This week’s Perceptions is dedicated in honor of Chaya Rivka bas Yocheved Kayla, amush. May it be a merit for her speedy refuah shlaimah.
EVERYTHING THAT HAS a beginning, has an ending, but in this case, it is the ending that has a beginning. We finished with Zos HaBrochah, and here we are again at Bereishis, starting all over. We’ve been doing it now for thousands of years all over the world. If we ever get to Mars, we’ll do it there too.
The amazing thing is how many times people can do it without ever wondering what lies beyond the simple words, “In the beginning, G–D made the Heaven and the Earth.” You mean, just like that? Well, no. One of the main reasons that Rebi Shimon bar Yochai is famous, and the Arizal as well much later on, is because they expanded those words into kabbalistic dissertations, many, many volumes of kabbalistic dissertations.
Do we need to know them? It’s like asking if the average person needs to know what happens to a baby from conception to birth. Most of us are just concerned about what happens from the time of birth when our lives as we know them actually begin, and we leave the pre-birth stuff to the doctors. But is that necessarily the best approach? Is there anything from the pre-natal period that can help us with life post-natal?
Of course. Unquestionably. But that doesn’t mean that the average person is going to feel the need to do so. “That’s why we pay doctors,” some will say. The trouble is, by the time we get to a doctor about some problem, it is often very late and, in some cases, too late.
In any case, for anyone interested in taking a look under the hood of Creation, I just wrote a book that does that called, “What’s Really Going On: A Kabbalistic Look Under the Hood of Creation.” It is available in Kindle and paperback formats through Amazon, and as a PDF file through my site (www.thirtysix.org). Even I was amazed while writing it where some of my research brought me.
In the meantime, how would you feel if you built a house to live in and while you were gone, someone moved in instead and turned it into a bar and nightclub? Or let’s say you forgot your tefillin on a public bench, only to come back and see children playing with them like cheap toys? Would you not feel wronged, perhaps even violated?
Now, though it is true that G–D does not feel any pain, He acts as if He does, at least for us. So imagine how G–D must “feel” watching mankind use His holy Creation that He made for a very specific purpose, in a very specific different purpose? Just a simple act of throwing waste on the ground is an abuse of Creation, so how much more so using Creation to a personal end not in line with its purpose.
Perhaps that is one of the main reasons why we start the Torah all over again each year. It’s a good reminder of Who made Creation and why, before history gets confusing and convoluted. Taking us back to the “beginning” allows us to “see” how G–D preceded it all, made it all before man steals the stage and makes life super distracting, as he is wont to do.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT that is part of the Bereishis Story is the transformation of man. What we see is what we get, but not what always was. The story of Creation from the beginning of Parashas Bereishis until its end seems like one continuous flow. Ya, man sinned and ruined everything. But other than that, everything is basically the same, right?
Wrong. Everything is dramatically different. When Adam HaRishon sinned, he brought an abrupt end to the first part of history. Even the quality of time changed. The physical world you see around you? It wasn’t like that at all, including the rest of the universe. That physical person you see when you look in the mirror? You wouldn’t be able to see them today, not in the mirror and not straight on. All of it would be invisible to some from our time, just as an angel is.
I know it sounds rather fairytailish because it did once to me as well. But that’s just because we have grown up thinking that this world is the one that has always existed, or at least this way. It is the same world that was created, but its nature was dramatically changed because of Adam’s sin. But the only books that speak about that are the really holy ones (Zohar, Arizal, etc.), and how many people learn them?
It wouldn’t make a difference if it wasn’t for the fact that it is the way we’re supposed to be, and will be again one day. It wouldn’t be a big deal if it wasn’t for the fact that everything we do is supposed to be to eventually return us back to that state. It may not be relevant to us now in practice, but it is certainly relevant to us now in theory.
For example, one major change from before and after is the yetzer hara. It’s only really impacted us since the sin of “eating” from the Aitz HaDa’as. And even then it was external to us, only really becoming internal once Kayin and Hevel were born. That’s when the yetzer hara moved in, took the best room in the house, and decided to stay for good.
That too we have accepted as being the most normal thing in the world. Difficult, but normal. Far from it. When Adam was first created, the yetzer hara wasn’t even in the Garden. He didn’t have one evil bone in his body, and there wasn’t one in the entire Garden as well. Only once he got involved with the Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Ra, and even before eating, did that begin to change. First it came as the snake, and then it was absorbed into our being. With few exceptions in history, we have no idea what it means to not be influenced by our yetzer hara.
But if you take a couple of steps back and look at society as a whole, you can see what it means to be subservient to the yetzer hara, and that’s with a Torah in the world! Just take note of the amount of heresy around the globe, and how many services we have developed just to cater to our physical drives and whims. There was no junk food before the yetzer hara came around, nor would there have been had it never entered the Garden of Eden…which leads to another fundamental before-and-after difference.
If, as a child, someone had offered me a choice between candy and a connection to G–D, it would have been an easy one. The candy. Even as an adult I have to work it through sometimes to choose the G–D connection. Pleasure from a candy is just a wrapper away. Pleasure from a G–D connection takes much more work, and even then it usually doesn’t provide the same level of gratification. Let’s face it, if prayer wasn’t an obligation many would skip it, and many do.
In fact, they skip the whole thing. They avoid religion altogether for a fun-packed secular life. They will argue that it is the more logical choice, but that is just a cover for a yetzer hara-friendly lifestyle. Because anyone I have ever met who wanted to know the truth about life before ignoring religion thoroughly investigated it first, and usually became religious as a result. Only one person ever told me, “You know, you’re right about what you said, but I’m steering clear of it anyhow.”
That is the danger of knowing good and evil. If you knew nothing before it, then it is a big step up. But if you began on the level of truth and false, then it is a big step down. Truth becomes murky and, eventually, just opinions, something that has been evolving for thousands of years but has really become prevalent with the help of social media. A lie said often enough becomes the truth for those who say it…especially since G–D is patient enough to let people hang themselves by it.
A convenient truth is usually a lie.
continued in part 2
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