Parshat Bereshit: Back to Our Roots
This is dedicated to our friend Galen – Gavriel Mordechai ben
Pesach Chaim zl
The dismantled Sukkah has been stored away in the shed (or will be - as soon as it stops raining!)
The drama of the 'Days of Awe'
is fading into the distance and even the Simchat Torah dancing has taken on the
status of the 'Last Hurrah' of a month of festivals.
Soon the days will be drawing
in and it will seem as though the brightness of the long summer will be perfectly
mirrored by the darkness of an interminable winter.
Even our Torah reflects this
change of mood.
A few days ago, we read about
the last day of Moses' life and how he blessed the Nation of Israel as they prepared
to enter the Promised Land. One can only
imagine the unbelievable sight of the throng of millions of men, women and children
encamped on the banks of the Jordan River.
And here we are, less than
a week later, rewinding the timeline by nearly three thousand years to the time
when there wasn't a single human being alive.
In fact, there was nothing.
The tumult of the former, eclipsed
by the silence of the latter.
"In the beginning
of Gd's creating the heavens the earth, when the earth was astonishingly empty,
with darkness upon the face of the deep, and the Divine Presence hovered upon the
surface of the waters"
Until...
God said, “Let
there be light”; and there was light.
By the end of 1970, two of
the world's most famous partnerships had reached their apex.
In the UK, The Beatles were unmatched by any other group in terms of the quality of their musicianship, influence and impact on society. The rapturous acclaim garnered by the release the Abbey Road album in the midst of the previous summer may have been somewhat tarnished by the disappointment engendered through the flawed Let it Be project. Paul McCartney's decision to leave the group was greeted by a sense of shock and deep distress by their millions of fans.
And similarly so, across the Atlantic Ocean, where Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, riding high on the tails of their greatest hit record ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ decided, albeit less publicly, to part their ways. This was going to be a 'Hazy Shade of Winter' for many, many people.
Both Pauls were very keen to mark their newly found independence by releasing their first solo records eponymously. 'McCartney' and 'Paul Simon' were very different musical offerings to those delivered under their previous incarnations. Almost pared to the bone, the former was a rustic, mostly acoustic affair produced in-house at a studio on his Scottish farm. The latter, although co-produced with Roy Halee (the same man who had been responsible for Simon and Garfunkel's output) was much more folksy though similarly quieter in tone than its illustrious predecessor. Compare the production of songs like 'The Boxer' and 'Keep the Customer Satisfied' with 'Armistice Day' and 'Peace Like a River' and you will know what I mean. In interviews over the years, both men explained how they had deliberately moved away from the sophisticated production that can be heard on 'Sgt. Pepper' or 'Bookends' respectively. Both Pauls were deliberately returning to their roots and starting again on a new path in their musical journeys. It would take a while until they felt confident enough to reach the point where they could release classics like 'Band on The Run' or 'Graceland'.
One of the most famous Rashi
commentaries can be found in the first verse of today's Parsha. He asks why the Torah started with a description
of the Creation. Surely, it would have made
more sense to begin with the first commandment given to the nascent Israelites:
"This
month shall be unto you the first of the months” (Exodus 12.2)
He answers that the reason
it doesn't do this, is so that Gd could give an account of the work of [His]
Creation), in order that He might give them the heritage of the nations. For should the peoples of the world say to Israel,
“You are robbers, because you took by force the lands of the seven nations of Canaan”,
Israel may reply to them, “All the earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He;
He created it and gave it to whom He pleased.
When He willed, He gave it to them, and when He willed, He took it from them
and gave it to us”
Gd describes the Creation in
our Divine Book because every story has to have a beginning and an explanation of
its purpose. No-one can achieve greatness
by releasing masterpieces like 'Abbey Road' or 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' as their
initial album. You have to build up to a
crescendo by starting small.
He describes the process of creating a world that didn't exist and which came into existence bit by bit, from darkness to light, from endless waters to skies and seas; from the formation of one single human being to his female soulmate, to their eventual descendants on the cusp of entering the Land of Canaan.
After the lavish productions that constituted Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Shmini Atzeret / Simchat Torah, we need the opportunity to return to our roots. To remind ourselves of how it all began and of how we too came into being. Before we were rabbis and accountants, lawyers and schoolteachers, estate agents and bankers, plumbers and electricians, farmers and even Prime Ministers, we were also seeds waiting to grow. In our beginnings, we also lived in darkness and did so until we experienced the light of the world outside the womb.
Bereishit teaches us that we don't have to be world-class musicians to remind ourselves that once a year, it does us a great deal of good to find pleasure in the simple gifts of life. As the 14th century quote states, 'Mighty oaks - from little acorns grow' and returning to our roots is the surest way to plant the metaphorical seeds that we hope will bring us a successful new year.
Enjoy your journey through 5782!
Shabbat Shalom.
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