Pirkei Avot, Chapter 5: Ten Generations from Adam to Avraham

Yes. Well then. I am now going to take up a mishnah from the fifth chapter of Avot, which we will be reading next Shabbat. As far as I can tell from my notes, I have already had the opportunity to speak to you about the first mishnah, which is why this evening I shall focus on the second. This chapter deals, in a sense, with the way G-d governs His universe, with the part man plays in that governance, and with the qualities required to be truly associated with the governance of this universe. Certain numbers predominate here — one would think this was a lesson in numerology. There is ten: with ten utterances the world was created. The question, then, is this: a single utterance would have been enough to bring this world into being, so why ten? Quite simply, in order to grant a reprieve to the human beings engaged in running this world, a chance to make amends — because one does not want to stake the future of the universe on a single utterance. It was therefore preferable to spread it over ten utterances. And why ten? Because the number ten tells us that it is a unit of perfect creation.

So it is not one, it is ten — and ten is not ten times one; ten is three times three plus one. You will ask why. Quite simply because in Jewish arithmetic, which is founded on quality rather than on quantity, one plus one equals three — because things do not repeat themselves; they vary in space and in time. Consequently, when we add together two elements which are not fundamentally different, but which are simply set in another perspective, then by adding them we create a new entity. The couple is one plus one. [Between man and woman,] Shekhinah beineihem — the Shekhinah (the Divine Presence) dwells between them: the couple is a third entity. That is how the world works.

By the principle of synthesis, unity in itself cannot be grasped. Without “two” there is no “one.” The “one” is reserved for the Creator alone: Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad — “Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One.” And even so, within this very profession of faith, Hashem and Elokim must be joined together — that is, what lies beyond nature and nature itself. And that is how the number three is the very foundation of the alphabet. What do we have? How does the Hebrew alphabet begin? Aleph, bet: aleph plus bet equals gimel. And “there are three partners in a human being”: the father, the mother and the Creator. This trilogy, if you like, is found again in space and in time. Remember what we say on Pesach: whoever has not said these three things has not fulfilled his obligation — Pesach, matzah and maror. Pesach, matzah and maror: that is the whole secret of the festival of Pesach. The Torah was given in the third month; there were three days of hagbalah, three days of setting bounds before the revelation of HaKadosh Barukh Hu (the Holy One, blessed be He). It was given to a people descended from the three patriarchs, the “fathers of the world,” a people destined to fulfill and carry its responsibilities through the prayers of the day — three prayers a day; three times in the unfolding of humanity and of the world, namely past, present and future; and through the three dimensions, which are length, breadth and height, or depth. So this notion of unity, founded on a product of synthesis, an element of synthesis, lies at the basis of three and repeats itself three times. Why? Quite simply because there is a first unity of creation, which is the light of the first day, marked by the point of light;

then the space of the second day, bounded by the line, the succession of points; and finally, on the third day, the appearance of the volume of the earth. These are the three elements that produce the creation of the first three days, and to which the other three days of creation come to give content: the sun and the moon for the light, which are to determine the seasons and the years; for the seas, everything that was created on the fifth day, which will populate those seas; and finally the earth and its vegetation await the sixth day, on which the animal and man were created, called to populate the earth and to give it reality.

So this notion of three will repeat itself, first in the nefesh, in materiality; then in what we might call regesh, feeling, what also belongs to the senses; and finally, the third element, that of the neshamah — breathing in and breathing out, life in its true sense. And in this connection, the human component, the very basis of the human dimension, is forged out of Adam, Noach and Avraham. Adam is still adamah, the earth: he is raw being, the basic element. Noach will give him the sense of regesh. Let us not forget that Noach’s sons are three in number, and they are three types: Shem, Cham and Yefet. Shem is the name, renown; Cham is what gives man his drive; and [Yefet is] the sense of the aesthetic, which is bound up with the ethical. And finally, all of this will be found later on, when the evolution passes through Avraham — and Avraham is birth. Avraham is truly the one who is worthy of revelation. And I repeat: in the making of the people there are Miriam, Aharon and Moshe — the woman first. I note in passing that at the foot of Mount Sinai too she is mentioned first: Ko tomar le-Veit Yaakov — “Thus shall you say to the House of Yaakov” — and the House of Yaakov — elu ha-nashim, these are the women; only afterward come the Children of Israel, ve-taggid li-vnei Yisrael. And the Children of Israel are the keli, that is, the instrument, the vessel of the entire universe, and this vessel carries the particular qualities of the kohen — kaf — of the levi — lamed — and of Yisrael — yud.

All this is to say that the functioning of the entire universe is founded first of all on this trilogy, which we find everywhere — in time, in space and in the human being. It is the gimel. And gimel — gamal — is a gift of the spirit. So we have said that there are three elements of life. In every stage of development, for every reason, a new entity is given; but there are two primary entities, material and spiritual, so to speak. They must be united — they must be united — and their union makes three: three for the first, material element, three for the spiritual element; each time, as we have already noted, three. This then creates a third dimension. There are the shalosh regalim, the three pilgrimage festivals: they are the stages of life — liberation; the balance that the Torah gives to this creation; and finally the manifestation, or rather man’s recognition, of this duality, a faith which holds that it is one. So too, the people was to be an am segulah, a treasured people — and segulah evokes sagol, the color violet. Violet is a blend of red and blue. Red is the nefesh, it is the earth, the material; blue, as we have always said, is the accumulation of celestial transparency. And this, indeed, was to make up the segulah of the Jewish people.

It is this color that asserts itself, if you will, in the march of the people. We have seen that it is three times three. […] Our Sages taught: Asarah she-yoshvin ve-oskin ba-Torah, Shekhinah sheruyah beineihem — ten who sit and engage in Torah study: the Shekhinah rests among them. […] But the minyan is always nine plus one: it is the entity, the one added force, if you like, the bonus — in the same way that, in the counting of the Omer, we are to count fifty days but do not count the fiftieth; the fiftieth day awakens of itself once we have reached the forty-nine days, once we have counted off the forty-nine. And that is why ten is truly the expression of perfect creation.

Just as we find ten utterances, asarah maamarot, at the foundation of creation, so we will find ten utterances at the foundation of revelation. We will also find the ten trials that commit man to the proper governance of this creation — the text will tell us this further on. But more than that, the text says that the transformations of history always come about from ten generations to ten generations: Asarah dorot me-Adam ve-ad Noach — “ten generations from Adam to Noach.” There are ten generations that lead to Noach, and ten more generations that lead to Avraham. That is to say, history is not static; there is a dynamic of history, and [man] is associated, first and foremost, with HaKadosh Barukh Hu in governing this universe, in governing the history of humanity.

We do not see the reasons why there is rasha ve-tov lo, tzaddik ve-ra lo — the wicked man who prospers, the righteous man who suffers — quite simply because in these ten generations, for instance, which separate the creation of Adam, the appearance of Adam, from Noach, there are roughly one thousand and fifty-six years. And how much does that period occupy us? Very little. So we cannot have a perspective on history. We do not know how those ten generations were preparing the future of Noach’s world, the future of Avraham’s world, the future of Yitzchak’s world, and so on. There is a whole itinerary of history being made. And the people who live through that history are not, so to speak, useless — no. In every being there is a divine spark, except that it has been covered over by conduct unworthy of human beings; and because of this, one must pass through very harsh trials — sometimes a mabul, a flood, sometimes a very severe punishment — in order to see the sum of these particles, of these sparks of light, appear in a single man: Noach, or Avraham.

Of course, each man is at his own level: Noach is a tzaddik, a righteous man; Avraham is a hasid, a man of loving-kindness. And Noach, by being righteous, is called to raise his society to a certain level that makes this transformation easier. That is to say: for ten generations the world cannot, at first sight, be judged; one must wait for the tenth. Why? Because as long as there are no norms in society, as long as no leader comes forward, people are not — I would say — answerable. They cannot be judged: they have no reference point, they have no leader. But as soon as a figure appears, there is a call of norms, of criteria, which demand change, leveling. And that is precisely what the text tells us: “There were ten generations,” le-hodia kamah erekh apayim lefanav — “to make known how great is His forbearance” toward humanity; that is, there was no one to take as an example until the coming of Noach. And then, when Noach appears — well, the Flood, and we set out toward a new creation, a new history. But since Noach is a man who walks with G-d’s justice, who therefore remained bound to the laws of creation, enclosed within this law of creation — and this law of creation calls for the law of measure for measure — another ten generations must pass before we move in a different direction: that of the hasid, that of love, that of surpassing the ways of nature. And that is Avraham. And Avraham is Noach in another perspective, and he is also Adam. All of this comes from the smallest letter, which contains the universe: the smallest letter of the alphabet is the yud, and its numerical value is ten.

And how does the letter of unity [the aleph] begin? With a yud which, across the line of reflection, meets a yud turned upside down, below. So we have the numerical value of the yud spelled out in full — yud, twenty; yud and yud, twenty. But that twenty is already inscribed in the first yud, and it is from yud to yud that the world moves forward. It is the foundation of the alphabet; it is the point — the point in the bet of Bereshit. That point is the starting point of creation, and it is the yud. This point is indivisible; but when we speak of creation, which for its part is dual, that is the bet of Bereshit. That is the reason why, in any book, you will never see [the first letter] at the beginning, because the bet is what gives […].

So now we can [understand] the reason why HaKadosh Barukh Hu [brings about] mutations of behavior by ten, in tranches of ten: ten, twenty, thirty, forty, up to a hundred. From ten on, these are compound numbers, up to a hundred, which is of course the multiple [of ten] — and which brings us toward the end of life. Whoever has reached the full age of his time has nothing left to innovate. Yes — because what is death? It is the loss of dynamism, of the sense of responsibility; we no longer turn our gaze toward the new generations. There is an important notion in Judaism, namely that good and evil are very [relative]. If at the beginning man was told not to fix his attention on the knowledge of good and evil, it is because there is no evil in the absolute.

What matters in life is not to distinguish between good and evil. We do not bless HaKadosh Barukh Hu for having established the separation between good and evil; we bless Him as ha-mavdil bein kodesh le-chol, “who separates between the holy and the profane,” between the pure and the impure. That is to say, in a spiritual life what counts most is to raise matter to the level of the sacred, to consecrate the profane, to cross the boundary between the pure and the impure. And only then does the notion of good and evil come in: it stands third in the ranking of values. Now, those first generations had no sense of holiness — for holiness too is threefold: Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, a glorification repeated three times. Once it refers to heaven, once it refers to matter, and once it refers to that combination which comes about through time, by the third kedushah, the third holiness.

And it is in this capacity that we are to be mamlekhet kohanim ve-goy kadosh — “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” The kohen is the one who guards himself from impurity and who watches over holiness. We are little kohanim for humanity, but we are inspired by the dimension of the kohen gadol, the High Priest. We are inspired by time — that of Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot — when we set aside everything that is repetitive […], everything that is conformism. Conformism is the essence of impurity; [the task is] to seek to raise each point to a higher level. And we are regulated by Shabbat — the preparation for Shabbat, the preparation for the festivals, the three daily prayers, and so on. It is a way of keeping our spirituality on its toes. There is no repetition, neither in space nor in time, and still less in the human being. But there are stages, and stages that lead man to be in the image of his Creator. That is the teaching of this mishnah, and it is illustrated by the one that follows it, namely […]. A righteous man knows no rest; he is always at school. He cannot allow himself simply to let life carry him along — that is not possible.

He is achrai — you know, in the word achrai, “responsible,” there is the word acher, “the other”: responsibility is toward the other. He has the desire to bring about progress for the other, so that he may fulfill his duties toward him. Naturally, he too will go through trials — ten trials, as was the case for Avraham Avinu. He was not rewarded for his past, but rather for having shown yatzivut, steadfastness — a constancy, a faithfulness proof against every trial. And that is also the reason why the people of Israel itself obtained its liberation only after the ten plagues, the plagues of Egypt, the ten [miracles] that took place at the Sea, and the ten [trials] it had to face in crossing the desert. But life goes on like this — life goes on like this, but on one condition: when we come out of the number ten, below, we find ourselves in the number seven. And in the number seven, as I said yesterday, there is two times three for creation, and the seventh is consecration. It is always this trilogy that returns. And our chakhamim, our Sages, asked: what then is the difference? For after all there is a Divine Presence that consecrates the gathering of ten people, and there is also a Divine Presence that consecrates the presence of three people, as with other people.

The difference is that when we are in the ten, the elements may be separate; but by the very fact that we are integrated into the ten — even if we are dealing with resha’im, with unbelievers — that presence is always there. There is always this process of creation that will take place through them, and the Divine Presence is there. Whereas when we are in the lower order, then there must truly be a dialogue, a participation of the two units in order to bring something about, to call forth that presence. There — I will stop here. If you have a question, the two of you, with pleasure. — Yes, Rav, if you will allow me, I would first have a small question.

You said that the source of impurity is conformism and repetition. But when we speak of Ben Zoma, who says that the korban tamid (the daily offering) is what represents Judaism, and when we take up the priestly service of the priesthood, which is eternal, an eternal cycle, and which is precisely extremely regulated — how, in fact, do you reconcile the two? — Yes. Listen: there are three notions in the spiritual order. That of talmud, the study that inspires; that of halakhah, which regulates our practice, our ritual; and then that of aggadah — of the imaginary; no, I would not say the imaginary — rather, the projection of being into a world that carries me toward the heights.

The mitzvah, it is true, is a repetition — it is a repetition. Study is not; talmud is not. The talmud that inspires the mitzvah means that the mitzvah is no longer the same; and the fact that at no moment is it equal to that of the day before projects us into another conception of this spirituality. To shut oneself up in the practice of repetitive mitzvot gives rise to religion — and we are not religious. We do not want religion: we are poets of life with G-d. We are beings borne by spirituality toward being a complete human being, a man in the image of our Creator. So one must not die in repetition. “You shall be men of holiness unto Me” […].

The mitzvah — yes: this is how it must be done, and not otherwise. Not kedushah: kedushah is what lies beyond the mitzvah. The whole ritual of the Temple was in the realm of the holy, it was in taharah, purity. It was not in the realm of good and evil; it was in impurity, in the purity wrested from impurity, and in the holiness wrested from the profane. But of course, it is not a matter either of sinking into a world of poetry beyond the world. The verse says ve-anshei kodesh tihyun li — “you shall be men of holiness unto Me”: be men first, and then holy. You cannot be holy at the expense of the ish, of anashim, of the human being — and you cannot confine yourself to remaining only ish and do without kedushah.

There — another question? — Yes, precisely, I would like to continue from what you have just said: that in Jewish thought the moral categories of good and evil are in fact very relative; they are truly surpassed by the holy and the profane, by the pure and the impure. But I am still looking, within the Torah, for the verse on which one could base this. And I am thinking rather of the beginning: in Genesis, in chapter 2, we have the prohibition against eating from the tree of good and evil; but at the end, in chapter 50, we read what Yosef says to his brothers: “The evil you intended against me, G-d turned to good.” And I wonder whether that is not a key verse for grounding what you say, these relative dimensions of good and evil, […]. That is all. — Well, the answer: you are right, but I will add to it. In the book of Genesis this notion of the holy and the profane does not appear. It appears in the book of Shemot, when there is a people. At the level of Bereshit there are only individuals, and as an individual it is difficult to attain the notion of kedushah. The notion of kedushah is plural.

The only one who can claim kedushah for Himself is HaKadosh Barukh Hu. And there it is said [in the Midrash]: kedushati le-ma’lah mi-kedushatkhem — “My holiness is above your holiness.” Why? Because I can be holy at once on earth, holy beyond the world, holy in time — and you cannot be beyond these notions. Your holiness, for all that, limits you. It is effective only when it is projected onto kedoshim tihyu ki kadosh Ani — “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And holiness also obeys [a twofold movement]: on the one hand, hashgachah, providence. The Jewish people is holy because HaKadosh Barukh Hu so decided. The kohen is holy — not because he is just, not because he is good: he is holy from birth. It was granted to him; he was endowed with this holiness. Whether he lives it or not — that is hashgachah, providence […]. But be careful: there is a movement from below upward. There is a holiness […] — the one that leads us, precisely, to respond through bechirah, through free will.

Free will is when I commit myself to taking on this hashgachah, this destiny that was imposed on me — I did not choose it. And that happens when the notion of am, of a people, appears: mamlekhet kohanim ve-goy kadosh, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” The notion of a people expresses, I would say, this need for holiness, for going beyond one’s being — or even beyond justice. Justice is the minimal expression of morality. What is the true one? It is tzedakah u-mishpat; it is lifnim mi-shurat ha-din, going beyond the letter of the law; it is beyond justice. It is lema’an telekh be-derekh tovim — “that you may walk in the way of the good.” That is the true [morality]: the march toward holiness.

There — I will leave you now.