Two sides to the clouds

“I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall:
I really don't know clouds at all” (from Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now).

Clouds are fascinating things. Coming in so many different shapes and sizes, they occupy a curious position between heaven and earth, between the tangible and the intangible. They also occupy a significant place within the Torah, both written and oral.

This past Shabbat we read parashat Beshalach, part of the Torah narrative that is rich in miracles. The biggest of these is the kriat Yam Suf (the splitting of the Reed Sea), which the Torah describes at length and the significance of which has been embellished by generations of midrashim.

But in the desert the Children of Israel experienced other miracles too. Along with the splitting of the Reed Sea we read details the near-daily supply of mon (the manna from Heaven). We also get water from a rock which, some commentators explain, is a portable rock that travels round with the Israelites on their desert journeys. And, tucked away near the beginning of the miracle of the manna, we find mention of a third miracle: the ananei hakavod, the clouds of glory that provide shade by day and warmth by night. In the Gemara (Taanit 9a), R’ Yose ben Yehudah notes that these three miracles—the manna, the well and the clouds—are each associated with one of the three leading lights of the desert generation The manna is in the merit of Moses, the well in the merit of Miriam and the clouds in the merit of Aaron. When each one dies, the miracle associated with them ceases.

So far, so good—but where does Pirkei Avot fit into all of this?

In the fifth perek of Avot at 5:8, we learn of ten remarkable, if not actually miraculous, things that were created at twilight on Friday afternoon, just before Shabbat commences. These include the manna and also the well of Miriam from which we drank for 40 years.  But there’s something missing from the list: there’s no mention in our mishnah of the clouds of glory. Why isn’t Aaron’s miracle included along with the miracles attached to Moshe and Miriam?

R’ Moshe ben Yosef miTrani (the Mabit), in his Bet Elokim, notes that you can’t compare the clouds of glory with the manna and the well. We had to have the manna because, without it, we would have starved to death. Likewise, without the well, we would have died of dehydration. In other words, even if we had no Moses and no Miriam, God would still have had to give us food and water. The clouds, however, are of a different order because we could have got by without them. They were in effect a free gift, a demonstration of God’s chesed (kindness) and His love for His people. But this doesn’t answer our question as to why the clouds aren’t in our Mishnah. This is because some of the other things created at twilight were also optional extras and signs of God’s chesed—for example the keshet, the rainbow that serves as a sign and a reminder that we should behave ourselves.

Looking at our mishnah in Avot, we can ask how precise it is meant to be. It opens by saying that 10 things were created at that time, but then it goes on to list 14 since there is no consensus as to what those 10 were. On that basis it cites rabbinical opinions that add the mazikin (some form of destructive force), Moshe’s burial plot, Avraham’s ram and even tongs made without tongs.

But there is another explanation. In his Derech Chaim, the Maharal endorses the conclusion of the Rambam in the final chapter of his Shemonah Perakim that the list only includes things that were made at twilight but had no form of existence before then. Other things that appear to have been created after the Six Days of Creation were, Rambam explains, created in their incipient form during the world’s first week but only implemented in reality at a later time. This applies, says the Rambam by way of an example, to the kriat Yam Suf: when God separated the waters on Day Two, he incorporated into the water the potential for splitting when the need arose. A midrash in Bereshit Rabbah 5:5 dramatically depicts this as God negotiating with the sea to do just that if it didn’t want to be vaporized. R’ Yirmeyah ben Elazar widens this category to include other miracles that make no appearance until well after the Six Days of Creation.

So were clouds created before Friday afternoon with the potential to act as clouds of glory? The answer must be “yes”. In Gemara Sukkah 11b there’s an argument between R’ Akiva and R’ Eliezer as to why we sit in sukkot (temporary dwellings) on the festival of Sukkot.  R’ Akiva says it’s to commemorate the fact that we lived in such dwellings. No, says R’ Eliezer, it’s because we lived under the miraculous clouds, the ananei kavod. Resh Lakish, commenting, cites a verse from the second account in the Torah of the Creation, Bereshit 2:6, “ve’ed alah min ha’aratz” (“a mist rose from the ground”). On that verse the Targum Onkelos translates “ed”, mist, as “cloud”. This took place before the creation of Adam and must therefore have happened before twilight on Friday. That could explain why the clouds are not on the list of late creations in our mishnah from Avot.