Why would God reveal the beginning of all things to Moses? Maya Angelou, poet and author said, “If you don’t know from where you’ve come, you won’t know where you’re going.” Most of us don’t know where we are going in this life because we are haunted by our past. We don’t know how to live fully in this moment because our past tends to rule our thoughts and emotions and ultimately our behaviour. And most put on a facade to hide the chaos within.
The first two verses of Bereshit tell us, “When God began to create heaven and earth— the earth was Tohu Vavohu, with darkness over the surface of the deep and ר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים Ruach Elohim, God’s Spirit swept over the water.”
GOD is letting us know that when He began His creation, He didn’t start from nothing, there was Tohu Vavohu. We don’t know the exact meaning of this Hebrew expression, but Jeremiah and Isaiah (in chapter 4:23 and 34:11 respectively), use it to prophecy “ruin and destruction” or “confusion and emptiness”. Isaiah often used the Hebrew word “Tohu” when referring to chaos, desolation and destruction.
What the Creator did was to transform that state of being into order.
The word “emptiness” reminded me of my early years when everything I did was guided by the emptiness I felt within. It manifested in physical pain in my gut, so much so that at the age 16, my parents sent me to a gastroenterologist. After a variety of tests, I was diagnosed with a “nervous stomach.” The doctor handed me a prescription to counteract anxiety but never asked me any questions to find out what would make a 16-year-old so nervous. That sparked the beginning, the bereshit, of my personal quest for answers that eventually led me to the Torah.
How many of us walk through life with deep-rooted anxieties that can eventually result in physical illnesses or addictions but we don’t associate them with thoughts of “if only… such as, if only I had other parents; if only I had a college education; if only I had married someone else; if only I were rich; if only I had children, if only I was somebody else, if only…”? These thoughts create tohu vavohu, confusion and emptiness within our being; they have a beginning, a bereshit, but they can also have an end.
So many people today, including in our own families, are oppressed by feelings of fear, anxiety, paranoia and a deep emptiness within; they are crying out for relief. Sadly, relief is not easily found these days. Some turn to drugs or alcohol, others to food, others seek help through years of psychoanalysis or self-help programs, while others bury themselves in their work or the quest for money; there is a plethora of methods today to escape this emptiness, this void. I know them all very well.
In Parashat Bereshit, time enters the equation of Eternity as GOD who dwells outside time, creates the earth within time. It is not important whether creation took place over a literal seven days or seven millennia but within that period, God assigned signs, the Moedim, His Appointed Times, days and years. We are living in times right now that I thought I would never see, especially since after World War Two, we cried out, “Never Again”. I can relate to Frodo Baggins who said to Gandalf In the Lord of the Rings, “I wish it need not have happened in my time.” Gandalf responded, “So do I and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
King Solomon, the wisest of kings, spoke about time in Ecclesiastes chapter 3. He said that there is זְמָ֑ןzman, a time for every experience under the heavens. Then he recounted a time for all things, such as a time to be born and a time to die, a time for peace and a time for war. He continued with many of the things that occupy our time. It made me think of how I am spending the gift of time that has been allotted to me. Do I pass the time doing good or bad, bringing light or darkness into the world; do I waste time, do I use time well or abuse it?
There is a beautiful verse in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that says, “He has made everything beautiful in its time; He also has placed eternity in their heart, so that man can find out the work that God had done from the beginning to the end.” There is a place within each human being that holds the remembrance of eternity, some say that it is the memory of paradise, placed there by the Eternal but what will it take to awaken that memory within all of humanity once again? I remember the exact day, the time when God revealed to me the reality of His existence. From that moment on, the emptiness that had left a hole in my being which my body had interpreted as gut pain, was replaced and filled with hope. The pain left, never to return.
All the major characters in the Torah had an experience where God revealed Himself to them in one way or another. Adam and Eve knew God at a level that few of us can ever experience. They heard the sound of His voice as He walked in the cool of the Garden (3:8). I am learning to hear the sound of His still, small voice within guiding me.
Most of humanity has lost the concept that God can speak directly to us. Some say that God created us but now He’s too busy to bother with us; we’re on our own. That’s not what the Torah teaches. God spoke to the millions of people, Jew and Gentile who were set free from Egypt and who stood at the base of Mount Sinai when He spoke His Ten Commandments to them. Our ancestors told Moses to let God speak to him and then Moses could tell them what He said. They didn’t want to hear from Him then because they were too afraid. How many of us are still too afraid to hear from Him now? I had a friend, may she rest in peace, who told me that she didn’t want to read the Torah because then she would know the truth and would have to be responsible.
We understand that God gave Adam and Eve the gift of Free Will because they were able to choose to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. They were living in paradise; they had everything they would need to be happy but here is a perfect picture of human nature… Eve was the crown of God’s creation, the last thing that He created. She was at the highest level of spiritual connection to the Creator. Yet she was duped by the shrewdest of creatures, the snake, the perfect politician, who said to her, “Did God really say: You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?” God never said that, but the serpent twisted God’s words.
Perhaps out of pride, Eve responded with one-upmanship, “It is only about the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that God said: ‘You shall not eat of it or touch it, lest you die.’” God never said, don’t touch it. Here is the first case of twisting God’s Words, taking them in vain or adding to them. This is the beginning of Replacement Theology, of religions who put their words into God’s mouth.
The serpent continued: “God knows that as soon as you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods (or divine beings) who know good and bad.” Notice that it didn’t say “…you shall be like God”, (capital G) referring to the One GOD, but it said, “as gods”. Isn’t that one of the problems that we are facing on earth today? How many people have become so highly educated, proudly thinking that they know it all, or those who have amassed so much wealth that they feel a god-like power, lording it over others? These gods are represented by modern political leaders, religious icons or any other famous personalities who think they know better than others. They have the same attributes as the ancient gods and goddesses who constantly fought among themselves, behaved irrationally and unfairly, and were often jealous of one another. Greek gods and goddesses were highly emotional and behaved inconsistently and more often than not, immorally.
But here in Parashat Bereshit, we are told that we were made in the image of the Bore Olam, meaning that implanted within us were the Creator’s attributes – being loving, loyal, just, good, merciful, gracious, faithful, truthful, patient, and wise. Can you imagine what this world would be like if everyone nurtured these traits within us? That’s what happens when we immerse ourselves in the principles of the Torah because they arouse what is already innate within each human being. However, when we choose to disobey His principles whether one or ten, our lives manifest those qualities of the gods that bring a cycle of darkness into this world instead of light.
It is true that the world is still living under the curses that came from Adam and Eve’s decision, but the wonderful thing is that GOD made a formula for us to help us choose life and not death, light and not darkness.
First, we stop crying and blaming others for all the terrible things that have happened to us in our lives. We acknowledge that we may be part of the problem. Believe it or not, that’s the hardest part because it takes humility, the breaking of our pride. Then we ask for help, from God and from those who love us. We admit that we need to make restitution, take the steps to do so and work hard to do better next time. We stop from time to time to examine ourselves, acknowledge the improvement we’ve made instead of comparing ourselves with everyone else who seems to be doing so much better than us. We don’t know what others are going through. We read life’s instruction manual, the Torah for ourselves instead of believing what others tell us it says; then we allow God to speak to us in the inner recesses of our minds and hearts. Then we do what is right in His eyes. If every human followed this process, it would be a different world. We can turn the tohu vavohu, the chaos of our lives into order which helps bring order into the world on a grander scale.
We can hold onto the hope that one day this world will return to that original state of paradise, to Gan Eden. That’s the message from our Hebrew prophets. They warn us about our behaviour and encourage us to return to the Torah so that we will no longer suffer the consequences of being in direct opposition to the Creator. He placed things into “order”; He gave Adam and Eve everything they needed to live a rich life in Gan Eden and to be fruitful and multiply. Mankind would have lived forever in paradise if they had listened to the instruction of the One who loves His creation. He didn’t create us as puppets or robots as all religions and ideologies try to do, rather He gives us the power to choose.
What returns us to the initial state of tohu vavohu – chaos? Anything that stands in opposition to God’s advice to humanity. He warns us about what to do and what not to do beginning with Bereshit and continuing in the rest of the Books of the Written Torah. Let’s enjoy this process and watch our lives change from chaos to order.
Shabbat Shalom
Peggy Pardo