WHY BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE

While the topic of why bad things happen to good people—and vice versa—has occupied a place in the thought of religious people of many faiths across the millennia, it is plain that there is no consensus answer. We are faced with a palette of answers from which to choose, and each is open to objection. Sample explanations might run like this:

• The good person to whom bad things happen isn’t really good—and you aren’t in a position to assess their quantum of goodness;
• That person obviously didn’t pray hard, well or frequently enough to merit good things happening;
• That person may be good in this life but be possessed by a soul that was bad in an earlier existence, and which deserved a tough time;
• That person is really and truly good, and the bad things that happen are only to clear the way for them to enjoy a more pleasurable life in the World to Come;
• Bad things happen to this person so that some other person can have the opportunity to good things to them;
• The infliction of bad things has a cautionary effect, warning that worse things may come if the good person does not do—or desist from doing—a particular thing;
• Being made to experience bad things is only a test of how strong is that person’s faith in the face of adversity.

There are also correlative explanations as to why good things happen to bad people.

At Avot 4:19 Rabbi Yannai raises the question but then appears to deflect it:

אֵין בְּיָדֵֽינוּ לֹא מִשַּׁלְוַת הָרְשָׁעִים, וְאַף לֹא מִיִּסּוֹרֵי הַצַּדִּיקִים

Neither the tranquility of the wicked nor the suffering of the righteous are in our grasp.

Rabbi Yannai is quite correct. We cannot understand why the wicked enjoy the good things in life while the good do not, or why people who commit evil can sleep soundly in their beds at night while tzaddikim, the righteous, are unable to rest. One might venture to suggest that the thrust of his mishnah is not to tell us that we don’t have an answer but, by implication, to persuade us to let go of these issues and not waste valuable time speculating about them since we have neither the necessary data nor the Divine perspective that make an assessment in each case possible.

As one might imagine, this issue has attracted the serious attention of many of our Sages over the generations, none of which impressed Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein

In his Baruch She’amar al Pirkei Avot, he expresses his astonishment that many have laboured over this issue when the answer is so obvious. He cites a gemara at Niddah 16b that runs like this:

Rabbi Chanina bar Papa made the following exposition: The name of the angel who is in charge of conception is 'Night', and he takes up a drop [of semen] and places it in the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He, saying, 'Sovereign of the universe, what shall be the fate of this drop? Shall it produce a strong man or a weak man, a wise man or a fool, a rich man or a poor man?' Whereas 'wicked man' or 'righteous one' he does not mention, in agreement with the view of Rabbi Chanina. For Rabbi Chanina stated: ‘Everything is in the hands of heaven except the fear of God, as it is said, And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear him …

This gemara answers the question entirely. God determines what is going to happen to a person in terms of his or her health, wealth, status and aptitudes—but it for that person to exercise free will and choose whether to be a God-fearing (= good) person or not.

The same gemara is picked up in a recently published commentary on Avot, Rav Schachter on Pirkei Avos (2023). The Rav Schachter in question is Rav Hershel Schachter and much if not most of his commentary is based on the teachings of his own revered rabbi, HaRav Yosef Dov HaLevi Soloveitchik. Curiously, the passage from Niddah quoted above is brought in a discussion of an entirely different mishnah, Avot 4:4, at which Rabbi Levitas teaches that one should be exceedingly humble. This is because, as the gemara explains, a person’s skills and talents are God-given gifts and therefore nothing to boast about.

So how does Rav Schachter tackle the good-person/bad-things issue? In truth he doesn’t—but he does write about the fact that we live an imperfect world in which we have failed to eliminate Amalek and the forces of evil, and about the importance of accepting God’s decree with equanimity as a means of demonstrating one’s own emunah.

Maybe the Baruch She’amar’s approach comes close to sweeping a complex philosophical issue under the carpet, but I can’t help preferring it to a lengthy, learned and well-sourced response that seems to avoid answering it full-on.

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Bad things, good people: a debate to avoid?

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?

When we read this teaching, our minds are immediately drawn to the age-old debate over why good things happen to bad people and vice versa. This debate features in the Babylonian Talmud (Berachot 7a) and it was certainly known in Mishnaic times. Commentators on Avot have a tendency to be drawn into this discussion too. The bottom line is that God, being omniscient and all-just, possesses both the information and the understanding that are necessary for the implementation of His plan, a plan which cannot be known to us and which involves a settling of accounts in a future world to which we are not privy.

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?