Braysheet 2020/5781: Created before Creation

For us, Rosh Hashanah and the holiday season begin in the summer, in the month of Elul.

 

Every year we take a whole month to prepare.  We do this because it’s too quick a turn around to wake up the morning of Erev Rosh Hashanah and be able to have a plan in mind for our spiritual journey into the new year.

 

Just like a show on stage, first we need the scenery, and then the play goes on.

 

On this Shabbat, we go back again to the spirit of Rosh Hashanah, that was, among other things, hayom harat olam, the day the world was created.  This week, we start reading the Torah again from the beginning, from Braysheet.

 

But the Rabbis knew that just as we can’t jump from summer to the New Year, God also could not create the world without first setting the scene, without first preparing certain things so that both the creation itself and future events could unfold in a thoughtful way.

 

There are many suggestions about what was created before the completion of the world.  One list suggests 10 things were created at just this time of day on the eve of the very first Shabbat, at twilight on the 6^th day of creation.  

 

These things are:  The mouth of the earth that would one day swallow Korach and the other rebels, the mouth of the well where our ancestors drink water in the desert, the words the donkey speaks to Bilaam when he strikes the donkey for stopping in front of an angel the donkey could see but he could not, the rainbow that signaled the end of the flood, and the manna we ate for 40 years, the staff Moses used to call forth God’s miracles, and the shamir, a legendary worm that could eat through stone, enabling the building of the temple without the use of iron implements, and also created at twilight were the words that would be inscribed on the tablets at Sinai, the instrument for etching the writing on the tablets, and the tablets themselves.

 

What do all these things have in common?  The first 3 are associated with miracles, the next 4 are all symbolic of God’s presence, guidance, and tools to demonstrate these things to the people.  The final 3 are the heart of the Torah, that our tradition also says was created before the world was complete.

 

Miracles, symbols of God’s presence, and the beginnings of Torah.  

 

These 3 categories of items suggest God creates a world, and creates us, and then wants to make sure to stay involved in this world.  Unlike the stark medieval Jewish philosophers who suggest God is the unmoved mover who started everything but stays conspicuously distant, the Rabbis here show God setting up the implements by which to maintain a connection between Creator and us, God’s creations.

 

But perhaps the most important element God places in us at creation is that we are made in God’s image, b’tzelem Elo-him, and that as we enter this new cycle of Torah reading, back at the beginning again, we realize we are more than players on a stage, in a drama that’s been written and who’s ending is known.  We are God’s partners in the ongoing work of creation.  Every prayer we say, and every mitzvah we do, every word we speak in love, in anger, in sadness, in compassion, these all are a significant and impactful part of the world of holiness and blessing we will strive to create in this New Year.  We have all the tools ready to go, let’s get to work.  Shabbat Shalom.

Believe: Dvar for Lech Lecha, 2020/5781

  

Twenty-two years ago, the film Prince of Egypt retold the Exodus story in colorful animation with its most memorable and climactic song, “When You believe”.  There can be miracles when you believe, though hope is frail it’s hard to kill.  Who knows what miracles you can achieve?  When you believe somehow you will…

 

The irony for us is that as a matter of faith, there is a significant debate about whether as Jews we must believe in something.  Some argue, we’re born or convert to Judaism, then we’re Jewish, regardless of what we believe in our hearts and minds.  Others argue the first of the ten given at Sinai is a command, rather than an opening statement, that we must believe and accept Ado-nai is God.  Once, on a Hillel retreat in college, a guest speaker said, in his view, the only thing that all Jews believe is that we’re Jewish and that’s meaningful to us.  Tragically, even that vague and minimalist statement isn’t 100% true.

 

For us, here and now, during this time of dramatic change, when the world is turned inside out, and nothing proceeds as we’re used to, it is a time when apart from this debate about Jewish religion, we may be questioning our previously accepted beliefs, and assumptions, and also our previously formulated outlook on life both in the present and what will be in the near future and long-term future.

 

And, as it so often happens, what we are reading in the Torah at this moment, during a pandemic, right before a national election, our Torah portion provides wisdom on how to navigate these fraught moments through the story of Abraham, who as you heard in this week’s reading, is himself at a crossroads in his life, at a time when circumstances challenge his recently acquired belief in the One God of the Universe.

 

He has followed God’s command to risk his life to travel hundreds of miles west, when God does not even specify exactly where he is going.  And he has heard God promise him that his offspring will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand under his feet.  But he does not have a child of his own.  When God makes the promise to him he will have his own offspring, Abraham responds with belief.

 

The Torah says at this moment he didn’t do anything, it was all internal, he chose to believe.

 

V’he’e’meen B’Ado-nai

 

And when God notices this, the sentence ends:  Vayach’she’veha lo tzedakah, and God credited this belief to Abraham as a righteous thing.

 

At this moment, Abraham accepts without question that a miracle will happen.

 

Shmuel David Luzzato observes the language here, the Torah says ‘ve’he’emeen’, past tense, suggesting he already believed in God before the promise made to him.  And so the promise here only confirms his belief.

 

That is to say our beliefs are not static.  They can change or they may remain consistent but they can evolve and adapt.  When we’re celebrating, we may focus our beliefs on God as a source of life, light, and blessing.  When we’re mourning, we focus on God as the source of compassion, the Eternal One, the creator of consolation.  Sometimes we may think of ourselves in religious terms, sometimes we think of ourselves as part of the Jewish nation, and other times we spark our Jewishness when we eat foods cooked to a recipe from a parent or grandparent. 

 

In the messiness of belief, of doubt, of renewed belief or of disillusionment, our ancestors, starting with Abraham, issue us a challenge, a challenge for us to hold onto beliefs that can strengthen us at times like this, when our lives are changed, and restricted, when due to the stress of not knowing when this situation will end, we become filled with anxiety, with a constant pressure of heightened awareness about infection and sanitizing.  All these things take a toll, just like the toll of not knowing his destiny troubles Abraham.  At times like these our tradition asks us to have bitachon, a sense that the universe, however random and maddening it can be, exists here for a reason just as we do, and that however dark the moment may be, our ancestors challenge us to summon up strength and conviction, that is bitachon, the conviction that the nature of our beliefs may change, but the intensity of our desire to live, to learn, to be a part of a holy community of support and love, all these things do not change.

 

As Rav Yosef Yozel Hurwitz teaches, if you see that someone came to the station after the train he wanted had already left, do not say that the man was late and missed his train, but that he came early for the next train.  For everything is in the hands of heaven.

 

And so, thinking back on the lyrics from the Prince of Egypt, our ability to believe is itself a miracle.