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.