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Tag Archive for: B’reishit

B’reishit – בְּרֵאשִׁית (Genesis 1:1−6:8)

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This Week’s Torah Portion: B’reishit – בְּרֵאשִׁית (Genesis 1:1−6:8)

“In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the earth” – God creates the world, God existed before the world was created and God will continue to exist, even if God forbid we destroy the world.

That is the most important innovation the Hebrew Bible brings about God! God is not dependent on laws of nature, God is beyond the world, God has no sexuality, nor family, nor any other human fixtures, God is the total other than us.

Parsha B’reishit – בְּרֵאשִׁית Torah Summary:

God creates the world and everything in it in six days and rests on the seventh. (1:1-2:3) Adam and Eve are placed in the Garden of Eden, where they eat the forbidden fruit and are subsequently exiled. (2:15-3:24) Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain kills his brother, Abel. (4:1-24) Adam and Eve have another child named Seth. The Torah lists the ten generations from Adam to Noah. (4:25-5:32) God regrets having created human beings and decides to destroy everything on earth, but Noah finds favor with God. (6:5-6:8) B’reishit – בְּרֵאשִׁית “In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth” – God creates the world, God existed before the world was created and God will continue to exist, even if God forbid we destroy the world. That is the most important innovation the Hebrew Bible brings about God! God is not dependent on laws of nature, God is beyond the world, God has no sexuality, nor family, nor any other human fixtures, God is the total other than us. B’reishit – בְּרֵאשִׁית

B’reishit (Genesis 1:1-6:8)

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This Week’s Torah Portion: B’reishit – בְּרֵאשִׁית (Genesis 1:1-6:8)

The great scholar Rabbi Akiva famously said that the greatest principle in all of the Torah is to: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). But a more humble scholar of that same ancient age named Ben Azzai, chose instead a more humble verse from this week’s Torah Portion. Ben Azzai said that the greatest principle in all of the Torah is:

“This is the story of the generations of Adam: When God created Adam, God made that first human being in God’s own likeness.” (Genesis 5:1)

It is an unlikely choice, I know – one of the many “begats” in the Bible which simply begins a long list of the genealogy of some character whose story is about to be told. But this isn’t just any genealogy, this is the line of the very first human soul, so this is the beginnings of us all.

And, that is Ben Azzai’s point in choosing this verse as the first and greatest principle in all of the Torah. We are all the descendants of one human family and each of us carries within us a certain likeness of the Divine. We are all God’s Children, the creations of God’s hands, and when we see that in one another, there can be no greater principle for the Torah to teach, or for us to learn.

Love your neighbor as yourself, for we are all the children of the One Eternal God.

Parsha B’reishit Torah Summary:

God creates the world and everything in it in six days and rests on the seventh. (1:1-2:3) Adam and Eve are placed in the Garden of Eden, where they eat the forbidden fruit and are subsequently exiled. (2:15-3:24) Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain kills his brother, Abel. (4:1-24) Adam and Eve have another child named Seth. The Torah lists the ten generations from Adam to Noah. (4:25-5:32) God regrets having created human beings and decides to destroy everything on earth, but Noah finds favor with God. (6:5-6:8)

B’reishit (Genesis 1:1-6:8)

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This Week’s Torah Portion: B’reishit (Genesis 1:1-6:8)

The Big Bet which Begins each Torah scroll with the word B’reishit is clearly not an accident. God really seemed to want to make a point of beginning the Torah with the letter Bet. This assumes, of course, that God wrote that first letter, with a quill pen and a deep brown ink upon a parchment scroll, just as scribes have done in writing that first word of Torah again and again for thousands of years.

There is a mystical midrash, a legend of our people, which teaches us that God considered beginning the Torah with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet which is Alef. God decided against the Alef because Alef is the beginning of the word Aror, which means “curse”, whereas Bet is the beginning of the word B’rachah, which means, blessing.

May each of us write our works upon this earth for blessing and not for curse, and may we together become repairers of the breach – builders of a better world.

B’reishit Summary:
God creates the world and everything in it in six days and rests on the seventh. (1:1-2:3)
Adam and Eve are placed in the Garden of Eden, where they eat the forbidden fruit and are subsequently exiled. (2:15-3:24)
Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain kills his brother, Abel. (4:1-24)
Adam and Eve have another child named Seth. The Torah lists the ten generations from Adam to Noah. (4:25-5:32)
God regrets having created human beings and decides to destroy everything on earth, but Noah finds favor with God. (6:5-6:8)