(Delivered October 26, 2024)

Shabbat shalom!

When my Akiva was first born, I fell immediately and irreversibly head over heels in love. Also, I was newly a mother and it’s fair to say I struggled with every single part of that new role. He was not a big fan of sleeping at night and the sweet personality that we now know and love was… slow to develop. Meanwhile, I was exhausted, and hopped up on postpartum hormones, with the result that, as happy as I was, I could lose my temper at the drop of a hat, and I cried with alarming frequency. As a free-range adult, pre-children, I was used to being awesome, and in this new phase of my life, I felt anything but. At some point, a very wise friend said to me: The first baby is the hardest baby, the first night is the hardest night, the first month is the hardest month… and so on. New things—even new things we look forward to and embrace, even new things that make us starry-eyed with hope and optimism and soul-melting love—are hard. Newness is hard. Beginnings are hard.

And so this week, as we find ourselves back at the beginning of the Torah, with the delightfully unresolved ending still churning in our minds, we’re forced to contemplate the nature of beginnings. Our Torah opens, famously, 

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ׃

At the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

About which Rashi said:

 אֵין הַמִּקְרָא הַזֶּה אוֹמֵר אֶלָּא דָּרְשֵׁנִי

This verse practically screams, explore me!

I’m paraphrasing Rashi, but only slightly. This mysterious beginning to our most sacred text sets the table for the millennia of questions and answers, and more questions that opened up. 

The text continues:

וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵי תְהוֹם
וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם׃

And the earth was tohu vavohu—emptiness and chaos—
with darkness on the face of the deep;
and the spirit of God hovered on the face of the water.

which sparks all kinds of questions: What was this tohu vavohu really? What about the deep, and the water? What was before the beginning?

The rabbis of the midrash practically have a party with these questions. In Breishit Rabbah chapter 1 midrash 9, a non-Jewish philosopher challenges Rabban Gamliel, baiting him with the question—and again I paraphrase: Well, your God is a great artisan but the materials were already there. The second verse talks about tohu and vohu and darkness and spirit and water… What’s the big deal? Anyone can make a world with enough emptiness, darkness, enough depth and spirit. Just add water! Oh wait, that was there too. 

Rabban Gamliel goes on to prove through scripture that God created all those other things too, that God’s labor was unbounded by time because even the things that were described in pasuk 2 were created by God, as evidenced by other verses from all over the Tanach. 

Still intrigued by the mystery of the beginning, the rabbis keep exploring. In the very next midrash in Breishit Rabbah, they spin out different answers to the question, לָמָּה נִבְרָא הָעוֹלָם בְּבת—why does the world begin with bet, in other words, with the second letter of the alef bet and not the first? A beginning that starts somewhere other than the beginning is bound to draw raised eyebrows.

The rabbis begin to answer: Rabbi Yonah, in the name of Rabbi Levi, cites the shape of the bet. The way that it blocks from view anything that might have come before it and forces us to look only forward. In this way, it reminds us to perceive the works of creation and attend to the future. The world was created with sharp-edged bet, closed on all sides but one. The tangible, remember-able world is our concern, what came before is above our pay grade. We are not permitted even to peek behind the bet. Bet is the boundary, the backstop that keeps us from asking too many questions. It’s the lock on Pandora’s Box.  

Davar acher—another take. An unnamed commentator in the same midrash says the world was created with bet to show an orientation toward bracha, toward blessing. If it had been created with alef, it would instead be oriented toward arirah, toward curses.  

For the rabbis of the midrash, whose communal memory held the destruction of the first and second temples, this approach is striking. Their determination not to look behind the bet, and their dogged commitment to seeking out blessing, have much to teach us. As we find ourselves in a world with its own measure of tohu and vohu, we can look to these ancient figures who, when facing tragedy, oppression, and destabilization, found a way not only to go on, but even to innovate. When their sense of security crumbled, they picked up the pieces, preserving and transforming our tradition. Our ancestors’ resilience can inspire our own.

So we’re back at the beginning again—a new Torah cycle for a new year, and in so many ways the world we’re in echoes the watery mess, the chaos and catastrophe of the first few psukim of the first parsha. Elsewhere, the midrashic literature suggests that God has tried making worlds before and then destroyed them: scraps on the cosmic cutting-room floor. Yet, something—something!—makes God say, I’ll try again. I can do something with this. Maybe a little light will help.

And it was so.