One feature that differentiates the first half of Sefer Bereishit (Genesis) from the other four books of the Torah is the focus on family lineage and geographical locations. For Ba’alei Korei like me (people who read the Torah in public), this means our having to reacquaint ourselves annually with ancient names and places that don’t exactly trip off the tongue!
The Torah’s
emphasis on listing the ten generations between Adam and Noach (in this week’s Parasha)
and the same number between Noach and Avraham (in next week’s) teaches us that one’s
ancestry is important in shaping the people we are, for good or bad.
We, the Jewish
people, are all descended from Avraham who in turn hails from Shem, the son of Noach,
who himself follows the line of Adam and Eve.
Family matters and families, in many cases, bring the next generation into
existence (with help from Gd).
Without Adam,
there would be no Avraham (or anyone else for that matter).
Twenty-nine.
That’s the
number of generations that separate me from my ancestor, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki,
popularly known as Rashi and possibly the greatest and most famous Biblical and
Talmudical commentator in Jewish history.
It’s also the time span between the world that he lived in and ours. From the days when Jews were persecuted at
the time of the Crusades for their beliefs, to the twenty-first century when
Jews are being persecuted for their beliefs.
Nothing has changed.
This matters
because the very first Torah commentary he provides is on the very first word of
the Torah, ‘Bereishit’. He writes:
בראשית IN THE BEGINNING — Rabbi Isaac said, “The Torah which is
the Law book of Israel should have commenced with the verse (Exodus 12:2) “This
month shall be unto you the first of the months” which is the first commandment
given to Israel. What is the reason, then,
that it commences with the account of the Creation?”
His question.
on the face of it. seems a little odd. He
is suggesting that the Torah should have commenced with Gd’s commandment to Moshe
to tell the Israelites that they are to create a calendar. This is to mark their birth as a free and independent
nation on the cusp of leaving Egypt. The
objective being to go straight to the country we now call Israel which at the
time was much bigger.
However, we
all know that if you’re going to tell a story shouldn’t you, quoting Oscar Hammerstein’s
famous lyric, ‘start at the very beginning’? Every archaeologist, palaeontologist, astronomer
et al knows that the key component in trying to decipher an object is ascertaining
its age or attempting to understand where it fits in the chronology of the world
and universe. Rashi’s question seems out
of place until he explains the following:
What is the reason, then, that it commences with the account
of the Creation? Because of the thought expressed
in the text (Psalms 111:6) “He declared to His people the strength of His works
(i.e. He gave an account of the work of Creation),
in order that He might give them the heritage of the nations.”
And continues
his answer with a very contemporary response:
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.”
Last Sunday,
which was Simchat Torah, we marked the end of the reading of the Torah cycle with
the death of Moshe Rabbeinu and followed it up almost immediately with Bereishit. On that very same day, the Green Party echoed,
to the letter, the words that my twenty-nine-generation grandfather predicted would
happen.
It wasn’t so much a prediction as a sad acknowledgement that from time-immemorial, individuals and nations have accused us of being thieves, taking the land that they claimed was never ours. It is, as the Walt Disney song claims, ‘a tale as old as time’ (a line written by the late, great Jewish lyricist, Howard Ashman for ‘Beauty and the Beast’).
We have also
held onto the hope that the nations of the world would value and respect the Divine
veracity of the Bible and the reason for its chronology but alas, for many, this
is no longer the case. At least not in a
society that treats influencers, actors and TV commentators as demi-gods whose every
pronouncement is, if you excuse the word, ‘Gospel’.
Rashi is highlighting
a critical point in his commentary.
Follow the
chronology from the creation of the world and the first couple through to their
twentieth-generation descendants. Gd makes
it clear to Avram and Sarai (soon to be renamed) that the land of Canaan that they
have been commanded to go to (as described at the start of Parashat Lech Lecha which
we will be reading in a fortnight PG) will be given to their descendants (literally
their ‘seed’) (Sefer Bereshit 12.7).
This promise
is repeated to Yitzchak (26.2-4) and then Yaakov (28. 13-15 and 35.9-12).
Joseph is
sold by his brothers and ends up in Egypt to be eventually joined by his father
and siblings which of course culminates in the events described throughout the remainder
of the Torah. For the present to make sense,
you must know ,and just as importantly understand, the past.
When I entered
one of the huts in Auschwitz, I was greeted by a plaque bearing the quote from the
renowned Spanish born philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the
past are condemned to repeat it.” How ironic
that his native country is one of the most hostile and active players in the anti-Israel
alliance.
Denying our
connection to the land of Israel is therefore not a new phenomenon and in highlighting
the significance of Bereishit and the narrative it follows, Rashi perceptively points
out the ‘tale that is as old as time’. Avraham,
Yitzchak and Yaakov were treated as foreigners, but Gd told them that one day, their
descendants would be anything but.
Zionism did
not begin with Theodore Herzl despite those who try to convince us that it did. It began with Gd’s promise to Avraham, Yitzchak
and Yaakov that one day we, the Children of Israel, i.e. the Jewish people, would
inherit the land. Firstly, through Joshua
and the tribes and finally through the early Chalutzim (Pioneers) in the Yishuv
(pre-mandate settlement of the land) who despite the odds battled nature and naysayers
to reach the point we find ourselves today.
Their story
and ours ultimately begins with Adam and Eve.
Shabbat Bereishit
is a time to reflect on how we ended up where we are. Despite our enemies’ attempts to deny Gd’s promise
to the Avot (Patriarchs), this Parasha, at the very beginning of our new annual
cycle, reminds us of the everlasting connection between the Jewish people and the
land of Israel.
Our enemies
and naysayers in this country and throughout the world throw every spurious allegation
and grotesque lie in our direction and call us whatever they want but nothing will
ever stop the Jewish people also known as Bnei Yisrael being loud and proud Zionists.
Denying our
inalienable link to Israel is racism in its most basic and vicious
form.
Twenty-nine-generations
ago, my ancestor wrote it down and what he wrote was as true then as it is now. He was a Zionist centuries before the modern iteration
of the word was coined by Nathan Birnbaum, an Austrian Jewish writer in 1885.
May Gd bless
us all with a year of peace and we pray fervently that the nations of the world
come to the realisation that Zionism, which is embedded in our DNA and souls, is
as old as our nation to whom the land of Israel was eternally promised.
