A good deal of debate goes into the nature of the truth of Torah. Is the Torah’s truth to be found on the level of chronology is it true the way a reliable history book is true? Or is the Torah’s truth to be found on the level of information is it true the way a comprehensive science textbook is true? Or, perhaps, there is a third way, on the level of meaning and purpose, that the truth of Torah is to be found? As we begin this year’s cycle of Torah readings, perhaps it is fitting to return to beginnings, to re-examine the import of what the Torah seeks to convey.
B’reshit bara the opening words of the Book of Genesis have invited a complex range of translations. The most well known English translation, found in the King James version, would have us understand that “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” The language itself pushes us towards relating to creation as a matter of history this came first; then, that. This way of accepting creation is popular among more orthodox (within Judaism) and more fundamentalist (within Christianity) approaches to the tradition. It’s virtue is allowing a simple faith if the Torah says it, then it is true. End of story. But it is not the end of the story. To read this first sentence as simple history creates an immediate problem, one recognized by no less traditional a giant than Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, the greatest of the medieval Bible commentators). Rashi begins his comment to this verse by telling us, “This verse says only, Œxplain me!” Rashi then goes on to inform us that it is impossible to read this verse in its simple meaning (p’shat), both for grammatical and theological reasons. The grammatical reason is that the noun, B’reshit is in the construct, requiring another noun to complete the phrase. That other noun is missing. But the weightier theological problem is that it can’t possibly mean the chronological beginning of all, since the waters already exist! So, says Rashi, “the verse does not come to teach the order of creation by telling us that these preceded those.”
For reasons theological, textual, and grammatical, Rashi insists that the true meaning of the very first sentence of Torah cannot be taken on the level of p’shat, on the level of history or fact: “you are forced to admit that the verse did not teach the order of what came earlier and what came later at all.”
When we force Hebrew school students to memorize what was created on which days, when we engage in sterile arguments about how long the seven days actually were, we are missing the truth that is before our eyes. Not chronological information, but religious truth is the purview of this (and every) biblical insight.
And what is that truth?
Rashi proposes that the verse comes to teach purpose, not history. He argues that the first letter in B’reshit means “for the sake of” and he looks elsewhere in the Torah to see what is described as “reshit.” He finds two that are called by that term: the Torah itself, and the people Israel. Accordingly, Rashi understands the verse to be saying that heaven and earth were created for the sake of Torah and Israel. Another way of saying that would be that we locate meaning and purpose in the facts of existence and the cosmos by discovering layers of belonging and holiness in text and in community. Coming together as the children of Israel, locating our story in the narrative of Torah, setting our actions in the context of mitzvot (commandments) and gemillut hasadim (good deeds) this purposefulness is what gives meaning to existence and to our lives.
Read the Torah, and come to savor its truth. It is not intended to be merely a shoddy science text or a sloppy history book. No, says Rashi and the weight of Jewish thinkers throughout the ages, the truth of Torah is of a higher sort the kind that lends life a pervasive and elevating purpose that can carry us through our days in joy, and can link the generations one to another, and to God.
Shabbat Shalom!