An Avot mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Chukkat)
Continuing our series of erev Shabbat posts on the perek
of the week, we return to Perek 5.
There are three worms in Pirkei Avot. Two—the rimah (at
3:1 and 4:4) and the tole’ah (3:1—are what one might call conventional
worms. But the third, which we meet in this week’s perek is anything but
ordinary: it is the miraculous shamir. At Avot 5:8 we learn of 10 things
that, the Tannaim agreed, were created at the very end of the sixth Day of
Creation, just before all creative work ceased for Shabbat. They are:
פִּי הָאָֽרֶץ, פִּי הַבְּאֵר, פִּי הָאָתוֹן, הַקֶּֽשֶׁת,
וְהַמָּן, וְהַמַּטֶּה, וְהַשָּׁמִיר, הַכְּתָב, וְהַמִּכְתָּב, וְהַלֻּחוֹת
The mouth of the earth [that
swallowed Korach]; the mouth of [Miriam's] well; the mouth of [Balaam's]
donkey; the rainbow; the manna; [Moses'] staff; the shamir; writing, the
inscription and the tablets [of the Ten Commandments].
The corpus of the Mishnah deals with law and (in the case of
Avot) best principles of behaviour and conduct. It is not a treatise on natural history. So
what is this shamir doing in Avot? What can we learn from it today?
For the father-and-son team of Rabbis Baruch and Amos Shulem
(Avot Uvanim) the creation of the shamir resonates an earlier mishnah
(Avot 2:13). There Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel recommends that we take steps to
foresee possible problems ahead. When God created humans he gave Adam and Eve
free will. Had they opted to obey His instruction not to eat the fruit of the
tree of knowledge, the human race would have lived happily ever in a sin-free
world. The Temple, with its mechanism for atonement, would not have been needed
and creation of the shamir would not have been called for. From this we
learn that even God, in creating the world and everything in it, took the
precaution of engaging in an act of creation that was purely conditional. We
too should guard against events and misfortunes that may not ultimately occur.
The Ben Ish Chai (Birkat Avot) offers another answer.
The ‘stone’ the shamir burrows into is the yetzer hara, the
inclination to take an evil course of action.
But no matter how hard the stone is, the shamir represents the
potential of even flesh-and-blood creatures such as ourselves to break it into
pieces. This is learned by a kal vechomer: if even a small, weak worm
can achieve this effect, how much more should we, bigger and possessed of
greater strength and will-power, be able to do the same.
Though he does not mention it here, the Ben Ish Chai has
support in the Gemara for use of the word ‘stone’ to refer to the yetzer
hara: at Sukkah 52a, citing a verse from Ezekiel, ‘stone’ is deemed to be
one of seven metaphors by which the yetzer hara is identified in Tanach.
The vulnerability of stone to a slow but unremitting attack from a substance
less strong than itself is also acknowledged by Rabbi Akiva’s resolution that,
if the constant drip of water can wear away a rock, so too, through persistent study,
might the words of Torah eventually penetrate even his then-unlearned mind
(Avot deRabbi Natan 6:2, citing Job 14:19).
But there is more to the success of the shamir, and
by implication to our own success, than this story suggests. Our achievements
are not just credited to ourselves. There is a further ingredient—a vital
ingredient without which there can be no success. As R’ Mordechai Dov
Halberstam (Knesset Yisrael) comments, our efforts depend on the will of
God too. We recognise this on Chanukah, when we give thanks for the victory of
the Hasmoneans over the Greeks, the triumph of the weak over the strong.
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