New Beginnings

There's a famous book called "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," in which the author, Kiyosaki, talks about his two different parental influences, one, a father, who taught him the more spiritual side of life, about meaning and the like; the other taught him about how to get rich. In a certain respect, the patriarchs of my family, my grandfathers were similarly different, not in terms of wealth, or financial standing, but in terms of their attitudes to life. One, of blessed memory was a rabbi, very cerebral, who could sit for hours and think, mindfully taking in life. The other, may he live and be well, couldn't – and still – at the ripe age of 97, and now nearing 98, can't sit for a minute. A survivor, he's always jittery, always anxiously eager to do, unable to take a moment to reflect, even at his advanced age, about what was, but rather, inveterately needs to always be planning, thinking about what will be. When he stands, hovering over you, and you tell him, "Saba, please sit down," he says, "I am sitting." One of his classic lines is, "I'm an open-minded person – I'll tell you what I think."

I would like rather than waxing philosophical, apply what the first of the two grandfathers, Rabbi Israel Orenstein Z"L might say about the current situation; rather, given what he taught me, I'd like to weigh in on what I think about the situation. This evening, in a mere three hours and change, I am supposed to speak at my local shul; we have a rotating roster, and of late there have been few volunteers, and so I see it as my imperative to share some life wisdom about how the tragedy we are now facing can in some way, shape our lives. Some 75% of the men in my age contingent are now in reserve duty, and will be absent this Sabbath. Many are doctors, others, combatants; all have a great deal of uncertainty in their lives, as do we, as a nation, our former purposefulness, motivation, and esteem short of where it needs to be, myself and everyone included.

In creating this world, God, my grandfather taught me, was conducting an experiment, exploring what would happen if man were given free will. Man did not exist, and God always has, writes the Rambam. Were anything to ever have existed, primordially, it would be God; nothing could exist before Him, and nothing after. One day – and obviously I'm making the fallacious cognitive leap here that there was something called a day before creation took place, but one day, God decided in his supernal loneliness and oneness, to create a world, a world from nothing, a world conceived in thought, delivered in action, a world to tell over God's greatness. And boy have we failed! Or have we?

Rashi and the Ramban seem to take different cracks at that question. Rashi quotes Rabbi Yitzhak from the Midrash in his first comment on the Torah, citing the Midrash that given that the Torah was aimed for the Jewish people, the first teaching of the Torah should have been about the first commandment given our nation as a whole. But, the Ramban seems to take umbrage at that approach; Rashi is consistent, though, essentially viewing the entirety of the creation story as a lesson meant to form and shape the Jewish people's understanding and conceptualization of the divine imperative, to choose our people over all others, to give the Jewish people a primacy that is both inimitable, and very fragile, one that hinges on the Jewish people fulfilling their end of the bargain, the covenant. Rashi takes this approach a step further, adding that the term Reishit as in Bereishit refers to the most select, the most select nation, the most select fruit, bikkurim, and the most select of teachings, the Torah itself, thus there is a oneness of purpose, similar – I would add, to the service on Yom Kippur, the holiest time, place and person, all coming together in perfect oneness as the High Priest atones in the Holy of Holies, on the holiest day of the year.

The Ramban takes a very different approach. Reading in between the lines, it would seem that the Ramban struggled very much with Rashi's interpretation, failing to understand how Rashi could reach the conclusion he did. Even on a logical level, what Rashi writes – namely that the Jewish people will be able to hold off the non-Jewish nations by saying that God created the world and therefore he has a right to give us the land, seems to hold little water, especially in the world we have just seen implode before our very eyes. Humbly, I may add, it is hard to aver that the logical argument proposed by Rashi's father ever could have been taken at face value, but rather, again, it would seem that Rashi's stance in interpreting the events of Bereishit were meant more to galvanize the Jewish people, and frame the annals of the history of mankind from the perspective of the Jewish people at its core.

The Ramban notably responds to Rashi by saying that there are many more things referred to in the Torah as Reishit, and furthermore, one who denies that God created the world is a heretic, so therefore, by logical extension, the Torah needed to start with the creation story.

This seems to be encapsulated in the Ramban's interpretation of the words, "Tohu va'vohu," translated by Artscroll as "astonishing emptiness." As a translator, I don't know how to put what the Ramban writes in such unequaled brevity, but the Ramban certainly thought otherwise: Tohu - conceived, and cognizant thought, Vohu ­­- the form the thought takes in the realized, material world. A primordial substance, almost like stem cells, were created (the Ramban writes that in the first verse we find the only instance of the word ברא or created, in the whole creation story), and this substance, after God's initial thought, was then conveyed into physical form, only to be then shaped into individual creative endeavors בוהו, a combination of the two Hebrew words בו הוא.

This creative enterprise took the duration of the five successive days, the tohu being formed in different ways over the rest of the days, the operative point, according to the Ramban seeming to be that the world was created from a singular substance aimed at designing a world, in my grandfather's terms, a laboratory, an experiment, one that had a time delay between conception and fruition, one that required a constant process of distillation, one that saw Adam and Eve start anew, Cain becoming a murderer, Noah becoming the forebear of humanity, God's chosen humanity, only to then become inebriated, wallowing in his nakedness for the sheer demise that befell his eyes, a world destroyed that could not be recreated, that needed to be fled, rather than embraced anew.

This world truly is a laboratory, one that has brought wonderful discovery and revelation and yet, heinous crimes. In this light, the Haftorah's words are ever so powerful: "Yet it is a people plundered and despoiled: all of them are trapped in holes,
imprisoned in dungeons. They are given over to plunder, with none to rescue them;
To despoilment, with no one to demand their return (Isaiah 42:22)"

The Haftorah then continues, speaking of a freedom from not only physical but spiritual bondage:

But now thus said GOD —
Who created you, O Jacob,
Who formed you, O Israel:
Fear not, for I will redeem you;
I have singled you out by name,
You are Mine.

 

When you pass through water,
I will be with you;
Through streams,
They shall not overwhelm you.
When you walk through fire,
You shall not be scorched;
Through flame,
It shall not burn you.

(Isaiah 43: 1-2)

 

The Torah is the story of humanity, as the Ramban writes, but we, the Jewish people as Rashi writes are the nation with whom Hashem crafted His covenant, the faith and face of humanity, whose strength shall never waver.