Miracles without a message -- or something more meaningful?

As noted in our previous post, not every mishnah in Avot carries an obvious message for our daily lives. Indeed, some teachings seem quite out of place in a guide to Jewish ethics and moral behaviour.

A good example is Avot 5:7, which lists ten miracles that God performed for us in Temple times. Eight of them are clearly the consequence of divine intervention, so they teach us about God’s behaviour rather than ours. The other two—reproduced in bold below—do address aspects of human behaviour and are thus more relevant to mussar and middot. But how much do they really teach us?

The mishnah goes like this:

עֲשָׂרָה נִסִּים נַעֲשׂוּ לַאֲבוֹתֵֽינוּ בְּבֵית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ: לֹא הִפִּֽילָה אִשָּׁה מֵרֵֽיחַ בְּשַׂר הַקֹּֽדֶשׁ, וְלֹא הִסְרִֽיחַ בְּשַׂר הַקֹּֽדֶשׁ מֵעוֹלָם, וְלֹא נִרְאָה זְבוּב בְּבֵית הַמִּטְבָּחַֽיִם, וְלֹא אִירַע קֶֽרִי לְכֹהֵן גָּדוֹל בְּיוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים, וְלֹא כִבּוּ הַגְּשָׁמִים אֵשׁ שֶׁל עֲצֵי הַמַּעֲרָכָה, וְלֹא נִצְּחָה הָרֽוּחַ אֶת עַמּוּד הֶעָשָׁן, וְלֹא נִמְצָא פִסּוּל בָּעֽוֹמֶר וּבִשְׁתֵּי הַלֶּֽחֶם וּבְלֶֽחֶם הַפָּנִים, עוֹמְדִים צְפוּפִים וּמִשְׁתַּחֲוִים רְוָחִים, וְלֹא הִזִּיק נָחָשׁ וְעַקְרָב בִּירוּשָׁלַֽיִם, וְלֹא אָמַר אָדָם לַחֲבֵרוֹ: צַר לִי הַמָּקוֹם שֶׁאָלִין בִּירוּשָׁלָֽיִם

Ten miracles were performed for our forefathers in the Holy Temple: No woman ever miscarried because of the smell of the holy meat. The holy meat never spoiled. Never was a fly seen in the slaughterhouse. Never did the High Priest have an accidental seminal discharge on Yom Kippur. The rains did not extinguish the wood-fire burning upon the altar. The wind did not prevail over the column of smoke [rising from the altar]. No disqualifying problem was ever discovered in the Omer offering, the Two Loaves or the Showbread. They stood crowded but had ample space in which to prostrate themselves. Never did a snake or scorpion cause injury in Jerusalem. And no man ever said to his fellow "It’s too hard for me to find a place to stay when I come up to Jerusalem" [emphases added].

Is this the stuff of which the Bartenura (on Avot 1:1) says “All of it is mussar (moral chastisement) and middot (behavioural standards)”? The fact that a crowd of people found they had enough space to prostrate themselves appears to be the result of an act of God, in which case once again it is miraculous, beyond human understanding and therefore beyond all comment ad criticism. We can praise God for it but there’s no mussar message to take home. In contrast, the fact that people did not complain when they might have been expected to do so can be seen as a description of how a group of humans chose to respond to a particular situation, which is not really a miracle at all. But of course there is more to this teaching than meets the eye.

R’ Ovadyah Hedaya (Seh leBet Avot) puts a different spin on this mishnah in his commentary on one of the teachings at the other end of the tractate, at Avot 1:5, where Yose ben Yochanan ish Yerushalayim opens his teaching with the following instruction:

יְהִי בֵיתְךָ פָּתֽוּחַ לִרְוָחָה, וְיִהְיוּ עֲנִיִּים בְּנֵי בֵיתְךָ  

Let your home be wide open, and let the poor be members of your household.

On this earlier mishnah R’ Hedaya comments that the host who opens his home to all and welcomes the poor is emulating God’s middah of gemilut chasadim (performing acts of kindness). He then alludes to Avot 5:7:  in emulating God the good host should take care to make sure that his guests have room to spread and that they should not have grounds to complain that his place is too uncongenial for them to stay there. The importance of following God’s example and practising acts of kindness is driven home by reference to Avot 1:2, where Shimon HaTzaddik lists gemilut chasadim as one of the three pillars upon which the world stands.

Comments and discussion of this post can be found on Facebook, here.