Bereishit - Shulamit Reinharz
Parshat Bereishit describes the creation of the world. We read about what was created on each of the six days of creation, and the seventh day, blessed by God as a day of rest. We then read the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, and how, tempted by the serpent, they break God’s instruction and are expelled from Eden. Adam and Eve give birth to Cain and Abel, and when Abel’s offering to God is accepted but Cain’s is not, Cain kills Abel. The parsha concludes by charting the ten generations between Adam and Noah.
The Humanization of God
Shulamit Reinharz is the Potofsky Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University, Founding Director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Women's Studies Research Centre.
The story of Creation is presented twice: Genesis 1 has 31 verses and then Genesis 2 tells the story again. Scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to the difference between the two tellings. For example, the creation of Shabbat was not mentioned until the start of the second telling (2:1). I want to use both versions in order to ask - what happened to God after man was created?
In both versions, God started out as a careful planner. One thing at a time and in a particular, logical order, with everything turning out to be good. On the first day, God created light; on the second, the heavens. On the third, grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree bearing fruit (Gen. 1:11). On the fourth, the sun, moon and stars. On the fifth, fish and birds, cattle, animals, and creeping things. And on the sixth, God said “Let us make man in our image…and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing…male and female created He them. And God blessed them; and God said unto them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it.”
When God creates man, we are told that man is formed in God’s image. As soon as man is created, man becomes God-like. But more important, God becomes human-like. Confusion, ambivalence, and ambiguity are created, both in God and in humans. Things are not exclusively good. They are gray.
Three examples spring to mind immediately. First, even though God told man (1:28) that they (intentional verb disagreement) had dominion over all that had been created, in 2:8 God intervenes before man had a chance to do anything. “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man whom He had formed. And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. (16) Theoretically, following Genesis 1, Adam/Eve should have created the Garden of Eden.
Second, not only does God create the Garden, but God is contradictory when saying that Adam may not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Earlier God had told man that man had dominion over everything.
And finally, God pronounces the first punishment in history, which simultaneously is the first link between behavioral cause and effect: on the day that you eat the apple, you will surely die. (2:17). As we know, Adam ate the apple and did not die.
In other words, as soon as God made man, God lost the orderly rational approach demonstrated earlier, and became humanized. God intervened in pre-stated orders, made rules and exceptions, and showed compassion when punishments turned out to be too severe. The rest of the Bible and human history follow in this theme – none of the humans are perfect and life turns out not to be fair.
My favourite text
Helena Miller is the Director of Education and Professional Development at the Leo Baeck College - Centre for Jewish Education.
A king once owned a large, beautiful, pure diamond of which he was justly proud, for it had no equal anywhere. One day, the diamond accidentally sustained a deep scratch. The king called in the most skilled diamond cutters and offered them a great reward if they could remove the imperfection from his treasured jewel. But none could repair the blemish. The king was sorely distressed.
After some time a gifted jeweller came to the king and promised to make the rare diamond even more beautiful than it had been before the mishap. The king was impressed by his confidence and entrusted his precious stone to his care. And the man kept his word.
With superb artistry, he engraved a lovely rosebud around the imperfection and he used the scratch to make the stem.
The Dubner Maggid (Jacob b. Wolf Kranz 1741-1804)
I was teaching nine year olds. In the classroom next to mine
was the “special class”. This was the group of
educationally and behaviourally challenged young people who were
unable to cope in the main school. The teacher of that class, a Welsh
woman of fierce and vociferous temper, loved those children. She
appreciated their humour, celebrated their achievements and marvelled
at their successes, however small. She took those difficult and
scarred children and found the beauty in them. She taught me to look
at people as individuals who are all capable of shining. She showed
me that the point was not to make that “special class”
like the rest of the school, but to find in each one of those
children their own unique and precious quality.
Many years later, I always think of that teacher and her class whenever I read this text. It not only speaks to me about how we must see the “rosebud” in every person, but it also speaks to me about creativity and imagination, optimism and perseverance.
John Dewey, one of the most influential educationists of the 20th Century, understood that to tap into creativity and imagination is to become able to break with what is supposedly fixed. It is to see beyond what the imaginer has called normal or sensible and to develop new orders in experience. John Dewey saw, for example, that imagination and creativity is the gateway through which meanings derived from past experiences find their way into the present; it involves a risk; “it is a venture into the unknown, for it assimilates the present to the past” (1934, p272). In my text above, the most skilled artists could not deal with the scratch on the diamond. It took a jeweller who could think creatively and could use his imagination to look at the task in a different way. How often, in our lives, are we unable to move on because we cannot see new perspectives? As we begin a New Year, perhaps we should think more creatively about solving the problems and challenges with which we are faced.
This text also speaks to me of optimism and perseverance. How easy it would have been for the king to have given up trying to repair his diamond. How familiar it would have been for the jeweller to have stared at the diamond, drawn in a deep breath and shaken his head. But they didn’t. Both the king and the jeweller responded to their challenge in a positive and life-affirming way. The jeweller didn’t see a problem; he saw an opportunity. We can choose how we approach our lives. Are we optimists or pessimists? Is our glass half full, or half empty? Can we make the best of what life brings us, or do we bemoan what is past?
Finally, to return to my class of nine year olds. I used to tell them this text as a story. With a few embellishments and props, it makes a great tale. But as the years went on, I realised that whilst this text has all the elements of a fairy tale, it is also a lesson for how we could approach life: be positive, use the gift of imagination and creativity that we all have and appreciate the unique qualities in each individual.