54 Torah Talks: From Layperson to Layperson

B’reishit/Genesis

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B’reishit

(Genesis 1:1 – 6:8)

Have you ever started reading a book by turning the pages to the conclusions after getting an idea of the contents? If there is a happy ending, our anxiety is lower; if the authors conclude by satisfactorily answering questions they have raised at the beginning, then we can read contentedly through the anticipated trials and tribulations.

A quick glance at the end of the Torah, Parashat V’zot ha-B’rakhah, is not reassuring. The events we read about are sad and seemingly disconnected from B’reishit. The Israelites are weeping for Moses, who has just died, whereas in the first Parashah we celebrate the creation of the earth. The actors are different; the places are far from each other; and God’s purposes seem inconsistent. Reading the end is thus disconcerting; we don’t seem to have much to look forward to.

I believe there are three interconnected themes which unite the last chapters of this holy text with the first chapters, meaning there is consistency. First, the uses and misuses of human intelligence; second, exile and return from exile; and third, the loss and rediscovery of intimacy with God. Although this first chapter of the book is, of course, a commentary on the first Parashah of the Torah, I want to look for a moment at the last Parashah:

V’zot ha B’rakhah means This is the Blessing, and it refers to Moses’ last message to the Israelites which includes his blessing. His words are God’s words because we are reminded that Moses, who wrote the Torah on God’s instructions and whom the Lord singled out face to face (Deut 34:10) was more intimate with God than was any other human being.

During the few hours remaining to him, Moses reminds Israel of God’s message from Sinai; he lovingly blesses each tribe and summarizes their relationship with God, concluding with a promise of well-being for Israel in the Promised Land. He climbs to the top of Mount Nebo where God shows him the Promised Land. He breathes his last and dies at the age of 120. (Deut 34:7) No one else in the Torah dies at that age, as far as I know, even though in Parashat B’reishit we read that God says 120 is the proper age to die. (Gen 6:3)

After Moses’ death the Almighty tells us that Israel’s leader used his intelligence to serve God. Moses dealt with the King of Egypt, and he displayed might and awesome power…before all Israel. (Deut 34:10-12) Moses organized and led all the tribes of Israel. He taught the laws of God, thereby freeing his people from idolatry. The people were intelligent. Otherwise, they never would have understood the nature of the Covenant. Moses had recognized the strength of their minds: Surely, this Instruction [i.e. the Torah] which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. (Deut 30:11) The great medieval commentator, Ibn Ezra (Rabbi Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra 1089 – 1164), said intelligence is the basis of the Torah. The Torah was not given to ignoramuses. Man’s intelligence is the angel which mediates between him and his God. (Ibn Ezra, Introduction, to Genesis, p. 10)

We learn the source of this intelligence and how humans use and misuse it from B’reishit: God created man in His image…. (Gen 1:27). This sentence cannot mean that humans look like God because the Almighty has no particular form. Maimonides (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon or Rambam 1135-1204) wrote that the phrase in His image means that humanity was given Divine intellect and intellectual perception. (The Guide, p.14)

Next, we read in the first Parashah of the Torah that God gives human beings power, a force for their intelligence to use, by decreeing that they shall rule…the whole earth. (Gen 1:26) and shall choose names for all the animals and plants. Emboldened by their power, Adam and his new partner, Eve, want more. The serpent promises them the ultimate in knowledge and power: eat from the tree of knowledge of good and bad and you will be like divine beings. (Gen 3:5) Despite the Lord’s explicit warning to avoid the tree, they succumb to the serpent’s words.

Immediately after tasting the fruit they perceived that they were naked (Gen 3:7) meaning that intelligent persons know themselves first. God forestalls Adam’s and Eve’s growing arrogance by expelling them before they can eat from another tree in the garden, namely, the tree of life. With intelligence, knowledge, power plus eternal life they would have threatened God’s sovereignty over the universe.

As Adam and Eve depart into exile, [s]ome natural tears they dropped but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide; They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way. These are Milton’s words from Paradise Lost. (Milton, Book XII: 645) Expulsion and a search for a place to rest is the beginning of human history, a chronicle of our deeds and misdeeds, the uses and misuses of our intelligence. God seems to abandon Adam and Eve who must make a new life in the harsh world outside the idyllic garden.

In comparison, God perceives a similar threat from Moses. After the exodus from Egypt the people demand water at Meribath-Kadesh. God tells Moses exactly how to obtain water, but Moses speaks loudly to a rock while striking it with his staff thus giving the impression that he himself is performing the miracle without any heavenly assistance. (Milgrom, p. 454) The Lord punishes his presumptuousness by forbidding him to enter the Promised Land. God does not, however, abandon Moses because Moses must continue to lead and to teach.

In Parashat B’reishit God blocks humanity’s return to Eden by stationing east of the garden…the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning sword…. (Gen 3:24) Eden does not disappear. God is, in fact, preserving this garden for later generations who will receive and obey His commandments. When Moses dies, we read in the Talmud (T’murah 16a) that he goes into the Garden of Eden.

Moses’ entry into Eden represents more than a return to a specific geographic location; he is entering into that special intimate relationship with God which had been lost by Adam and Eve. Moses must sense what this means as when near his death he tells his people: God is a refuge. A support are the arms everlasting. (Deut 33:27-28). Moses is thinking he will embrace and be embraced by the Almighty.

The details of Moses’ death make this idea of embracing more clear: So Moses the servant of the Eternal died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Eternal. (Deut 34:5) The Hebrew for according to the word of the Eternal is al pi Adonai which Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, 1040-1105) translates as by the mouth of the Lord meaning that God kisses Moses taking Moses’ breath or spirit or soul from his mouth. (Rashi on Deut 34:5) Talmud calls this the divine kiss. (Mo’ed Katan 28a) This should remind us of B’reishit when God touches Adam in a similarly intimate way by blowing into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. (Gen 2:7. Cf. Onkelos, p.10 ftn. 7)

Adam and Eve originally lived in close proximity with God: And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden…. (Gen 3:8) When the first humans are sent into exile, God also departs from the garden into the heavens. Subsequent Parashot beginning with No-ach tell us how later generations disappoint God.

After destroying most of the earth in the great flood the Almighty decides He will make an agreement or Covenant with one family founded by Abraham and Sarah. He will count on this family to obey and worship Him, the one and only God. Their descendants will learn about the Covenant and God’s laws from a man called Moses. God promises in the Book of Leviticus that if this family obeys the laws, God will finally return to earth. I will walk among you [as He did in Adam and Eve’s garden]; I will be God to you and you will be a people to me (Lev 26:12)

What does all this mean to us living, as we do, outside of Eden? The closest we can get to God is through His teaching, transmitted to us through Moses in the form of the Torah and also transmitted to us through the sages of the oral Torah or Talmud.

Before reading and studying the Torah in a synagogue prayer service we kiss it as it is carried around the room and when we approach it to say the prayer. Zohar, the great mystical text, explains that kissing represents the cleaving of spirit to spirit. (Zohar, Vol II:124b) When the Kohen is called for the first reading from the Parashah of the week, the gabbai or lay volunteer leader says: Blessed be He who in His holiness gave the Torah to His people Israel. The congregants respond: And you, who cleave unto the Lord your God, are alive every one of you this day. As the Torah scroll is returned to the ark, Jews sing God’s words Forsake not My Torah. It is a Tree of Life to them that hold fast to it…. (Proverbs 4:2, 3:18) We embrace the scroll in place of God who since the Garden of Eden is separate from our communities.

This idea of separation is central to the story of creation in Parashat B’reishit: Separation of the sky from the earth; humanity from other living things; brother from brother; alienation of humanity from God. In subsequent chapters of the Torah God volunteers a way for reconciliation of humanity with God. And, in the last Parashah, V’zot ha-B’rakhah, the end of the story, the Master of the Universe promises that our intelligence can lead us to obey the laws as transmitted by Moses. Obedience ensures that we shall return to live with God in the Garden of Eden. In the Yizkor or Memorial Service for the deceased we express the hope that after death our souls are bound up in the bond of life among the souls of…the patriarchs and matriarchs, and all the righteous men and women in the Garden of Eden.

Thus, we begin to study the Torah with confidence that Torah is a cohesive whole from the first Parashah, B’reishit, to the last, V’zot ha-B’rakhah. For me it is also important to know that the story beginning with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from their land has a happy ending with God’s embrace of Moses and the people of Israel returning finally to their Promised Land.

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No-ach

(Genesis 6:9-11:32)

Because of the misbehavior of the descendants of Adam and Eve, God destroys almost all living things on the planet with a great flood. Because of No-ach’s righteousness, he and his family along with pairs of earthly animals will be saved within an ark. When the waters subside after forty days and nights of rain, a second process of creation will begin with No-ach’s family and the creatures that emerge on dry land from the ark.

God gives No-ach, who is grateful for his life, commandments meant as guidelines for all human behavior. God also promises not to destroy the earth again. To seal this covenant with the new progenitor of humanity God places a rainbow in the sky for all to see.

Humanity and the animal kingdom proliferate. We read the genealogies of the peoples who begin to repopulate the earth. Shem, a son of No-ach, will be the ancestor of Abram (later to be called Abraham), but Abram’s importance is not evident as yet. Everything seems fine until a unified and arrogant humanity has the idea to build a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves (Gen 11:4) God perceives this action as a threat to His sovereignty and disperses humanity to the ends of the earth where they develop their different languages which disunite them.

Through the details about No-ach, the ark, the flood, the regeneration of humankind and the very detailed genealogies God is sending us several messages. Among these messages are the following:

1. Pay attention to numerical references. The ark of No-ach must be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high. Much later we learn that the Temple in Jerusalem must be 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high. The dimensions of the Holy Ark and other objects are very specific. This shows us that God always demands precision.

2. Recognize the concept of Covenant, an agreement or contract between God and the people. God commits to preserving the earth, but humanity must obey the commandments. In the next Parashah God refines this concept with Abram’s/Abraham’s and his and Sarai’s/Sarah’s descendants.

3. Understand the concept of kashrut which means fit for human consumption, from which we get the word kasher/kosher. God explains that the blood of an animal is not fit. There are pure and impure animals which God will elaborate eventually.

4. Observe the repetition of words and concepts. The ark of No-ach is called in Hebrew a tebah. The only other reference to a tebah in Torah is the container or basket into which the baby Moses is placed by his mother. Jews from Iraq call the ark which contains the Torah in their synagogues the tebah. This indicates that the ark of No-ach saves humanity; so, too, the ark of Moses, who will lead Israel out from Egyptian slavery; the ark within the synagogue preserves God’s teaching, the Torah, so that Jews may learn about the Covenant and survive as a people.

5. Dwell on the commandments. God prohibits murder, albeit not so explicitly as in Parashat Yitro in the Book of Exodus. This is the introduction to the many rules of behavior we shall learn throughout the Torah. Altogether, these are the important underlying messages in this Parashah.

From time to time a mission of exploration tries to find remains of No-ach’s ark. What a colossal waste of time and money! God’s transcendent message is what counts, not finding some archaeological remains. God has been disappointed with humankind ever since Adam and Eve disobeyed Him. He is reconciled to humanity’s deficiencies and decides to let them live. God develops a plan which includes giving people rules about how to live, and how to behave toward Him and toward other human beings. God’s disappointment with humanity as a whole leads Him to conclude that He must choose a people with the singular responsibility to teach His message to everyone else.

Parashat B’reishit and Parashat No-ach are together a type of foreword to God’s book, the Torah.

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Lekh L’kha

(Genesis 12:1-17:27)

"And the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth [lekh l’kha] from your land and your birthplace and your father’s house to the land I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great and you shall be a blessing.’" (Gen 12:1-2). These words begin to define the particular history and characteristics of the Jewish religion and Jewish people. The two words themselves, lekh l’kha, raise two questions: Go forth from where? Why go forth? The answers help explain the origins and the importance of the separate and distinctive identity of the Jews:

Go Forth From Where?

Abram’s native land and his father’s house are in Ur and in Haran located in Mesopotamia, an area encompassing historical Assyria, Sumeria and Babylonia. At least 1500 years after Abram the Jews are once again in Ur and Haran where they have been involuntarily brought by the conquering Babylonians. King Cyrus, the Persian king who conquered Babylonia, tells them: The Lord God of Heaven has given me all the Kingdoms of the earth, and has charged me with building Him a House in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Any one of you of all His people, the Lord his God be with him and let him go up. (II Chron 36:23) Thus, Abram’s departure from Babylon is not definitive.

What seems to be the recurring departure from Babylon differs from the single exodus from Egypt that we read about in the Book of Exodus. The two departures from Babylon- that of Abram and that of the Jews in the 6th century BCE - define Jews in a way different from the way departure from Egypt defines Jews. Egypt was a place of slavery, and departure, once and for all, meant freedom. In contrast, one thinks about the ancient and enduring Jewish connections with Mesopotamia starting with Abram and the three matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel, as well as their handmaidens Bilhah and Zilpah, who were born there. Jonah was forced to preach in Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. Israelites were deported to Assyria in the 8th century BCE; the Judahites were deported to Babylonia in the 6th century BCE.

Jeremiah advised Jews in Babylonian exile to make the most of their stay: "Multiply there, do not decrease. And seek the welfare of the city