Part 4 of My Personal Journey | Avot with the Chief

After countless hours of searching, I thought the picture was complete. We had found the heart of Avot - the Torah of who you become, the third pillar of Jewish life - and mapped it across the whole tractate. Everything felt like it made sense.

Then I noticed something I couldn't explain.

Woven in among all the mishnayos about character and Torah learning, are mishnayos about action. About mitzvahs. About the imperative to do. Not study is the main thing, but deeds. Run to a mitzvah. Be careful even with the lighter commandments.

Our entire theory had been built on the idea that Avot is not about what you do. It is about who you become. So how do these fit?

The clue comes from a single mishnah, of a tree with great branches and shallow roots. And what the Maharal says about it begins to pull the entire picture - Avot, the 613 commandments, the whole of Torah - into a relationship I hadn't seen before.

This is Part 4 of the journey. The moment the pieces stopped being separate and began to form something whole.

KEY QUESTIONS

·  If Avot is about who you become - not what you do - why does it keep insisting on the importance of action?

·  What does it mean to have brilliant branches but shallow roots? And what does that say about a person who understands everything but hasn't lived it?

·  Is there a version of Jewish life where the mitzvahs you keep and the person you are becoming are actually the same project?

·  What would it mean to do a mitzvah and ask not only "did I fulfil this?" but "what is this doing to me?"

·  If Avot is the beating heart of the entire system of Torah, what changes about how you understand everything else you do?