Just When I Thought I Was Out....: Bereshit 5769

Shabbat Shalom. Oh, I got to tell you, it is nice to be done with the holidays. I mean they really dominate our lives don’t they? It started way back in September (remember September?) with preparations for Rosh HaShanah. Then after two wonderful days of soul-searching and community prayer, we relaxed for a whole week before we Yom Kippur came along. Another day of prayer, this time with fasting, and this time we forced ourselves to focus upon the fragility of life and upon our own mortality. Finally came Sukkot, a time of unbridled joy, although I must say I think we’d all be a bit happier if we had more than two days to put up our Sukkah. And so that brings me to today. Ah...today, just a shabbat. Just a regular shabbat (if there is such a thing.)
Which brings me to this mornings parasha, Parashat Bereshit. As everyone knows Parshat Bereshit is where it all begins. For those that were with us on Simhat Torah, you got to hear (and indeed you even got to see...by virtue of some impromptu pantomime) how the opening words of the Torah come to life.

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ: וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָֽיְתָ֥ה תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְח֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם:


“In the beginning of God’s creation of the Heavens and the Earth, and the Earth was formless and void, with darkness on the face of the abyss and the Spirit of the Lord was hovering over the face of the water.”

Indeed, most of our parasha this morning concerns itself with the events of creation, or at least the Bible’s version of creation. But regardless of the scientific accuracy of this account, it is nonetheless important for us as Jews, after the tumult of the High Holy Day season to get back to basics, to return to the very beginning. I must say, for me this moment of returning to normalcy, of getting back to basics occurred while I wrote this sermon.

You see normally when I sit down to write a sermon I place my Etz Hayim Humash on a shtender on my desk. This week was the week when I took the time to notice that instead of flipping to the pages in the back to drash on Bamidbar or Devarim, I knew exactly where to go...Page One. (Which is actually page three in this version...) but whatever you get the point. After a month filled with the spectacle of holidays, it was nice to turn back to page one.


But like all monumental occasions in our lives, it is not so easy to separate ourselves from the events of the past month. In fact, years ago I noticed that the rabbis had devised a subtle strategy to make us re-live each and every major holiday of the past month of Tishrei in the weeks following the Days of Awe...
In other words...in the words of the Godfather... “Just when I thought I was out...they pulled me back in.”

Allow me to explain what I mean. First we have Rosh HaShanah, a day of soul-searching where we try to get back to the basics in our lives. A day when we try and re-discover God’s purpose for us on this Earth. But Rosh HaShanah also contains a significance with regard to this week’s parasha. After all, each time we blow the shofar in the Malchiyot, Zichronot and Shofrot services we recite a well-known prayer entitled:

הַיוֹם הֲרַת עוֹלָם
Today is the birth-day of the world!

So just when we thought that we had left the themes of the High Holy Days behind us, they come roaring back to wake us from our spiritual slumber.

But the parallel does not stop there with Rosh HaShanah, just a week from today we will be confronted with the themes of another major holiday we thought was behind us. Next week we will read from Parashat Noach, which recounts the story of the flood and the tower of Babel. About the flood it is written:

וַֽאֲנִ֗י הִנְנִי֩ מֵבִ֨יא אֶת־הַמַּבּ֥וּל מַ֨יִם֙ עַל־הָאָ֔רֶץ לְשַׁחֵ֣ת כָּל־בָּשָׂ֗ר אֲשֶׁר־בּוֹ֙ ר֣וּחַ חַיִּ֔ים מִתַּ֖חַת הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם כֹּ֥ל אֲשֶׁר־בָּאָ֖רֶץ יִגְוָֽע:

God said to Noah: “Behold I am about to bring the flood - waters upon the Earth - to destroy all flesh under the sky in which there is breath of life; everything on the earth shall perish.”

Reading the narrative of the flood reminds us once again about those thoughts of mortality which consumed us during Yom Kippur. Remember the Unetaneh Tokef prayer and how it seems to borrow from the biblical imagery of destruction when it asks the chilling question:

מִי בָאֵֹש וּמִי בַמָּיִם
Who this year shall perish by fire? Who by water?


And later on in Parashat Noah we have the story of the Tower of Babel, you know the one, the people in their hubris decide to build a tower that reaches into the heavens, But God sees this and says:
הָ֚בָה נֵֽרְדָ֔ה וְנָֽבְלָ֥ה שָׁ֖ם שְׂפָתָ֑ם אֲשֶׁר֙ לֹ֣א יִשְׁמְע֔וּ אִ֖ישׁ שְׂפַ֥ת רֵעֵֽהוּ:

“Let us then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.”

hmmm... confounded speech, misunderstanding and misinterpreting our fellow human beings.... does this remind anyone of anything? Perhaps it takes us back to that moment a few weeks ago when we stood, beating our chests during the Vidui and the Al Heyt as we considered all the ways our words brought hurt and harm upon others.

עַל חֵטְא ֹשֶחַטָאנוּ לְפָנֶיךָ בְּשִֹיחַ שִֹפְתוֹתֵינוּ
For the sins we have committed against you with the chatter from our lips...

And finally in two weeks from now we will move on to the third parasha of the yearly cycle, Lech L’cha. Where God says to our forefather Abraham:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהוָֹה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵֽאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ:

“Go out from your land, from your birthplace, from your father’s house, unto the land that I will show you.”

This is the first of many tests with which God tried Abraham. Go out from the place you feel the most comfortable, leave your comfortable dwelling, your comfortable lives and experience for yourself a life of vulnerability.

Sound familiar? How about from the Torah reading for the holiday of Sukkot:


בַּסֻּכֹּ֥ת תֵּֽשְׁב֖וּ שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֑ים כָּל־הָֽאֶזְרָח֙ בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל יֵֽשְׁב֖וּ בַּסֻּכֹּֽת:
“You shall dwell in booths for seven days, every citizen of Israel shall dwell in booths.”

That’s right, just after we contemplate the birth of our world, just after we think about our mortality and the fragility of life, we are asked to make a leap of faith and live our lives outside for eight days. We are commanded to feel the vulnerability that our ancestors must have felt in their wanderings in the desert (And anyone who spent some time in my sukkah over the holiday, truly felt vulnerable.)

So there you have it: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” Just when I thought that we had cleared the hump of the High Holy Days, the rhythms and the cycles of our Torah make us experience it all over again. Simply by reading the opening parshiyot of our Torah, we re-live the birthday of the world, the fragility of life and the feeling of vulnerability that are such a part of the season of the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe.

Finally this morning, since we are re-hashing a bit about the themes of the High Holy Days, allow me to remind you of a message that I left some of you with on the first day of Rosh HaShanah when I spoke about the incredible gift that our new program Lea’s Letters, a New Torah for Temple Emanu-El can afford us in the coming year:

For some of us the Torah is only a monologue, instead of being in dialogue with our lives. Many of us keep our time and our calendar according to our Blackberry, or Google, or according to our daily planner, instead of by the rhythms of the Torah. And although we can all agree that it is important to live alongside the modern world, to live according to the pacings of January, February and March; can’t we also agree that we as Jews should try harder to keep our time according to the Parshiyot of our Torah: B’reshit, Noah, and Lech L’cha?

And so I implore you, let this be the year when you bind yourself to the words of the Torah. Let this be the year when your turn the monologue of the text into a dialogue with your life . And let this be the year when the rhythm of your weeks is led by the beat of the Torah’s drum.

Finally, I hope and I pray that this is the year when we see that the messages of the High Holy Days are not confined to the month of Tishrei, but rather their themes should follow us throughout the coming months and the coming year. Shabbat Shalom.