The third worm

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 shamir, which may possibly not have been a worm, was a tiny creature that, in our tradition, was vested by God with the power to cut the huge stones that were used in the construction of Solomon’s Temple.  For two millennia the notion that a tiny worm might cut into solid rock was regarded by many as a laughable fantasy, but the discovery in 2019 of the bivalve shipworm lithoredo abatanica changed all that. This small, unprepossessing creature burrows into limestone and excretes it, creating an as-yet unsolved puzzle as to how it derives its nutrients.

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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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’aretz” (“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.

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Mazikim pt 2: Are we the real mazikim?

Continued from the previous post.

I believe that the real question we face is not that of whether mazikim exist. Rather, we should be asking what we can learn from the incontrovertible fact that the author of the mishnah at Avot 5:8 teaches us that there are those who say that mazikim were created on the eve of the World’s first Sabbath.

It seems to me that an argument can be made out that the inclusion of mazikim on the list of last-minute creations is because their presence has a positive aspect, in common with the other thirteen creations that are listed in this mishnah.

Let us start by asking another question: how do you “know” that you have received a visit from a mazik? The tell-tale sign of a mazik’s impact on a person’s life is that something adverse has happened to him. That person has, at the instant he realizes this, a choice of how to think. But what is this choice?

One option is for someone who has suffered a misfortune to link that adverse consequence to his own conduct. This can be done in many ways and on different levels. For example he can accept that the damage he suffered was because he was negligent (e.g. the car rolled down the hill because he didn’t check if the brake was on) or inadvertent (e.g. he switched the kettle on, forgetting that he had previously emptied it). He can also view the adverse consequence as a sort of retribution (e.g. why did he drop the bottle of Scotch in the street? Because he should have spent the money instead on a charity donation that he declined to give) or caution (e.g. he walked into an old lady while checking his phone and knocked her over, this being a warning to him to be more careful next time he goes out).

The other option is to blame it all on the mazikim. By blaming the mazik he satisfies himself that his misfortune is quite unrelated to his own behaviour. Let us return to the examples above. Why did the car roll down the hill? Because a mazik released the handbrake. Why did the kettle boil dry? Just his luck that a mazik must have distracted him! That Scotch bottle? Not my fault. And as for the old lady, a mazik must have pushed her into my path or she would have taken care to avoid me.

When a person is prepared to take responsibility for his actions, he recognizes that it is he who is the mazik. Why did that bottle of Scotch fall from my hands? Maybe it was a lesson – annoying and expensive but at least it was painless – that I should think again about putting my own selfish interests ahead of the needs of others. Why did I knock that poor little old lady over? Because I was so preoccupied with my own affairs that I forgot I was sharing the sidewalk with my fellow humans. So, to summarize, mazikim are listed as a sort of shorthand term for the potential of mankind to accept or reject responsibility for its own damaging actions.

The significance of mazikim in this mishnah is that this concept was created just before Shabbat of the World’s first week. The Torah is not a history book, but it does tell us in some detail about one event of crucial significance: the Fall of Man.

Our thoughts concerning the story of Adam and Eve tend to dwell on the sadly lost opportunity to do the one thing God asked of them: to refrain from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This mishnah however addresses another part of the story: the abrogation of responsibility on the part of both Adam and Eve for their wrongful acts. Adam states that it was not his fault: it was a mazik, Eve, who gave him the fruit. Eve states that it was not her fault: it was a mazik, the serpent, who told her to eat it.

Here then, with Shabbat coming in for the first time in history, we see the meaning of this mishnah and its teaching for contemporary readers: it tells of the potential for either accepting or denying responsibility for our own damaging actions.