Hello and welcome to the beginning.
Or is it the ending?
I ask this question because when something begins, the actual beginning is one end of that something.
Now you can take two ends of something and put them together, but this creates a seam, and what you really have a two separate ends connected.
In the Jewish family tradition, beginnings (and endings) or not looked at in quite the same way.
There is more of a blending. For example, the first month in the Jewish calender is in the spring. The Jewish new year (Rosh haShannah) is celebrated in the seventh month. And the time we finish reading the Torah (which we begin anew in the same reading), is neither in the first month, nor at Rosh haShannah, nor even in the beginning of any month or holiday.
It is during the waning moon, at the end of the holiday of Succot, which is the end of the 3 week holiday period that began with Rosh haShannah.
What is created is a blending of the old and the new, with no hard and fast place a person can say one ends and another begins. This can also be seen in the first word, breisheit in Hebrew, which is normally translated as, “In the beginning”, but can also be translated as, “During the beginning.”
The result is that you have an endless circle with no beginnings or endings.
So, let us look at what this first/last parsha (weekly Torah portion) contains. It starts off with not one, but two stories of creation. The first takes us to the end of creation and the second takes us through creation and into what happens after all is created: namely the eating from the tree of knowledge and on into the birth of new people and interpersonal interactions, and finally a recounting of the generations of Kayin (Cain) and Set, the latter being the ancestor of Noah.
And it is with the generation of Noah and his sons that we hear an interesting bit about the sons of the Elokim (a name for god that literally means powers as in the powers that created the world) and the nephalim (literally means the fallen ones). The sons of the Elokim took human woman for wives and their offspring were the heroes of old, while what it says about the nephalim is that they lived, “In those days and also later when the sons of the Elokim came to the daughters of the Adam.”
We end our parsha with haShem (god) regretting making the world so much he is ready to destroy it because of the evil that was in the hearts of the Adam, but doesn’t because Noah finds favor in haShem’s eyes.
This is a very brief overview of an incredible amount of detail (creation of the being Adam is mentioned 3 times for example). There are many, many things to say. I think today, I will skip on looking at the names of things (like the rivers and the names of the generations), or on what really happened with the serpent, or what really happened during creation, though I know these are all exciting topics.
There are 4 things I do want to explore though: Why two creation myths? Why does god speak to create? Why is Chava (Eve) created from the Adam? Why does the Adam hide from god’s voice?
Now the two creation stories are really quite different. The first one takes place in stages, or “days.” I put days in quotes because a Rabbi Wilson once told me that the word for day in Hebrew, yom, is related to the word yam or sea, and has the connotation of connection.
A sea connects drops of water, and during the day you can see a panorama, and not just things unconnected or separated by areas where you can’t see anything.
In each of these “days,” certain things that are connected come into being.
By using this definition of day (yom), one could equate it to an epoch; perhaps this first story is not so far from the idea of evolution.
The second story is radically different. Everything is ready to go except there is no Adam to interact and work the ground. So, the rain could not fall, things could not happen until the Adam gets created. After the Adam gets created, there is a constant interaction between god and the Adam.
Why do we need two stories, and two such radically different stories?
Well, a hint comes from the fact the first looks like evolution. Evolution is a theory based on us, the creatures inside the creation, trying to understand how creation happened. The reason for the two stories is that they describe the same event(s) from two points of view: the first is inside of creation, and the second is outside of creation (god’s view).
To god, there is no real days, things are just ready to go. All that is missing is someone to do the work on the inside. Meanwhile, from our view, all this stuff is happening.
I can understand telling the first story, so we have a handle on what is going on. But why do we need to see god’s point of viewing too?
I think we need it for two reasons: one is two tell us that in all situations, our view is not the only correct view, that we need to seek out others’ views before we can even begin to say we know what is going on.
The other reason is to let us know that the way god views the creation is radically different from our view, and so we should not assume we really know what right or best for us, or what god is really going to do or why god will do something.
The second thing I wish to share, I heard from Rabbi Aaron on Friday night. He asked, “Why does god SAY what he is going to do?” For example: And god says, “Let there be light,” and there was.
The answer the rav gave is that god is teaching us about communication and relationships. God didn’t need to say anything, but he did to let us know that she talks to us through the creation. We can ask, and pray to god with our voices and our wishes. God talks back to us and his words manifesting as actions in the physical world. So, all we have to do to listen to what god is telling us is to open our eyes and our ears and pay attention to the world around us.
Related to this is why Chava was created from the Adam’s rib. God wanted a partner for the Adam and created Chava. He paraded all the animals before the Adam who named then but didn’t connect to any of them. It wasn’t until god brought Chava before the Adam that he knew she was his partner.
How did he know? He felt it in his bones. God created our bodies and god only creates beauty and perfection. So, how could our bodies be anything less?
What this text is telling us that if we want to know truth, our bodies will tell us. When truth is presented before us, we will feel it in our bones and in our flesh. If only we can remember to listen.
This leads me to the final thing I want to talk about today. After the Adam eats from the tree, god’s voice come into the garden on a wind, and the Adam hid. God says to the Adam, “Ayeka.”
This word is normally translated as, “Where.”
but there is another word in Hebrew for where, “Ayfoh.”
A better translation would be, “How.”
God knows where the Adam is. He isn’t asking for the Adam’s location, he is asking how the Adam is.
What is going on?
God knows he ate from the tree; she is now asking teh Adam what he is experiencing after eating from the tree. T he common translation of the Adam’s answer is that he was afraid because he was naked, and so he hid.
Now the word used here for afraid is eyrah. There is another word in Hebrew that is scared as in frightened. That word is pachad.
The root of eyrah means in awe. So, we now have god asking the Adam how he feels and the Adam answering, “I heard you and I was so in awe of my nakedness…”
You see, before he ate, he wasn’t really aware of his body. After eating he started noticing it and was amazed at the sensations and the workings, etc. He then heard god’s voice and hid so as not to distract god with this amazing body that god had given him.
I realize there is a lot of ideas here, and I hope you were able to stay with them.
As I wish you a good week, I bless everybody that they start to see and feel the amazing gift haShem has given us: that tool for the physical world we call a body, and that we learn to use it to hear/feel the truth. I also hope we can start to “hear” haShem’s voice in the world around us. And lastly, I bless everybody with the awareness that every situation has many points of viewing, and that we start to become aware of others’ points of viewing.
Shavuah tov/have a good week,
If you want to read what I wrote about this parsha last year, click here.
About the Author
Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.