Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Over the course of this journey through Pirkei Avot, we have been piecing together its vision of the human being: how we think, the character we develop, the choices we make, and the responsibility we take for the world around us.
In Part 6, those pieces come together around one of life’s most fundamental questions:
What does it actually mean to succeed?
We naturally measure a life by what someone accomplished. And as Jews, we might assume the answer is even clearer: learn Torah, fulfil the mitzvot, live according to halacha.
But Pirkei Avot makes a startling claim. All of that is indispensable, and yet it is possible to do everything required of us and still miss something essential.
Drawing on the Rambam, Ramban, Maharal, Netziv and the great commentators on Avot, I explore what the Rambam calls hatzlacha amitit - true success - and why the ultimate measure of a life may lie somewhere deeper than a checklist of what we have done.
Because at the end of the journey stands another question entirely:
Who did we become?
KEY QUESTIONS
- What does it actually mean to live a successful life?
- Can a person fulfil all 613 mitzvot and still somehow miss the purpose?
- Why are Torah and mitzvot necessary, but not the final measure of who we become?
- What does Pirkei Avot mean by shleimut, the completeness of the human being?
- At the end of a life, should success be measured by what we did or by who we became?
Over the course of this journey through Pirkei Avot, we have been piecing together its vision of the human being: how we think, the character we develop, the choices we make, and the responsibility we take for the world around us.
In Part 6, those pieces come together around one of life’s most fundamental questions:
What does it actually mean to succeed?
We naturally measure a life by what someone accomplished. And as Jews, we might assume the answer is even clearer: learn Torah, fulfil the mitzvot, live according to halacha.
But Pirkei Avot makes a startling claim. All of that is indispensable, and yet it is possible to do everything required of us and still miss something essential.
Drawing on the Rambam, Ramban, Maharal, Netziv and the great commentators on Avot, I explore what the Rambam calls hatzlacha amitit - true success - and why the ultimate measure of a life may lie somewhere deeper than a checklist of what we have done.
Because at the end of the journey stands another question entirely:
Who did we become?
KEY QUESTIONS
- What does it actually mean to live a successful life?
- Can a person fulfil all 613 mitzvot and still somehow miss the purpose?
- Why are Torah and mitzvot necessary, but not the final measure of who we become?
- What does Pirkei Avot mean by shleimut, the completeness of the human being?
- At the end of a life, should success be measured by what we did or by who we became?
