avakesh

Avos 2:6, Clever or wise

Not all who engage in trading become wise.

Here we learn that not all who engage in trade become wise. This means that some do not but some do. If such is the case, isn't it important to tell us who does and who does not? Or, to put it differently, we all know that every rule has exceptions, so what does telling us that not all traders become wise actually tell us?

You could suggest that  there may have been a time when everything that traders did was right and good. In the end of the 20th and the beginning of 21st century, especially in Russia, people believed that poets were inspired and that everything that a poet or a writer said, was beautiful and true. Perhaps, there was a time when everything business people did was right and wise. I can see how a traveling buisness person, who had seen places and cultures beyong imagination of the simple farm folk, could be considered the repository of all wisdom. For such a time, teaching us that sometimes traders are not wise is enough to break the spell.

This is not the only place in which Chazal comment on merchants and wisdom. Rashi here brings the verse in Devarim 30:13 that says that Torah "is not beyond the sea". Sifri comments on it: "(Torah) is not with those who go beyond the sea to trade".

Sefas Emes gives us a clue. He says that this refers to a method of Torah study, known as
"trading". In Mishlei 32, the woman of valor is referred to as "merchant ship that brings food from a far". This refers to a Torah scholar who explains one place based on another place. Another way that this is expressed is to say that words of Torah are poor ( a play on the word Aniya, which meeans both "poor" and "ship") in one place and rich in another place.(Tos. Krisus 14a from Yerushalmi Rosh Hashana 3:5)). He explains that there exists a method of study that brings faraway analogies from seemingly unrelated sources to make a novel case. This method of study is not always the wisest.

If we translate the language of Sefas Emes into contemporary epistemology, we come to a distinction between being clever and wise. Some people are clever and others are wise. Some are even clever and wise at the same time.

Jews are a clever people. They always look to find a way to go from Boston to New York by the way of Chicago. Jewish propensity to be clever, says the historian Paul Johnson,  makes us a subversive force and an agent of change in most societies. Gentiles tend to think linearly while Jews are non-linear thinkers. Sometimes this is good; sometimes it is bad.

Our yeshivos teach cleverness. Sometimes, cleverness comes at the expense of common sense. Cleverness can lead one to counter-intuitive conclusions, good in theoretical physics, not so good in most life situation. Cleverness does not know how to evaluate bright thoughts, to weigh and evaluate them, to decide whether to accept or reject them. It grasps onto the novel and elegant and abandons and despises the simple and sensible. Many Torah scholars are clever but few are truly wise.

Merchants succeed because they are clever. Wisdom is not a necessary ingredient for buisness success. It is enough to be clever, to figure out a marketing gimmick, a competitive advantage, another distribution scheme, how to shuffle around income and liablities. Mercantile experience can teach cleverness but not necessarily wisdom. Merchants, of course, can be wise---sometimes, not by virtue of their specific business experience but because of their general life experience.

This is what the mishna teaches us. Not all traders are wise. Understand the distinction between clever and wise.

 

Avos 2:6, Vessels for middos

He would also say: A boor cannot be sin-fearing, an ignoramus cannot be pious, a bashful one cannot learn, a short-tempered person cannot teach, nor does anyone who does much business grow wise. In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.

This mishna gave me an untold amount of trouble. I have been thinking about it for close to a month, trying to get my mind around what it says. Why should it pick a few examples of things that don't fit together and list only them? There are so many more potential examples.  What makes these examples hang together. Why does the mishna end the way it does, the end of it seemingly disconnected from its beginning?

I was able to piece and present together some comments on its disparate parts but not to understand it as a single document with a unified theme.

The solution came from the explanation of Mei Hashiloach in Parshas Shemos. R. Mordechai Yosef Leiner explains that Fear of Hashem cannot exist unless it fills a vessel. About midwives it says: " And it was because the midwives feared Hashem and He made for them houses". This means that G-d made for them vessels, which the verse calls "houses", to contain the Fear of G-d, for without such vessels, Fear of Hashem cannot be contained. He does not say what these "houses(in the plural)" might be. Based on our mishna I suggest that they are Derech Eretz and Wisdom (or Torah).

We can elaborate that without a framework, Fear of G-d would be destructive. As I wrote in the previous post on this Mishna, religiousity must be contained in some kind of a framework, or it will be destructive. An ignoramus can be G-d fearing because he has a social framework (Derech Eretz) in which religiosity can be contained. However, he cannot be a chassid because Love requires a bigger vessel than Derech Eretz. Derech Eretz and even Wisdom is too small to contain Love. A "Boor" is empty by definition and cannot even contain Fear of G-d. Without a vessel, religiosity is like fire, destroying and consuming whatever it touches. Some kind of vessel is required. It can be Derech Eretz for the ignorant or Wisdom for the scholar.

This perspective is the reverse of the conventional one. Usually one says that Wisdom need to be contained and limited by the Fear of Hashem or it will be destructive. Here, as not uncommon with Ishbitza, the matters are reversed. It is now Fear that must be limited and contained in the vessel of Wisdom.

Chokhmah is also called Fear, 'because it has no measure of boundary, and therefore the mind does not have the power to grasp it'. The book of Job states 'Behold the fear of God is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding' (Job 28:28). Fear of Hashem is the beginning of wisdom (Tehillim 111:10). See Shabbos 31a-b. Finally we learn later on in Avos:

R. Chanina ben Dosa would say: One whose fear of sin precedes his wisdom, his wisdom will endure. One whose wisdom precedes his fear of sin, his wisdom will not endure. He would also say: One whose deeds exceed his wisdom, his wisdom will endure. One whose wisdom exceeds his deeds, his wisdom will not endure. (Avos 3:9)

There is a great deal to say about this but this is not the place.

When I see disparate chassidic schools say the same thing, I assume that we have before us a statement that is a common inheritance from Baal Shem Tov. Here is what we find in Torah Ohr, 96, Maamarim 5672, p.178)) of Lubavitch, a very different chassidus than Ishbitza.

A chassid is suffused with Love. Just as light in a physical sense cannot shine without radiating from some physical source, such as a candle, wick or firewood, so too with spiritaul love. It cannot be drawn form above without the proper vessels in which it can be contained. The Torah that a Jew learns and the mitzvos that he does are the vessels for containing Love and Fear of Hashem, whether the ones generated by Chochma or which transcend it. An ignoramus is not one who makes vessels suited to revealing Love. Hence, it says, "nor can the ignorant be a chassid".

What the common thread between the mishna's teachings is that there are vessels which contain certain qualities of character and some that do not. A boor is not the vessel that can contain Fear of G-d and the ignoramus can contain Fear but is not a fitting receptacle for Love (Chessed). The bashful cannot incorporate learning and the irrascible cannot hold within the ability to teach. Business is not the correct vessel for learning Wisdom. The mishna then summarizes and concludes: In a place that there are no Man, that is no vessel that is ready to receive and contain elevated middos and character traits, remake yourself as a vessel.

 

 

Avos 2:6, Tolerant teaching

The Kapdan is not a teacher.

The term Kapdan can be variously interpreted. One can say that it refers to someone who is not patient with his students or who loses patience with them. Sefas Emes says that it means that a teacher must not become angry and he adds a a parenthetic comment that Chaissidic Rebbes are called "Gutte Yiden(Good Jews) because they do not get angry".

Then there is a story of R. Preida. Rav Preida had a student to whom he needed to explain everything 400 times until he finally understood.  One time Rav Preida told the talmid that he would need to leave to do a dvar mitzva.  After going over what they learned 400 times, the talmid still did not understand since he had lost his concentration when Rav Preida told him he would need to leave.  Rav Preida then taught him another 400 times and was rewarded for this fwith a long life (Eiruvin 54b). It illustrates the incredible patience that a teacher must possess.

I think, however, that this mishna teaches us something profound about teaching. So often we see teachers whose focus is on the material and not the students. Their primary concern is getting though the lesson or completing the currriculum. Recenlty I encountered a speech therapist who was evaluating a child with dyspraxia. Dyspraxia is a defect in language processing and she was administering the test in an incredibly rapid pace of speech. "Why do you speak so rapidly to this child who has difficulty processing sentences", she was asked. She responded, " I have to finish this test". Her focus was not on the student but on the task.

This is not an isolated example. So many teachers insist on getting out what they want to say, not what the student can or should hear. You would think that everyone understands this point, that all teachers are there to teach and in their devotion to their task, will assess and reassess the students and what they are getting out of the teaching experience, and adjust their lesson accordingly. Yet, good teachers are very hard to find. Many of the "best" teachers get their repurtation because they faithfully cover the material and devote much time to poreparation. Common mentality is that if the lesson is highly scripted and flows well, the teacher is great. But in the process, many teachable moments get erased. Why is this so?

Because, the mishna informs us, because they insist, they invest too much in the material and not the students, because they MUST give over what must be given over.

I need to caution that this is not a matter of personality. A relaxed, unfocused person may do well for one lesson with an appropriate group but in the long term, he or she may not have the focus and drive to plan out the lessons, to prepare and to turn their classroom into a place of learning rather than babysitting. What I mean is that a great teacher is student- focused in all aspects and cares about what the students can handle right now, knows how to flexibly direct the flow of the teaching interaction,  and how ais or her charge can grow as a student so as to master the curriculum and do it on the student's terms.

 

Avos 2:6: Study and Shame

The bashful does not learn and irrascible is not a teacher.

The first thing to note is that there is no symmetry between the two parts of this sentence. The first part is an adjective and a verb and the second one is an adjective and a noun.

The second one is why the bashful cannot learn. So, he is too embarassed to ask questions in class but why can't he or she simply sit in class and absorb. Some of the students who sit quietly in lecture halls and never raise their hands, do pretty well on exams. Granted they may not achieve all they could have achieved had they been more agressive in pursuit of knowledge, but they can still learn some, no? One can't emphatically say that a bashful person does not learn.

Tov Levanon suggests that "bayshan", the term used in our mishna is different than "boshes ponim (Lgan Eden)" used in chaper 5: 17. "Bayshan" is a negative term. "Boshes panim is the "golden mean" in bashfullness whereas our mioisna speaks of someone who goes to an extreme in bashfullness. The former is good, the latter is bad. Using contemporary terms I would explain this to pertain to an individual who is so frightened and phobic about publicly being asked a question that his mind is simply not available for learning and nothing "sticks".  This answers why the bashful does not learn at all.

This would be a better explanation had Tov Levanon not cited Rambam as the source for this distinction. Not only is it not found in the first hapter of Deyos but in his commentary to Avos, in the 5th chapter Rambam clearly equates both terms since he quotes as an explanation for "boshes panim" the saying from Yevamos 79a that there are three distinguishing features of the Jewish nations: Bayshanim (bashful), Rachmanim)merciful, V'gomley chasadim(kind acting).

R. Avraham Alter Landau ion PirkeiMaharioah suggests an interesting explanation in the name of Nodeh B'Yehuda. He says that a person who sinned, should not dwell too much on the sin. He should move past it and forward. One cannot learn from mistakes if he remains excessively attached to them. As taught in Breslav, one must move on or else remain in the embrace of the sin and the deression and despair that is a part of it. The Mishna is saying: "The one who is ashamed of his sin cannot learn from it". 

I would say that this mishna teaches the same lesson as "rabbis" in Yoma 88b.

The rabbis taught: The sins one has confessed on one Day of Atonement, he need not confess on the next Day of Atonement. This is the case, if he has not repeated the sin; but in that case, he should repeat the confession. If, without having sinned again, he confessed again, then to him applies the verse [Prov. xxvi. 11]: "As a dog returneth to his vomit, so doth a fool repeat his folly." R. Eliezer b. Jacob, however, said: So much the more may he be praised, as it is written [Ps. li. 5]: "For of my transgressions I have full knowledge, and my sin is before me continually."

Shaarei Teshuva of R. Yonah 4:21gives three reasons as to why one should not confess again and says that this pertains to confession ( a halacha in vidui but in teshuva)  but in one's heart the sinner should always remember his sins, which is not how I am explaining this position here. He also points out that many midrashim strongly warned not to confess again, like the position of "rabbis". However that is not the halacha cited by Shulchan Aruch 607:4, which encourages repeated confessions .

The practice of confessing repeatedly on each of the tefillos of Yom Kippur and during the repetition of the Chazzan again on Yom Kippur also appears consistent with this view.

   

Avos 2:6, Scholarship and Piety

Hillel used to say, a boor cannot fear sin, nor can an unlearned person be pious.

Classic commentators, Rabbeinu Yona, for example, understand this to mean that an unlearned person, despite his lack of knowledge, possesses a rudimentary knowledge of how to participate in society and relate to others. Fear of sin is within his daily experience. He knows that offending the powerful leads to retribution. G-d is poweful and so he fears sin.

An unlearned person can fear sin because he understands hierarchy and relatedness. He can model the relationships around him, comprehends cause and effect and he can fear sin and its consequences. What he cannot predict and project is the results of piety. Going beyond the expected is not a part of society and not something that an unlearned person is socialized into or understands. A scholar experiences piety and pious people during his training and he can be pious, but not an unlearned person. Without erudition, he will substitute imagination for experience and pursue extremes. This will hurt others. 

A boor, on the other hand, is someone who is not living within society, or, as they say it, not "b'derech eretz". He cannot even understand the concept of consequences for anti-social behavior and he will not fear sin either. The etymology of the word "boor" is not clear. I would suggest that a 'bor" is a hole in the ground. It can be filled with different things. There is "bor sid", a cemented "bor", for example. Sometimes it is filled with water and sometimes with snakes and scorpions (Shabbos 22a). This bor is empty and waiting to be filled.

I find two things interesting about this mishna. One is that it implies that Fear of Sin is accessible to all and does not require specialized training. More, it does not depend to Torah learning at all, for even an ignoramus can have Fear of Sin. This belies those thinkers who claim that Torah study is the only way to gain Fear of Heaven, Chazon Ish, for example, in his Emuna UBitachon.

The other one is that this mishna seems to contradict the Tannaitic defintion of Am Haretz, in which the ignorant is hardly G-d fearing and hardly a person who leads a socially correct life.

Who is Am Haaretz - one who does not read Shema morning and evening, words of R. Eliezer. R. Yehoshua says: " One who doesn't put on tefillin". Ben Azzai says: "He who does not have tsitsis on his garment". R. Noson says: ":one who does not have a mezuzah on his door". . R. Noson b. Yosef says: "He who has children and does not bring them up to the study of Torah". Others say: " Even if he read and studies but did not serve scholars, this is Am Haaretz".

Perhaps, our mishna follows the view of "Others", who we know is  R. Meir (end of Horayos) and the author of "stam" mishna (Sanhedrin 86a). However this seems unlikely because of another source attributed to R. Meir that assumes that an am aharetz does NOT deal properly with his wife, i.e. is not b'derech eretz: " ... It is taught that Rabbi Meir said: Anyone who marries a daughter off to an ignoramus is like one who leaves her for the lions [to devour]. As a lion tramples and eats and has no shame, so too does the ignoramus strike and have intercourse and has no shame" (Pesachim 94b). "

There are exceptions, however, and not all "others" is R. Meir (see Tosafos to Sotah 12a).

Avos 2:4: Don't dismiss new ideas

 Do not say something cannot be accepted (heard) for its end is to be accepted(heard).

Hillel continues. He now says something obscure. There are a number of textual variants and many explanations of this phrase, all of them teaching important concepts but all having the ring of something which is being read into the words and not its intended meaning. Rambam curiously says that it means that a teacher should not say something outrageously non-sensical with the intent that the student will realize that it is non-sensical and figure out what the teacher really meant to say. I call this a curious explanation because in a number of places, one of which is the Introduction to Mishna Chelek, Rambam says that this is exaclty what Chazal do in their aggadic statements - veiling deep teachings in statements that are so patently impossible that any men of knowledge will be led to discover their true meanings. Here he says that one should not do so! Perhaps Rambam would agree that a riddle is a valid means to teaching but an allegory is not.

Others say that this passage refers to keeping secrets or not expect that a fact shared will remain private. Others explain it to mean that one should not dismiss any Torah teaching but try to justify it and discover its intended meaning.

I would suggest that HIllel is warning us that the coming changing paradigm of individual religiosity that overshadows traditional communal religious expression will bring with it many new ideas. People are all different and multiple new expressions and religious formulations will soon arise. In fact, as we know, the hundred years after HIllel were a time of great ferment and many new ideas arose in the Judean religious marketplace. Chazal accepted and supported some of them and negated and fought publicly the others. HIllel says:  "Do not dismiss any of them, for even if some of them seem so far from the mark, so distant from what has been taught under the old paradigm of Tradition, so novel that you think they will never be accepted, some WILL be accepted". Therefore treat them seriously. Investigate them, search them out, consider their implications and where they will lead. If they are consistent with Torah and raise the honor of Torah and its Giver, watch closely as they spread and be prepared to guide their proponents and influence their uptake. If, on the otherr hand,  they are destructive and heretical be prepared to oppose and fight them. But never, never simply dismiss them.

Avos 2:2, 6: Individual vs. collective

A thread that ran through our discussion of the second chapter of Avos has been the contention that the actual spiritual question of the Second Temple period was whether and how to serve Hashem as an individual within the collective. This is not surprising when we consider the fact that the Covenant with the Jewish nation was essentially a collective one. No one who reads the book of Devarim, for example, or the exhortations of the Prophets can fail to be impressed by the collective tone of G-d-man communication. It is not surprising that the idea of a possibility of a personal covenant, parallel to but not identical with the group covenant ocuppied the center stage on the theological discussion table.

Among the prophets, it was Yechezke, the prophet of exile, who first raised and brought this issue to the fore. Rabbi Josef Carlebach, in his Die drei grossen Propheten Jesajas, Jirmija und Jecheskel; eine Studie. Pp. 133. Frankfurt am Main: Hermon-Verlag, 1932 , translated as The Three Prophets (tr. Henry Biberfeld, Beth Jacob Teacher's College, Montreal, 1990) explained that the Destruction and Exile created a new religious reality. "In the galuth, the religious individual, essentially is all alone: the relationship and solidarity of the community and the nation, where one is responsible for all and all for one, is loosened and disrupted". it was Ychezkel who annuled the Mosaic perception that  G-d avenges the sin of fathers upon sons and instead said: " The soul that sins, it should die (Makkos 34)." Rabbi Carlebach elaborates on this idea at length and in beautiful and poetic language.

The return of Jews to Zion raised the question again. Are we back to collective destiny, the way things used to be? Can the notion of individual responsibility be discarded, or is it subsumed under the National Idea, or, once expressed, can it ever be forgotten. By the end of the Second Temple period, the answer was clear. We are individuals, we are personally responsible to G-d and our national identity and covenant is refracted through the personal covenant. Before a child is born he is sworn, "be a tzadik and not to be a rasha(Niddah 30b)". Christianity then took this idea to its absurd radical conclusion; that there is no national covenant, only a personal salvation.

Lest the pendulum swing too far back, Hillel came and set down some rules for an individual on how to relate to the community: "Hillel would say: Do not separate yourself from the community. Do not believe in yourself until the day you die. Do not judge your fellow until you have stood in his place.

I will end with an interesting take of the last piece of advice: Do not judge your fellow until you have stood in his place. This, of course, implies that one CAN judge another, if you HAD been in his place. The Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote that this means that one cannot assess another person until one finds areas of commonality with him. This is similar to the Chabad teaching that a Rebbe can help a petitioner only by rising to the level of Adam Kadmon, in which the root of his soul and the root of the petitioner's soul is united.  

Presumably, after such an experience, the assessment would be much more favorable. The Gerer Rebbe, on the other hand, writes that we can never reach another's place : "Inasmuch as two people are never alike (as their faces are not same, so their minds are not the same, Yerushalmi Brochos 5:9), this is impossible".

Avos 2:2, 5: The return of Hillel

We now face an unexpected development. Thus far, the Mishna followed the chronological order, starting the Moshe Rabbeinu, pausing by Hillel and proceeding down the chain of his descendants to  Rabban Gamliel the son of Rabbi Yehuda the Prince. Suddenly and without warning, we jump centuries back to Hillel. Not only that, we do not even start a new mishna as we jump. This is the same Hillel of Chapter 1, Mishnas 12-14! Hillel who lived approximately in 100 B.C.E. comes back in in the middle of the mishna that reports the views f Rabban Gamliel of around 350 A.C.E.and from now on we again go forward historically step by step, only now it is through Hillel's student and their students, not his children and grandchildren.

This shift is so sudden and strange that some suggested that this Hillel is not the same Hillel as in the first chapter. Rather it is Rabban Gamliel's son, whose name was also Hillel. Tosafos Yom Tov notes this view and rejects it (see Tosafos Yom Tov).   How can one understand it?

We explained that the mesechta thus far dealt with two questions:

What is the proper political structure for a Second Temple Jewish commonwealth that is not led by the Davidic monarchy? The view of Chochomim transitioned from R. Shimon ben Shetach  who thought that it was possible to base a Jewish polity on Torah, Temple Service and Public Welfare, to the growing realization that the Hasmonean dynasty was not suited nor capable of realizing this ideal.  Next, Chochomim tried a model of withdrawal from the corrupt political life of the "Jewish" State into autonomaous Torah-based communities. When that no longer worked, R. Yehuda Hanassi canonized a religious Weltshchaung based on individual's relationship with Hashem and Torah. He said: "What is the proper way that an individual should choose for himself?".  From now the debate will be only about how far fror the community is it appropriate to withdraw in search of an personal relationship and how much is too much?

Well, turns out that Hillel already began considering these questions. As a Babylonian outsider who vaulted overnight into the position of religious leadership, Hillel foresaw and foreshadowed that issue that were coming to the fore but which others, perhaps, did not yet clearly perceive. Hillel was a harbinger of the coming conceptual change. 

When we now in the mishna go back to Hillel, we do not stop and start again. Instead we seamlessly continue the discussion of individual versus community. This is why Hillel comes in in the middle of an ongoing mishna. What Hillel had to say, centuries before, was just right for the generations after R. Yehuda the Prince. This is why we go back to Hillel but do not even separate his teachings into a separate mishna, because Hillel is speaking of the same actual burning religious question of the day.

"Hillel said, do not separate from the community, do not trust yourself till the day you die, do not judge your fellow until you reach his place, ...."

Rabbon Gamliel just told us that you should perform Divine WIll so that the will of others be negated before your will. That sounds very self-centered. Hillel comes in to restore the balance. "Yes", he says. "Yes, you should, you must have an intense personal relationship, because the old ways of serving G-d wholly, solely and exclusively as a part and parcel of His people, are no longer possible". Yet, he tells us, in your pursuit of an intense personal relationship, do not "separate from the community, do not judge your fellow as if there is nothing binding the two of you together. The discussion of the parameters of public versus private will continue among Hillel's students.

Avos 2:3: Wanting and giving up

He would also say: Make His will your will, so that He should make your will  as His will. Nullify your will before His will, so that He should nullify the will of others before your will.

This is a very confusing Mishna. First, what is the difference between the first and second part, between doing His will instead of your will and nullifying your will before His will. Secondly, the two parts of the Mishna are not symmetrical; In the first, the Mishna promises the if you do His will, he will do your will. In the second, it promises that if you nullify your will, He will not nullify His will, but nullify the will of others before yours (Tiferes Yisroel does understand that hullifying your will lead to G-d nullifying His will in your favor, but the Mishna expressed it euphemistically out of respect for the Almighty).

I never really "got" this Mishna until if realized that there is a very simple and basic difference between tis two parts. In the first, your will and His will are not in conflict. Say, you want to have grilled chicken for supper. He wants that the Glory of His kingdom be sanctified. If you take His will as paramount and learn Torah and perform Mitzvos, and try to do what He wants, He will bring about that your will be done and that you do get grilled chicken for supper I If you think that wanting grilled chicken for supper is beyond His concern, see Kesuvos 67b .

The second part of the Mishna is talking about a different case, where His will and your will contradict. He wants that you should go daven and your want to stay in bed. In that situation, man must nullify his will. Hashem cannot then reciprocate and hullify His will before yours, for your will no longer exists. You are already at that minyan. But  what He can and will do is to nullify the desires of others before your will in other matters or even in this matter itself.

******************************************************************************************************

 

Avos 2:2, 4: Avoid the authorities

"Be careful with authorities, for they do not befriend a person except for their own sake. They appear as friends when they benefit from it, but they do not stand by a person in his time of need."

At first glance, this is a continuation of the previous mishna. There we were told that those who work for the community, though they may not be able to learn Torah, will be protected and will succeed, as long as they work for the sake of Heaven. Despite this, they are warned to distrust and be cautious of the authorities, who do not work for the Sake of Heaven, and who will use people and then discard them (Raav).

However, this teaching was already presented in the first chapter. There it says:

Shemaya and Avtalyon received the transmission from them [the previous generation of scholars]. Shemaya said: Love work, despise high position, and do not become close to the authorities."

So what is the difference between these two teachings?

Ain Levanon points ot that Shemaya and Avtalyon are discussing the Jewish government , because that is what was in place in their times. Our mishna is referring to the Non-Jewish authorities, because that is what surrounded Jews in the times of Rabbon Gamliel the son of R. Yehuda Hanasi.

With this in mind, we can understand the difference between the two teachings. Shemaya and Avtalyon teach us that we should pursue work and disdain honor, including the honor of participating in the government. The government is run by Jews and even a frum Jew can become close to them, for after all they are his brothers. That's OK, except that one should eschew honor. Therefore the term for closeness that Shamaya and Avtalyon use is "tisvada", which has a connotation of familial closeness (See Ruth 2:1). As we repatedly discussed in the commentary to the first chapter of Avos, as the politics of the Jewish Commonwealth grew more and more distant from the Davidic ideal, the Rabbis gradually abandoned the idea that they should participate in the building of a Jewish polity that is based on Torah, Temple worship and Public Welfare and, after experimenting with various communal substitutes, at the close of the second Temple period they transitioned to champion the individual's role and a personal path to Torah and Hashem. But for Shemaya and Avtalyon, the government is still neutral. You can work with them but such is not the way of the pious.

Rabbon Gamliel, on the other hand,  knows that closeness with the Roman government is impossible. His askan has no illusions. But a communal worker might be misled into thinking tnat an utilitarian, working relationship can still be - I help them and they will hepl us. After all, they are people just like we.  Rabbon Gamliel therefore cautions the askonim: "Be careful with authorities, for they do not befriend a person except for their own sake. They appear as friends when they benefit from it, but they do not stand by a person in his time of need."