Bereshit — The Foundations of the Human Being

There — it’s done. Is it done? Yes. So, good evening. I understand: we are a small group tonight, and that is just as well. — We can’t see you. — Pardon? — We can’t see you. — Perhaps that is intentional… Excuse me; now, yes. We have commented on chapter 4, with the fumbling of the first family — let us say the family that is the work of creation and not of blind evolution, and that even has an awareness of a divine presence, of a Creator. Yet despite everything, it is not a given for man to be the direct partner of G-d in the work of creation. At times he defied his own possibilities, his own capacities, and that is indeed the source of all the disorders of history and all its failures. All the failures — and the failures are not at the level of humanity in general, but first and foremost at the level of the family: of family education, of the way the children were conceived, of the way they were launched into life, and insofar as the way of brotherhood was not established at the very beginning. And this brotherhood presupposes the first law of creation, namely that there is always a zakhar and a nekevah (male and female), a giver and a receiver, a will on the part of both to coordinate their efforts, to merge them, and to advance toward the new face of creation that one wishes to give oneself. And this new face that we wish to give ourselves at the level of creation is the one that takes shape through the day of Shabbat, the one our Sages took as the reference for the seventh millennium, which is the seventh Shabbat in the history of humanity. In sum, let us say that the modulations of progress, of advancement, of the transformations that take place within society, will always follow this number seven — a number drawn from what we may call the universal structure of the spheres, which are, in sum, the modes of rotation of the universe from its point of departure to its point of arrival. But if we have taken the number seven, it is simply because we place the emphasis on the conduct of one’s being rather than on certain attributes that escape us entirely, such as chokhmah and binah, wisdom and understanding, which are not always within our reach. Now, we know very well that if the Torah did not give a mode of conduct, if it did not dictate one — if there is no moral preaching in the Torah but rather rules of conduct — it is because it considered that these ways of behaving have already been acquired.

The Torah cannot be the portion of someone who has not worked on himself in his middot, in his virtues, in his way of being. This is difficult, because one does not advance in life by imperatives — especially those imposed on us from outside, which are not our own; that is doomed to failure. This is the image, or rather the picture, that the Torah wished to give us in this chapter: man outside the Garden of Eden, the family outside the Garden of Eden, where a man comes to do violence to his brother over problems that we know, problems that are not foreign to today’s society. We still struggle with these problems and with the violence that follows from them. One way to make up for it is indeed to disguise it with the will to build a city, schools, achievements, sometimes discoveries in industry — be it in music, in weaponry or in agriculture. But this does not hide the problems inherent in life within society. However much one may cover them up with a great cultural and scientific breakthrough, man still does not change. And for people to change, they would indeed have to stop seeing themselves in permanent competition with the other; each would have to consider himself as someone who must, in his own measure, bring his own brick to the building of this world. And that is the little man, that is Enosh. The third child of Adam HaRishon, Shet — it is on him that the world was founded, and it is he who takes the place of Hevel, for Hevel too was bound to become Kayin’s victim. A family is not held together at any price.

On the contrary, Hevel himself should have responded. Rather than the Holy One, blessed be He, speaking to Kayin to tell him “you can move forward,” and so on, it was for Hevel to take a step toward his brother and to share with him the distress of not having seen his offering accepted by the Creator. Above all, one must not — “בִּנְפֹל אוֹיִבְךָ אַל תִּשְׂמָח” (Mishlei 24:17), when your enemy falls, do not rejoice — that is not an attitude, that is not a way to behave. And then Shet: even for him it is hard to decide to have a child when we live in a world of violence, and when we see that society does not at all answer our expectations. Should one commit to bringing a child into the world?

But it is an act of faith. “וּלְשֵׁת גַּם הוּא יֻלַּד בֵּן” (Bereshit 4:26) — to Shet too, despite everything, a son was born. Here we must note a nuance in the text. When it is the woman who brings a child into the world, the Torah says vateled; when birth is attributed to the man, it says vayoled. What is the difference? The difference is that the woman, when she brings a child into the world, it is her son: she wants to keep him, to cradle him, she surrounds him with all her love, and she dreads the day when she will have to part from him — it is not always easy. Whereas the man, the vayoled, is aware that when he brings a child into the world, it is to allow society to evolve, because he considers that where he himself stands is always a stage before the new Shabbat to come, the new step.

We observe that this evolution we spoke of in history takes place at the end of ten generations: there are ten generations separating Adam from Noach, and ten separating Noach from Avraham. As I recalled earlier, this is a structure of creation, subdivided into ten spheres of evolution, and the transformations at the level of society take place at the completion of each spherical structure. These are the small messianisms we live through at different stages, and to which we are not very sensitive. But the Torah helps us put our finger on Enosh, on this man Enosh, the son of Shet. And this Enosh is the little man, the common run of men; he is not […] — no, he is the enosh, a man who is conscious of his insignificance relative to others, but who is determined at all costs to lay his cornerstone in the building of this world.

When this Enosh was born — and I have already had occasion to tell you that there are four designations of man: enosh, which is that of humanity, of the man concerned with survival; then gever, the revolutionary; then ish, the man of morality; until one reaches Adam, the Adam who is the prototype of the ideal man. Why? Because there is in him a notion of adamah (earth), which gives a being a power of growth, and there is a will of “אֶדַּמֶּה לְעֶלְיוֹן” (Yeshayahu 14:14), “I will be like the Most High.” Edameh le’elyon means to resemble, to resemble the Holy One, blessed be He. What does le’elyon mean here? It is not the notion of equaling the Holy One, blessed be He, which would be wrong; rather, he aspires to rise to the height of his abilities.

That is edameh le’elyon. And yet, paradoxically, it is said “אָז הוּחַל לִקְרֹא בְּשֵׁם ה'” (Bereshit 4:26) — then men began to call upon the Name of Hashem. What does this mean, az huchal likro beshem Hashem? There are two explanations. One explanation is that, in the end, with the birth of Enosh there spreads this belief in a higher power that runs the world. But this knowledge, even as it spreads, fosters idolatry: the Name was made profane, it was profaned, it was emptied of its content. How can this be? Yes — when belief in Hashem becomes a popular belief, it becomes the object of selfish hope, of national hope, the object of war hymns. The Name of Hashem — the world believes in it. Everyone believes in Hashem in his own way. Everyone has appropriated Hashem. Each thinks He belongs to him and that He is bent entirely and solely over his own problem, and that is the misfortune of humanity in its quest for G-d.

And so, chapter 5 opens with “זֶה סֵפֶר תּוֹלְדֹת אָדָם” (Bereshit 5:1) — this is the book of the generations of Adam: the book of the generations of humanity. We have not left it. Above all, one must not regard the book of Bereshit only as the youth of history: it is the whole of history. Nor should one regard it as a book of law belonging to Israel alone. No, it concerns all of humanity. Our Sages noted that sefer has the same numerical value as shem (name): what matters in each person’s name is the book he writes and adds to the whole body of writings — but in a spirit of bringing man closer to his fellow. Yes, it is sefer. We have also explained that sefer has four senses. The first is narrative: each person sets down the story of his life; that is his book.

And for the story of one’s life, one does not always need a child. If one has left the story of one’s life, it is sometimes worth more than a child who risks mortgaging the family, who risks mortgaging the whole edifice of life that I have built. I mean a child who is not a ben (son), who is not a boneh (builder), who does not take part in building the work launched by past generations, by me myself — then he indeed becomes a danger, a public danger. And then, in this story of a life, there are many snapshots. There are many snapshots; they must be sorted, selected, counted. One must be able to — there is a great deal of dead time, you see. We will see that the Torah says, regarding life, “and these are all the days that he lived,” that is: there are days in which one does not live, days one does not live, days that are like dead time but are redeemed by other days.

“וַיִּהְיוּ כָּל יְמֵי אָדָם אֲשֶׁר חַי” (Bereshit 5:5) — all the days of Adam that he lived. That is why — sefer in the sense of counting, sefer in the sense of setting in order — one must know how, in a life, to choose these snapshots of life. The third sense of sefer is to cut. Yes, it can be in the sense of analyzing; it can also be in the sense of eliminating. In reviewing these dead times, we set aside certain aspects and integrate others. That is sefer; it is also the book of life, the book of the generations of man. You see that this is not a story beyond man’s possibilities, beyond man’s pretensions. No, it is a book that accompanies a person from his first steps to the completion of his mission. That is what is called sefer: when one has polished one’s whole life, when one has made it transparent, when one can indeed pass it on to one’s children — in the best light, in a spirit of total transparency, while inviting them to respect the first stammering steps, let us say, of the life of their parents and grandparents, and their hope at the same time. That is how the book of humanity begins. Until now we have spoken of the family. Now, with Enosh, we have left the limited framework of the mishpachah (family) — for you see, the word enosh has yielded only one attribute, that of enoshut, which is humanity in the broadest sense of the word. And that is the reason for the dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai, who asked what, in the end, is the principal foundation of the Torah, on what the Torah essentially rests. We all know that Rabbi Akiva answered: “וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ” (Vayikra 19:18), you shall love your fellow as yourself — “I am Hashem.” And Hillel himself, when a candidate for conversion presented himself and asked to be converted in the time he could stand on one foot — that is, what, in the end, is the very essence of this whole conversion, the very meaning of the Torah, the spirit of the Torah — told him: “דַּעֲלָךְ סְנֵי לְחַבְרָךְ לָא תַּעֲבֵיד” (Shabbat 31a), what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is a way of saying it, of formulating it in a rather down-to-earth manner, because loving one’s fellow as oneself is difficult, very difficult; it demands a great deal of effort. “As yourself — I am Hashem”: but who am I to imitate Hashem in this verse? Then Ben Azzai says: careful — this verse presupposes that you will love your re’a (fellow), the one who is close to you, the one with whom you share your life, and the first with whom you share your life is your wife.

After that it is your children, after that your friends — but what will you do about the others? It is here that the morality of the Torah begins: zeh sefer toldot Adam — to consider that in my story I am not basing myself on the degree of love I bear my fellow, but on the way I approach the one who is far, approach the other, approach the stranger. That is why there are three loves in the Torah. The love of “וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת ה’ אֱלֹקֶיךָ” (Devarim 6:5), you shall love Hashem your G-d; “וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ,” you shall love your fellow as yourself; but the third is “וַאֲהַבְתֶּם אֶת הַגֵּר” (Devarim 10:19), you shall love the stranger — in a certain measure, in the manner of the Holy One, blessed be He.

Our fellow, and our stranger: the love of the one who is far will be founded in the name of the Holy One, blessed be He — in the name of this morality that I share with those close to me. That is the book of “the generations of Adam.” I must consider only Adam, and not the re’a. Why? Because on the day G-d created man — every man a divine creature — that is what the verse intends: “בִּדְמוּת אֱלֹקִים עָשָׂה אֹתוֹ” (Bereshit 5:1), in the likeness of Elokim He made him. Demut — note that here it is not betzelem. In fact, as we studied a little earlier, at the creation of man, “וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹקִים אֶת הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ” (Bereshit 1:27), the emphasis was placed first on the tzelem. Now the tzelem is the framework — the framework, what brings me to perceive the other as being in competition with me, or even as willing to lend me a strong hand in what I seek to obtain. Demut, by contrast, has a more singular meaning.

[A participant: “You were cut off for three seconds during the session, and then you were cut off.”] And here the text, when it speaks of this story that I must write together with the other, associates [demut] with his face. And the face, you know what it is: panim in Hebrew, which is penimiyut, inwardness, what each person hides within himself and which is not evident. And yet we play with our face and paint it with all kinds of expressions. One ought to be able to discover the face of the other and this inwardness bound up with it, that of the people around me in life — because in any case I cannot spread my teaching or impose my influence beyond certain limits.

Although there are people who have changed the course of the world — yes, and that is what we await from the Mashiach — it is not asked of each person to claim that he is the Mashiach. No, each person lives in the expectation of this Mashiach, and this Mashiach lies in this projection of oneself onto the other. This is very important: the projection of oneself onto one who is smaller than oneself. That is what makes the Mashiach someone we share with the stranger, someone who comes from Moav, who comes from Ammon — peoples barred from entering, not the body of the Torah, but the body of Israel — and yet, melekh poretz geder, a king may make a breach in the wall. A breach in the wall, yes, and this breach in the wall has a messianic reach.

So I was saying: bidmut Elokim asah oto — a face, a face of Elokim. When we speak of a face, it is not bidmut Hashem; it is bidmut Elokim. Earlier I spoke of huchal likro beshem Hashem, and we always make these distinctions: the Name Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei is that of existence as a whole, of totality and of what lies beyond these totalities, and which can in no way be spelled out. We cannot appropriate it; it is impossible. Each time we undertake something in the name of Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei, it means that we encompass the future of all creation with the attribute of hesed (loving-kindness). Hesed — that is, it is an act of kindness that I perform.

A blessing is an act of kindness. Here I open a parenthesis to tell you that the Holy One, blessed be He, foresaw — once He had left man the freedom to complete His creation — that there would also be failures, disasters that would threaten the future of creation and would demand a fresh start; but to deprive man of his freedom of action is not possible. He would then be nothing but a robot; he would have no merit. And that is not the spirit in which the Creator wished to find His place here below. G-d’s first movement is to dwell among His own, among His children, within His creation. It is there that He is recognized. To be recognized by higher spirits, by an elite of malakhim (angels), is worth nothing; it answers nothing.

That would still be remaining in a spiritually elitist world that contributes nothing. No — to find one’s place here below is to regard oneself […]. What is the small letter of the alphabet? It is the yud. The yud is an imperceptible point. We have no hold on the point. An object stands only thanks to its center of gravity. It is a point, the point of balance. It is not visible, […] it exists, it is there — it is its yud. Every person, in his creation, has a yud, a small yud, and it is this yud that gave yad (hand), because it is from this yud that he can indeed realize himself, have a reality of his own. But as I said earlier, the Creator was aware of this possibility of the degeneration of the being. So He left the yud as the letter of olam haba, of the world to come — the letter of the future, of becoming. […] Look: clothing bears the mark of man’s sin. Man uses his clothing to cover deeds of enormous gravity, and under his clothing he hides his sin. But the Holy One, blessed be He, gave clothing the means of restoring it, through the yud of the tzitzit. We attach ourselves to the garment.

Man threw human nature out of order and damaged his food — and what did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He gave man the possibility of restoring this food through the mitzvah of challah. What does one do with challah? One sets apart a yud of the dough, and we have given our challah new value, we have given it a reality in another — let us say — in another order of holiness. And so it is with man’s milah, circumcision, and likewise with Eretz Yisrael. Israel is the yud of the whole of creation in space, just as Shabbat is the yud of the creation of time. Shabbat alone justifies the whole labor, the whole work of the six days of creation; and the Land, with its Sanctuary, is the yud of the space of the stars — of space itself.

Well then, this notion: man indeed acts in this world under the sign of hesed, because that is what moves the intimate relationship of zakhar and nekevah. What moves it is love. The notion of Elokim is the principle of justice […], and Elokim is indeed the intangible laws of creation. But despite everything, it is possible, through each mitzvah we perform in the Name — the Name Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei, in the name of Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei — to inject love into this notion of Elokim which imposes itself on us through every face, every face that judges us, that scrutinizes us, that accepts us or rejects us. And yet, “זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה בְּרָאָם” (Bereshit 5:2), male and female He created them: G-d ensured that it would always be under the principle of zakhar and nekevah, of giver and receiver. That is the source of blessing, and that is what makes Adam.

That is the reason our Sages said that a man who has no wife is not called Adam, does not deserve the title of Adam. Then the question was asked: but Ben Azzai — here he did not want to take a wife! And they said to him: you yourself said that such a man does not deserve the name Adam. He answered that there are others capable, better than he, of fulfilling it. But for him, the fact of fulfilling this love through the Torah could take the place of the presence of the feminine, as of the presence of the child. And that is why, when the Torah states this in chapter 5 — Adam, in this light, “וַיּוֹלֶד בִּדְמוּתוֹ כְּצַלְמוֹ” (Bereshit 5:3), fathered a child in his likeness, after his image. The first children were not bidmuto ketzalmo. Kayin and Hevel were neither in his image nor in his likeness. They were neither in the framework nor in the face; they did not represent him. He had separated from his wife — why have children himself? — and he had come to forbid himself from having children, since he was not sure of their happy development. And so this time, when he took it upon himself to write the book of humanity, the book of the generations of humanity, he laid the foundations of this humanity through Shet. And now we are going to be given generations that follow one another; not always will they succeed in accomplishing things.

It is true, it is true — it is fine. Not all families accomplish things, but we are not able to judge. Still, the generations follow one another; the whole question is to see what their culmination is — and when the culmination is that of Noach, which is what we will see next week, then one may indeed ask oneself whether we are not ourselves the pioneers of this messianism, of this story of the seventh millennium.