We now begin the fifth chapter of Pirkei Avos, with Mishnah 1. This chapter is built differently from the previous one: for the most part we do not have a particular Tanna delivering his advice, but rather statements organized around numbers - ten, seven, four - without attribution to a particular Tanna as the source of that teaching. We will return to this point at the end of the chapter. Let us begin, then, with the sets of ten.
The text of the Mishnah:
"With ten utterances the world was created. And what does this come to teach us? Could it not have been created with a single utterance? Rather, it is in order to exact payment from the wicked, who destroy a world that was created with ten utterances, and to give a good reward to the righteous, who sustain a world that was created with ten utterances".
Two questions arise from the Mishnah:
We have a tradition that the world was created with ten utterances - so why did the Holy One not create the world with a single utterance?
Why is it important for us to know this? Countless things took place during the creation of the world about which we have no information whatsoever, and there was no need for us to know them; yet here, specifically, we are told that there were ten utterances. What is the point of this?
Two basic principles in approaching this Mishnah:
The first principle: the purpose of the Mishnah, like all the mishnayos in Pirkei Avos, is to teach us good character traits and to put a person's ethics and outlook in order. It does not come to teach us the mystical dimensions of the Torah, even though most of the words of Chazal surrounding the ten utterances revolve around Kabbalistic ideas, the sefiros and the like. The Mishnah before us is studied by searching for the moral lesson - what is the ethical teaching that emerges from this piece of information.
The second principle: the Torah's understanding of the number ten. Ten in the Torah expresses a complete system. A system means a collection of components that work together in harmony and produce something more significant than the individual parts do when they are not working in harmony; this is a quality that emerges from the things themselves at the moment they function as one.
A clock made up of ten parts illustrates this: springs lying on a table are nothing more than a collection of springs. Once they are assembled in exactly the right way, they do something that is more than what a spring does - they tell the time. But this depends on all the components working in harmony, and if one spring stops functioning, we no longer have a clock but a broken clock, which is in no way superior to a collection of springs lying on a table. Only the joint functioning of all of them creates that emergent quality which the system is capable of producing.
This idea of the number ten, as something greater than the sum of its parts, is found throughout the Torah's outlook:
Ten men are required for a minyan.
Ten utterances with which the world was created.
The Ten Commandments, which Chazal relate to as a system - as Rav Saadyah Gaon, for example, fits all six hundred and thirteen mitzvos into those ten.
Avraham Avinu asked for ten righteous people in order to save Sodom.
Ten is an idea that contains more than an individual: it is a system that works together and is capable of creating something that an individual, or a group of individuals acting on their own, cannot create.
The Ten Utterances of Creation:
To get to the depth of the Mishnah, we need to enter a bit into the technical side and clarify which ten utterances are being discussed. In Parashas Bereishis the phrase "Vayomer Elokim" ("And G-d said") appears ten times. Eight of them are agreed upon by everyone:
"Let there be light" - the creation of light.
"Let there be a firmament" - the heavens.
"Let the waters beneath the heavens be gathered" - the gathering of the waters together.
"Let the earth sprout vegetation" - the growth of plant life.
"Let there be luminaries in the firmament" - the luminaries, the stars, the sun and the moon.
"Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures" - the teeming of life in the water.
"Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, animals and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind" - the proliferation of animal life on the earth.
"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" - the creation of man.
The two additional utterances are not agreed upon by everyone, even though they too contain the expression "Vayomer" ("And He said"):
"Vayomer Elokim hinei nasati lachem es kol esev zorei'a zera" - And G-d said: behold, I have given you every seed-bearing herb. The Holy One gives man plant life for food, as the verse continues: "which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree that has fruit bearing seed, it shall be yours for food."
"Vayomer Hashem Elokim lo tov heyos ha'adam levado, e'eseh lo ezer kenegdo" - And Hashem G-d said: it is not good for man to be alone, I will make him a helper opposite him. Here the wording is slightly different, since it is not "Vayomer Elokim" but "Hashem Elokim," with the name Havayah.
The root of the disagreement lies in a different tradition, according to which the first of the ten precedes "In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth," that is, the creation of the world itself. Although no utterance is explicitly mentioned there, the reason is that before the Holy One created anything, nothing at all existed, not even a world; and an utterance, the act of speech and communication, requires to some degree someone or something on the other side of that communication. Until there is a "Bereishis," there is no one to speak to. This is one of the approaches to explaining the matter.
Once we count what precedes "Bereishis" among the ten, we end up with eleven utterances, and the question arises as to which one is the tenth - for the last two are unlike the rest, and no thing is directly created through them:
The view of the Vilna Gaon: The tenth is "And G-d said: behold, I have given you every seed-bearing herb." As emerges from the words of his student in Ruach Chaim, the ten utterances correspond to a progression from the most spiritual down to the least spiritual, parallel to the ten sefiros; therefore the last of them already descends into the details of the physical world of action, into the food that human beings eat.
The view of the Rashbatz and others: The Midrashim omit this utterance from the list, and count as the tenth "And Hashem G-d said: it is not good for man to be alone, I will make him a helper opposite him" - it is not good for man to be alone, but rather it is fitting for him to have a partner, and therefore the Holy One created Chavah to be with him.
"U'mah talmud lomar": And what does this come to teach?
What is this meant to teach us? And again, the question is what moral lesson and outlook can be learned from here, as is the way of Pirkei Avos, and not the kabbalistic dimensions. "Vahalo b'ma'amar echad yachol lehibaros" - could it not have been created with a single utterance? The Holy One is all-powerful, and had He wished, He could have created the world with just one utterance. What, then, is the idea behind a world of ten utterances rather than one? "Ela lehipara min haresha'im she'me'abdin es ha'olam shenivra ba'asarah ma'amaros" - rather, it is in order to exact payment from the wicked who destroy a world that was created with ten utterances. The wicked, who do not align themselves with the Holy One's plan, are punished not only for their own deeds, but for having ruined a world that was created with ten utterances.
The idea is that a world made of ten utterances is a complex world, in which everything is interwoven with and dependent upon everything else. We are all a collection of springs working together to make up that metaphorical watch. And just as a single spring that stops functioning holds up the entire watch - meaning, every spring is essential, and if it fills its role it is responsible for the whole thing working, and if it does not fill its role it is responsible for the whole thing not working - so it is with the wicked and the righteous. The wicked person who does the wrong thing, who does not align himself with the Holy One's plan and does not fill his role in creation, has not only done something bad to himself; he now bears responsibility for the entire system not functioning.
On the other hand, "V'liten sachar tov latzaddikim shemekaymin es ha'olam shenivra ba'asarah ma'amaros" - and to give a good reward to the righteous who sustain a world that was created with ten utterances. Each one of us who does the right thing earns a merit that is not limited to his own private deed alone, but extends to the fact that without him the world would not have reached the destination it was meant to reach. It turns out that he has a claim and a share in the entire success of the world.
This, then, is a world of ten utterances and not a world of a single utterance: a world of interdependence, in which a person's actions reach far beyond his own private choices, his own reward and his own personal consequences. There is a chain reaction here - a person's actions affect the entire world for better or for worse, and therefore reward or punishment is determined according to the consequences: not merely according to his narrow actions that concern himself alone, but according to how vital they are to the success of all of creation.
How this idea finds expression in practical halachah:
This idea finds expression in halachah as well, and most strikingly on Rosh Hashanah - the anniversary of the creation of Adam, who is the purpose and goal of creation, as we learn here, since the final utterance deals with man and seals the account of creation. In the Mussaf prayer we recite the verses of Malchuyos, Zichronos and Shofaros, and ideally ten verses in each of them, as the text appears in the siddurim. The reason for the number ten specifically is that it recalls the ten utterances with which the Holy One created the world. We read them anew because this is precisely the point: we accept upon ourselves the vision of the Holy One and ask to be part of the system - the Holy One is the King, and we ask to be the instrument, like that spring that does exactly what is required of it in order to help the world reach its perfection.
In fact, in the Torah reading on Mondays and Thursdays as well, a total of ten verses are read across the three aliyos, and this number too derives from the Ten Commandments, which correspond to the ten utterances with which the Holy One created the world - matters bound to one another by a strong bond.