Pirkei Avot

Pirkei Avot (Hebrew: פִּרְקֵי אָבוֹת, romanized: pirqē aḇoṯ, lit. 'Chapters of the [Fore]fathers'; also transliterated as Pirqei Avoth or Pirkei Avos or Pirke Aboth, also Abhoth), is a compilation of the Jewish theological and ethical teachings and maxims from Rabbinic Jewish tradition. It is part of didactic Jewish ethical literature. Because of its contents, the name is sometimes given as Ethics of the Fathers. Pirkei Avot consists of the Mishnaic minor tractate of Avot, the second-to-last tractate in the order of Nezikin in the Mishnah, plus one additional chapter. Avot is unique in that it is the only tractate of the Mishnah dealing solely with ethical and moral principles; there is relatively little Halakha (Jewish law) in Pirkei Avot.

In the title Pirkei Avot, the word "pirkei" is Hebrew for "chapters of".

The word avot means "fathers", and thus Pirkei Avot is often rendered in English as "Chapters of the Fathers", or (more loosely) "Ethics of the Fathers". This translation engenders an appealing and not entirely mistaken image of "patriarchal teachings".

However, the term 'avot' is not usually used as an honorary designation for 'rabbis' or 'sages'; in rabbinical usage, it refers to the Patriarchs of the Bible. Rather, in the Mishnah, the word avot generally refers to fundamentals or principal categories. (Thus, the principal categories of creative work forbidden on Shabbat are called avot melacha, and the principal categories of ritual impurity are referred to as avot tum'ah.) Using this meaning, Pirkei Avot would translate to "Chapters of Fundamental Principles". Additionally, the possibility that the title was intentionally worded to support multiple renderings—both "fathers" and "fundamental principles"—cannot be ruled out.

The recognition of ethical maxims as 'Fundamental Principles' may derive from the high regard in which the Torah, Mishnah, and Talmud hold such wisdom. "Love your neighbor as yourself," states the Bible (Leviticus 19:18), an injunction that Rabbi Akiva in Genesis Rabbah 24:7 famously calls a "great principle" of the Torah. In Shabbat 31a, Hillel, when challenged by a prospective convert to explain the entire Torah while the latter stood on one foot, answered: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: This is the entire Torah, the rest is the explanation, go now and learn it." (This maxim is not included in Pirkei Avot.) The attribution of Biblical Wisdom books to King Solomon (e.g., Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Book of Wisdom) attests also to the central importance that Jews of this period placed on transmitting the ethical way of life.

The Mishnaic tractate Avot consists of five chapters. It begins with an order of transmission of the Oral Tradition; Moses receives the Torah at Mount Sinai and then transmits it through various generations (including Joshua, the Elders, and the Neviim, but notably not the Kohanim), whence it finally arrives at the Great Assembly, i.e., the early generations of Sages (Avot 1:1). It contains sayings attributed to sages from Simon the Just (200 BCE) to shortly after Judah haNasi (200 CE), redactor of the Mishnah. These aphorisms concern proper ethical and social conduct, as well as the importance of Torah study.

The first two chapters proceed in a general chronological order, with the second focusing on the students of Yochanan Ben Zakkai. Chapters Three and Four are thematic and contain various attributed sayings in no explicit order. Chapter Five departs from the organization and content of the preceding four in that it consists mostly of anonymous sayings structured around numerical lists, several of which have no direct connection with ethics. The last four paragraphs of this chapter return to the format of moral aphorisms attributed to specific rabbis.

In liturgical use, and in most printed editions of Avot, a sixth chapter, Kinyan Torah ("Acquisition of Torah") is added; this is in fact the eighth (in the Vilna edition) chapter of tractate Kallah, one of the minor tractates. It is added because its content and style are somewhat similar to that of the original tractate Avot (although it focuses on Torah study more than ethics), and to allow for one chapter to be recited on each Shabbat of the Omer period, this chapter being seen well-suited to Shabbat Shavuot, when the giving of the Torah is celebrated. (See below.) The term Pirkei Avot refers to the composite six-chapter work (Avot plus Kinyan Torah).