From the Guardian's Vineyard on Sefer B'Reshith : (The Book of Genesis)

By Dov Rabbi Dov Avraham Ben-Shorr

From the Guardian's Vineyard is a multi-level commentary on the Hebrew Bible. It is a glimpse into the treasure faithfully transmitted from the ancient Jewish sages, the "Guardians," of the Holy One's "Vineyard," Israel. Bridging the Oral and the Written Tradition, the simple and the esoteric as well as explaining many rituals and practices harvested from the "vineyard," both the newcomer and the seasoned student of the Bible will find an appetizing taste of that "which is contained within." This volume is an extensive commentary on the first book of the Torah (Bible), the book of Genesis. Included are detailed explanations, and descriptions of ritual and practices connected with the various verses, as well as many deep Qabalistic insights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781447575955

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בס"ד

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From The Guardian’s Vineyard

On Sefer B’reshith (the Book of Genesis)

by

Rabbi Dov Abraham Ben-Shorr

Beith David Yeshiva Publications

Har Hebron

ISBN 978-1-84753-298-5

Copyright ©5766 (2006) Dov Abraham Ben-Shorr

All rights reserved, including transaltion rights. No part of this publication can be translated, reproduced, stored in an information and retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For more information:

Beith David Yeshiva

US: 216-539-7344

Israel: 02-960-5526

e-mail: [e-mail]

web: www.beithdavid.org

In Loving Memory

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SimHah Dov

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Abraham Adel

(Samuel Bernard Fleishman)

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Belhah

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Ya'aqov

(Beulah Spitz Fleishman)

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Anita

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SimHah Dov

(Anita Helene Fleishman)

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Peninah

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Abraham

(Pauline Frank Reece)

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Moshe

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Abraham

(Morris Frank)

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Rose

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Benyamin

(Rose Rissin Penn)

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For:

HaShem, the Holy One of Blessing Who has created and sustained me And bestowed upon me blessings Whose number cannot be counted Yet, who in the course of my daily life I often fail to fully appreciate.

And To my parents:

Shlomo Gedaliah (Sanford) And Leah Miriam (Lenore) His partners in my creation. May He bless them with a multitude of all of His Blessing

And to my wife and family

And my many friends Who have been His greatest blessing In my life.

From The Guardian's Vineyard

Foreword

Turn it and turn it again (delve deeply into it) for all is found within, teach our sages concerning the Torah (Pirqe Avoth 5:26). The Torah we are taught, is the blueprint for the entire universe, therefore its study connects one both with the Builder (God) and His Creation. As a blueprint, all can be found within - given enough study.

Our sages clearly are talking about much more than a superficial reading of the text. In fact, according to the Holy Zohar (parshath b’Huqotekha), the text we call Torah, that is the stories of the Bible, is merely a garment for the Heavenly Torah. Just as malakhim [angels] do not come to this world in their pure form but dress as humans, for the world wouldn’t suffer them if they didn’t, so too the Torah, which created the malakhim, needs to dress in a form that gives it expression in this world. This is the narrative of the Torah. (This is not, God Forbid, to suggest that the stories are anything but factual. HaShem, the Architect of the world and Mover of history, caused the events in conjunction with the narrative.) The Zohar teaches that one who thinks that these stories are the essence of Torah, are not only foolish, but it would be better if they had never been born. Such a person will judge an individual by the clothes he wears, and not examine the person any further.

A good analogy would be a person receiving a precious gift, which, due to its importance, was wrapped in an impressive wrapping. Even though the wrapping itself is special, one would consider a person a fool if they simply kept the package wrapped up, without ever investigating its contents.

The Zohar continues that the body of the Torah is the mitswoth [the commandments], but one who stops his investigation there, also falls short of its essence, which, like with a person, is found within the soul of the Torah. The body is simply that which articulates the soul, and gives expression to its hidden depth.

"Shelomo had a vineyard at Ba’al amon, he gave the vineyard to guardians. For its fruit everyone was to bring a thousand silver. My vineyard, which is Mine, is before Me. A thousand for you, Shelomo, and two hundred for the guardians." (Shir HaShirim [Song of Songs] 8:11)

HaShem has planted a vineyard, the Torah, an expression His presence, and He has appointed guardians to guard it and delve into its midst, harvesting its fruit for His children to indulge. The Guardian’s Vineyard offers a taste, a glimpse, into the fruits of HaShem’s Holy Vineyard. May its fruit satiate our essence and give us continued strength for our journey in life.

Parshath B’reshith

Overview

The beginning, and yet as we learn, this beginning is a continuation of our ending. When a Jew completes a cycle of reading Torah, he immediately begins again anew. It is related that the Torah begins with the Hebrew letter "beth and ends with the Hebrew letter lamed. If one reads the Torah from beginning to end, and stops – feeling that he’s completed it, then his learning was on the level of beth-lamed, a word meaning balu’i, shabby or worn out. Bal also means, not or it can mean b’lo, meaning, without. However, when one begins anew, effectively going from the lamed to the beth, then one’s learning is on the level of lev, heart," and the learning becomes a part of the person.

Further, the Oral Law, in the form of the Mishna, begins with the letter "mim," the letter that follows lamed, and ends with the last letter of the aleph-beth, the "taw." This suggests that Torah is not complete unless one has both the written and the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah is, among other things, the explanations and methodology for exegesis that Moshe Rabbeinu [Moses our Teacher] received on Mount Sinai and has been passed down from father to son and teacher to student to this day.

The Torah, and thus Sefer Bereshith [The Book of Genesis], begins with the Creation of the Universe. Many "m’forshim" [commentators on the Tanakh – Tanakh is an acronym for Torah (the five Books of Moshe), Nivi’im (Prophets) and K(h)’tuvim (Writings)] question why the Torah begins with the Creation of the world. This may seem like a strange question, but only because we are so conditions to beginning the Torah with Creation. Learning Torah requires one to question even the most fundamental assumptions.

Considering that Torah is really about the relationship between HaShem [literally The Name which designates the name of the God of Israel Who is beyond the limits and definition of a name] and His people Yisrael [Israel], shouldn’t the Torah start with Sh’moth [Exodus], which begins the story of Yisrael’s birth as a nation? Or, maybe it should begin with Wayiqra (Leviticus), which has the vast majority of laws and ritual?

Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo YitsHaqi, the foremost commentator on the entire Tanakh and Talmud, lived in Northern France during the 49th Century (eleventh century C.E.)] points out that Bereshith establishes HaShem’s ownership of the Universe. It is His creation. Therefore if the nations of the world were to say (as they so often do) to Yisrael, You are bandits for you conquered the land of the seven (Canaanite) nations, then we will be able to respond that all of the earth is the property of the Holy One of Blessing. He created it and gave it to those whom He chose. It was His Will to give it to them, and it was His Will to take it from them and give it to His Chosen People, Yisrael as an eternal inheritance.

The story of Creation, which is a detailed account of the creation of the Universe and the development of human civilization, has caused many modern people a lot of difficulty. Wanting to believe in God, and the Truth of the Torah, they have difficulty reconciling Bereshith with modern science. How can one understand the literal meaning of the text, and, at the same time accept the seemingly incontrovertible evidence of science?

There are several answers to this difficulty. First, Torah cannot be understood without commentary. The written Torah that we received at Mount Sinai is only a part of the revealed Truth that we received. The written Torah (l’havdil-an expression that means there can be no real comparison here, we are only using it as a metaphor) can be compared to class notes of a lecture. Someone who wasn’t in the lecture would have a hard time understanding the notes without some type of explanation or at least a basic understanding of the subject matter. The Oral tradition provides meaning to the Torah and helps us understand the notes. Moshe Rabbeinu sat in the lecture for forty days on Har [Mount] Sinai, and when he descended, he taught the Torah, with its explanations to several groups of people, until the entire Nation of Yisrael learned the tradition. This was then passed down from parent to child and teacher to student for almost two hundred generations.

So, understanding that what is written is only a hint of the Truth, we can now take a more critical look at what seems to be a conflict between science and Torah. I will not argue that there aren’t differences between the way each see the world, but as time progresses, science has slowly begun to understand the world in the same light as the Torah’s understanding.

For instance, for close to two thousand years, the scientific understanding of the universe was based on the Greek philosopher Plato’s understanding that the there wasn’t a beginning. That the Universe always existed and has simply changed formed over time. In other words, until the Big Bang Theory, science believed that there was no beginning to the Universe, that there wasn’t a Creation. In fact, this belief was so fundamental to science that it took over fifty years for science to accept the truth of the Big Bang. There were even notable scientists, including Albert Einstein, who changed results of their calculations (which would have suggested a beginning), because they were so indoctrinated in the Platonic concept of the world that they thought they had simply erred in their calculations.

The Torah has always maintained that there was a beginning to the universe and that God created it out of nothingness. The Qabbalist [for lack of a better term - Jewish Mystic, though note that this is imprecise] through the writings of Rabbi Moshe ben NaHman (known as the Ramban or NaHmonides) goes even further. He writes, in his commentary to B’reshith, that the entire universe began from an insignificant speck, which God created, and then exploded out into what we now have as the Universe. The Ramban postulated in his commentary, based on the Torah and his teachers’ tradition, that this insignificant speck was a bundle of primordial light, pure energy, that as it expanded began to form matter, creating the universe we know today. In other words, the Ramban, based on a thorough understanding of the Torah, postulated the theory we call today, the Big Bang. It is important to note, that the Ramban lived in the thirteenth century Spain, when most of Europe still thought the world was flat.

It took, Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity, to help us understand the seven days of creation. According to Dr. Gerald Schroeder, in his books, Genesis and the Big Bang, and The Science of God, the seven days can be understood from the point of perspective. It is common for the Torah text to shift perspectives, helping the reader understand things from different angles.

Here, according to Schroeder, the Torah begins from the perspective of the point of Creation. From that perspective, the Universe was created in seven, twenty-four hour Earth days (just what the reader understands a day to be). However, understanding time to be relative, those seven days are much longer from the perspective of the Earth itself. In fact, according to Schroeder, by calculating a known phenomenon of the physic of light called the Blue Shift, the age of the universe from the Earth’s perspective should be approximately fifteen billion years old. Further, Schroeder applies the Blue Shift to each of the six days of Creation and comes up with amazing results, wherein each day of Biblical Creation corresponds directly to the scientific understanding of the earth’s formation. For further study, one should examine Dr. Schroeder’s books.

Parshath B’reshith describes the creation of the world and then the beginning of humanity. The Jewish calendar begins from the creation of Adam ha-rishon [literally the first human], which began exactly 5,766 years ago (as of Spring 2006 according to the christian calendar). Parsha means section or chapter, and it is the traditional way the Torah is divided, each parsha being publicly read each week on the Shabath [Sabbath], completing the cycle in a year.

In this first parsha. we read the story of Adam and Havah [often translated as Eve], their sin and expulsion from Pardes. Then we learn about an argument between the brothers, Kayin and Hevel, which resulted in latter’s murder. The generations of Shet, Adam’s later son, are detailed, along with the various discoveries and developments throughout the generations.

Finally our parsha concludes with the Generation of the Flood, which became incredibly corrupt and distant from God. The end of the parsha introduces NoaH and describes God’s exasperation at the behavior of his Creation, and His resolve to destroy (almost entirely) the world. NoaH is introduced to us as a righteous and simple man in his generation. We are told that NoaH walked with God. Already, at the end of this week’s parsha, there is a foreshadowing of events to come. HaShem has begun to regret most of His creation, with the exception of NoaH

In Details A selection of some verses of interest

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Bereshith . . .

The first word, as Rashi points out, screams, Interpret me! Grammatically the word is in "smikhut form, meaning, the first noun in a compound noun pair (an English example would be schoolhouse [school and house). In Hebrew this first noun takes a special grammatical form. However, Bereshith" isn’t followed by a second noun, but, instead, by a verb. This has led to a variety of interpretations.

The Ramban [Rabbi Moshe ben NaHman] interprets the verse, "In the beginning of time, God created the Heaven and the Earth" (see overview above).

Rashi [Rabbi Shlomo YitsHaqi]offers several interpretations.

Rashi offers a midrashic (Midrash is specific form of interpretation) interpretation found in Bereshith Rabbah, that the Torah is called "reshith," based on the verse from Mishley [Proverbs], "Reshit darko, HaShem created me as the beginning of His way, the first of His works of old, which refers to Wisdom. This Midrash explains how God created the Torah first, as a blueprint for the Universe, and then, looking into the Torah, created the world. Thus, the verse would be interpreted, From Reshith (Torah), God created the Heavens and the Earth."

Offering another interpretation, more in line with the simple meaning of the text, Rashi interprets the entire predicate as the second noun in the smikhuth form, rendering the verse, In the beginning of God’s creating the Heaven and the Earth . . .

The first verse has many other curiosities. Ivan Panin, a Russian mathematician, discovered that there are over fifty different permutations of the number seven in the first verse. Some examples are as follows:

There are seven words in the first verse, consisting of a total of twenty-eight (7x4) letters, fourteen (7x2) in the subject, and fourteen in the predicate. The gematria [numerical value – each letter has both a sound and a numerical value. The first letter, aleph is 1, beth is equal to 2, and so on] of the only verb, "bara" [bet (2), resh (200), aleph (1)] is equal to 203 (7x29). The gematria of the three nouns (added together) is 777 (7x111). Also, the gematria of the first and last letters of every word (added together) equals 1393 (7x199).

Even more intriguing is that the number seven plays a significant role throughout the entire Creation story. The word for God, "El-him, appears thirty-five times (7x5) while the word for earth" appears twenty-one times (7x3). Also, the words for day, heavens, good, flying, and crawling also appear in multiples of seven.

One more note of significance. Pinchas Zalman Hurwitz, from Cracow Poland, discovered that the name for God [spelled with a yud (10), and a hey (5) and a waw {sometimes pronounced vav} (6) and another hey (5) adding up to the gematria of 26] appeared 1,820 times in the Torah, which, coincidently, is 70 x 26 (the gematria for the name).

Seven is a significant number for a number of reasons. It symbolizes natural completeness or the essence of things. Our world is three dimensional, meaning that all things have six sides (each dimension in both directions) and the seventh side in Jewish thought is the thing itself, the whole, or gestalt, which is greater than the sum of its parts.

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bara El-him

Rashi points out that the word for God in the beginning of Creation is "El-him, and not God’s more intimate name, written with the letters yod and hey and waw and hey, and pronounced (though with the exception of blessings and other rituals it should not be casually pronounced)as a-donay, and refered to as HaShem" (as spelled above with the gematria of 26). This name, El-him, represents the attribute of Justice, in which God originally tried to create the world. However, God then realized that the world cannot exist under the dictates of strict Justice and thus continued the creation with the Attribute of Mercy.

Another explanation for the use of El-him as opposed to HaShem, is that El-him is the more general name for God, the name in which the entire world knows Him, while HaShem is the more intimate name that God uses with the Jewish People from the time of Sinai. It therefore makes sense that the more Universal name would be used in the Creation of the entire world.

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tohu w’bohu

Often translated as without form and void, or chaos, this expression is very difficult to understand. Translating "tohu as unformed seems to be a good linguistic translation of the word, however, linguistically bohu" does not seem related to void or chaos. Both the Gemara (Talmud Bavli Masekhet Hagigah 12a) and the Ramban’s commentary on this verse suggest something more powerful. They suggest that the word implies the building blocks of Creation. According to Dr. Gerald Schroeder, an accurate translation might be, the earth was in a state of chaos, but filled with the building blocks of matter.

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. . . and the spirit of God hovered (m’raHefeth) over the surface of the waters . . .

The word, "m’raHefeth" is the same word used for a mother bird sitting on her children – with love and care, an apt metaphore for HaShem’s concern for the world.

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God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.

It is important to note that light in the context of this verse isn’t referring to the natural light of our