(ו) עֲשָׂרָה דְבָרִים נִבְרְאוּ בְּעֶרֶב שַׁבָּת בֵּין הַשְּׁמָשׁוֹת, וְאֵלּוּ הֵן, פִּי הָאָרֶץ, וּפִי הַבְּאֵר, וּפִי הָאָתוֹן, וְהַקֶּשֶׁת, וְהַמָּן, וְהַמַּטֶּה, וְהַשָּׁמִיר, וְהַכְּתָב, וְהַמִּכְתָּב, וְהַלּוּחוֹת. וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים, אַף הַמַּזִּיקִין, וּקְבוּרָתוֹ שֶׁל משֶׁה, וְאֵילוֹ שֶׁל אַבְרָהָם אָבִינוּ. וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים, אַף צְבָת בִּצְבָת עֲשׂוּיָה:
(6) Ten things were created on the eve of the Sabbath at twilight, and these are they: [1] the mouth of the earth, [2] the mouth of the well, [3] the mouth of the donkey, [4] the rainbow, [5] the manna, [6] the staff [of Moses], [7] the shamir, [8] the letters, [9] the writing, [10] and the tablets. And some say: also the demons, the grave of Moses, and the ram of Abraham, our father. And some say: and also tongs, made with tongs.
(1) Ten things were created on the eve of the [first] Shabbat at twilight. And these are they: The mouth of the earth for the swallowing of Korach and his assembly.
(2) and the mouth of the well: The boulder that Moshe struck.
(3) and the mouth of the donkey of Bilaam - "And the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey" (Numbers 22:28).
(4) and the rainbow: "My rainbow have I given in the cloud" (Genesis 9:13).
(5) and the manna of the wilderness.
(6) and the staff of Moshe, with which he did the signs.
(7) and the shamir: It was a type of long worm. And King Shlomo built the Temple with it, as he would place it on the stone and it would split (Gittin 68a). "And no hammer or ax or any iron tool was heard in the House while it was being built" (I Kings 6:7).
(8) and the letters: The Torah that was written in front of God, may He be blessed, from the six days of Creation with black fire on top of white fire.
(9) and the writing: The form of the letters carved on the tablets.
(10) and the tablets themselves.
(11) And some say, also the destructive spirits, and the burial place of Moshe: "And no man knew his burial place" (Deuteronomy 34:6).
(12) and the ram of Abraham, our father "caught in the thicket by its horns; and Avraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son" (Genesis 22:13).
(13) And some say, also the tongs, made with tongs: These are pincers with which a blacksmith holds metal when it is hot until he makes it into a vessel.
And why was it necessary to count these ten things? To make known that all the Holy One, blessed be He, created, He created on condition that it change its nature when it is told [to do so] at a time when it is needed. As there is nothing (from the depths) [novel] in the world that did not come up in the thought [of God] in the story of Creation. When the luminaries (fell) [were suspended] on the fourth day, He decreed upon them that they would stand for Yehoshua and Hizkiyahu; the sea, that it should split for the Children of Israel; and so [on] with all of them. However, these ten went up into [His] thought "on the eve of the [first] Shabbat at twilight," [though] they are included in the things that [have change] embedded in them.
(1) Introduction This mishnah lists fourteen things (10 + 3 + 1) that seem to defy the laws of nature. These are problematic because God is supposed to have created a world that acts upon the laws of nature. In order to solve this metaphysical problem, the mishnah claims that these supernatural items were created for this very purpose during the six days of creation. They were created during this in-between time, right before creation ended at the end of the sixth day. These items are therefore part of God’s ultimate plan and they are not in essence “supernatural”.
(2) And the ram of Abraham, our father: which seemed to have miraculously appeared before Abraham sacrificed Isaac (Genesis 22:13). The mishnah teaches that God all along created the ram to be sacrificed in Isaac’s place. Otherwise it might seem that if the ram had not gotten caught in the bushes, Abraham would have been allowed to sacrifice his son.
Tongs made with tongs: One cannot forge tongs in fire, without already having a set of tongs. The first set of tongs must therefore have been made during the twilight of the sixth day.
Additional thoughts:
The Maharal says that the twilight period before the first Shabbos has a dual quality. It is still Friday, so it is still a day of creation, but it is Shabbos, a day above creation. So the things created at that time are of a miraculous and not of the natural order, but are still creations of G-d.
The thing which doesn't really belong on that list, according to those explanations, is tongs. They aren't exceptionally miraculous (you could make the first pair by pouring into a mold). The Lubavitcher Rebbe explains that the idea of tongs is they are a facilitator to a meaningful act. By creating those tongs, G-d granted meaning even to those parts of life that seem to be only means to a holy end. This ability is something granted by the twilight of the first Friday.
.......
Noah didn't know how many days he was going to be in the ark. The Israelites didn't know how many days Moses was going to be on Mt. Sinai. And perhaps most iconically, the Israelites had no idea how long they were going to journey through the wilderness.
Each of these stories shares at least three qualities.
The first is that the length of time is equal to the number 40. Be it 40 days or nights or years. 40 represents a fullness of time. Which is to say, a seemingly endless period of time.
Second, in each of these stories, the people experienced profound doubt, fear, and loss.
In the beginning, Noah hesitates to build the ark at all, not really believing the waters would actually come. Then the Torah explains that even after the water receded, Noah would not leave the ark until the Holy One literally commanded him to do so, doubting it was safe to leave. When the waters receded, and he finally emerged, everything Noah had known was gone.
While Moses was up on the mountain, the people gathered at Sinai became convinced he would never return, so unmoored that they reverted to the ways of idolatry and built a golden calf to quell their fears. [4] When Moses returned down the mountain and saw the Golden Calf, he ordered the Levites to kill 3000 Israelites.
And the Israelites in the wilderness kvetched about everything. "If only we had meat to eat! We were better off in Egypt!" They complained so much that they started to believe it would be better to go back to Mitzrayim, to be enslaved, than to live with this much uncertainty.
....
There is a the third quality that each of these stories shares:
The felt sense of "Are we there yet?," or even more so, "Are we ever gonna get there?" is always actually the beginning of some kind of revelation, which is what I want to explore with you today.
What revelation was possible for our ancestors in the midst of their unending uncertainty? And what revelation is possible for us?
---
So what in fact was revealed in each of these stories?
We begin with the story of the Flood.
God tells Noah to enter the ark without telling him when he will leave. This is the biblical shelter in place order we all received last March.
It goes on to rain for 40 days and 40 nights. When the waters had finally receded, and Noah was sure the ground was dry, he exited the ark.
God makes a promise in this moment:
"So long as the earth endures,
Seedtime and harvest,
Cold and heat,
Summer and winter,
Day and night
Shall not cease."
And thus God established a covenant "with every living thing on earth," declaring,
"I will maintain My covenant with you: never again shall all life be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." [6]
....
Then God said further, "I have set My bow in the clouds, and it shall serve as a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth." And thus the rainbow was revealed.
....
Second, the story of Sinai.
Exodus 19 recounts how the Israelites camped by the base of the mountain filled with awe and terror. Now Mount Sinai is all in smoke, for the Holy One had come down upon it in fire; the smoke rises like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain and everyone present trembles violently. The blare of the horn grows louder and louder. As Moses speaks, God answers him in thunder. Then Moses goes up the mountain.
While on the mountain, the people grow fearful. They fear not only for their lives but for their leader Moses, the one who brought them out of Mitzrayim. They even cry out to Aaron, "We do not know what has happened to him." [8]
When Moses finally descends, every bird, bug, and being is silent. Moses' face is glowing and he is carrying two tablets, upon which were engraved the 10 Commandments.
Torah itself was revealed.
And we were all there for it. It was whispered into our ears and felt in our bones. So much so, that this moment in Torah is referred to as "revelation" itself.
And finally, the wilderness. 40 years of wandering through the desert. The journey through the wilderness embodied the most profound uncertainty. And it was defined by a near constant cascade of revelation.
When the people feared they would have nothing to eat, manna fell from the sky, elevated on the morning dew. And when the people complained of its monotony, the manna transformed, "tasting according to one's own desires." [9]
When the people feared they would die of thirst, a well of water appeared, providing water for hundreds of thousands of Israelites on their 40-year journey through an arid desert, following them wherever they went. Rolling up mountains and down into valleys, and resting at the entrance of their camp. [10]
Not to mention the cloud that followed them by day, providing shade from the hot sun, and the fire that warmed them through the cold desert nights.
Amidst endless verses of complaining filled with doubt and fear, we learn that the Israelites were quite literally sustained by miracles every day of their journey.
And so are we. Amidst our doubt, and our fear and our tremendous losses.
Now, in each of these biblical stories, the revelation is unique to its circumstances. But, in the rabbinic imagination, they are deeply connected.
We learn in Pirkei Avot [11], that ten things were created at twilight, just before the first Shabbat.
Imagine the haste of the Holy One, rushing to complete the work of creation before pausing to celebrate it on the first Shabbat. As if they were last-minute packing for a trip, throwing into their suitcase anything they thought the world might need, ever!
[E]ach and every one of the revelations from the stories I just told you is on that famous list. [12]
.....
But I don’t think it's random.
What connects the items on this list is the stories they come from. And what connects the stories they come from is that they are stories of unending uncertainty and loss.
......
Each one appears when the people involved in the story have lost hope that there will be a way through to the other side, a light at the end of the tunnel.
......
This list of revelations was compiled by people living through unending uncertainty: the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, the beginning of exile.
We are the inheritors of their clarity. A clarity that is usually beyond the grasp of those in the midst of the experience.
.......
......
This pandemic, warming temperatures, rising sea levels, drought, and famine, coupled with restrictive voting rights and the rise of authoritarian governments around the globe...
Much like the Israelites, we don't know how long we are going to be here.
Now we have explored what revelation was possible for our ancestors in the midst of their unending uncertainty.
So what revelation is possible for us?
According to Maimonides [14],
Every miraculous thing that has ever been revealed
was programmed into creation,
integrated into the cosmos.
Which means that this list of 10 things that the Holy One created at twilight before the first Shabbat, like all lists, is not exhaustive.
It is representative.
The list of miraculous revelations in the wilderness exists to help us realize that the things we need are not only possible, but they are already here, even -- especially -- if we don't know what they are. They already exist.
The things we need already exist.
........
To quote the agrarian poet Wendell Berry,
"Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here."
What we need is here!
.......
That beloved list of the 10 things that the Holy One squeezed into creation in the last moments before the clock ran out just as the sun was beginning to set on the sixth day before Shabbat,
That list concludes with a bonus track.
It ends with the line:
They are forged. Which means that a person must hold white-hot iron and beat it with a hammer in order to to make it into tongs.
But to do so, you need to hold that hot iron with something, with tongs! But where did that first pair of tongs come from?
For which the answer this midrash offers is, of course, the final moments of creation!
And if we read the midrash closely we can see, it was not just tongs, but tongs that make other tongs.
......
Their presence on this list and in our world represents the tools we need to develop the resilience and creativity to survive this much uncertainty and loss.
Tongs represent the internal mechanism of human beings to create for ourselves what we need when we need it.
And to create a world that embodies real wholeness, a world that is wholly just, like maybe it never was before.
Hashiveinu adonai elecha v'nashuva
hadesh yameinu k'kedem.
Return us to you Holy One, and we will return
Renew our days, renew our world, k'kedem - like we long for it to be.
Uvtuvo mechadesh b'chol yom tamid ma'aseh v'reishit.
Every single day, including today, the world is renewed.
......
Whatever it is, it is already here, in our hearts, in this room, in this community.
Rabbi Barry Leff:
I believe that discovering one’s mission in life is one of the most important spiritual tasks a person can undertake. It is an active response to the question of what is the purpose of life.
So what does Judaism say about the purpose of life?
We find the answer by starting at the beginning: the creation of the world. The Torah opens with: In beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. But that’s not the whole story: the Jewish mystical tradition, Kabbalah, elaborates on our Creation myth in a way that has profoundly influenced the way Jews view the meaning of life. Keep in mind that we do not look at these stories as in any way competing with the scientific view of what happened—they work in a different realm, a beautiful tale designed to enlighten us on how God chooses to interact with the world.
Before the beginning, God filled the Universe. The first thing that had to happen in creation was a contraction: God had to withdraw, concealing God’s self, so that there would be room for the physical world. God then began to emanate into the world, pouring His divine energy into vessels called sefirot, which represent different ways God has of interacting with the world—a bridge between the finite and the infinite. The vessels were not able to contain God’s light—it was too powerful—and the vessels shattered. The remnants of those shattered vessels are the physical world we live in. Yet those shattered shards contain some Divine energy, just as a broken honey jar would still have honey stuck on the pieces of glass. The world, in a sense, was created in a cosmic work accident. Our communal mission is to put God back together again, to restore those slivers of the Divine that have been cast down with the physical. And the way we do that, the way we fix the world, is through doing mitzvot. To the mystics, any mitzvot we do—whether feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, or lighting Shabbat candles and keeping kosher—contributes to “tikun olam,” the repair of the world, the bringing of the holy sparks back to God.
Yesod HaAvodah, the first Chasidic rebbe of Slonim, wrote that each of us has a unique tikkun, a unique healing of the world that we are uniquely qualified to do. It is for the purpose of fulfilling this unique mission that our souls began the long journey downward into our bodies, into the physical world. The mystics tell us that no one else can accomplish our missions: by dint of our uniqueness, those special characteristics that come with our soul being put in our bodies and the things we have experienced in our lives, there is some special thing that each one of us can accomplish that no one else can.
“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”
Michaelangelo
