Ari Shatkin is a talmid at MTA in the 1oth grade class to which I teach Tanach. Recently, one of my talmidim from last year, Yaakov Schonzeit, has begun giving a chaburah in Pirkei Avos to some boys in the Tanach class. They are required to make presentations to the entire class. Ari typed up his presentation, so I am pleased to share it:
The following terms that I chose to interpret for you today is the terms to “love work”, “despise lordliness”, and to “remove yourself from uncertainty”. All of these topics or terms interest me because I feel like they mean something to me.
The way I interpret the term “love work” is to mean that you should simply love the thing you do. This term affects me because I feel it everyday. I take school as my “job”. On days I like it I feel a lot better about myself than days that I hate it. It’s teaching us a life long lesson, which is “If you hate what you do, then what’s the point of living?” If one doesn’t like the thing they do daily, such as work, then it can lead to many bad things, like being depressed or other bad things that can effect you for your life.
The way I interpret the term “despise lordliness” to mean that you should not get into politics. This term does not affect me as much but I can understand the term. People who are in politics have such a huge responsibility. If we look back at the last term “love work” I feel like people who are politicians will be lead to not loving work because of the stress of the job.
The way I interpret the final term “remove yourself from uncertainty” is to not get into stuff you don’t know the result to. This affects me because I do invest some money in the stock market. I also find that as a small job that I have right now. When I put my hard earned money into the market I will always consult with my uncle or another person who is a stock broker before putting it in the market. If you mean this as a job I feel like it goes back to the first thing to “love work” If someone doesn’t remove themselves from uncertainty then they may not be successful in there job which can make them hate it. It doesn’t even have to do with the market or a job. It can also do with something like school. You should go into a test knowing you will get a good grade. If you don’t then you are not ready.
In conclusion you see that the 3 terms I use not only affect me a little bit but you also see how they connect to each other. I believe that we are trying to learn life long lessons to make us live better and have a peaceful and happy life.
Rabbi Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer הרב יוסף גבריאל בקהופר
