Title: The Journey of Mankind
By: Rabbi Yonason Arenias
Menucha Publishers
The weekly Torah portion is integral to Jewish life. Jews of all backgrounds and religious levels read the same section of the Torah every week. The number of parsha classes and divrei Torah sent out each week all attempt to find lessons to suit all of those varied audiences. Yet, how often do we read the Torah to find a lesson in the text rather than read the text to find its lessons? Authors have themes that they wish to convey to readers, and the Author of the Torah is no different. In his first work on the Chumash, Journey of Faith, Rabbi Yonason Arenias shone some light on the major themes of each parsha of Sefer Bamidbar. In his new work The Journey of Mankind, Rabbi Arenias applies this skill the first two parshiyos of Sefer Bereishis.
The Journey of Mankind contains several layers. The first layer is the entire text of the first two parshiyos with an elucidated translation. This would likely be the most practical way to use this sefer during the Torah reading in shul since many of the pasukim contains several pages of commentary in the running commentary section. One can easily follow the krias haTorah with the elucidated translation and then glance at the running commentary between aliyahs to get the bigger picture.
After this most basic of layers, Rabbi Arenias provides several other layers of overview divided into three sections for Parshas Bereishis and one section for Parshas Noach. Following comprehensive summaries of each section dotted with copious footnotes referring to the comments in the Running Commentary section, there is also a summary of the chronology of each section. A full chronology for events of the first two parshiyos of the Torah appears as an appendix at the end of The Journey of Mankind. While most of Parshas Bereishis and Parshas Noach unfold chronologically, not everything does. The creation of Gan Eden and the blessing for man to fill the world are just the first two examples of events that Rabbi Arenias highlights as being out of chronological order. While the Torah is not a history book, serious readers of the Torah should still contemplate what Hashem wishes us learn from placing events not in the way that they occurred. These issues are addressed in the running commentary section.
Aside from lessons related to chronological structure, the overview concludes with a summary of themes. It is here that Rabbi Arenias urges the reader to engage with the Chumash as a complete text and not just a pasuk to study for a dvar Torah for the Shabbos table. By way of example, the first theme in Parshas Bereishis that Rabbi Arenias identifies is creation as a process where new steps of creation emerge from previous steps. While not necessarily a novel concept, this idea reminds me of an observation I heard some years ago that the second three days of creation mirror the first three days. If readers of the Chumash think in terms of a whole picture approach, they will find these kinds of discoveries on their own. It is hard to imagine a more fulfilling way to read through the parshiyos each week. This is exactly Rabbi Arenias’s goal with his work The Journey of Mankind.
Of course, the vast majority of the Journey of Mankind is Rabbi Arenias’s running commentary on Parshas Bereishis and Parshas Noach. On this, the words on Ben Bag-Bag in Pirkei Avos to “turn through it and turn through it for it everything is in it” seem appropriate. Each question or topic addressed is marked off for the reader with a shoulder note on the page. A twelve-page question index can even be found at the end of the sefer. While I believe a reader could make it through Rabbi Arenias sefer on Bamidbar every week, I do not think that is the case with The Journey of Mankind. Rather this sefer will take several years of careful study to make it all the way through. As some form of consolation, however, perhaps the next volume in Rabbi Arenias’s series will be published by that time so that the process can start again.
