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Bereishith

"And G-d said, let there be . . . And there was . . . and G-d saw that it was good."

Thus unfolds the most revolutionary and the most influential account of creation in the history of the human spirit.

Rashi, however, begins his commentary with a remarkable question: "Rabbi Yitzhak said: The Torah should have opened with the verse, 'This month shall be to you the first of months' (Shemot12: 2), which is the first command given to Israel. Why then does it commence with the creation?"

The logic of Rabbi Yitzhak's question is this. The name we give the book of books is not 'The Bible' (from the Greek and Latin biblical, meaning, 'the books.') It is Torah, meaning, 'law, instruction, and teaching.' The name itself defines what the book is meant to be - not a store of information: history, fact, scientific explanation. It is something else: a book of laws, of guidance, of proper conduct and behaviour. The question to which Torah is an answer is not, 'How what did is, come to be?' but, 'How then shall I live?' Even a fact as fundamental as creation does not, in and of itself, justifies its presence in the Torah. Instead, suggests Rabbi Yitzhak, the Torah should have begun with the first command to Israel, in Egypt, as they were awaiting the exodus. How, then, are we to understand the opening chapter of the Torah, not as fact but as teaching?

Rabbi Yitzhak gives one answer: to justify the gift of the land of Israel to the people of Israel. The creator of the world is ipso facto owner and ruler of the world. His gift confers title. The claim of the Jewish people to the land is unlike that of any other. It does not flow from arbitrary facts of settlement, historical association, conquest or international agreement (though in the case of the present state of Israel, all four apply). It follows from something more profound: the word of G-d Himself - the G-d acknowledged, as it happens, by all three monotheisms: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Rabbi Yitzhak gives a political reading of the chapter. Let me suggest another (not incompatible, but additional) interpretation.

One of the most striking propositions of the Torah is that we are called on, as G-d's image, to imitate G-d. "Be holy, for I, the Lord your G-d, am holy" (Vayikra 19:2):

The sages taught: "Just as G-d is called gracious, so you be gracious. Just as He is called merciful, so you be merciful. Just as He is called holy, so you be holy." So too the prophets described the Almighty by all the various attributes: long-suffering, abounding in kindness, righteous, upright, perfect, mighty and powerful and so on - to teach us that these qualities are good and right and that a human being should cultivate them, and thus imitate G-d as far as we can. (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, De'ot, 1:6).

Implicit in the first chapter of Bereishith is thus a momentous challenge: Just as G-d is creative, so you be creative. In making man, G-d endowed one creature - the only one thus far known to science - with the capacity not merely to adapt to his environment, but to adapt his environment to him; to shape the world; to be active, not merely passive, in relation to the influences and circumstances that surround him:

The brute's existence is an undignified one because it is a helpless existence. Human existence is a dignified one because it is a glorious, majestic, powerful existence . . . Man of old who could not fight disease and succumbed in multitudes to yellow fever or any other plague with degrading helplessness could not lay claim to dignity. Only the man who builds hospitals, discovers therapeutic techniques, and saves lives is blessed with dignity . . . Civilized man has gained limited control of nature and has become, in certain respects, her master, and with his mastery he has attained dignity as well. His mastery has made it possible for him to act in accordance with his responsibility. (Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith)

The first chapter of Bereishith therefore contains a teaching. It tells us how to be creative - namely in three stages. The first is the stage of saying "Let there be." The second is the stage of "and there was." The third is the stage of seeing "that it is good." What does this mean?

The first teaches us something counter-intuitive. What is truly creative is not science or technology per se, but the word. What singles out Homo sapiens among other animals is the ability to speak. (Targum Onkelos translates the last phrase of Bereishith 2: 7, "G-d formed man out of dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living creature" as "and man became ruach memallelah, a speaking spirit.") Because we can speak, we can think, and therefore imagine a world different from the one that currently exists. Creation begins with the creative word, the idea, the vision, the dream. Language - and with it the ability to remember a distant past and conceptualize a distant future - lies at the heart of our uniqueness as the image of G-d. Just as G-d makes the natural world by words ("And G-d said . . . and there was") so we make the human world by words, which is why Judaism takes words so seriously ("Life and death are in the power of the tongue," says the Book of Proverbs (Mishlei 18:2). Already here, at the beginning of creation, is foreshadowed the Jewish doctrine of revelation, that G-d reveals Himself to humanity not in the sun, the stars, the wind or the storm but in and through words, sacred words ("Torah from heaven") that make us, with G-d, co-partners in the work of redemption.

"And G-d said, let there be . . . and there was." This, the second stage of creation, is for us the most difficult. It is one thing to conceive an idea, another to execute it. "Between the imagination and the act falls the shadow." Between the intention and the fact, the dream and the reality, lies struggle, opposition, and the fallibility of the human will. It is all too easy, having tried and failed, to conclude that nothing ultimately can be achieved, that the world is as it is, and that all human endeavour is destined to end in failure.

This, however, is a Greek idea, not a Jewish one: that hubris ends in nemesis, that fate is inexorable and we must resign ourselves to it. Judaism holds the opposite, that though creation is difficult, laborious and fraught with setbacks, we are summoned to it as our essential human vocation: "It is not for you to complete the work," said Rabbi Tarfon, "but neither are you free to desist from it." There is a lovely rabbinic phrase: machshavah tovah mitztarfah Hakadosh barukh Hu le-maaseh. This is usually translated as "G-d considers a good intention as if it were the deed." I translate it differently: "When a human being has a good intention, G-d joins it in helping it become a deed," meaning - He gives us the strength, if not now, then eventually, to turn it into achievement.

If the first stage in creation is imagination, the second is will. The sanctity if the human will is one of the most distinctive features of the Torah. There have been many philosophies - the generic name for them is determinisms - that maintain that the human will is an illusion. We are determined by other factors - genetically encoded instinct, economic or social forces, conditioned reflex - and the idea that we are what we choose to be is a myth. Judaism is a protest against determinism in the name of human freedom and responsibility. We are not pre-programmed machines; we are persons, endowed with will. Just as G-d is free, so we are free, and the entire Torah is a call to mankind to exercise responsible freedom in creating a social world which honours the freedom of others. Will is the bridge from "Let there be" to "and there was."

What, though, of the third stage: "And G-d saw that it was good"? This is the hardest of the three stages to understand. What does it mean to say that "G-d saw that it was good"? Surely, this is redundant. What does G-d make that is not good? Judaism is not Gnosticism. Nor is it an eastern mysticism. We do not believe that this created world of the senses is evil. To the contrary, we believe that it is the arena of blessing and good. Perhaps this is what the phrase comes to teach us: that the religious life is not to be sought in retreat from the world and its conflicts into mystic rapture or nirvana. G-d wants us to be part of the world, fighting its battles, tasting its joy, celebrating its splendour. But there is more.

In the course of my work I have visited prisons and centres for young offenders. Many of the people I met there were potentially good. They had, like you and me, dreams, hopes, ambitions, aspirations. They did not want to become criminals. Their tragedy was that often they came from dysfunctional families in difficult conditions. No one took the time to care for them, support them, teach them how to negotiate the world, how to achieve what they wanted through hard work and persuasion rather than violence and lawbreaking. They lacked a basic self-respect, a sense of their own worth. No one ever told them that they were good.

To see that someone is good and to say so is a creative act - one of the great creative acts. There may be some few individuals who are inescapably evil, but they are few. Within almost all of us is something positive and unique, but which is all too easily injured, and which only grows when exposed to the sunlight of someone else's recognition and praise. To see the good in others and let them see themselves in the mirror of our regard is to help someone grow to become the best they can be. "Greater," says the Jerusalem Talmud, "is one who causes others to do good than one who does good himself." To help others become what they could be is to give birth to creativity in someone else's soul. This is done not by criticism or negativity but by searching out the good in others, and helping them see it, recognize it, own it, and live it.

"And G-d saw that it was good" - this too is part of the work of creation, the subtlest and most beautiful of all. When we recognise the goodness in someone, we do more than create it, we help it to become creative. That is what G-d does for us, and what He calls us to do for others.

Cain, Abel and G-d's faith in man

Where was G-d when Cain killed Abel? Given the biblical text and its assumptions, it is a question we cannot avoid. G-d knew of Cain's murderous intentions in advance and warned him of them. Moreover, Abel and Cain were engaged in an act of religious worship, the first recorded offering to G-d. G-d might even be said to be the instigator of the conflict, by not favoring Cain's offering. Where was G-d, when He might have intervened? On this there is one answer. We have been traveling with it since we first met Abraham and his cry at the injustice of the world. Abraham, says the Midrash, saw a palace in flames, G-d's order threatened by the chaos of mankind. To the question, "Where is G-d?" G-d replies with a question of his own, "Where are you?" -his first words to Adam and Eve, and to Job. Jewish faith did not die in this question; it was born in it.