Most of the content of Pirkei Avot consists of advice as to how a conscientious Jew should behave. Some of that advice is couched in positive terms, when the rabbis of the mishnah explicitly tell us what to do (e.g. acquire for yourself a friend, pursue peace, judge others favourably, don’t stare at people in their moment of disgrace). Other advice is implicit. For example, by describing four permutations of people who are either swift or slow to anger and either swift or slow to calm down again, the mishnah makes it plain which sort of person we should seek to be.
A small
number of mishnayot do neither of these things. One such mishnah is the teaching
of Rabbi Yannai (Avot 4:19):
אֵין בְּיָדֵֽינוּ לֹא מִשַּׁלְוַת הָרְשָׁעִים, וְאַף לֹא מִיִּסּוֹרֵי
הַצַּדִּיקִים
This is taken
to mean that it lies outside our power to understand either the tranquillity of
the wicked or the suffering of the righteous. If this mishnah is not telling us
what to do, or at least alluding to the path we should do best to take, what is
it doing in this tractate, surrounded as it is by quantities of powerful moral instruction?
It seems to
be that Rabbi Yannai, far from engaging in this debate, is actually calling on
us not to become involved in it either. A later mishnah (Avot 5:20) points out
that disputes that are “for the sake of Heaven”, such as those between Hillel
and Shammai, will have a constructive outcome, while those not for that end
will not. Can Rabbi Yannai be suggesting to us that, if a debate is doomed to
have no constructive outcome, as is the case here where we are either judging
God or second-guessing his decisions, it must by definition be one that is not
for the sake of Heaven?
