Torah Posting: בראשית
There is no word in Hebrew that means “world.”
That is an agglomeration of concepts that reflects certain perspectives and values that are not reflected in the language in which, among other things, the oldest part of ✌️“the Bible”✌️ was written. Originally. Before people with different values changed it.
In the first sentence of the Torah’s first creation story, two words are used: שמים (upper waters) and ארץ (land). The Hebrew Bible nearly always refers to material realms as layers like this.
In modern Hebrew, the word typically translated as “world” is עולם, which comes to take on a more modern scientific meaning like “universe” over time. That is, this translation as “world” reflects an assimilated world view, one shared more with the secular materialist overculture than with ancient Israelites.
In fact, in Tanakh, עולם generally means “eternity” or “forever.” It’s a clearly temporal or experiential concept. It doesn’t refer to some complete, static realm. It refers to duration.
So עולם is sort of illusory? Or at least not perceptible by us. It’s God’s perspective, not ours. And that says all that needs to be said about the significance of this orientation and how it differs from the modern orientation to “the world,” which is almost an antonym of God in some of the overculture’s uses.
This also explains why עולם shares a shoresh with להעלם, to hide or conceal, which is the pun from which I derive my name. To make “a world” conceals eternity.
The next layer created is on the second day, the רקיע that separates the waters below and above. The typical translation is “firmament” or “sky.” But the root is more interesting than that. It has connotations of stretching and flattening, and in the noun מרקע it means “screen,” as in that upon which a show is projected.
God is creating this experiential realm out of words and projections, obscuring what is behind it. And yet God sees “כי–טוב,” that it is good. It serves the Divine Purpose.
One thing for my astrologers out there: God creates the sky (screen), then creates the land and seas, then creates the plants, THEN creates the lights in the sky for the purpose of lighting up the land.
On the fifth day, God creates animals (starting in the oceans), and this is where the word נפש first appears in the text. This is taken to be the most basic layer of “life force” in the layered, compound entity that gets amalgamated in the overculture’s word “soul,” the middle layer being רוח, which was the first to be created.
The word רוח (wind) is in the second pasuk of the Torah, in the third phrase, following two primordial descriptions. One is תהו ובהו, describing the ארץ (land) and usually translated as “formless and void,” though I’ve heard “topsy turvy,” which I like. Chaos. The second is חשך (dark). With רוח third, it’s not the most primordial force, but it is an animating energy behind nearly everything. This speaks to later teachings that use this word for a layer of the life force of incarnate beings.
Notice how words like “world” and “soul” flatten the teachings of this culture.
The next day, God creates the land animals, which includes אדם (“earthling”/“א blood”). My wife, the rabbi, likes to teach on the phrase “זכר ונכבה ברא אתם” (“male and female God created them”) in the same sentence in which God appears to be creating a singular being, suggesting that the primordial human encompasses all gender. I’ll share her teaching in song form:
I have always been drawn to the word צלם, the “image” of the Divine in which the Earthling was created. This word “image,” being a particularly human object of consciousness, seems to be a pretty good translation. צלם gets used in a pretty narrow way, ending up in the modern Hebrew words for photograph and photographer and so on. But what I’m struck by is the connection to רקיע (sky/screen) and the underlying sense in this story that Creation is a medium, as in “media,” as is the story itself.
Now think about biblical literalism as a cultural expression. It’s an error. Foreign to the text.
After the earthling, the work is complete, and God’s last creation is קדושה (holiness), which is bestowed on the seventh day, Shabbat. The ancient sages decided to begin the second chapter of בראשית with the seventh day (chapter divisions are not in the written Torah, they’re added later). Given that what happens next is clearly a second creation story in a different order, this division is strange. Perhaps this is meant to obscure the seam in the transition.
Many teachings address this strangeness, and the one I prefer is that the first creation story relates the metaphysical/cosmic order of things, whereas the second one is from within the image/screen and relates the human/cultural order of things.
One telling marker of this transition is that the first verse of the second story (that is, after the ויכלו paragraph where Shabbat is created) is where the Divine name יהוה first appears. That name is not in בראשית א, the cosmic story.
The main indication that the second creation story is the human-centered one is that, in this story, plants and humans are created in one stroke and described as inseparable, with the earthling’s labor necessary for not just the production of fruits but even the bringing of rain. In the human-centered creation story, nature requires human participation, which adds much more dimension to the hierarchical relationship described in בראשית א. Humans must work for their central place on Earth.
It is in the second creation of the earthling where the word נשמה is given for the third layer of life force/soul that is given to the human in particular. Meditation people like to make a big deal out of the fact that this word “neshamah” (soul) shares a root with “neshimah” (breath), but that’s actually the explicit sense in which the word is first given. God breathes the נשמה into the nose of the earthling.
One thing to be said about the geographical landmarks given in בראשית ב: The region is huge and not confined to the borders of Eretz Yisrael, and this shows the extent to which this story is received from the ambient regional cultural mix.
From the jump, it is clear God is setting up the events that befall the earthling. God creates the earthling, then creates the garden, then “ויקח” (takes) the earthling and “וינחהו” (puts) him there. Then God gives the second verbal commandment (after “be fruitful and multiply”), which is the rules of the tree game: “Don’t eat from the tree of knowledge of good and bad, because on the day you eat from it, you will die.”
Of course, having not eaten, the earthling doesn’t know what that means.
Then God offers the first opinion in the universe, which is that it is not good to be alone. So this time God creates the animals after the earthling, and they help the earthling work the land, and the earthling names them. But there is no “עזר כנגדו” (helper that matches him) among them.
So God physically separates the universally gendered earthling into two earthlings of different biological sexes, so they can actually fulfill the first thing God commanded them to do, namely reproduce.
In order to effect this split, God creates תרדמה, some kind of “deep sleep” where humans have prophetic or other kinds of direct encounters with God. This will come back later in the book of בראשית and is clearly one of the highest spiritual states in the Jewish cosmos.
It is in תרדמה that God removes a rib from the earthling and creates an earthling companion. Adam is the one who recognizes his physical unity with Havah, whom he calls אשה because she is of the same matter as אש.
Note that אש/אשה (man/woman) is spelled the same as אש (fire). I think the kesher here is that, in the Torah, fire is the medium for making offerings back to God, raising the fruits of the ground back up to Heaven, which later becomes the people’s job.
Okay, here comes the snake. The text uses a very clear pun in introducing him. It says the earthlings were “ערומים,” usually translated as “naked,” and the snake was “ערום,” usually translated as “cunning.” These are quite obviously the same word, and while they are understood to have different meanings, they are used in consecutive sentences. It’s not a coincidence. The connection is highlighted loudly. Why would the same word portray the earthlings as innocent and the snake as deceitful?
The snake approaches the woman and asks for her take on what God (without using the יהוה name) instructed them with regard to eating of the trees of the garden. She says they can eat of any tree except for “העץ אשר בתוך–הגן” (the tree which is [something like “in the center”] of the garden), on pain of death — which, again, they don’t understand.
The snake replies that it won’t kill them but rather open their eyes and make them “כאלהים” (like the Divine) in that they will know good from bad.
Now, we know the woman skipped something. God told the (as yet undivided) earthling that this tree was called “עץ הדעת טוב ורע” (the tree of knowledge of good and bad). What can we say about the woman’s knowledge of this? Does she know things that happened before she was separated from the primordial earthling, or does her memory begin when she is formed independently? If it’s the former, is she concealing this from the snake? If it’s the latter, did the man conceal it from her?
Either way, the snake teaches her something here, which is that knowledge of good and bad makes her like God.
But as we saw in the first story, the earthlings were created like God! Not only in God’s “image,” as I mentioned when making a different point, but “כדמותנו,” in the Divine “likeness” or “model!” In other words, if the earthlings are not “כאלהים” in this second story, are they not incomplete??
So then the woman looks at the tree. Really looks at it. Takes it in visually. Embodies it.
She sees it is delightful and makes one wise (“העץ להשכילֹ”). It doesn’t just have sensuous qualities — though it does have those — it visibly grants wisdom. So, discerning with her senses, she eats it, and she gives some to the man, and he eats it, too.
So then their eyes are opened, and they know that they are “עירמם,” and this is probably the plain reason for that pun between “naked” and “deceitful,” as now they have defied God’s commandment. And this embarrasses them. They cover themselves.
The next thing that happens is, they hear “קול–יהוה אלהים” the VOICE of God walking in the garden “ברוח היום,” in the “wind of the day.” And when they hear that, they hide amidst the trees of the garden. Then God calls out to the earthling and asks, “איכה” (where are you)?
This question and its answer are of fundamental spiritual importance throughout Torah. What does it even mean for God not to know where someone is? Obviously, what God is interested in is the person’s answer.
And when Adam answers, he reveals his nakedness and deceit. He says he was afraid when he heard God’s voice because he was naked. God responds with another question: Who told you you were naked? Did you eat of the tree I commanded you not to eat from? And Adam responds by blaming the woman.
God turns to the woman and asks her a question? What did you do? She blames the snake.
Then God punishes them in reverse order, and the punishment is — essentially — real life. For all three of them.
Slithering on the ground, fighting between animals and people, painful childbirth, hard work, and then death! Sounds scary. But before this story even ends, Adam responds by… naming his wife חוה? Because she is now “אם כל–חי” (Mother of All Life)? So the earthlings can now actually fulfill the very first commandment God ever gave them, i.e. to reproduce?
What kind of punishment is that? And for good measure, God gives them comfy clothes now.
Now, this has gone far enough. God speculates aloud that now they might eat of the other tree in the center of the garden — the tree of LIFE, which was not forbidden to them, but whose benefit — immortality! — they would not have understood in their innocent state. This would mess up this real-life condition they had just set up, in which bad things can now happen to humans, so God casts them out of the garden, sets up scary angels to bar the gate, and human life and history now begin.
I posit that the values of this story are clearly, explicitly in favor of being mortal, reproducing, working the land, eating the fruits, wrestling with God’s commandments, and then dying. You have to have values that are at odds with the Torah to read this story as a failure. God set all this up. The snake is the good guy. The woman’s embodied relationship with the natural world makes real life possible — and this is what God wanted.
There is a good question of why God gets so mad, though.
My understanding of this comes from R’ Avraham Yitzhak Kook, and I thank him for this teaching as often as I remember.
God does not get mad first. God asks questions first. The people give fearful, deceitful answers. Then God gets mad. So begins the tortuous relationship between humanity and God known as history. They have trouble trusting one another.
This is Adam’s sin: attempting to deceive and hide from God.
As we’ll see later in the Torah, when God asks Adam’s descendants “Where are you?”, the most righteous of them answer, “Here I am.”
It is this state of mistrust — lack of faith — that creates the separation between humanity and the Divine. This is the repair that the rest of the human story will be spent making.
But the first parashah is not over. The story of the first sons of Adam and Havah is also part of it. This is also the story of the first offerings of the fruits of the land back to God, and what happens when one is not accepted. It doesn’t do much to help this faith/trust problem.
God prefers the offering of the younger brother, Hevel the shepherd, over the elder, Qayin the farmer. The young God has quite an appetite. When killing an animal pleases God more than a plant offering, Qayin freaks out and decides to kill his brother. How’s that for a sacrifice? And this breaks God’s heart, which breaks Qayin’s heart even more and makes him fear for his life. And God realizes this and promises to protect him.
God and humanity, brand new at this, feeling our way through it.
The first generations are chaotic for humanity and God alike. Nobody knows the right way to do this yet. And this tension will come to a head in the next parashah with the story of the line of Noach.
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