Bereishit

Raymond Simonson

Raymond Simonson has worked in informal education across the UK Jewish community for over a decade, and is the full time Executive Director of Limmud.

Bereishit is such an important and complex sedra, that the most difficult decision I faced when trying to write this, was what theme, issue or lines to choose, and where to begin. The answer however was obvious, as the word staring out in front of me, BEREISHIT, was clearly recommending, in the words of the great lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, that I start at the very beginning - a very good place to start...

I find it difficult to imagine that anyone can fail to be both fascinated and moved by the Creation narrative that the book of Bereishit begins with. The power of it is overwhelming and the simplicity is awe-inspiring, yet at the same time, the text is intricate and complicated. It is hugely difficult for us to comprehend how immense the task of Creation was, which is why for many in the modern world, it is simpler to reject the entire concept.

I have always thought that one of the most challenging and interesting aspects of the Creation narrative is the nature of the immense void that existed at the beginning of, or before, Creation. We are told in Bereishit 1:2 that before God created light, the world was "tohu vavohu". Amongst the most commonly used translations of these words (and there are many differing ones) are "unformed and desolate", "chaos and emptiness", "shapeless and unordered", and "chaotic and anarchistic". Whilst these all carry different meanings, they all carry an overwhelming sense of nothingness, and leave a rather depressing and even frightening image.

Kabbalists suggest that far from being depressing, tohu vavohu carries the meaning of nothing, but the potential for everything. Similarly, Rav Moshe Feinstein (leading 20th Century New York-based Orthodox rabbi) picked up on Rashi's (11th century commentator) interpretation of tohu as coming from the root tamah meaning to wonder/be amazed/be astonished, to explain that that we should all be awed by the sheer untapped potential available within the universe. It is not the total absence of anything, the complete desolation that causes the wonder, amazement and disbelief, but the stark contrast between that and the potential that God unleashes during the act of Creation.

We can read a very important lesson from this, a message to all humankind: As we are created in God's own image, we too have the responsibility to look around us at places of chaos, disorder, or emptiness in our own lives and the wider world, and create. Rabbi Dr Lawrence Hoffman (eminent contemporary Reform rabbi) teaches that in these first few lines of Torah, God created the possibility of being and of creating, an act of wonder and amazement that astonishes because complete emptiness had become "primal matter, ready to be shaped and reshaped ad infinitum" both by God and by humans.

We should consider seriously the concept of "nothing, but the potential for everything." We are partners in God's creation, and it is imperative that we seek to maximise the skills, talents, knowledge, understanding and abilities that we have, to fulfill our potential. If we fail to do this, then far from continuing the act of creation, we are simply adding to the void. Perhaps this is why the phrase "vayar Elokim ki tov" ("and God saw that it was good") which comes at the end of each day of Creation, was omitted at the end of the sixth day, when humankind was created. Perhaps what sets us apart from the rest of Creation is that we have the capacity to define who we are, and what role we will play in this world. We all have the ability to participate in some way in the partnership project that is the Creation of this world, to help shape and reshape it; it is up to each of us to play our fullest part in that, to maximise our potential in order that God can see that it is good.