To Begin Again: Breisheet 2016

To Begin Again: Breisheet

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Breisheet—“In the beginning…”  (Genesis 1:1—6:8).  So we begin, again and again, just as we have for the past 2500 years.  Again the Torah has been rolled all the way back to the beginning, and again we read and ponder.  We have so many questions!  Why does the Torah begin with the second letter of the aleph-bet?  And what came before? Where did God find the materials for creation? Was it always there (as some ancient Greeks believed) or did God create matter ex-nihilo—from nothing—(as another school of thought believed)?

And above all else, why?  Why bring order into the chaos to begin with? What is order, anyway? Does order, like art, exist only in the mind of the beholder, or is there actual, objective “orderliness” out there in the vast infinity of all that exists?

The text of the Torah is built in a way that encourages us to think and ask our many questions.  Inherent in this text are even more ancient stories; some have been subsumed into the Torah’s version and appear when we focus on the words themselves.  An example of this is in the two versions of the birth of humankind, one that we encounter pretty much right away (Gen. 1:27), the other just a moment later (Gen. 2:22). Were Adam and Eve created together, or was Eve created out of a “rib” taken from Adam’s side.  And if so, then why do men and women still have the same number or ribs?

Story and myth, legend and history all combine as though in some primordial soup, and we have to examine all of it in order to get the full benefit.

But ultimately, the question that emerges as most important is Why?  Why did God decide to create the universe and then focus on a particular planet, minute and insignificant in the larger picture and then place humanity in its midst?  Why? For what reason?  For what purpose?

We have been discussing these questions for nearly three millennia now. Thousands of explanations have been offered—yet we still ask.  And therein lies the beauty and excitement of this text.  For it enables each of us to ponder for ourselves.  Each of us in invited to find our place at the table and continue the discussion begun so long ago, to converse with the greatest minds and souls of all time, hear their sage advice—and then freely to accept it, reject it or come up with an interpretation of our own.

This week we begin the cycle yet again, and the door is open for all of us:  Come in, partake.  Take what you will, offer what you will.  Only come in. There is respite for the weary to be found here, comfort for the downcast.  Here is food for thought, nourishment for the soul, a shining light in the infinite darkness that surrounds us.

As with the greatest of novels, Breisheet and what follows bear numerous repetitions and re-readings.  In each eon, at each age, we find appropriate lessons.  The ancient Rabbis say that the Torah has 70 “faces,” or interpretations.  And that’s true for any moment in life.  Tomorrow there will be new meanings, new discoveries to make and savor.

Torah means teaching.  It also means light.  With the creation of light—God’s first act of Creation, we are given a huge gift:  awareness.  We open our eyes and see.  We sense that we exist not only from the inside, but also in relationship to what we see all around us.  Comprehension comes later; first, we learn to see.

We learn to hear.  It is God’s voice that creates the universe.  The myriads and myriads of sounds around us are all God’s voice.  Like a rainbow, we hear the separate melodies that interweave, sometimes in harmony, other times in discord.  But each is a fragment of the whole.  Learning to add our voice, our own song, will come later.  First we learn to hear and listen.

We feel.  Our hands touch the blades of grass, our feet sense the dew on the field or the cracked dryness of desert sand.  With our hands we feel the trees, the flowers, the soft fur and flowing hair. We sense the roughness, and we wonder at the smoothness.  We sense the love; we comprehend pain.  How mystifying, this ability to feel another’s touch on our skin and then sense its echo in our hearts.

We feel the hunger.  We seek to quench our thirst.  We yawn and sleep and, miraculously, dream.  We imagine.  We see visions.  We learn to use our minds and hands to create, fashion and invent. We learn that everything has a name.

Slowly, we learn to craft tools and tame fire, wind and water to give energy itself. 

We learn that giving life to children is natural, but teaching them is not.

We gather information and store it, like grain, in the storehouses of our minds, or on cave walls, on paper or anything else that will allow our handprint.  Here is how we gather, here is how we hunt.  Here is how we pray.

We learn about cause and effect; we learn about actions and consequences.  With each step we take comes new awareness. 

We learn about death. Torah does not flinch in the face of the fearful and unknown.

We learn not to kill, not to give in to our natural impulses.  The impulse is short and momentary; the hurt and pain of loss are much more lasting.

Slowly, like the sun peering through the fog, we begin to comprehend that beyond reason there is also purpose. A path appears, revealing footprints of those who came before us.

And so we begin our own journey of discovery, of understanding, of determining for ourselves what the purpose of our existence might be. 

We have the tools.  Now we begin.  Again.

© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman