Gen. 1:1 - 6:8
Précis: The first Book of the Torah, Bereshit (Genesis, literally “in the beginning” or “When God began to create”) begins with the familiar story of creation. The world is created in six days and God rests on the seventh. The stories of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden are included, as is the story of Cain and Abel.
We begin the annual reading of the Five Books of Moses immediately upon its conclusion. Why? Perhaps it is because with each passing year, our experiences allow us to understand more of what life has to offer, and what the text has to offer. Yohanan Ben Bag Bag said (Pirke Avot 5:25), “Turn it, and turn it, for everything is in it. Reflect on it and grow old and gray with it. Don't turn from it, for you have no better standard of conduct.”
Gen. 1:26-27: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of heaven, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every moving thing that moves upon the earth. So God created man in His image, In the image of God He created him, Male and female He created them.”
Lord Jonathan Sacks (z’l), writing in Covenant and Conversation (10/10/17), initiates his discussion of creation by noting that the text shows that God’s initial work was effortless. Repeatedly we read, “And God said, ‘Let there be … and there was … and God saw that it was good" until we come to the creation of Adam, the human beings, in this verse. Then the tone of creation changes in important ways. Why the plural “us?”
Sacks cites a Talmudic explication: the “us” refers to the angels with whom God consulted. Why the need for consultation? By making humans, He was creating the one thing beside Himself which had the power to destroy the world. He did so because He was faced with a fateful dilemma. Sacks tells the following tale from the Talmud:
“When the Holy One, blessed be He, came to create man, He created a group of ministering angels and asked them, ‘Do you agree that we should make man in our image?’ They replied, ‘Sovereign of the Universe, what will be his deeds?’
God showed them the history of mankind. The angels replied, ‘What is man that You are mindful of him?’ [in other words, let man not be created].
God destroyed the angels.
He created a second group, and asked them the same question, and they gave the same answer. God destroyed them.
He created a third group of angels, and they replied, ‘Sovereign of the Universe, the first and second group of angels told You not to create man, and it did not avail them. You did not listen. What then can we say but this: The universe is Yours. Do with it as You wish.’ Then God created man."
This goes to the core of a dilemma even God cannot escape. If God did not create humankind with free will, there would be none who could understand God, or even grasp that God exists. In other words, the creation of Man was the creation of self-consciousness.
Sacks’ theology is radical. It implies that God had faith in Man. What matters most is not that we have faith in God, but that God has faith in us. This, Sacks calls “the real religious mystery” of Judaism.
Throughout Torah, God again and again forgives an ungrateful and appalling humanity. He is disappointed with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Joshua and countless others. Most of the prophets disappoint as well. But God is forgiving, never losing faith in humanity.
When we perceive the evil of history, we remember that God did not stop human beings from evil behaviors: Adam and Eve ate forbidden fruit, He did not stop Cain’s murder, nor the Egyptians from cruel enslavement. The Holocaust happened, and many said, “Where was God?” The proper question should have been, “What is man?”
We face evil every day, and ultimately our future is uncertain. We can believe that the world was created by unknowable forces of Nature, or we can accept the Jewish concept that the world was created by a God who knew His creations could create the most terrible darkness. I chose the latter, because it means that there is indeed a God who has faith in us, and so that we can have hope for the future.
