Bereshit: The Beginning of Creation

With Bereshit, the Bible marks the starting point of the history of the Jewish people. We are not going to discuss the way the world was created, the way this universe was created, or how long it took. We limit ourselves to the reading of the text, which speaks of six days, and that is highly significant, but we are determined, so to speak, not to enter into the debate over the age of creation. How long ago did it begin? For us, it is 5783 years since human consciousness, since the history of the Jewish people, began. That is the principle that matters to us: that history, time and space have a beginning. And this is contained in the principle of the word bereshit.

On bereshit alone one could expound for a whole year. But we will not do so, because I am not sure it would be very profitable. What is important is to know that, in any case, the foundation of Jewish faith rests on the principle of a beginning. To say that there is a reshit, a beginning, is to say that there is a tachlit, that there really is a purpose. History has a meaning. If we say that the world is the product of chance and of an evolution that began with a big bang we can hardly analyze, then in any case we would be the fruit of a chance we cannot control. We would be determined by the laws of nature and could never escape them, whatever claim we might make to human consciousness.

The Torah does not ask us to understand G-d, or to believe in G-d, so long as we have not accepted the principle of a beginning. If there is a beginning, there is a will, there is free will. When I decide to do something, I thereby affirm my ratzon, my will, my free will. I take on my responsibilities. If I belong to a chain of events that I do not control, I could never affirm it. The principle of a creating spirit, of a Creator G-d, only imposes itself on us once we have accepted the beginning and the principle of creation. This is not contrary to the idea of evolution: evolution could only be seen through, and within, this creation.

The text invites us to this through the very analysis of the word bereshit. You know, the art of the Hebrew language is to express itself first through the shapes of its letters, its signs. There is no alphabet in which the letter carries so marked a meaning, concentrating a whole thought within itself. Take the aleph: you have this turning propeller, which tells you: be careful. If you enter the movement of creation, you are in continuous motion, like the blade of a turning fan, and you must take up your role from within. But the Torah did not begin with aleph; it began with a bet. When the Hebrew language wants to express unity, it goes from a duality toward unity.

The bet is duality: a home is built from two people. But there is not only this duality of masculine and feminine; it is found everywhere. At the level of this world and of the world beyond, […], at the level of the impulse toward good and toward evil, everywhere we find this polarity within creation. For from the moment the primal will decides to create, there is no longer unity; there is only duality. And that is why all the books begin on page bet, not on aleph. It is the bet that leads us to the aleph; it is two that implies one, and not one that leads to two. That is why the path of becoming is to go from duality toward unity. And this is how the very intimacy of the couple is expressed by the term bi’ah.

To realize this unity, this intimate meeting of one with the other: that is the principle of the bayit, the principle of the home, the principle of the house. It is the principle of the bond between the bet and the aleph, and the aleph will appear, for the first time, in Elokim, which is translated as “G-d.” A false translation, because even the Zohar reads it as ele mi bara: Elokim would derive from the plural, ele, “these many,” and mi, “who.” So ele mi bara, Elokim, is a question about the origin of creation. But when one asks about the origin of creation, one is obliged to believe in one G-d, one force, not several divinities; and yet Elokim is plural.

Yes, because that is how creation presents itself to us, in its many facets. And when we remain solely within the perspective of Elokim, that is, of Nature with a capital N (for our sages have suggested that we see in Elokim the numerical value of hateva; hateva means nature, and Elokim is simply its equivalent), then Elokim is also the principle of justice and of law. Law, yes, because making a world requires laws. The laws of causality, which govern the world at its different levels, are plural. Now, to reach unity one would have to pass to a higher stage, but that will show itself only in the realization and not in the conception.

When Hashem, the name drawn from the verb hayah, “to be,” is joined to Elokim, we are told that there is love in this creation. Creation is not governed solely by the principle of justice, not solely by the laws of causality; these can at some moment be suspended, because love prevails over all this strict justice. This is the first teaching of the Bible, but it is not the first creation, because our sages teach us that six creations preceded the world, the universe. Yes, six elements preceded creation. What are they? I will simply quote a midrash for you; the text is developed in tractate Pesachim, page 54a.

Some of them were actually created, and some were projected, conceived before being created. So what are these six things? One: the Torah. The Torah preceded creation. Just as every house follows an architect’s plan and a first design by the one who commissions the dwelling, G-d thought out His creation and founded it on a law, which is the Torah. So the Torah, the plan of creation, preceded creation. The second element created was the kisse hakavod, the Throne of Glory, as it is usually translated. What does this celestial throne mean? It is the principle of not being overwhelmed by this creation, of being able to govern it, to limit it, to stop it. Indeed, Shaddai, an attribute of G-d, which we display on the doors of our homes. These doors mark the limits of our place in space, of our activities within a defined space, and those limits are set by a mezuzah. That is the Throne of Glory: it is providence. We will stop there on this point; it is to say that this world is not left to chance. Once He had created it, did G-d withdraw and abandon it? No, He continues to govern it. Third element: the world beyond.

Yes, Gan Eden. As I pointed out a moment ago, this world is not a hell, as other religions have perceived it. We are not in this world to atone for a life lived as a curse. On the contrary, life is real. This world offers man the possibility of revealing and fulfilling himself as a being created in the image of G-d. So Gan Eden is truly the plan of this world, in which the spirit will delight in this nearness to the divine, in the spiritual presence of its revelation. But there is also Gehinnom. Hell preceded creation. How could hell precede creation? Well, a dwelling, when it is not a source of well-being for the couple, can also become its tomb […].

History, nature, takes revenge when its laws are not respected. There is within nature itself a determinism, if you will, of good and evil. That is the fourth element. The fifth element in creation is teshuvah, repentance. Repentance preceded creation. That is to say, the ability to correct man’s wanderings, his mistakes, was also conceived before creation itself. Man was not to be condemned for all eternity by the errors he commits. He has the possibility of correcting them. And that is the principle of teshuvah: to restore the universe to its original design. The sixth element: Israel. Israel preceded creation, and because it preceded creation, even if creation were to disappear, Israel would not disappear.

What does Israel mean here? It is the principle of the human being for whose sake the world was created. There is a whole discussion about which came first. Did the Torah precede Israel, or did the creation of Israel precede the Torah? Opinions were divided. Without the Torah, Israel would not exist; without Israel, the Torah would have no reason to exist. This discussion parallels that of Hillel and Shammai. What came before what: heaven or earth? Spirit or matter? For Hillel it was matter first, and for Shammai spirit first. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai settled the matter. He said: it is not possible to separate these creations from one another; they are intertwined, they depend on one another. And so Israel, in the plan of creation, is like man in the purpose of this six-day creation.

Six days, as we live them through our six senses. Yes, people generally speak of five senses. But the Rambam says there is a sixth sense, and the sixth sense is intuition. We are sometimes moved by an idea that reaches beyond what we are living through. We sense it in advance. There is a foreknowledge, and each person has this sense at his own level. Just as there is a scale of values, a scale of hearing, a scale of vision, there is also a scale of intuition, and it is this one that, as it is refined, rises in level and becomes the prophetic sense, which dwells in each of us at a basic level of creation, since man was created in the image of G-d. This would also correspond to our surroundings, which have four cardinal directions, plus the dimensions of below and above. And the six days of creation are also celebrated through our Shema, Shema Yisrael, our profession of faith, Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad: six words that express this unity of six, which is the only number in the first ten that has this property of divisibility: six divided by six is one, by three is two, by two is three, and three plus two plus one gives six. Now, there are two stages in creation. In reality there is a static stage: first, second and third day. On the first day, light, but this light is not yet in motion; it will be only on the fourth day.

On the second day come the waters below and the waters above, the separation between the waters. On the third day, the land, the uncovering of the land. And then these same spaces begin, let us say, to live, to set themselves in motion through the beings that inhabit them, on the fourth, fifth and sixth days. There are three days, says the Kabbalah, that determine Shabbat, the seventh day, and three days that are nourished by Shabbat. Consequently, for the kabbalists, the actual creation would not begin on the first day but from the fourth day, where things take their place in the movement of creation; and as for the other three days, which follow, it is the radiance of Shabbat that moves them.

So where is all this teaching found? We are told that in bereshit there is bara shit: He created six, He created six dimensions; six is the number of creation. We will come back to this, because it is very expressive in another domain. But there is also another meaning, contained in bayit and rosh: there is a first thought in the design of this house, this home of the universe (of humanity, I should say). And in this bayit and rosh, rosh is time and bayit is space; space and time are created simultaneously, from the moment creation is conceived. There is no point in separating time from space; each is the emissary of the other; they function together and are determined in the same way. And bereshit is also the structure of the people of Israel. How many are we in Israel? We will never really be more. We may count ourselves in the millions, but in our essence we will remain shishim ribo, six hundred thousand; and in our distribution across the world we are spread among seventy peoples, and we are, if you like, the seventy-first nation. For humanity […], each people according to its own nature and its own ideologies, since there is no point in conceiving of humanity from a single point of view, a single outlook, a single thought. No: there is room for a plurality of thoughts and ideologies, but they must simply aim at a supreme goal and meet one another, having their center of gravity in the principle of […]. We will come back to this.

So, a first point for reflection. We are in the world of a creation ex nihilo, from nothingness. But creation ex nihilo is not truly from nothingness. This nothingness G-d first willed, before He could go on to create. That is to say, what precedes creation is the world of tohu. To put it another way, I would say that the first verse, “בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹקִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ” (Genesis 1:1), “In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth,” is the ideal of creation, summed up in this way. But G-d refuses to give us a perfect world. For then we would have no merit, we would have nothing to do in it, we could not flourish, and we could not prove our abilities either.

Then: “and the earth was tohu,” the earth was tohu vavohu. This is an earth composed of four elements: fire, air, water (mayim), and earth, matter. It also carries four great civilizations, Babel, Madai, Yavan and Edom, four universal exiles that follow one another in this race for domination and indeed burn up the foundations of creation. But in the midst of all this disorder that humanity will create, there is a divine order: yehi or, “let there be light.” The One who decides on the light is G-d. You will notice that this is the first time I speak of G-d. For or, light, has the numerical value 207, and the Infinite, Ein Sof, also has the numerical value 207. And when man, in an evolution that is not horizontal but vertical, spiraling, decides his own trajectory (as the generation of the dispersion wanted to do, but with a different spirit), then he becomes something like G-d’s partner in bringing this universe to completion. G-d creates, bara; man, for his part, forms: he gives a form to this creation.

The creation of man, G-d’s creation, bears witness to a will for imperfection. That is why in bereshit bara Elokim, the final letters of these words form emet, truth, but a truth that is not in the ideal order. By contrast, at the end of creation, in the world that G-d leaves to man the task of making, “אֲשֶׁר בָּרָא אֱלֹקִים לַעֲשׂוֹת” (Genesis 2:3), “which G-d created to make” (la’asot: to make, to bring to perfection), here the final letters fall into order. Now, this first analysis naturally raises the question of the interpretation of the text. Are we not making the text say, in the end, what we want it to say? That is why it is said that the Torah preceded creation. Just as we cannot conceive of this world without the law of causality (otherwise it would have escaped our governance; it would have been a hell), neither can we detach it from the spirit that presided over its creation. The spirit that presided over its creation is the Torah. The Torah is not a philosophy of life. It is not a way of seeing things. No: it is torat chaim, the law of life. This is where each person’s faith comes in. It is the only reason the Torah began with this chapter on creation, which scientifically, on the face of it, gives us no decisive light and does not answer all our physical and metaphysical questions. It is there to tell us that if we truly believe that this world has a meaning, that it answers to a will, then the reading of the Torah… How do we say it in Hebrew? Mikra. Mikra is not keri’ah; reading is usually called keri’ah. But mikra is a call from within to reading. That is, the text suggests the reading to me, and I read what it suggests to me. Since this Torah is the law of the universe, it comes in the same way that the wonders of creation call forth my wonder and my questioning, and so too in the realm of the Torah, when I love it. Now, when you have a mem at the beginning of a word, as in mikra, mizbe’ach (altar), mishkafayim (eyeglasses),

it is a keli: a vessel, a means, a tool. Yes, the Torah is the tool of creation. We began it with bereshit bara Elokim et hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz, and it suggested to us, in the reading of “וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ עַל פְּנֵי תְהוֹם” (Genesis 1:2), “and the earth was formless and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” a final letter, which is the mem. When darkness reigns over the deep, when we understand nothing, when we do not know how to interpret the text, when we do not know how to read it, we need a tool. The Torah has given us this tool, and when it is read properly, then the word keli is there as well. This means […] that one may perhaps begin with an imperfect approach, but when one goes deeper, when one seeks to decode it, one discovers that there is a treasure of thought within it, and that the tools we have been given […] are means of giving man the possibility of freeing himself from […].

For every light needs a keli, a container, a film, a membrane that can hold these lights and not let them scatter. That is how the world was designed by the One who said to His world, “Enough.” The kelipah, the husk, or the beged, the garment, or the tangible covering, clings to the fruit, clings to the body, clings to the light, and itself contributes to the intensity of that light. Now, what characterizes man in his original creation is clothing. We will see this later. The other created beings, the animals, have no need of clothing; they do not feel this need. But man does. Even when he opts for total nakedness, there is sometimes a little string, a cord, a small ribbon, by which he feels the need to mark his person with some symbol of clothing. And that is of course why we wear tzitzit on our garments: because we want our garments to radiate, not to be opaque, not to hide our own light, and not to become a hypocrite’s cloak.

We attach these threads because the beged, the garment, is in a sense the first thing man added to his nature when he sinned, when he found himself unable to approach this divine light. Then he took fig leaves to hide his nakedness; that was his first act. There: I will perhaps stop here for this first lecture. If you have any questions: so far you have not interrupted me, you have listened, but I would so much like to know a little of what you think. And if there are questions, of course, […]. — I have a small question, honored Rav, good evening, if you will allow me. You said at one point that Shabbat was a key of creation, that it held a central position; I do not remember exactly what expression you used.

What is surprising, all the same, is that in creation, Shabbat is only for the Jews, in quotation marks; non-Jews have no Shabbat. How can it be, if Shabbat belongs to creation, and if it is supposed to be the example for the other nations (there is always a kind of collaboration, we are the example for the other nations), how can it be that they have no share at all, even a tiny one, in Shabbat? — Well, first of all, consider the starting point of your thinking, namely that Shabbat is the property of the Jewish people. It became the property of the Jewish people. When G-d conceived His creation, when He sanctified Shabbat, He sanctified it for all of humanity.

Adam was not Jewish. Adam was a prototype of the divine creation of all humanity, and consequently the people of Israel is also the embryo of all humanity. The Jewish people must not be separated from the rest of humanity. I have said it several times: there is no reason for the Jewish people to exist if there are no other peoples, and the other peoples cannot exist without the Jewish people either. The Jewish people represents, in a sense, the center of gravity of all humanity, just as Shabbat represents the center of gravity of all creation through holiness. Shabbat was sanctified by G-d; it is the day G-d sanctified. That the nations do not adopt it

is another problem, but originally it was not conceived only for the Jewish people. — But the Noahide laws: why do the Noahide laws not include some part of Shabbat? — Very good. The Noahide laws are the post-diluvian revelation. That is, after man’s first failure there is a revelation, and G-d’s revelation to humanity is limited to these laws, not ten as in the Decalogue. The observance of Shabbat appears only in the Ten Commandments: the mitzvah of keeping Shabbat. Now, you know, in Egypt, the Midrash says, the Jewish people kept Shabbat, kept the seventh day, and Pharaoh too respected this institution among the Jewish people, because he saw it as an indispensable breathing space for resuming work on a sound footing. Human strength must not be exhausted; people had to be given some respite, to catch their breath through Shabbat. And Shabbat was then a day of rest, not a holy day. The Decalogue imposed it as a day celebrating G-d’s creation, and imposed it as the remembrance of the liberation from Egypt, the liberation of man. And to the extent that humanity one day attains this double recognition (on the one hand of a Master who created the world, and on the other of man’s will to free himself from everything that oppresses him, at the level of nature as at the level of man), then Shabbat would also become the […] of humanity; […] it begins, indeed, with the observance of Shabbat.

— Is there not a law forbidding a non-Jew to observe the rules of Shabbat? — Pardon? — Is there not a law that forbids a non-Jew…? — Yes, yes. It is written that the non-Jew who keeps Shabbat is not in the spirit of Shabbat; he is liable. Why? Because he has violated the spirit of Shabbat; he does not truly observe it. Keeping it like a Sunday is not observing Shabbat. There are Jews who do that, who observe it like a Sunday. Well, it is not for us to judge. But the idea is this: the holiness of this day itself implies the notion of return, of inner renewal. And speaking of this renewal: Adam HaRishon, on the eve of Shabbat, meets Cain, who has just killed his brother, and asks him: How did you come through it?

He told him: Why, I confessed my sin, I expressed my regret, and the Holy One, blessed be He, allowed me to reconsider my life, the course of my life, and so it was. Then Adam said to him: Is that so? And I did not guess it, I did not know it. So there is a possibility of repentance, of restoring one’s honor before G-d. What did he say? What did he recite at once, our sages say? “מִזְמוֹר שִׁיר לְיוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת” (Psalms 92:1), “A psalm, a song for the Sabbath day.” He recited the song of Shabbat. Indeed, in Shabbat there is the verb shuv, to return; there is the meaning of teshuvah. There it is. — Or in the future, then, the non-Jews will become a kind of Jew, and they will keep Shabbat then, if I have understood correctly?

— […] They will have chosen to adhere to the Torah, which is not obligatory. I say it once again: not everyone can, not everyone has the possibility of pursuing studies, isn’t that so? Higher studies. But that does not mean they are worth nothing. No, they too have their mission, and they can fulfill it within the scope of what they are able to do. Israel, on the other hand, has a far more important mission, which was imposed on it, but which it accepted, even declaring from the outset that it would do, and to which it committed its descendants, all its descendants. Remember that G-d was not willing to give them the Torah until He had asked them: what guarantee will you give Me?

So they tried to find all kinds of guarantees, and when they said, “Our children and our grandchildren will be the guarantors,” He said to them: now it is yours. There it is. — Thank you very much. Rav Benizri, you spoke of the tools the Torah gives us to be able to explain the inexplicable. You did not name them, so forgive my impatience: would these tools not simply be the Torah itself? — Yes, it is the Torah itself. Rabbi Yishmael says that there are thirteen, in the thirteen middot: there are thirteen paths, thirteen rules by which the Torah is expounded. Perhaps one day we will have the opportunity to examine these thirteen rules, which include analogy, the process of inference, and so on, and the exception and the general rule.

All of this is set out in the thirteen middot, the thirteen rules of exploration, because this is hafoch bah vahafoch bah, “turn it over and turn it over again” (Avot 5:22). One is allowed to dig into the text, to turn it over from within; one is not allowed to discard it. Hafoch bah: one is not allowed to destroy it. It is not turning it outward; it is hafoch bah, within it. So you are within the rules, the thirteen rules, which in a sense correspond to the thirteen attributes of G-d, do they not? For there are thirteen attributes of G-d. And if you also make a connection with the text we have now begun to interpret: from the first Elokim to the appearance of the second Elokim there are thirteen words. That is to say, the approach of the aleph of Elokim, which is the small aleph, since it is inscribed in the very nature of creation and not beyond creation.

So one would need to have this key in hand. This is what Moshe asked when G-d revealed Himself to him. When he asked, after the sin of the worshippers of the golden calf, he said: “הוֹדִעֵנִי נָא אֶת דְּרָכֶךָ” (Exodus 33:13), “make Your ways known to me.” He answered him: you will grasp Me from behind, but not from the front. From the front you cannot. From behind: how? Through the thirteen attributes. These thirteen attributes are these thirteen words. […] There it is. Thank you. — Thank you very much. — Your question.