The trouble with tongs

According to an anonymous mishnah at Avot 5:8,

Ten things were created at twilight, just before Shabbat. These are (i) the mouth of the Earth [that swallowed Korach]; (ii) the mouth of [Miriam's] well; (iii) the mouth of [Balaam's] donkey; (iv) the rainbow; (v) the manna; (vi) [Moses'] staff; (vii) the shamir worm; (viii) writing, (ix) the inscription and (x) the tablets [of the Ten Commandments]. Some say also the burial place of Moses and the ram of our father Abraham. And some say also the mazikimas well as tongs made with tongs.

The last-minute creation of tongs that were made with tongs (Avot 5:8) has fascinated both the earlier sages and later commentators. For some this act of creation smacks of the divine: if you need tongs to hold hot metal while you beat it into the shape of tongs, where else but through God’s creativity could that first pair of tongs have originated? Others dismiss this view and remind us that all you need in order to make a metal object of any specific shape is a mould into which molten metal can be poured; for them, if there is any significance in this last-minute flurry of divine creativity, it must lie elsewhere.

For one rabbi at least, the tongs created just before the first Shabbat point to a famous argument in the Talmud (Berachot 35b) between Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and Rabbi Yishmael:

Our Rabbis taught: “And you shall gather in your corn” (Deut. 11:14). What is to be learnt from these words? Since it says: “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth” (Joshua 1:8), I might have thought that this instruction is to be taken literally, so it says: “And you shall gather in your corn”, which implies that you should combine the study of them [i.e. the words of the Torah] with a worldly occupation. This is the view of Rabbi Yishmael.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai says: “Is that possible? If a man ploughs in the ploughing season, sows in the sowing season, reaps in the reaping season, threshes in the threshing season, and winnows in the windy season, what will become of the Torah? No! But when Israel perform the will of the Omnipresent, their work is performed by others, as it says: ‘And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks…’ (Isaiah 61:5). and when Israel do not perform the will of the Omnipresent their work is carried out by themselves, as it says: ‘And you will gather in your corn’. Not only that, but the work of others will also be done by them, as it says: ‘And you will serve your enemy…’ (Deut. 28:48). Said Abaye: “Many have followed the advice of Yishmael, and it has worked well; others have followed Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai and it has not been successful”.

What does this argument have to do with tongs? In essence, the point of tongs is that they are used for making things that are needed for the purposes of work. Was mankind initially created in order to live a life of contemplation in the Garden of Eden, where all human needs would be met without the need to work at all? If so, they should not therefore have had any need for tongs. Supporters of Rabbi Yishmael’s view might argue that the creation of tongs during the Six Days of Creation is proof that man was initially supposed to work as well as to learn. Supporters of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s view could counter this by arguing that it was only just before Shabbat—after Adam and Eve had sinned and had failed to recognise the possibility of repentance—that the tongs were made. Initially, therefore, man’s task in the newly-created world involved no labour at all.

Based on a comment by Rabbi Yitzchak Ze’ev Yadler, Tiferet Tzion.

Getting a grip on tongs made with tongs

One of the most memorable bits of Avot is the statement (Avot 5:8) that one of the things that was created at close of play on the Sixth Day of Creation was "tongs made with tongs". This has generated discussion over the centuries as to whether you can make metal tongs if you don't already have tongs. Here's a thought on this subject.

The thing that grabs people about this mishnah is the problem that metal tongs are made by heating strips of metal to the point at which they become malleable so that they can be shaped into its component parts—but, without a pair of tongs to hold the red-hot metal, tongs cannot be made. Traditional rabbinical commentators tend to be divided between (i) those who explain what tongs are but say nothing of their significance;  (ii) those who say that, if tongs can only be made if you already have tongs, the first tongs must have been made by God,  (iii) those who say that tongs can actually be made by pouring molten metal into moulds, and (iv) those for whom the real issue is the actual time when the tongs were created.

So we remain stuck with a question: what is our takeaway message from this mishnaic reference to tongs? In the 21st century most of us do not have much connection with metallurgy on a daily basis, or indeed at all. It is possible that not one in a thousand contemporary Torah students will have seen a blacksmith using tongs to hold a metal bar that would otherwise burn a man’s hand (they might have seen sugar tongs, but these genteel items did not exist in Tannaic times). So why should we even care?

If we look beyond the tongs, we see a bigger, wider message: that we should always recognize God’s contribution to our own inventiveness for it is He who created in us the potential to innovate. To put it another way, whatever we invent today is a consequence of God’s original creation of mankind’s ability to do so.  We might consider ourselves to be creators on a par with God, but all we have done is to graft our own effort on to the inventive potential that God Himself instilled in us, late on the first Sabbath eve, knowing that we would need to actualize it as soon as Shabbat ended, when Adam and Eve, expelled from the Garden of Eden, had to make their own way in the World.

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This sensible and practical explanation of the tongs issue can be found in Rabbi Menachem Mordechai Frankel-Teomim's Be'er Ha'Avot. This work appears to have been privately published and must have been purchased by someone since it ran to at least three editions (the third being published in Jerusalem in 1978). The bigger question is whether anyone has ever read it, since I have never before seen it discussed or referred to in any subsequent commentaries on Avot and a Google search does not reveal its existence.