[Avodah] Girsa in Avot 1:3

[Zev Sero]

On Areivim Micha Berger wrote:

> For the same reason, many people do not notice the problem with
> "ka'avadim  hameshamshim as haRav al menos shelo leqabeil peras"
> rather than "... lo al menas leqabeil peras". Are we to be like
> servants who serve our Master for the purpose of avoiding getting a
> reward? But that's how it reads! One would have thought the mishnah
> would ask us to serve our Master with no goal of getting a reward.
> Many derashos ensue.

I never noticed the problem because I'd never seen or heard of that
girsa until just a minute ago, when I looked it up in order to check
that I wasn't imagining things.  The girsa I'm familiar with, the
only one I can recall seeing until just now, is "...shelo al menat
lekabel peras".  This is the girsa in the BhT's siddur, Machzor
Livorno, the Vilna Shas, Kehati, and the Ahavas Avot (Breslav).

On the other hand, your girsa is in the Kafih edition of the Rambam's
PHM (with a footnote that the Vilna edition differs), and also the
versions at http://tinyurl.com/2oxn3m, http://tinyurl.com/35ytr9,
and http://kodesh.snunit.k12.il/b/h/h49.htm.   And I see that Rabbenu
Yonah prefers your girsa, and refers to it as "girsat hasefarim".

Dayan LY Raskin of London, in his commentary on the BhT's siddur,
notes the existence of the other girsa, and quotes the Maharash of
Lubavitch (Hemshech "Vekacha" 5637, end of #15): "that is, it's not
enough that he works without the motive of a reward, but that he
doesn't want to be rewarded at all".  He then quotes the LR's
Biurim Lepirkei Avot (page 21) that this sort of avodah is only
applicable to special individuals, and therefore in a siddur which
is for everybody the other girsa is more appropriate.


-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas