Our Part in the blessings of creation

Bereishit

Genesis 1:1 - 6:8



Précis: The first Book of the Torah, Bereishit (Genesis, literally “In the beginning” or “When God began to create”) begins with the now familiar story of creation: the world is created in six days, with God resting on the seventh. The story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden are included in this weekly reading, as is the story of Cain and Abel.



1:1 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”



Rabbi Jack Tauber, in his book Yalkut Ya’akov, cites a Talmudic explanation of why the description of creation starts with the letter bet, the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet,and not with the alef, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The alef is the first letter, and has a numerical equivalent value of 1, while the bet is the second letter, with a numerical equivalent of two. Shouldn't first things come first?

According to an explanation of the sages (Genesis Rabbah, 1:10), if the story of creation begun with an alef, we would live in a world of curses, since the word for curse (arur) begins with an alef. Much better to begin creation with a bet, the first letter of the Hebrew word for blessing (bracha)! Thus, we live in a world where we have the opportunity to make creation a daily blessing.

Creation was not perfect. It was incomplete and it required development. Had the world been created in totality and in its entirety, it would have been a world without stimulation, challenge, or the need for creativity and exploration. It would have been a world where the struggle to meert the challenges of life were absent. How boring and uninteresting!

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, one of the great teachers of traditional Judaism over the last century, suggests in Halakchic Man that because the Torah begins with Creation, the story of Creation must be read in a way to illuminate the underlying legal (halakchic) matters. Noting that human beings are the only creatures created in God's image, he argues that just as God is a creator, so too human beings must create. The first commandment of the Torah, in his view, is for human beings to "create." They must go out into the world and transform and renew it.

The new cycle of Torah reading which we start this week gives us the opportunity to examine our role in the on-going creation of the world: in tikkun olam, in support of our families and friends, in support of Israel, and in support of the Jewish community.