Parashat Bereshit
Genesis 1:1 – 6:8
As if anticipating the “LP era,” Josef Haydn wrote, in just about three-minutes, absolutely captivating music, expressing the joy and amazement of the first humans. Adam and Eve, as they awaken to the world and to each other, are dazzled and hypnotized by God’s creation. All is “so wonderful” as they echo each other, again and again:
By Thee with bliss,
O bounteous Lord
The heav’n and earth are filled [stored]
This world, so great, so wonderful
Thy mighty Hand has framed
(Hear a gorgeous rendition of this duet with chorus from Haydn’s Creation, below)
Their song conveys the luminous way that the Torah begins, with light and with goodness. Goodness is the theme throughout the six days of creation. The Beginning is really “very good.” (Gen. 1:31)
But then humans ruin it all. By the end of our Torah reading “God’s saw that the human’s evil on the earth was very great and the entire inclination of his heart was only evil, all day long.” (Gen. 6:5)
The image is unbearable! And, indeed, God feels that the world can no longer be borne. What saves the world is the last verse of the portion, the report that Noah found favor in God’s eyes. (v.8) But we know ourselves well enough to know that we are not another Noah. So how do we have enough strength to take this Torah portion in?
Perhaps this is one more blessing given to us by the wisdom of our Torah reading cycle. We read this story of descent and failure after we have been fortified by an intense period of cleansing and spiritual uplift. We will have to wait to read of Noah’s ark until next week, but we have already experienced our own salvation by sitting in our small sukkahs, vulnerable but caressed. For a few days the world was filled with bliss, “so great, so wonderful,” and so were our hearts. There was no room for the evil inclination. We know that the goodness and the light were not effaced by human malevolence. We are strong enough to hear the story and to learn from it. We begin to read.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Greenstein
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image: collage of commercial stock images, name of artists unavailable.
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