Bereshit : A Lumpy Universe
After a life of training, in which he received help from God’s miracles, the Talmudic sage Nachum Ish Gam Zu felt so much faith that he could reduce himself to his minimum essence, and still be in total simcha/joy, and in total love of Hashem. With no arms and no legs, he loses everything but his essence, and he can teach from that place.
There is an amazing Gemara in Hagiga 4b, where Rav Huna weeps when he recalls that God longs to see the pilgrim in Jerusalem as much as the pilgrim longs to see God. R. Huna asks how Hashem could exile His beloved servant - the one He loves the most.
The response to this is gam zu l’tova – this also is for the best. The exile is a place of tremendous potential. We received the Torah in exile, not in Eretz Israel, because it is through being in the outsider position that you find the richness and autonomy of who you really are.
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The Rebbe of Ishbitz, in his commentary on Parshat Bereshit (Section II) gives a whole new dimension to the meaning of the word reishit/beginning. He explains that reishit is actually a process, and so the first words of the Torah can be understood as ‘in the process of reishit, is the whole of creation’. We can learn about God by studying all the irregularities in the fabric of creation. For example, we cannot predict which will be the first fruit to ripen, and so we recognize God in this process, and we also recognize “the kindnesses of Hamakom, that Israel (like the first fruit) should arise in His thought.”
There are two ways of understanding the concept “first”. One is “me first” and “the early bird catches the worm”, which presupposes a hierarchy in all parts of creation. In this understanding, nothing in creation is equal. Total inequality is the imprint of Hashem on the world. Another premise of this understanding is that Jews have an inordinate desire to be first, starting with the Patriarch Jacob, who wanted to be first out of Rebecca’s womb.
For this situation, the poison and the antidote are the same. Just as with wine and with sexuality, the concept of reishit has a very positive potential, and it also has an equal and opposite negative potential.
Reishit as “me first” takes us to the very bottom of the chart, to the 10th commandment, which is the negative of imagination. For instance, the Midrash tells us that the snake in the Garden of Eden was jealous of Adam’s sexual relations with Chava. There are negative trains of thought and there are positive trains of thought, but in this framework, the main arena of free choice is in reishit – which is in fantasy and imagination. This is where you really fight the battle for free choice. Once you are in the middle of it, your train of thought is much more determined. The real battle is in your fantasy. Jealousy is a depressive fantasy that is bound up in the concept of ownership and entitlement.
The Pele Yoetz explains that even though we are not farmers, we also have first fruits. Our first fruit is our first thought in the morning. The fundamental dilemma is then, do I experience reishit as “me first” or do I surrender my first fruits to God?
If you start your day by strategizing how to be first in the world, this sets the tone for the whole day. What comes first – reishit - can influence the entire subsequent train of thought. This idea that initial conditions determine all that comes after is a general concept in the world. I don’t have to give everything to God. If I give the first thing, I will then perceive all the rest with the gratitude of the guardian.
In the world of hierarchy, Amalek and the snake are allies, connected in their spirit of competitiveness. Amalek says to Cain, ‘You’re not first. Hevel is first, because he has the better sacrifice.’ Cain then says to himself, ‘Second place isn’t an option. I have to be first. And so I must kill my competitor.’
The alternative to this, which effects the transition from murderer to ‘God wrestler’, is to surrender the reishit. Instead of grabbing the reishit, we need to surrender it. Once we do this, everything else is effected, and we become Israel. If I can let go of my “first” then I can live a life of simcha/joy. Simcha comes from taking the responsibilities of a grateful guardian rather than assuming the rights of an entitled owner.
My scientific friends assure me that the natural scientific assumption is that both the Big Bang, and the beginnings of human life start with one cell. This cell should then multiply evenly in an undifferentiated mode. The fact that what happens is total differentiation is one of the biggest scientific mysteries of all time.
God created a lumpy reality, which is very uneven and very unequal.
The Baal Shem Tov described Judaism as Humility, Separation (Havdalah), and Sweetening (Hamtaka). The sweetening is a unity that comes out of the separation. The premise of Western civilization, however, is that separate is not equal. If I have an obligation for a minyan, and a woman doesn’t have an obligation, this cannot be equal.
This lumpiness really bothers people. Most liberal people see it as anti-God. They see equality as God.
The Ishbitzer is telling us that the lumpiness is the main imprint of Hashem. Making everything even puts God out of the picture.
The Midrash says that when Adam and Hava asked God to create children for them, God responded that he wanted them to go through the process of having children so they would know what it was like to create the universe.
In creation, God contracts Himself, so that man can have a perception of free choice. Man, then, must contract himself, in order to come back and have a relationship with Hashem. Man must make a space for Hashem to exist.
The Ishbitzer compares the baking of bread to the creation of the universe. When we put the bread into the oven, we don’t know what part of the crust will bake first, just as we don’t know which fruits will be first on a tree.
An engineer friend of mine has assured me that it is impossible to predict the convection patterns inside an oven. From this we can understand that the differentiation of the world is the mystery that leads to Hashem.
In the many steps involved in the preparation of bread, the only thing that isn’t in the hands of man is where the crust will first appear. From this heat-convection phenomenon, says the Ishbitzer, we can recognize that God created everything in the universe.
This is why, according to Halacha, when we say the blessing over bread we score with a knife the thickest part of the crust, because this is where it baked first. Then we hide the knife, and make the blessing over that spot. Thus, through the bread, we are recognizing that Hashem created everything. With this recognition, we become the grateful guardian.
The beginning of all fantasy is in what we do with the reishit/first. If the first is jealousy, a negative thought train ensues. If the first is the recognition of Hashem, then we enter into the world of the First Commandment – “I am the Lord your God, who took you out of the Land of Egypt.”
We need to apply this to all beginnings – the beginning of the day, and also the beginning of the week. At Kiddush on Friday night we say zecher l’ma’ase b’reishit – ‘remember the process of reishit’. Friday night is the beginning of the week. As Rashi says, ashi says, Yom Rishon (Sunday) is the first day, but reishit is Friday night.
The Ishbitzer finishes his Torah by quoting Bereshit Rabbah; Hashem created the world in the merit of three things - in the merit of Challah, in the merit of Maser (tithes) and in the merit of Bikurim (first fruits).
Each of these are ‘firsts’ – mechanisms of reishit. We need to pay attention to what is first, and then surrender it and let go of it, rather than trying to grab it, the way the Egyptians tried to grab the firstborn sons of the Jews.
Inside the reishit, says the Ishbitzer, we find the idea that Hashem is giving the life force to the human being.
In a subsequent Torah the Ishbitzer describes three processes involved in the creation of the world – tohu (unformed), vohu (empty) and hoshech (darkness) – as the “hiddennesses that pass over a person”.
This is where the Ishbitzer defines the process of stepping into the darkness. Each of these three processes, he says, are forms of denial we use when we don’t want to identify and look at our deficits.
Hoshech (darkness) is the deepest level of denial, when a person does not even see his own deficits.
Tohu is when a person doesn’t know anything, and Vohu is when the person saw it, but then lost it.
The first purpose of education is simply to become aware that you have a deficit, without yet knowing how to fix it. With the saying v’yihi or “and there was light”, we are constantly praying for Hashem to illuminate the darkness for us, so we can see where our deficit is. The deficit is the very ground of our being – our greatest gift – for this is what makes each of us unique and different.
With these Torahs the Ishbitzer achieves a total reframing of the process of creation, into a framework in which the struggle for free choice is found in reishit – in the beginning. How we attach to the lumpiness in the initial conditions, and to the natural, inevitable hierarchy and inequality that is built into everything will determine our attitude and set the train of thought for what comes after.