Bereshit

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How did we move so quickly from “very good” to “nothing but evil all the time”? How do we hold on to our sense of possibilities in the face of God’s regret? How do we come to terms with the exile which we are sent into only hours after we are placed in the garden?

The rabbis give us some guidance on these key questions when they pair Parashat B’reishit with this week’s haftarah, from the book of Isaiah. The haftarah begins:

(5) Thus said God the Lord, 
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread out the earth and what it brings forth, 
Who gave breath to the people upon it
And life to those who walk thereon:
(6) I the Lord, in My grace, have summoned you, 
And have grasped you by the hand.
I created you, and appointed you
A covenant people, a light of nations—
(7) Opening eyes deprived of light,
Rescuing prisoners from confinement,
From the dungeon those who sit in darkness. ()

Verse five, which echoes the first verses of B’reishit, brings together the creation of the world and the creation of human beings, which comes into focus through the story of Adam and Eve. In a telling twist, Isaiah speaks of God giving breath to the people (noten neshama la’am)in contrast to the verse in Genesis which describes the creation of a single person, Adam. In Genesis we read: “He blew into his nostrils the breath of life (vayipach b’apav nishmat hayyim)”(). So we have to wonder at the meaning of focusing on the creation of a single being versus focusing on the creation of the people. In Genesis, we understand that all people come from this one person. We understand that, despite our many differences, we are all linked through this single creative act. The rabbis teach that since we can all trace ourselves to one common ancestor, we have to recognize our equality in God’s eyes. The miracle of the creation of Adam is that God took some of the earth (adama) and turned it into a living being (adam).

What then do we understand from Isaiah’s version of creation? God gave breath to a people. Instead of pausing over the miracle of the creation of human life, Isaiah moves us directly into the question of meaning. Isaiah focuses on the purpose of this creation:

I created you, and appointed you
A covenant people, a light of nations.

And what is this covenant people supposed to do? To open the eyes of the blind and rescue prisoners from confinement, to make this world the place it should be. The creation story as it’s told in Isaiah is a creation story that already knows what it is to live in a broken world. It is a story that is infused with a dark reality, steeped in the experience of a post-destruction, exiled community. The hope for that community involves seeing that the brokenness is not the end of the story. God wants them—wants us—to see that redemption is possible, that the brokenness can be transformed into wholeness and freedom.

But this role of “light of nations” becomes difficult to understand when, a few verses later, God promises to redeem God’s people.

All who are linked to My name,
Whom I have created,
Formed, and made for My glory—
Setting free that people,
Blind though it has eyes
And deaf though it has ears. ()

These verses seem to say that God’s people, Israel, are blind and deaf. That poses a problem for us. How can it be that this people, which is to be “a light of nations” is blind and deaf to God’s truth? How can a people be both blind and entrusted with the task of bringing sight to others who are blind? Some commentators don’t need to wrestle with this problem because they interpret the early verses of the haftarah as referring to an individual servant, either the prophet Isaiah or a messenger who will reestablish the people of Israel. But the rabbis who shaped this haftarah, by starting it at verse five of the chapter, leading right into the reference to “a covenant people, a light of nations,” have privileged the reading in which God’s servant is Israel. So we are back to our problem. How can a people be both blind and help others out of their blindness? The paradox of that challenge captures an essential aspect of being human. God does not make the people of Israel “a light of nations” because we are fundamentally different than the nations. If we were different, then what kind of light would we be shining? The nations would write us off and say that our reality and theirs have nothing to say to one another. In order to be a light of nations we need to recognize our own captivity and find the strength to trust that God will set us free; we need to recognize our own blindness and make our way in the darkness until some light becomes available to us. It is not some essential difference between us and them that sets us apart, but our commitment to the covenant—a covenant that fosters hope when we are in darkest despair—that enables our drama to inspire others to a similarly redemptive trust.

Ultimately we come to understand that chaos and possibilities, exile and the yearning to be restored, are present in both B’reishit and Isaiah. While the creation in B’reishit starts with “very good” and moves towards God’s regret, the creation in Isaiah starts with the broken world which makes God want to scream () and gives us the challenge of partnering with God to make it “very good.”Ken yehi ratzon, may this be God’s will.

This commentary was originally published in 2007.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee and Harold (��”l) Hassenfeld.

Bereishit

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Since it’s traditional for Jewish readers to begin with Rashi (R. Shlomo Yitzhaki), let us do that very thing! Rashi’s first efforts to understand the verse are midrashic in nature. Sensing the difficulty in making sense of the verse (“This text says nothing other than ‘expound me’!”), Rashi breaks the first word into two constituent parts: the prefix ב (bet), followed by the word ראשית (reshit). Whereas we typically learn to associate a prefixed bet as meaning either “in” or “with,” Rashi prefers another legitimate understanding, בשביל (bishvil), “for the sake of.” But for the sake of what? Well, Rashi would read the verse, “For the sake of reshit, God created the heavens and the earth. But Rashi does not leave it that way. He quickly launches into midrashic discourse: “for the sake of reshit . . . as long as one understands that Hebrew word as being a reference to Torah!” How does he get there? Rashi notes the presence of the word reshit in Proverbs 8:22: “YHWH created me at the beginning of His (God’s) way” (reshit darko). Who is speaking in this verse? Modern scholarship regard this as Personified Wisdom announcing that God created Wisdom (חכמה hokhma) at the onset of God’s creation of the world. But the rabbis see in the word not a reference to an abstract “Wisdom” (personified or not) but to Torah: אין חכמה אלא תורה, “there is no occurrence of the word ‘wisdom’ (in Scripture) that is not actually a reference to Torah” (e.g., Tanhuma Vayelekh 2). That we might consider such a statement as hyperbolic should in no way diminish our appreciation for the midrashic hermeneutic through which the Sages find “Torah,” writ large, in the Book of Proverbs. Deftly employing a different midrashic move, Rashi understands this as expressing a tautology: reshit = wisdom = Torah, and if this is so in Proverbs, it is just as true in Genesis. Thus Rashi “moves” the presence of reshit in Proverbs 8 in its rabbinic understanding as “Torah” to Genesis 1 and resolves the syntactic problem by interpreting the first verse: “for the sake of Torah, God created the heavens and the earth.” Now, it goes without saying that you are not likely to find such a translation in any English Bible. But it must be admitted that from a rabbinic perspective, the interpretation is both elegant in its resolution of the syntax and informative in teaching an essential rabbinic truth: Torah is the most precious thing in God’s entire universe and in fact, in this view, God created the entire universe for its sake!

Deft? Surely! But not unusual for the Sages; in fact, Rashi quickly follows this midrashic interpretation with another one that employs the very same technique. In this second interpretation, Rashi notes the presence of the word  ראשית (reshit) in yet another verse (Jeremiah 2:3):  קֹדֶשׁ יִשְׂרָאֵל לַה’ רֵאשִׁית תְּבוּאָתֹה  “Israel is holy to the LORD,/The first fruits of God’s harvest.” By now you already know the routine:  Rashi “plucks” the word reshit from Jeremiah, though this time with the associative meaning of “Israel,” and transfers it to Genesis, and—the syntactic problem again being resolved—interprets: “for the sake of Israel, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Are you catching a trend here? In only a very few words, Rashi has reassured his Jewish readers that while the Christian and Muslim worlds may dwarf the Jewish world in population and power, in fact God created the entire universe for the sake of Israel and Torah!  And again, it matters not a whit that such interpretations do not comport with our sense of what the words “actually” mean, in these two interpretations Rashi is living in the world of midrash, where different rules apply.

Having offered two different midrashic resolution of the syntactic problem of Genesis 1:1, Rashi then turns his attention to what he termsפשוטו של מקרא “the plain sense of Scripture.” Rashi is an here: as he states in his famous on Genesis 3:8, he is interested in interpreting both according to midrash and peshat in his effort to provide what Professor Edward L. Greenstein has as “the fullest possible accounting of the language of Scripture.” As Rashi makes his transition to the verse’s plain sense, he signals the shift to the reader: ואם באת לפרשו כפשוטו, כך פרשהו “If you have come to explain this passage according to its plain meaning, this is how you should explain it.” In other words, while the syntactic problem of Genesis 1:1 still remains, the peshat approach demands a different accounting. This time Rashi’s attention turns to the verb ברא (“He [God] created”) and notes as well that the preceding word בראשית (bereshit) does not really meaning “in the beginning,” but rather “in the beginning of . . .” In this understanding of the verse’s syntax (that grammarians regard as incorporating a noun in “construct formation,” typically to a noun that follows it), Rashi senses that the verse means “at the beginning of . . . something . . . God created or did . . . something.” Thus, we can ask: at the beginning of what, and what was it that God did? Rashi’s understanding that the word reshit typically means “the beginning of” leads him to wonder whether or not we are really served well by regarding the word that follows it (bara) as a conjugated verb, since as we already know it should be followed by a noun! This leads Rashi to interpret, “this is how you should explain it: ‘In the beginning of the creating (�������’a��) of heaven and earth—and the earth was howling waste, and darkness [was on the face of the deep] . . . —then God said, “Let there be light!”’” Thus, Rashi chooses to read ברא (bara) as a gerund (“creating”) instead of a conjugated verb; and incidentally demonstrates that the first sentence of Scripture does not actually occur until verse three (“God said ‘let there be light’!”). Moreover, a bit later Rashi follows this interpretation by stating that the gerund (�������’a��, “creating”) is probably better understood as a verbal noun that grammarians call an “infinitive” (here ברוֹא, bero). This means he reads the beginning of the Torah as starting with a two-verse long subordinate clause that does not conclude until verse three. That this interpretation likely reflects as close to the peshat, plain meaning of the opening of the Torah as we can get, lead the translators of the NJPS Tanakh translation to render:

When God began to create heaven and earth—2 the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—3 God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

To make the point clearer, we might consider Everett Fox’s translation in the Schocken Bible, “At the beginning of God’s creating of the heavens and the earth . . . God said: Let there be light! . . . ”

All in all, Rashi has provided three readings of the opening of the Torah, two rooted in rabbinic midrash and one rooted in an effort to elucidate the plain meaning of Scripture. But attempts to access the multivalent understanding of the Torah’s opening only begin with Rashi, by no means do they conclude with him. Were we to continue our investigation into the meaning of Genesis 1 by consulting other commentaries typically found in a (Rashbam, R. Abraham Ibn Ezra, R. David Kimhi, etc.), the elusiveness of Scripture and our inability to pin it down to one theoretically precise meaning would become even more apparent. And this elusiveness brings us right back to our initial observation about being God’s partners as we read Torah. In our brief journey to understand the opening of Genesis, we see that Torah can’t “mean” anything without its human readers, for even at this relatively early stage of our investigation we have three meanings from which to choose! On its own it’s like the proverbial falling tree in the forest — who knows if it makes any noise unless there is someone to hear it?  And this means we need to take our responsibility as Torah readers with the utmost seriousness, to closely read Scripture as best we can (and, I might add, in Hebrew!) and to engage Torah in the fullness of both its midrash and peshat. God has begun God’s own Torah with an invitation to unlock its mysteries and delight in its pleasures—may the new cycle of Torah readings that begin with this week’s Parshat Bereishit see us all accept this invitation with open arms and a willing heart.  Shabbat shalom!

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.”

These opening words of the Torah in most translations are clear, straightforward, and well known. But they don’t render the Hebrew original correctly. As Rashi already pointed out, the first verse of the Torah is not, by itself, a grammatical sentence. Instead, it is part of a longer sentence that continues through the end of verse three. The opening of the Torah is correctly rendered in the JPS translation:

^1:1When God began to create heaven and earth—²the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—³God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

Rashi argued for this understanding of the Torah’s opening on the basis of his outstanding command of the syntax and style of biblical narrative. More recently, biblical scholars have discovered additional support for Rashi’s claim: other creation stories from the ancient Near East begin with a very similar sentence structure, consisting of a temporal phrase, then a long parenthetical phrase describing what things were like in the cosmos before the real work of creation began, and finally the main clause. Thus Enuma Elish, the Babylonian epic of Marduk the creator-god begins:

            When the heavens above did not exist,
                        And earth beneath had not come into being —
            There was Apsû, the first in order, their begetter,
                        And demiurge Tiāmat, who gave birth to them all;
            They had mingled their waters together
                        Before meadow-land had coalesced and reed-bed was to be found —
            When not one of the gods had been formed
                        Or had come into being, when no destinies had been decreed,
            The gods were created within them;
                        Laḫmu and Laḫamu were formed and came into being.                                     

  (Translation from W.G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths, 51)

And another Babylonian creation story, ���ٰ���ḫa������, begins:

            When the gods like men
            Bore the work and suffered the toil —
            The toil of the gods was great,
            The work was heavy, the distress was much —
            The Seven great Anunnaki,
            Were making the Igigi suffer the work.

(Translation from W.G Lambert and A.R. Millard, Atra-Ḫasīs: The Babylonian Story of the Flood, 43. “Anunnaki” are the high-ranking gods, and “Igigi” are lower ranking gods.)

As in the three examples just quoted, texts that belong to the same genre often follow certain conventions, especially in their opening lines. Thus epics in the Western literary tradition typically open with an invocation to the muses. (We find this as early as the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer and the Theogony of Hesiod, and as late as John Milton’s Paradise Lost.) We find this in creation stories in the ancient Near East. The lengthy and rather complex syntax of the opening sentences quoted above mirrors the plot of all three stories, which describe how God or the gods moved the cosmos from chaos to order.

Biblical scholars have often discussed  in the Bible, and how the correct translation of  presents a view of God’s relationship to the world that differs from that of the more typical, if less defensible, translation. I would like to point out a different implication that emerges from recognizing the Torah’s use of this convention. When we read a little further in this week’s parashah we discover that the very next story opens with the exact same sentence structure found in the first. I quote again from the JPS translation:

When the LORD God made earth and heaven—when no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil, but a flow would well up from the ground and water the whole surface of the earth—the LORD God formed man from the dust of the earth. 

(:4b-7)

What follows, as biblical scholars have long observed, is another creation story, which .

The Torah, then, seems to begin twice, in a way not paralleled by any other creation narrative from the ancient Near East. It uses the conventions of ancient literature in a new way. By beginning twice, the Torah announces what sort of a work it intends to be: it is less a book than an anthology, a compendium of numerous viewpoints and competing teachings. Modern biblical critics have long noted that, and the Torah never tries to hide its composite nature. On the contrary, by beginning inand then blatantly beginning once more in:4b-7, the Torah announces clearly:I am not providing you with one narrative voice; I am supplying several voices. The Torah is about counterpoint, not just melody. And I am not afraid of dissonance—sometimes my counterpoint will be more like Schoenberg than Bach.

Of course, traditional Jews are quite familiar with this sort of text. Works of rabbinic literature always provide us with multiple opinions. The Mishnah opens by asking what time we can begin reciting the Shema prayer every evening, and then it gives three possible answers (). In its presentation of more than one answer to a question, the first paragraph of the Mishnah is a good introduction to the Mishnah as a whole. The Mishnah goes on to tell us which answer is correct in this case, but elsewhere the Mishnah simply lets more than one opinion stand. Debates about these opinions are even more common in the Talmuds, which intensify the already impressive level of multivocality found in the Mishnah.

Similarly, classical rabbinic collections of biblical interpretation such as Midrash Rabbah often consist of a long list of varied, sometimes conflicting readings of biblical verse, each one introduced with the words, davar aher—“another word.” Judaism is not apologetic about its sacred literature’s penchant for presenting several viewpoints that contend with each other. As  tells us, each of these controversies is a mahloket leshem shamayim, an argument for the sake of heaven. Classical Jewish thought teaches that we bring glory to God when we exchange ideas about the Torah, when we contend with ideas with which we differ, and also when we listen to those other ideas and consider them seriously. Indeed, rabbinic Judaism regards this dialectic process of learning through discussion, debate, and disagreement as a form of worship, in some ways even more important than conventional prayer.

This love of varied opinions does not start with the Rabbis. It can be traced back to the two beginnings of the Torah itself. By announcing from its opening narratives that it will provide more than one approach to a subject, the Torah identifies itself as what we might call a prototypical rabbinic text. We might even say that in the first two aliyot of this week’s parashah, the Torah creates rabbinic Judaism.

However, both classical rabbinic texts and the proto-rabbinic text we find in the Torah sponsor debates that have fairly clear limits. The opening paragraph of the Mishnah allows us to discuss when, exactly, we recite the evening Shema, but it does not countenance the possibility that we might decide to skip reciting it. The same tractate of the Mishnah goes on to allow flexibility in the exact phrasing of our daily prayers, but it does not suggest that any of us can make up the overall structure of the service ourselves. Similarly,  and  disagree about what exactly was created when, and, more importantly, about the relationship between Creator and created. But no text in the Torah would allow us to entertain the possibility that more than one deity created the world, or that there is no God at all.

This week’s parashahthen, presents us with a model for our own Judaism, a Judaism that displays both multiplicity and limits. This week we begin once again to hearthe Bible’s many voicesin the annual cycle of Torah reading, and we begin a new year of observing the Torah’s laws. As we do so, I hope we strive to achieve the balance between flexibility and structure that rabbinic texts—starting with the Torah itself—encourage us to pursue every day.

This Torah commentary was originally published in 2015.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Rereading the very beginning of the Bible this year, what I found most intriguing was the textbook example of the creation of halakhah lema’aseh (the practical application of Jewish law) that stems from a single verse in the parashah. Our inherited tradition of Judaism is rabbinic in nature, but the rabbis rooted their practice in the Bible. This parashah contains the first example of the clear line that one can draw from the Torah, through the Mishnah and Talmud, to Jewish law.

One of the most well-known, and controversial, passages in the Torah comes after God creates man and woman: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea the birds of the sky, and all living things that creep on earth’” (Gen. 1:28). In Mishnah Yevamot 6:6, when discussing the mitzvah to procreate, it reads: “A man is commanded concerning the duty of propagation but not a woman. Rabbi Yohanan ben Beroka says: Concerning both of them it is said, ‘And God blessed them; and said to them . . . Be fruitful and multiply.’” In this first stage of rabbinic law, the rabbis view this verse as a proof text for the mitzvah and an introduction to the debate as to who is obligated.

Later the Babylonian Talmud Yevamot 62b quotes a baraita:

Rabbi Yehoshua says: If a man married a woman in his youth, and she passed away, he should marry another woman in his old age. If he had children in his youth, he should have more children in his old age, as it is stated: ‘In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening do not withhold your hand; for you do not know which shall prosper, whether this or that, or whether they both alike shall be good’ .

(Eccles. 11:6)

This teaches us that one should continue having children, even if he has already fulfilled the mitzvah.

Finally, in Shulhan Arukh, Even Haezer 1, we read that “every man is obligated to marry a woman in order to be fruitful, and to multiply and anyone who doesn’t engage in being fruitful and multiplying is as if he spills blood, and lessens the appearance, and causes the divine presence to depart from Israel.” Procreation, at this point in the rabbis’ understanding of this verse, is not only a commandment to help fill the world, but a way to bring God closer to Israel.

It should be noted that there is considerable debate over whether the verse from Bereishit or the reiteration of the statement in Parashat Noah (or perhaps the two of them together) is the actual source for the commandment to be fruitful and multiply. There is also debate over whether it applies to just Jews or to all humans, whether it applies to men and women alike, and concerning how many children (and of what sexes) it takes to fulfill the commandment. But one thing is clear: God created the earth, and we are to fill it with people. There is no ambiguity in the biblical text, or any of the rabbinic texts that follow, that this is what God desires of us.

This can be difficult and uncomfortable for the modern reader. One particular challenge is the environmental questions this verse raises. How are we to reconcile the commandment to be fruitful and multiply with the fact that, according to some, having a child is the single worst thing an individual can do for the environment? In one study, researchers showed that giving up your car would save 2.4 tons of CO₂ emissions per year, recycling would cut 0.21 tons, and going vegan would save 0.8 tons.  But the choice to have one less child would save between 16.16 and 59.8 tons of CO₂ emissions PER YEAR. Could it be that being fruitful and multiplying is leading to the destruction of God’s green earth? There are plenty of examples of products or activities that were once believed to be beneficial and were later found to be the opposite, but those reversals have no theological ramifications. Would we dare suggest that God was wrong? Should the Shulhan Arukh instead read that anyone who DOES engage in being fruitful and multiplying is as if they are spilling blood?

Much of this debate has to do with the period in which these texts were authored. The Shulhan Arukh, the most recent of our texts, was first published in 1565—almost 500 years ago, at a time when man-made global climate change did not exist. Today, things are different, and we need to urgently work to mitigate the damage being done. Given our obligation to fill the earth, how might we read this text anew in light of our current understandings? What is the Jewish response to this global crisis?

One suggestion is offered later in our parashah. In Genesis 2:15, the Torah states that “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden, to till it and to tend it.” While God may have created the earth for human use, and indeed wants humans to populate the planet, many have interpreted “tilling and tending” to mean preserving natural resources while using them. The earth is not ours to abuse. God created humans to worship, praise, and serve, and God demands that we honor and protect all of God’s creations while nurturing and conserving the environment.

Even if each birth further strains the planet, each new human life has the potential to be the solution. Each new child could be the one to end world hunger, stop a war, cure cancer, or to solve climate change. We must be mindful of our duty to protect and preserve our natural resources, while fulfilling the mitzvah to be fruitful and multiply. A better understanding of the ramifications of our actions on the Jewish people and the planet are both lessons we can learn from this parashah.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

After all it is people who are created betzelem elohim (in the divine image), a divinity that some commentators say is reflected in our souls, and others say is reflected in the very contours of our bodies. As creatures with reflective capacity, human beings are at the apex of creation. We are the creatures with whom God enters into a full covenantal relationship, satisfying that deep yearning on God’s part for connection.

But are we the only ones? In a close reading of the first few verses of Genesis we discover that human beings are not, after all, the first creation to mirror God. Reflection begins at the beginning of creating as we read in verse 3 of chapter 1:

וַֽיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר׃ God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

The world takes shape by reflecting God’s words perfectly in the verse’s symmetry: God says יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר (yehi or), Let there be light. And the universe responds with וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר (va-yehi or), And there was light.

And it’s not just that the universe is mirroring God, and in so doing begins to relieve God’s solitude. It’s more than that: what is created at the beginning of creation is dialogue itself. God calls, and the world responds—a supremely generative call and response. Thus the creation of light signifies the free response of the universe to the divine call. In the beginning, God created a dialogue partner.

And, as if to underline the freedom of this newly created other, God is surprised by what the world does. As we can see from the Torah’s next words:

God saw that the light was good. וַיַּ֧רְא אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶת־הָא֖וֹר כִּי־ט֑וֹב

Like any serious artist, God beholds God’s work and evaluates it, and finds it pleasing. If God were in complete control over creation, God would not need to “see” anything. There would be no surprise. God would already know everything God needed to know about God’s creations.

This unfolding relationship between God and the world is dynamic and radically relational: dialogical and surprising; characterized by freedom, reciprocity, and reflection.

Being human, we understand how essential it is that the world reflects who we are. A child seen by their parents survives and thrives; friends and lovers look to each other to know who they are in the world. Perhaps the God of the Torah continually seeks reflection in God’s universe to assuage God’s original loneliness.

Indeed, mirroring is found throughout the Torah in God’s relationship with humans. Here’s a prime (and timely) example. Before God visits a flood on the world in the portion of Noah, the Torah tells us that that God sees that the world has been corrupted or destroyed:

וַיַּ֧רְא אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ וְהִנֵּ֣ה נִשְׁחָ֑תָהכִּֽי־הִשְׁחִ֧ית כָּל־בָּשָׂ֛ר אֶת־דַּרְכּ֖וֹ עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃

When God saw how corrupt the earth was, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth. (Gen. 6:12)

In the next verse God tells Noah that God will do to the world exactly what humanity has done to it, using a verb with the same root:  וְהִנְנִ֥י מַשְׁחִיתָ֖ם אֶת־הָאָֽרֶץ (I am about to destroy them with the earth). The three words in these two verses (bolded) that derive from the root shin-het-tav can be translated as corrupt or destroy. What’s instructive here though, is what human beings do to the earth, God will in turn mirror by destroying the earth.

The Rabbis identify a principle that deeply informs the literature of the Torah, measure for measure (midah keneged midah), which is a reflective principle. Essentially it refers to a kind of Jewish karma. Just as one relates to the world and behaves toward it, so the world responds. A most painful example of this principle at work is the way Jacob deceives his father, pretending to be Esau, his older brother. In turn, Laban, his father-in-law to be, deceives him on his wedding night and gives him Leah, his older daughter, instead of the younger Rachel, with whom Jacob is in love. This episode becomes a mirror through which Jacob can see his earlier misdeeds (that is, if he chooses to do so).

Through these examples of a much larger pattern, the Torah is a kind of literary house of mirrors. Maybe this continual reflective process embedded in Biblical literature is a unique feature of our sacred literature.

Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe there’s something about mirroring itself that is intrinsic to the workings of the universe—and this is what the Torah is teaching us.

In the ’90s neuroscientists discovered mirror neurons, neurons that fire not only when someone is performing an action, but also when a person witnesses someone else performing the same act. In other words, we mirror one another in our very nervous systems through neurons that fire sympathetically. And not only do we do so, but animals do as well. Mirror neurons of various kinds have been identified throughout the animal world. Scientists believe, for example, that this process explains how birds learn their songs. There is something about God’s creatures that is essentially reflective; mirroring is itself at the very heart of creation.

What does this radical mirroring principle, so deeply embedded in the Torah’s literary artistry, teach us about the moment that we are in?

We are in the midst of a climate crisis. The crisis shows us that we did not reflect the earth appropriately. The earth has called, and we’ve responded by exploiting and destroying her. And so, with a tragic symmetry, the earth is mirroring back to us what we have done to her. She is destroying us with fire, flood, drought, heat. She is dysregulated, angry, even furious. We’re the ones who have abandoned, if not God this time, then the earth itself. We might imagine her sitting ashamed, and alone, waiting for her shomer, her steward, to return to her.

How can we re-enter our relationship with the earth with integrity? We can only do so with respect. With humility. With care and compassion. The earth’s majesty is inescapable. Either that fact will be reflected in our actions or she will destroy us.

That is our task. It was outlined from the very beginning of God’s creating the world.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

The same narrative device is employed by the Torah. Dazzling victories are paired with ignominious defeats. Consider, for example, three victorious moments in the Torah: The dedication of the Tabernacle; the declaration by Israel at Sinai that they will “heed and hear” God’s teaching; and God’s proclamation at the end of Creation that all of it was “very good.”

Each moment completes an arduous process, signaling blessing and joy. Yet the Torah barely allows one to celebrate before delivering a devastating narrative twist. What does this say about the nature of victory, and what can it teach us about resilience in a pandemic?

The end of Exodus and the beginning of Leviticus describe the construction of the Tabernacle and its furnishings, and then details of the sacred service. Finally, when all is ready, Moses instructs his brother and nephews to begin an eight-day vigil, after which God’s glory will appear. Aaron and sons offer their sacrifices, Moses and Aaron enter the Tabernacle and then emerge to bless the people, summoning the divine glory (Lev. 9:23).

The Talmud states that the dedication of the Tabernacle was the greatest joy for God since the creation of the world (BT Megillah 10b). It was a labor of love, generosity, skill, and devotion. The Tabernacle project engaged the people of Israel as creators and allowed the divine presence to dwell in the center of their camp. And yet barely have the altar embers extinguished than calamity strikes. Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu offer “strange fire” and are struck dead by a fire from God (Lev. 10:1–2). The transition from joy to sorrow is lightning fast.

Now scroll back to Exodus 24, following the theophany at Sinai. Moses dedicates a different altar and reads the “book of covenant” to the people, after which they proclaim, “all that has been spoken by the Lord we shall heed and hear” (Exod. 24:7). In other words, they pledge obedience to God, but also something more—to study the teachings that they have committed to keep.

This double promise is central to Jewish spirituality. When the people make this statement, they signal trust in God and in their teacher Moses. They also indicate their intention to live in partnership with the Divine, not as unquestioning servants, but as students and teachers with their own insights to add to the ever-flowing well of Torah. What a spiritual triumph for Israel and for God!

The Talmud says that when the people made this double promise, ministering angels came from heaven and adorned each Israelite with two crowns. And yet, this victory was short-lived. Moses returned to the summit of Sinai, and the insecure people turned to worship the golden calf. This time twice as many attacking angels descended and ripped the crowns from their heads (BT Shabbat 88a).

Examples of this spiritual contrast between victory and defeat abound, but none is as prominent as the very first. In Genesis 1:31, God is pleased with the creation, declaring it to be “very good.” But by the end of the first Torah portion—after the sin of Adam and Eve, Cain’s murder of Abel, and the mysterious incident with the Nephilim—God bitterly regrets creating humanity, which is “evil all day” (Gen. 6:5–6). The Creator’s joy turns suddenly to sorrow.

A puzzling midrash plays on the first proclamation that the creation was “very good” (tov me’od). Rabbi Meir had a Torah scroll which added a shocking alternative: “Death is good” (tov mavet). The Sages add that God initially intended for humans to be immortal, but, anticipating that they would then see themselves as divine, decided that mortality was for the best (Genesis Rabbah 9:5).

Victory without the likelihood of failure feels inevitable and thus cheap. Life without death would lack limits and humility. The fleeting nature of triumph makes it more precious. It also intimates that the converse is true—that moments of sorrow and defeat may give way to new accomplishments and celebrations.

The past year has been rife with sorrow, with more than one million people killed by the novel coronavirus and nearly every aspect of life disrupted. Even in our sorrow, however, we are gaining new skills and purpose. As we return to the beginning of Torah, we also return to rebuilding our Jewish community to flourish once more, crowned by our dual commitment of service and study in partnership with God.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).