Beginnings: Divine & Human

Last updated on: October 21, 2024 at 8:18 pm by Hebrew College

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Beginnings: Divine & Human 2024-10-21T20:18:15-04:00 Hebrew College

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Parashat Bereshit Genesis 1:1-6:8

This is a season of beginnings. Not only did we just complete the High Holy Days—marking the start of the new Jewish year—but as we finish the festival of Sukkot—marking the fall harvest and the biblical account of God’s care for our ancient forebears in the wilderness—we also begin the annual cycle of Torah readings on Simhat Torah. Because the fall Jewish holiday season is so full, it can be difficult to maintain one’s spiritual focus while moving through these sacred days.

With this challenge in mind, I turn to the following sermonette from the legendary Hasidic master (rebbe), Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev (d. 1809) from his well-known collection of teachings, Kedushat Levi (The Holiness of Levi, 1811). It focuses on the very first word of the Torah:

“In the beginning (Bereshit) God created the heavens and the earth.”
(Genesis 1:1)

… The word Bereshit can be read as Bet reshit (“Two beginnings”).

The blessed Holy One bestows bounty (shefa) upon us, and we, through our prayers, limit and shape (osim tzimtzum) this bounty—each of us according to our will. One person forms the letters of the word “life,” another the letters of the word “wisdom,” and yet another, the letters of the word “wealth.” And so it is with all good things…

Now everything spiritual has a physical counterpart. In the corporeal realm there exists both sound (kol) and speech. Sound is all-inclusive [and undifferentiated], while speech involves the parsing (tzimtzum) of sound through the letters…

So it is with the sounding (kol) of the shofar (ram’s horn) on Rosh Hashanah, which represents the bounty issuing from the blessed Creator—it is all-inclusive. In reciting the prayers [composed for this sacred occasion] … we utilize the letters [of the Hebrew alphabet] to give shape and form to the divine bounty—each according to our will.

The fact that the all-inclusive bounty emerges from the blessed Creator is reflected in the Written Torah; our [role in] limiting and shaping this divine bounty through the letters is reflected in the Oral Torah. For Oral Torah accords with the will of Israel, following our interpretations of the Written Torah.

This is the meaning of “Bereshit” = Bet reshit, “Two beginnings”: Written Torah and Oral Torah.

Like several earlier interpreters, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak begins this brief homily by deconstructing the first word of the Torah, Bereshit (“In the beginning”), reading it as two separate words: “Bet”—the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, with the numerical value of two—and “reshit,” meaning “beginning.” This word play provides our preacher with the opportunity to explore the roles of God and humankind as partners in the unfolding of life, with a focus on this fall season of beginnings. He does so by examining the meaning of key ritual practices from the beginning and end of this period, seeking to heighten our consciousness as we enact these mitzvot (commandments).

Following past Jewish mystical thinkers, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak states that God’s beneficence animates all of life. It is referred to as shefa (bounty) in this teaching (or sometimes as hiyut, “vitality” or b’rakhah, “blessing” elsewhere in the Kedushat Levi). While the Berditchever (as he affectionately referred to by Hasidim) regularly speaks of the Divine as limiting His power or veiling His presence (tzimtzum, “constraint” or “constriction”) to allow people to live and grow independently, in this case he focuses on our role in channeling God’s creative flow through our prayers, Torah study, and other intentional acts. This stands in stark contrast to the image of the human being as “clay” in “the hand” of the divine “potter,” as described in the classic High Holy Day liturgical poem Ki Hinei ka’Homer.

This homily is designed to empower, and as such does not discuss the “not good”—the origins of evil, divine punishment, natural disasters, or the terrible things we humans regularly do with God’s vitalizing energy. Rather, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak simply calls on us—“each of us”—to play an active role in shaping our lives for the good. In using the examples of “life,” “wisdom,” and “wealth,” he acknowledges the range of our human needs—including our physical needs.

The Berditchever helps us internalize this grand vision by focusing specifically on the relationship between the sounding of the shofar and the special holiday prayers we recite on Rosh Hashanah (he mentions the three sections of the Musaf service specifically). When we hear the sound of the ram’s horn on this joyous and awesome day—described by our forebears as the day on which “the world has come into being”—we are reminded that God’s vitality courses through all of life, animating creation moment to moment. The question is what we will do with this divine gift as we begin a new year. The words of prayer we utter during the High Holy Days serve as the “beginning” of our response. Our master’s emphasis on the Hebrew letters partakes of much older traditions about the unique power of the “holy tongue” and of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. He would also insist that we carry forth our prayerful intentions into our daily lives—both in word (Hebrew, English, etc.) and in deed.

At this point in the teaching, the Berditchever shifts his attention from the new year to the new Torah reading cycle, which we inaugurate on Simhat Torah and continue on the following Sabbath, known as Shabbat Bereshit. As he did with the shofar and our Rosh Hashanah prayers, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak now briefly discusses the relationship of the “Written Torah” and the “Oral Torah.” Written Torah is a reference to the TaNaKh (the acronym for the three major sections of the Jewish Bible). Oral Torah commonly refers either to the interpretations of the TaNaKh by the early rabbis (their discussions were eventually recorded for posterity), or to the unfolding Jewish exegetical process across the generations. The Berditchever is again attempting to help us understand the dynamic relationship between the Divine and the community of Israel—how the Creator calls on us to serve as active partners in shaping the world. Here, he focuses on our vital role as interpreters of God’s teaching (the literal meaning of Torah).

One might wonder why Rabbi Levi Yitzhak refers to the Written Torah as kalul, all-inclusive, since the TaNaKh is, in fact, a limited and bounded corpus—just 24 books in total. Is not the Oral Torah—with its seemingly endless number of commentaries—a better symbol for God’s abundance? Building on previous rabbinic and mystical sources, the Berditchever views the Jewish Bible (like the elemental sounds of the shofar) as issuing directly from the Infinite (Ein Sof)—the Source of all creativity. As such, every letter and word can be plumbed for an array of meanings. The Hasidic masters insist that this ongoing interpretative process is vital to the renewal of the Jewish tradition and of broader life. Through our renderings of the Torah, we can help create a more compassionate, just, and sustainable world. Our master models for us the art of this sacred reading practice with his play on the very first letter and word of the Torah—Bereshit/Bet reshit: There are always two beginnings: Divine and human.

As we move further into the new year and begin a new cycle of Torah readings, may we be blessed to engage our sacred sources with renewed passion and diligence, utilizing our learning to fashion lives of goodness.

Rabbi Or Rose is the founding Director of the Betty Ann Greenbaum Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership of Hebrew College and a senior consultant to Interfaith America. Rabbi Rose is publisher of The Journal of Interreligious Studies and the co-editor of the award-winning anthologies, My Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interreligious Encounter, Growth, and Transformation (Orbis, 2012) and With the Best of Intentions: Interreligious Missteps & Mistakes (Orbis, 2023). He is currently completing a biography of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (d. 1972) for teen readers (ages 12-15, Monkfish, 2025).

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