Don't despair!

With Tisha be’Av, our national day of mourning, fast approaching, it can be difficult for committed Jews to focus on the happier and more positive things in life. So here’s a post that is designed to break the unrelieved sadness that many of us are experiencing.

In the first chapter of Avot we learn three things from Nittai Ha’Arbeli:

הַרְחֵק מִשָּׁכֵן רָע, וְאַל תִּתְחַבֵּר לָרָשָׁע, וְאַל תִּתְיָאֵשׁ מִן הַפּוּרְעָנוּת

(i) Distance yourself from a bad neighbour, (ii) do not join up with a wicked person, and (iii) do not give up the expectation of retribution.

The first two teachings are easy to discuss together because they appear to be related: they share a common theme of avoiding bad company. The third, however, is generally taken to stand alone.

The need to discuss the third teaching on its own is not just a consequence of it appearing to address different subject matter. After all, it is possible to tie it in with its predecessors. It demands separate treatment because of its ambiguity. Who is being told not to abandon the belief in retribution—the bad person or his victim? And are we automatically talking here of retribution? The same word פּוּרְעָנוּת (puranut) can also mean ‘repayment’ or ‘reward’.

This being so, here’s a more upbeat message on Nittai’s teaching. The source is Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Foundations of Faith, a 2021 publication on the late Yeshiva University President’s thoughts on Avot, edited by his son-in-law Rabbi Mark Dratch. He writes that not despairing of punishment can be interpreted in two different ways:

“One is, that when things are going well, when good fortune smiles upon you and you bask in affluence and good health, do not imagine that it will always remain thus. Do not distract yourself from the underlying misery and sadness and insecurity of life Do not ‘give up’ on the possibility that adversity may strike, cruelly and suddenly. But there is another way to interpret the same Mishnah: never despair because of adversity! When misfortune strikes, when life seems to crowd you in, when you are caught in narrow straits, when the sun has set and life seems to have darkened—nevertheless, do not give up, do not yield to despair, do not imagine that help will never come!”

[After citing, the Tzava’at HaRivash on Tehillim 16:8 R’ Lamm continues]

That is why we break a glass at a wedding, the time of supreme joy, in memory of the destruction of the Temple. And that is why on Tisha B’Av, the day of national calamity, we do not say the tachanun prayer, because this very day is called mo’ed, a holiday! We introduce a note of sadness during the wedding, and a note of joy during Tisha B’Av. Yet—we do weep on Tisha B’Av and we do dance at weddings! …To be sad does not mean to interpret all of existence as an unmitigated evil, and to be happy does not mean to ignore the tragic dimension of life…”

R' Lamm is not saying “cheer up, things could always be worse”. What he is saying is that the world is not comprised entirely of those things that seem to be worse and that we should acknowledge that this is so. Ideally, our Sages teach, we should be thankful for the bad as well as for the good since we have no means of discerning the objective value of anything that happens in the world God has created. For most people this is hard, if not impossible to do, but we can still do something. We can remember that good exists, whether we experience it or not, and we can be grateful for what we do have.

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