One of the "Gifts" that Thomas Cahill discusses in his best seller The Gifts of the Jews is the notion of journey. "Avram went," Cahill says, "are two of the boldest words in all literature." Until the Jews, Cahill concludes, people understood life as cyclical, a great wheel with the wisdom of the ancestors continuously being repeated and replayed. There was no need to journey, "to go forth," because humanity's fate was fixed; everything came around again.
No doubt a few weeks from now, when we study Parashat Lech L'cha, we'll have a chance to consider Abraham and Sarah's journey and the many gifts that we derive from their experiences and those of their descendants. This week, however, we read Parashat Bereshit, which marks a time to celebrate the cyclical nature of our learning. We have danced around our sanctuaries and have rerolled the Torah Scroll, and we now return to the stories of the beginning. But our study is neither linear nor circular. Perhaps a spiral is the image that describes it best. We have changed since last year and now view the same stories from different vantage points. To read Bereshit and the ensuing chapters is to greet familiar friends and to embrace them through the changing lenses of our own lives.
Consider the following familiar words in Genesis 2: "God said, 'It is not good for man to be alone.'" (2:18) The story of Creation in Genesis 1 deals with structural matters―earth, sky, and water―but the rest of Genesis is centered around relationships. Martin Buber, who wrote often about life in relationships, states, "In the beginning was relation. Not just God who longed to be, but God who longed to be with." According to Buber, the way to be holy as God is holy is to create holiness in our earthly relationships.
There is, however, one problem. Although God told the first man that it wasn't good for him to dwell alone, God neglected to tell him how hard creating meaningful relationships would be.
So the first family faces some significant challenges. Adam rejoiced in the person of Eve but was quick to place the blame on her for their expulsion from the garden: "The woman You put at my side―she gave me of the tree, and I ate." (Genesis 3:12) In other words, "This was not my responsibility. You put her here, God, and she led me astray." And how does Eve respond? Not in a dissimilar way: "The serpent duped me, and I ate." (Genesis 3:13)
Their children fare even worse. After Abel's offering had been accepted and his brother Cain's rejected, Cain's face fell. Later, Cain sets upon Abel and kills him. God then asks, "Where is your brother Abel?" And Cain answers, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?" (Genesis 4:9)
This famous question, of course, goes unanswered, and we are left to ponder the silence. In Midrash Tanchumah, Cain denies any personal responsibility and, like his parents before him, lays blame elsewhere: "I killed him, true, but You created me with the evil urge in me. You who watch over everything let me kill him." God, however, does not let Cain off the hook so easily and demands, "What have you done?" God's response in the midrash is connected to the question in the text, and even though it is left unanswered, it seems to require an affirmative response from Cain: "You, Cain, do have responsibility. You are your brother's keeper."
For us, the message from these familiar stories should be considered anew each year. Although relationships may be harder to maintain than we might like or think, they are essential to our lives. We do live in relationship to others and we are responsible for others. This is another gift from the text―another "gift of the Jews."
At the time of this writing in 1998, Jim Prosnit was the rabbi at Congregation B'nai Israel in Bridgeport, CT.
Understanding Our Origins From Our Personal Place In Life
In his book, God & the Big Bang, Dr. Daniel Matt opens with the words "In the beginning was the big bang, fifteen billion years ago. The primordial vacuum was devoid of matter but not really empty. . . . Photons broke away from the building blocks of matter. . . . Matter and radiation had decoupled, and the universe turned transparent. This is the moment of 'Let there be light!/Yehi or.'" Even more radically, the contributors to the new book The Bible According to Einstein, write, "In the 'Beginning,' there was no beginning. Before the Planck's constant, there was no time and there was no space. The universe was in a quantum state with wild fluctuations. What one might have called space time was incomprehensible. . . ."
Ever since Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) suggested human involvement in the formulation of our biblical texts, we have struggled to make sense of our creation story. Science has forced traditional theology to acknowledge that the universe is more ancient and much larger than the Book of Genesis suggests. Bible scholars believe that the narrative itself provides two different perspectives on the creation of our planet, its vegetation, and the origins of human life. The first chapter and the first four verses of chapter two describe six days of creation, perfectly planned, with both males and females created simultaneously on the sixth day, and conclude with God resting on the seventh, the world's first Sabbath. In contrast, the rest of the second chapter describes God giving Adam life and subsequently deciding to make a woman from the rib of Adam. Rabbi Prosnit interprets the familiar passage in the following way: "The Eternal God said, 'It is not good for man to be alone,'" suggesting that the second tale of creation focuses on human relations. Whereas God creates everything in a set order in the first version, with no emotion, it is as if God decides, based on human pathos, to fashion a female out of Adam in the second version. The stories seem contradictory: Will the real story of creation please stand up?!
Of course, one way to make sense out of these varying tales is to suggest that they are, in fact, identical. Rashi, the great medieval biblical commentator, resolves the apparent discrepancy by explaining that the first biblical narrative describes creation in general, while the second provides the details of how the two genders were created on the sixth day. Similarly, many modern works devote themselves to proving that creation and evolution are harmonious and that if we take liberties with how we measure time, then creation and evolution resolve into the same basic experience.
Nevertheless, our personal experiences prod us toward our own vision of our origins in the universe. The debate will never conclude, and it is the discussion itself that is holy. Our search to understand our present state of affairs by examining the tales of the Bible offers us an opportunity to learn from one another. Our goal is not "Truth"; our search is for meaning in our lives.
Rabbi Baruch of Medzibozh, the grandson of the Ba'al Shem Tov (founder of Chasidism), explains the multiplicity of interpretations of the Genesis story by linking the words of this portion with the very last words of the previous portion, which we read on Simchat Torah this week: "'According to the eyes of each of Israel . . . [is] In the Beginning.' That is, each Jewish person sees the Torah according to the clarity of his or her eyes." We gaze at our holy texts with the lenses of our personal experiences―whether we are engineers or educators, rocket scientists or rabbis―and as a result of our efforts, we make our Bible a Torat Hayim, a "Living Torah".
Consider the following:
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What are the implications of males and females being created simultaneously?
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Can we resolve scientific models with biblical narrative?
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Which perspectives on our origins suggest that we are significant? Which make us irrelevant?
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As modern Jews, how can we embrace traditional explanations yet accept scientific models?
For further reading: God & The Big Bang: Discovering Harmony Between Science & Spirituality, Daniel Matt (Jewish Lights Publishing, Vermont, 1996).
The Bible According to Einstein: A Scientific Complement to the Holy Bible for the Third Millennium (Jupiter Scientific Publishing Company, New York, 1998).
Reference Materials:
B’reishit, Genesis 1:1-6:8
The Torah: A Modern Commentary, pp. 18-55; Revised Edition, pp. 17-50;
The Torah: A Women's Commentary, pp. 3-34
Originally published:
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