Building a land of milk and honey

We read in Pirkei Avot 1:17: “Shimon Ben Gamliel says: I have spent my entire life among wise men and found nothing more advantageous than silence. It is not the study that is essential but the practice, and anyone who talks too much makes a mistake.”* During these seven weeks that we have been counting the Omer, on Fridays in our Café Mishna classes, before the Kabbalat Shabbat service, we have been preparing to receive the Torah, studying and discussing Pirkei Avot.

Pirkei Avot is included in the Seder Nezikin (Harms) of the Mishnah, and unlike much of the sedarim of the Mishnah, which are more focused on elucidating how to put the rules into practice, Pirkei Avot deals primarily with ethical issues. The ethics that Pirkei Avot refers to focus mainly on how to avoid harming the Torah, the People of Israel, the community, our neighbors, ourselves, and consequently, how to help the community, our neighbors and ourselves, in short on how to have a positive impact on us as a people, and on the Torah.

Rambam says that the silence referred to in Pirkei Avot 1:17 refers to not incurring the error of infamy and injury, or to falsehood that violates the dignity of people, as mentioned at the end of this same mishna. It seems that the most advantageous thing we can learn from the wise is precisely the silence that prevents them from harming others, and that practice, “doing,” is more important than study, which does not mean that we do not have to study, But what has been studied must be put into practice, and to the extent possible, through example and teaching. This Shavuot, when receiving the Torah, let us put into practice what we have learned and studied, let us do more than speak and remain silent before reviling others. Only then will we be able to continue building a land, a community and a society that flows in milk and honey. , that nourishes us and sweetens the challenges we are going to encounter.

According to the translation by Marcos Edery (1965) in https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.1?lang=bi