In the fourth perek in Pirkei Avos, Ben Zoma asks in
the first Mishna the following:
Who is wise?
Good question this.
We might think that he is perhaps referring to a person who knows kol HaTorah
kula (all of the Torah, Talmud, Midrash, and Zohar) or at the very least someone
widely recognized to be a Torah scholar.
But as everyone knows, Ben Zoma answers that one who is wise is he who learns from every
person. Note that he doesn’t say, one
who learns from every brilliant person, every scholarly person, or every
politically correct person. He says,
every person without distinction (with the only caveat being that the person
should have something to say worth learning).
On this Rabbeinu Yona says of the one who learns from every person, that
his love for wisdom and eagerness to attain it are so great that he will ask anyone
to teach him.
Anyone?
Yes, answers Rabbeinu Yona. He who is wise enough to learn from every person
will even seek out someone who has only a single thing to teach him. And through these efforts he will succeed and
grow wise.
But all of his efforts notwithstanding, he will not succeed
in becoming wise if his passionate desire to learn from anyone and everyone is not
matched by an acquiescence on the part of his teachers to allow him to do so. For how will his thirst for knowledge be slaked if what he is being taught is
filtered as per the prejudicial whims of his mentors?
It won’t, unless
he’s oblivious to the fact that he has been shortchanged.
And if one who
is wise is the one who learns from
every person, then what would Ben Zoma have to say about one who only
learns from certain persons and refuses to learn
from others no matter how knowledgeable they may be in the area of his
immediate inquiry? Or worse yet, one who
is only taught the views of certain
persons, thereby being deprived of the Torah of others with the same or even superior
standing of Torah knowledge.
As we mentioned above, Rabbeinu Yona praised those
who would go to anyone who had but one thing to teach him, and yet there are
certain circles in which the Satmar Rav zy”a will never be quoted on any matter
regardless of how insightful his teachings may be in reference to the point
being discussed.
And then there are other circles that likewise make
a mockery of Ben Zoma’s view in the Mishna by totally ignoring the existence of
Rav Soloveitchik z”l, the rebbeim at Yeshivas RabbeinuYitzchak Elchanan, Rav
Kook z”l, and anyone else that doesn’t pass their rarified hashkafic smell
test.
If the one who
is wise is he that will learn from
every person then the opposite must be true about one who will learn from
no one but a hashkafic clone of himself.
