Sacred Beginnings

This Shabbat, with the reading of Bereishit, we begin anew the cycle of the reading of the Torah as we do every year at this time. It wasn’t always this way, however. There were several different customs regarding the timeline for reading the Torah in antiquity, and in Biblical times, there was no established custom to read it in public at all – except during the Hakhel gathering when the king read from Sefer Devarim in the Beit HaMikdash every seven years.

In any event, the parsha is called Bereishit, the Sefer is Bereishit, and we are beginning again at the beginning. Rav Shagar (whom we encountered in this column just before Rosh Hashanah), in the posthumous collection of his teachings on the Days of Awe (Al Kapot HaMan’ul), asks why the Torah attaches such significance to “firsts.” (In Hebrew, this is “Reishit,” etymologically connected to the head and implying firsts and beginnings, such as RoshHashanah and Be-reishit). He points out that the Torah commands us to consecrate the first of our fruit (bikkurim) and the firstborn of our beasts as well as of our human children (bechorot). Even the sanctity of Israel is associated with primacy, as seen in Moshe’s declaration before Pharaoh “My firstborn, Israel” (Shemot 4:22) and elsewhere. The unique sanctity of Rosh Hashanah derives from its status as the date of Creation, and in this context as well – ontologically – Israel is Reishit (i.e., first) and so is the Torah. This implies either that the idea of Israel and the Torah precedes Creation or that they precipitate it by validation (see especially Rashi on the first verse of Bereishit).

Rav Shagar explains that beginnings hold particular importance for Hashem as He values originality in His servants, and we in turn observe rituals that center the firstsin our own encounter with reality, as detailed above. Beginnings are opportunities. When we understand that we are beginning again, this means that the burdens and the obstacles of the past are ready to be shed and need not trouble us any longer. In particular, beginning signifies non-contingent existence – true independence from the forms and the prejudices of our past. Whenever we acknowledge our existence as something that is new, we are encountering it as if for the first time, imbued with all its possibilities. The Maharal taught that in the beginning, everything is charged with its ideal purpose and destiny in the state of pure Creation, with nothing having happened yet that might diverge from or distort this purpose. For this reason, beginnings are “G-dly.”

It is noteworthy in this context that there are many classical Jewish sources that teach that the universe is created anew every day or even every morning. Hashem does not want for our experience of Creation to grow stale, for our experiences and interactions in this world to become rote or rehearsed.

We learn regarding Shabbat in particular that she is “created last but first in conception.” This specific formulation, so well known to us from Lecha Dodi, was written by Rav Shlomo Alkabetz in the 16^th century, but it was predicated on centuries of accumulated wisdom and traditions. Rav Shagar points out that in this, as in all things, it is incumbent upon us to emulate Hashem in His conduct and qualities. Just as Hashem presents the beginning as a necessary stage toward an ineluctable conclusion, we should begin everything we undertake with a clear design and plan for its intended conclusion. Rav Shagar uses the example of a bride and groom at the chuppah: They should be anticipating their 50^th anniversary and all the years and the challenges that presently separate them from that distant moment. Similarly, that same bride and groom, when they reach 50 years of marriage, should be able to look back to the beginning of their union and understand how the outcome was prepared from the outset and was gradually defined by each intervening event over the passage of time.

When we mark the Creation of the universe on Rosh Hashanah, we are counting from the birth of Adam – or more to the point, from the first attainment of human consciousness and cognition. The message implicit in the primacy of Rosh Hashanah and of Bereishit is that it is only through the embrace of beginnings – of renewal, of originality – that we can truly embody the G-dly form and consciousness that it is our lot to achieve. We are the nation that was conceived of first so we could receive the Torah which was first, and through which we will help to bring about the day that is “all Shabbat” – the last stage of Creation but the first in conception.