Uniquely among Mishnaic tractates, Avot does not concern
itself with the elucidation of any Biblical laws. Its concern, as Rabbi Ovadyah
of Bartenura reminds us, is with matters of morality—and these are matters
where the binary approach breaks down. More recently, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz has
observed that the choice of an ethical path, in one’s personal life and in
business, is often a choice between different options that cannot be described
in absolute terms as good because they are in reality an exercise in damage
limitation: which path do I take that is the least bad and causes the smallest
amount of harm to others?
Without a binary perspective of good-or-bad, right-or-wrong,
the light-versus-darkness metaphor is at best ineffective, at worst completely
inappropriate. In the world of moral choices, light and dark are replaced by shades
of grey. Could this be why Avot, a tractate that is more richly endowed than
any other with metaphor and simile, makes no mention at all of light or
darkness?
