How Do You Say “Pirkey Avot” in English?

Ben Michelson writes about the Mishnah’s tractate of Pirkey Avot, commonly known in English as “The Ethics of the Fathers.” Translating the Hebrew word avot as “fathers,” he says, is problematic because the early rabbis whose sayings are collected in the tractate’s five chapters “are not called avot by Jewish tradition.” Instead, Mr. Michelson suggests, avot should be translated as “principles.” This would, he believes,

follow Mishnaic usages like avot m’lakhah and avot n’zikin, and also match the content of the tractate, which deals not with Jewish law but with (ethical) principles.

I’m afraid I can’t agree. It’s true that, in rabbinic Hebrew, the word av, “father,” can also mean a general principle or rule from which secondary rules are derived, as in the two terms cited by Mr. Michelson: avot m’lakhah, “the fathers of labor”—primary categories of work forbidden on the Sabbath—and avot n’zikin, “the fathers of damage”—categories of liability dealt with by tort law. And yet in Hebrew usage avot in this sense can never stand by itself and must always be linked by the construct or possessive case to a word that follows it. You can’t say just avot if you expect it to means principles. You have to say the avot of this or the avot of that, and the avot of Pirkey Avot does not do that.