initial system. All of this takes on greater detail in due course.
4I use “real” in the technical sense, meaning, landed wealth or property, real estate. Any other usage draws me into questions of theology or philosophy, with which economics does not deal. I shall presently argue that there is no spiritualizing or moralizing or philosophizing “value,” which bears concrete meanings and material consequences in the documents considered here.
5For Aristotle, land could be anywhere; for the Mishnah’s economics, the ultimate value was a particular piece of land, which was the Land of Israel occupied by holy Israel.
6Now the word “real” is used in its non-technical sense, with which sense theologians and philosophers are more at ease.
7I have present in this chapter a richer selection of abstracts than I thought required in the others, because my claim here is somewhat out of the ordinary. That makes it necessary to show, through concrete passages, that what I claim is happening in the successor-documents is amply instantiated in them.
8At this point in the argument of the book, readers may think of concluding that the systemic center lay in the symbol and concept of Torah, since, after all, both the world-view and the way of life define themselves within that category and data pertinent to it. But we shall see in Chapters Seven and Eight that Torah is subordinate to another and deeper consideration, contingent and a dependant variable, in no way the independent variable and point of final destination that mark a system’s center. Torah produces what we really want—that is the upshot of Chapters Seven and Eight. Consequently, readers are cautioned not to identify the materials under discussion in Chapters Four and Five as the end of the matter; counterpart-categories serve to describe their system, but they do not define the systemic center at all. They simply guide us to that center.
9Let me briefly recapitulate a fundamental argument. Might one claim that the new system’s theory of the social order set forth no economics at all? After all, there is no reason that a theory of the social order required an economics at all, since a variety of theories of the social order of the same time and place other than Aristotle’s and the Mishnah’s—Plato’s for one, the Gospels’ for another, the Essene Community at Qumran’s for a third—managed to put forth a compelling theory of society lacking all sustained and systematic, systemically pertinent attention to economics at all. I insist, however, that the successor-system put forth a theory of the way of life that must be characterized as an economics, not as a theology that made reference, by the way, to topics of economic interest but an economics. It was, however, one involving a different value from the ultimate value, real property, characteristic of Aristotle’s and the Mishnah’s economics. Why do I maintain that view? It is because the counterpart category of the successor-system, represented by the authorships responsible for the final composition of the Yerushalmi, Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana, structurally and functionally concerned themselves with the same questions as did the conventional economics, presenting an economics in function and structure, but one that concerned things of value other than those things of value identified by the initial system. So indeed we deal with an economics, an economics of something other than real estate, but an economics just as profoundly embedded in the social order, just as deeply a political economics, just as pervasively a systemic economics, as the economics of the Mishnah and of Aristotle. Why so? Because issues such as the definition of wealth, the means of production and the meaning of control thereof, the disposition of wealth through distributive or other media, theory of money, reward for labor, and the like—all these issues found their answers in the counterpart-category of economics, as much as in the received and conventional philosophical economics. The new “scarce resource” accomplished what the old did, but it was a different resource, a new currency. At stake in the category meant to address the issues of the way of life of the social entity, therefore, were precisely the same considerations as confront economics in its (to us) conventional and commonplace, philosophical sense. But since the definition of wealth changes, as we have already seen, from land to Torah, much else would be transformed on that account. That explains why, in the formation of the counterpart-category of value other than real value but in function and in social meaning value nonetheless, we witness the transformation of a system from philosophy to religion. We err profoundly if we suppose that in contrasting land to Torah and affirming that true value lies in Torah, the framers of the successor-system have formulated an essentially spiritual or otherwise immaterial conception for themselves, that is, a surrogate for economics in the conventional sense. That is not what happened. What we have is an economics that answers the questions economics answers, as I said, but that has chosen a different value from real value—real estate, as we have already seen—as its definition of that scarce resource that requires a rational policy for preservation and enhancement. Land produced a living; so did Torah. Land formed the foundation of the social entity, so did Torah.
10Hence the title of this chapter, which alleges that value is transvalued. In the end of the chapter 1 explain precisely why I insist that the successor-system does not merely identify a new scarce resource in place of the received one, but that the disenlandisement of value constitutes in this context an utter redefinition of what can be meant by economics, hence, the transvaluation of value.
11To be sure, the distinction between haber and am haares does not encompass Torah study. Only in later strata of the canon would the value of Torah-knowledge contrast with the dis-value (disgrace) of ignorance, distinguishing the haber from the am haares. And when that distinction would be made, the opposite of am haares would be sage or disciple of a sage.
12Genesis Rabbah XLI:III.1.A-B.
13Genesis Rabbah LXXIII:XI.1.D.
14Genesis Rabbah XLII:I.1.
15In a well-crafted system, of course, principal parts prove interchangeable or closely aligned, and that is surely the case here. But I have already observed that the successor-system is far more tightly constructed than the initial one, in that the politics and the economics flow into one another, in a way in which, in the initial, philosophical system, they do not. The disembedded character of the Mishnah’s economics has already impressed us.
16Pesiqta deRab Kahana VI:III.3.B.