Parashat Bereshit - The Consequences of Creation

BS”D

Rashi opens his commentary on Torah by quoting Rabbi Yitzhak: The Torah is a book of laws; as such, it should begin from Sefer Shemot 12:2: “This month shall be for you…” which is the first Law given to the Natikon of Israel. Why does it, rather, begin with the story of Creation?

Before addressing Rashi’s question, it is always important to ask ourselves why Rashi is asking a particular question. What is Rashi getting at when he raises this issue? Perhaps it is that the Torah is not a book of laws. Certainly, it is not merely a book of laws, but, as ChaZaL point out, it is a document whose purpose is to demonstrate the greatness, the incomprehensibleness, the vastness of G-d the Creator. This is the message of Torah, insofar as we humans can approach an understanding of G-d.

The very first Midrash opens and says that G-d looked into Torah and created the world. Like a contractor building a house from a blueprint, G-d formed the Cosmos, all the while looking into Torah. The Torah is both by G-d and about G-d. It is about G-d and us, about G-d’s relation to G-d’s Creation – and the converse. It is about us, about Klal Israel, and about all humanity. And it is about itself. As a work of meta-literature, the Torah is the first, the grandest and still the most profound literary work in history. From a perspective of literary structure, meta-literature, self-referential stylistics and internal poetic referential structure, it remains unsurpassed. Add to that the layer upon layer of exegesis: tens of thousands of the most brilliant, most spiritual, most dedicated people in human history have spent the last three thousand-plus years analyzing and examining every nuance and shade of meaning in this text. There is no more fertile ground in all of human endeavor.

We have just come through the holiday period: the period from Tisha Be’Av through to Yom Kippur that replays the history of the giving of Torah; the awesome days of Rosh HaShana, the reconciliation and drawing-close of Kippus, followed by Succot, which commemorates our wanderings in the Midbar; crowned by Simhat Torah, the day on which we finish – and start – reading the Torah. The crown of the Chagim; in many respects, the holiest day of the year.

In the prayer service of Succot and Simhat Torah we say, “… You have exalted us above all languages, and sanctified us with Your Mitzvot…” The relationship of Klal Israel to the Hebrew language, to the very act of speech and to the notion of language, is fundamental to our identity. And it is from our relationship to this text that the Mitzvot and our entire identity and way of life emanate. It is how we relate to the world. Millennia before Wittgenstein, before Austin, before Derrida and the Deconstructionists, the Jewish people were wrestling with the fact that language, our most sophisticated tool for communication, cloaks more than it reveals. And the Torah itself, as emphasized by the Rambam, by Rashi, and by so many of the great Rabbis, is a mass of images and metaphors. Rashi says of the opening verse of Torah, “This passage cries out for interpretation…” The same can be said of every verse in TaNaCh.

Let us examine the Act of Creation. G-d creates the world in a fourfold act, components of which repeat throughout Torah, with resonant effect.

Bereshit barah Elokim… “In the beginning G-d created…” The Ba’al HaTanya says that the verb barah is the moment of creation ex nihilo. What the Rabbis call yesh me-ayin. Something from nothing. It is the moment, he says, when Being separates from Nothingness. Indeed, after that infinitely minute moment, all has changed. For All has come to be. There is the Before – a time in which there is no Time, no before, no thing. And there is After – the moment the world of Space, Time and Motion comes into existence. The rest is development.

The word barah derives from the root R’AH meaning To see. At the Beginning the world was be-r’ah Elokim – “in vision” of G-d. The Cosmos was a vision in G-d’s mind. And then G-d acted to make it real.

As anyone who has ever written a poem can attest – as anyone who has ever composed a song, written a novel, painted a picture, raised a child – can tell you, projects do not always work out as we first envision them, but the realization is always different from the concept. Often so much so as to be unrecognizable. The text we are now embarking on resonates with this tension – sometimes to G-d’s delight; much more frequently to G-d’s disappointment and rage. If you are troubled by the Anthropomorphism of this approach, you need to recognize that, as Harold Bloom has observed, the text before us is, ultimately, the only means we have for relating to G-d. In human terms, the evidence for G-d’s personality, for G-d’s intent – indeed, for G-d’s very existence – is its own self. The Torah stands alone, aloof and lonely in human terms; magnificent and infinite and eternal in Cosmic terms. Chazal say that G-d and G-d’s Torah are one, yet the existence of the Torah is confusing to us humans. For we see the Torah, we can touch and hold and read and debate and interpret it. But G-d…? G-d is the unknowable presence that hovers over Torah. We can wrestle with the meanings of Torah, for they are expressed in language. And through trying to learn that language, we hope to come to communion with G-d.

G-d’s Acts of Creation are Four.

And G-d Said (Vayomer Elokim…) The verb used here, from the root amar, recurs throughout Torah, generally to introduce something new, as in the oft-repeated phrase Vayidebr HaShem el Moshe lemor – This phrase always introduces new commands, new Mitzvot. It is the ultimate sign that something new is about to come into existence.

The second Act of Creation is: And G-d Saw (Vayar Elokim et ha-or…) “And G-d saw the light…) After bringing something into existence, G-d contemplates it, as though studying it to glean its essence. This is not a random image, for the Bible itself tells us that the world was created with the attributes of Chochmah, Binah, and Da’at: Wisdom, Understanding, and Knowledge – the initials of these words give us the acronym ChaBaD, from which the Ba’al HaTanya derives his approach to Chassidus.

The third Act of Creation is: And G-d Separated (Vayavdel Elokim bein ha-or u-bein ha-choshech…) “And G-d divided between the light and the darkness…” The true wonder and miracle of existence is differentiation. The wonder of human existence: that so many living beings with nearly identical DNA structures are so very different. Neoplatonist thought, that so heavily influences the Kaballah, posits that the universe is perfect because it contains everything; that if it were possible for something to exist, and that thing did not exist, the universe would be less than perfect. The notion of differentiation leaps out at our perception as the most obvious and startling wonder of the world.

The fourth and final Act of Creation: And G-d Called (Vayikra Elokim et ha-or yom…) Or, as Aviva Zornberg points out, the expression can mean, equally, “And G-d read…” The same verb comprises both meanings. Now we are on the Torah’s home ground.

G-d Speaks, then Observes the result of this speech. After study, G-d Divides the results into discreet packages, then Calls them a name, thereby instructing them in how to behave. Or perhaps, then G-d Reads them in the Torah, to make sure the realization matches the concept from the blueprint. Rashi, on the phrase “And G-d called the Light, Day…” says that G-d calls out to the components of Creation, instructing them as to their tasks and responsibilities.

The creation of humans emerges along similar lines. We shall return to the crux of the problems that arise as the consequence of creation in a moment. First, though, let us notice how identity emerges.

G-d fashions the first human from the Earth, and we are told that the first person is called Adam, because G-d fashioned this person from the Earth (Hebrew: Adamah). The Hebrew language uses the final letter Heh to indicate possession or direction – movement towards (Mizraimah – Towards Egypt). Adam derives his identity as a human being from his relationship with the Earth. Adam / Adamah. It is only after the woman is created that his identity as a male is established. The text tells us that the first human was created Male and Female. After Chava is separated from Adam’s body, they then differentiate. She is Woman (Ishah) and he is Man (Ish). The identity of the Male emerges from his reflection in the existence of the Female, and this is explicit in the language. Ish comes from Ishah just as Adam derives from Adamah.

What is the root of the breakdown in the Creation story? Chava gets much bad press, as being the cause of the “Fall of Man.” And while she is not blameless in this matter, it is far more complex than her being the wicked seductress.

At chapter 1, verse 11, G-d instructs the Earth to put forth grass, vegetation, and trees. The trees are to be ‘Etz pri, ‘oseh pri´- “Wood of fruit, making fruit.” Rashi pounces on this expression and when, in the very next verse, the Earth puts forth ’Etz ‘oseh pri - “Trees [wood] making fruit…” Rashi points out that the Earth disobeyed G-d’s command. The trees were to be made of wood that tasted like the fruit they bore. Instead, they merely put forth the fruit, the wood tastes only like… wood. Rashi says that, for this disobedience, the Earth was cursed.

The Consequences of Creation emerge immediately. By the third day, when G-d introduces Life, things begin to get out of hand. Life. Unpredictable, self perpetuating. Life, an urgent, yearning and all-powerful force. Life, that seeks its own continuity in the face of every obstacle – even against the direct command of G-d. And within the first thirteen Psukim of Torah, we have Sin (verse 11) and its establishment in the world; we have, if not Forgiveness, still some measure of acceptance of a flawed world (verse 12: And G-d saw that it was good – G-d seems to accept this error on its own terms); and we have reconciliation. We have Atonement, as G-d puts the incident behind and moves forward: “And it was evening, and it was morning: a third day.” But it does not rest there, for G-d has a tendency to bear a grudge.

When Chava and Adam eat the fruit, they are eating the very instrument of Earth’s disobedience. The poetic justice of this comes full circle when, in punishing Adam, G-d punishes the Earth itself – at 3:17. More: how does G-d expect Adam not to be disobedient, seeing that Adam was created from 'adamah - Earth - the very first element in Creation to disobey the Creator?

What is the nature of this Forbidden Fruit? It has been said that Adam had only one Mitzvah – not to eat the fruit – and even that one he could not keep. This is a simple reading of the narrative. Rabbeinu Bachaye has a more subtle reading, and one which sheds light on the overall narrative. Adam actually had two Mitizvot.

At Bereshit 2:16, we have the first instance of G-d re-using the instrument of Creation to introduce a new concept. Vayitzav HaShem Elokim ‘al ha-adam lemor… “And G-d commanded Adam, saying…” The command is that Adam is to eat from all the trees of the garden. The duplicative verb form – ‘achol tochal – usually translated “You shall surely eat,” here makes its first appearance, and it is an order. In the very next Pasuk, Adam is likewise commanded not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad because, G-d says, on the day you eat from it, mot tamut. This last clause is usually translated “You shall surely die.” But this seems a misleading translation.

Chava gets a bum rap as being responsible for bringing Death into the world. A plain reading of the text indicates otherwise. Indeed, the entire traditional Jewish approach to the position of women emerges, not from the Torah itself, but is bound up with the practices of Islam and other earlier cultures and religions from that part of the world, from practices and cultural strictures that clearly predate the giving of Torah, where women were subjugated, sequestered, and forced into strictly-defined roles in religion, family and the society at large. The paradox of Judaism is that we were among the very first nations to free women from the oppression under which they labored – but that what was radically progressive then is now pathetically retrograde. We changed the world and freed women three thousand years ago – and they have held the same status ever since. Today, Frum young men are warned not to date women who wear seatbelts while riding in a car, because the belts crossing lap and torso emphasize the female form, something a woman of modesty would not allow.

At Bereshit 3:22, after the encounter between G-d and Adam, Chava and the Snake, G-d speaks to the Heavenly Court and says, we must do something, lest the humans now eat from the Tree of Life and live forever. It would seem, then, that immortality was not the original plan.

Perhaps the interpretation lies in the language itself. Indeed, as with all great poetry, if we are confused as to the meaning of a Pasuk, it is generally best to return to the words themselves. Just as G-d commanded Adam ‘achol tochal – You shall eat, so the repetitive form in the following Pasuk may indicate something other than certainty of outcome.

In the day you eat from the forbidden tree, says G-d, mot tamut – I will command you to die. Prior to gaining Knowledge, humans did not view Death with anything more than the passing interest with which a fox might regard a stone, a lion a branch on a tree. After gaining Knowledge of Good and Bad, humans have an existential fear of Death. We now view Death as something G-d has imposed upon us, and no longer as merely another aspect of life. Indeed, G-d has commanded us to die – and at the very end of the Torah, G-d will command Moshe to die. We just read this passage, and it is striking that G-d does not tell Moshe “You shall die there,” but rather, using the imperative, “And die there.” As G-d opens G-d’s relationship with humans, so G-d closes G-d’s relationship with the greatest human of all. Even Moshe is not immune from the Curse of Adam.

G-d has inflicted death upon us. In the aftermath of the Eating of the Fruit, we are commanded to die, no less than we are commanded to give charity, to pray each day, and to keep Shabbat. Death is the final Mitzvah.

Rabbeinu Bachaye says that Adam had two Mitzvot: to eat from the trees of the garden, and not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Immediately after giving these two Mitzvot, G-d decides to create Chava. These two Mitzvot, says Bachaye, exemplify all of Torah, which is composed of Mitzvot ‘aseh (positive commandments) and Mitzvot lo ta’aseh (negative commandments). But, he continues, Adam was not capable of carrying out the Mitzvot, for Adam was Reason (Sechel) – the trait that separates humans from the other animals. But Reason without physical being (Guf) is not capable of action. Bachaye points out that the human is a blend of – and a conflict between – Mind and Body. And note that he uses the word Reason (Sechel) and not Wisdom (Hochmah). For Wisdom, as any observer of human history can surely tell us, is a long time coming, if at all.

In the combined and conflicted entity that is the human being, each component has a task. If each component performs according to its task, the Whole functions in harmony and all is well. If not, there is the potential for delay and disaster.

When the Snake approaches Chava, she replies that she is not permitted to eat the fruit, nor even to touch it. It is obvious to all readers that G-d did not prohibit touching the fruit. Why is that phrase in Chava’s mouth? Perhaps it is in order to point out the deeper contradiction: G-d did not prohibit Chava from eating the Fruit, but only Adam. When they are punished, G-d asks Adam, using the singular mode of address, did you eat the fruit? But G-d makes no mention of Chava’s eating. It appears that Adam conveyed the message wrong, and that Chava took it at face value.

Adam made the common human error of assuming that his own condition was universal. And Chava made the typical human error of not probing beyond the surface layer of meaning. How differently might the tale have ended if Adam had thought clearly and if Chava had probed to understand the root meaning of G-d’s command!

And what is the nature of Good and Evil, in the Eden narrative? It is clearly embedded in the notion of nakedness versus modesty. Or perhaps that is the human misinterpretation of what is Good and what is Evil. The Serpent narrative is introduced by the Pasuk (2:25) that they were both naked (‘arumim) and they were not ashamed. At chapter 3, verse 1, we meet the Snake – the Nachash – who is more ‘arum than all the beasts of the field that G-d had made. The word ‘arum in this context is translated as “subtle” or “devious,” but comes from the same root as the word meaning Naked – underlying this root is the meaning of “bright”, “clear”, “shining.” When we are naked, we can either be unencumbered or, if we feel guilt, we can be encumbered. We are either free in our nudity, or we are prisoners of our nakedness. The outcome of eating the fruit is that Adam and Chava become aware of their nakedness and experience Shame.

Now we understand the Mitzvah of Death. We suffer from the knowledge that the world will goon without us. And so we seek immortality or some substitute – usually grounded in bending other people to our will. We are painfully aware of the human condition. We clothe ourselves to protect ourselves, not merely from the elements, but to put barriers between our Self and the opinions of others. To hide from G-d, and from ourselves. As Mark Twain puts it: “Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.”

But there is a further, and far greater Evil to be confronted in the next generation. Cain, the firstborn of the World, commits the first murder, performs the first act of contrition, and becomes the first hero in Torah.

Cain is the firstborn of humanity – a status not to be taken lightly, for we are all his nieces and nephews. And Cain, by gratitude, seeks to please G-d with a gift, a Freewill Offering.

At Bereshit 41:9, Parashat Miketz, Pharaoh’s Cupbearer approaches with trepidation to tell Pharaoh about Yosef. “I am reminding you of my sins today,” he says – please, he begs, don’t become angry with me all over again – in order to tell Pharaoh about Yosef, the Saar HaMashkim must remind Pharaoh that Pharaoh threw him into prison.

How was Cain to know that, by bringing G-d a gift of the Fruits of the Earth, he would be reminding G-d of the very first Sin in Creation, of the Earth’s disobedience? And G-d, unlike Pharaoh, does not have a penchant for being forgiving.

Unlike a human Monarch, G-d has no need of confederates, of Palace spies, of secret partisans to uphold his rule. G-d, as we shall see over and over throughout the Torah, becomes impatient very easily and, brushing aside those who don’t Get It right off the bat, is eager to move on to someone more compliant.

“What are you so upset about?” G-d asks Cain dismissively at Bereshit 4:6 and 7. “Isn’t it true that you can improve yourself if you try?” All this while, Cain is watching in dumbfounded anger as G-d slurps up the savory stew prepared by Hevel, the younger brother. Not for the last time, the second-born has usurped the place of the firstborn. Just as Ya’akov will steal the Berachah from his brother by bringing their father a pot of meat stew, Hevel has brushed his own brother aside by bringing G-d an offering from the flocks.

Esav swears to kill Ya’akov, but never carries out his plan. Cain, on the other hand, is quick to act and not fettered by notions of morality. The only thing humans are troubled by at this point in our history is nakedness.

It is only after the fact that both G-d and Cain are struck by the enormity of the deed. At Bereshit 4:9, G-d asks Cain where his brother is. The famous sentence of reply is capable of more than one reading, and I prefer to see it in what makes more sense to the narrative:

“I did not know that I am my brother’s keeper!”

Cain is in agony, because he has discovered, too late, that he was responsible to protect and care for his brother; that killing his own brother comes under the category of Bad. Indeed, G-d, too, is in agony. In G-d’s mind, notions of human Good and Bad come under control of appetites. Don’t eat the fruit. Don’t turn nakedness from the pure natural state into the state of lust and uncontrolled desire. But this? G-d never conceived that people would slay one another. “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the earth!” G-d says, and G-d’s anguish and shock are on a par with Cain’s.

And now, for the first time, a human being suffers remorse and openly shrieks his agony before G-d, begging for help that he knows can never come.

When G-d asks Adam whether he ate the fruit, Adam is quick to point, first to G-d, then to Chava. “You gave me the woman, and she gave me the fruit!” Chava, likewise, points to the Snake.

Not so their firstborn. Cain has observed his parents’ naïve duplicity at close quarters, and he knows error in himself when he sees it. Now, immediately after the fact, he is horrified at his own actions – the irretrievability of it, the fact that, after all, just as his Father abandoned his Mother, just as his Mother failed his Father, so too Cain has failed his own closest flesh and blood. Like Yosef, who knows that his brothers will not stand for one another, Cain sees all too clearly the tragic wages of self-seeking pettiness, and his anguish at falling victim to the family Karma is every bit as great as his anguish at the act itself.

But Cain still has one remedy remaining. Unlike his parents, Cain steps up before G-d and wails acknowledgement of his act. He confesses his sin and asks, not for forgiveness – which he seems to recognize is an impossibility – but for some remedy in this, his life on earth. “I will be slain!” he sobs before G-d. Cain is the first human to do Teshuvah. He experiences Remorse, he Confesses his sin before G-d, and he has learned the lesson and Resolved that his future life will be different. At 4:13 he uses the word ‘avon, which translates as Iniquity, and represents sinful acts undertaken with the full knowledge that they are sinful, as opposed to chet, which is inadvertent sin.

G-d – the character in our text – has much to learn about the unpredictable nature of Life, and still more to learn about dealing with human beings. It will not be until G-d meets the ultimate Chavrusa – Moshe Rabbeinu – that the full relationship between G-d and G-d’s Creation will flourish. Still, G-d recognizes that humans need help.

Rashi tells us that G-d created the Torah two thousand years before G-d created the cosmos. And, as we have already seen, it is from the blueprint of Torah that the house of the World was built. G-d recognizes that humans need guidance. That G-d can not plant every possible thought and remedy to every possible contingency in the mind of every human being. That is the nature of Free Choice: that the error and thought and deviousness and self-delusion of the human mind are every bit as infinite as the mind of G-d.

But G-d can impart to us the blueprint of the house in which we dwell. And so, in response to Cain’s genuine remorse and Teshuvah, G-d begins the process of the giving-over of Torah. We are not yet at Sinai, we do not have a Moshe to stand between us and G-d and receive and convey, analyze and interpret and transmit Torah. Indeed, it may be that G-d has not yet decided to put Torah into human language – to give word to G-d’s Word. But clearly something must be done.

At Bereshit 4:15, G-d responds to Cain’s urgent plea. “Thus,” G-d says, “whoever kills Cain, it shall be established sevenfold.” Rashi tells us this means the vengeance of Cain will last seven generations. Or perhaps that it shall delay seven generations, but vengeance will surely come. G-d is making explicit the Torah’s version of the Law of Karma. What Goes Around, Comes Around.

And what does Cain receive from G-d? Va-yasem HaShem le-Cain ‘ot… “And G-d gave [or ‘placed upon’] Cain a sign…” The word ‘ot means “a sign.” And the traditional reading is that G-d placed a sign upon him – the so-called “mark of Cain.”

But this word also has another meaning: a letter.

We shall see next week that G-d goes still further with Noach. And ultimately, G-d fosters the creation of ‘Am Israel and through us gives the entire Torah to humanity. All bound up in language.

When we study Torah, we recognize that, in order to fully understand any one piece of Torah, we end up cycling through all of Torah. Do we have only one Pasuk? We must read all of Torah to fully understand it in context. Do we have only one word? Read it in its Pasuk, the Pasuk in its Parasha, and the Parasha in context of the entire work.

All that Cain receives in recompense for his tragedy, in recognition of his penitence, is a single letter. From it, he will have to derive all of Torah. It seems not much. But it will have to do.

Yours for a better world.