BEREISHITH 1992

In today's Torah portion, BEREISHIS, we learn how G-d created the world and how G-d created man and what man's proper role in the world is.  There is no conflict between the scientific interpretation of the creation and the Biblical interpretation of the creation.  In fact, leading scientists will say that they are in great harmony. The Torah is obviously not a scientific book, but the order of creation is very similar to what modern science says is the way the world was created, even vis a vis the time.  Fifteen billion years can equal six days.  It depends upon where the person is standing. We know that time is relative, and what can be fifteen billion years on earth can be at the edge of the universe just six days.

The Torah begins by saying, "In the beginning G-d created..." and it is interesting to note they use the word BEREISHIS.BEREISHIS is an interesting word because it means "in the beginning of" and, therefore, it is not really correct to say that in the beginning G-d created the heaven and the earth, because that is not what the word BEREISHIS means.  

The rabbis all ask, why do they start with this word BEREISHIS? What's more, we know that it mentions in the sixth day when G-d was about to create man, it says, "Let us make man in our image." Why does it use the words, "Let us make man in our image"? Who is G-d talking to? This has led to profound heretical views, that perhaps there is more than one G-d. Who is G-d talking to? We also learn in the sin of Adam and Eve that Eve says something to the serpent which is not correct.  She says, "G-d said, 'You should not eat from it and you should not touch it lest you will die'." Why did Eve say that particular thing? Finally, we have the story of Cain and Abel in which we learn how Cain kills his brother because he is jealous.  Why, though, does G-d turn to Abel's sacrifice and not to Cain's? What does it mean, "If you do well you shall not be lifted up and if you do not do well sin crouches at the door, but you may rule over it"? I think that we can perhaps answer all these questions if we look at the first three words of the Torah, which says, "In the beginning G-d created".  

The rabbis   say these three words stand for the word Ernes, that you have the Aleph, the Mem, and the Tof for the word Emes, that when G-d created the world He created the world in truth, and that is why we have a strange Medrash.  The Medrash says that when G-d was about to create man He consulted with the angels.  That is to teach us that we must consult with our inferiors, even if we, ourselves, are sure that we have the right answer, because you can always learn from someone.  You can always learn from other people.  G-d, here, was teaching us that lesson, that we can learn from our inferiors, and that is why it says, "Let us create man".  Another interpretation is that G-d was talking to man, himself.  When it says "in our image“ it means in our shadow, that man is merely a shadow and that man has potential but man has to fill in the potential himself, that we are the greatest artists who ever lived, each of us, because we can create a human being.  

We create ourselves.  That's why it says "let us make man in our shadow". We have to be a partner with G-d in even creating ourselves, but in this Medrash it mentions that G-d consulted with the angels, and G-d asked the angels whether He should create man.  Chesed, the Angel of Kindness, said yes, create man.  The Angel of Justice, Din, said yes, create man, but the Angel of Truth said no, don't create man, and the Angel of Peace said don't create man.  What did G-d do? He took the Angel of Truth and threw him down into the ground.  He threw him on the earth, and then He decided to create man.  Why did G-d have to do that? After all, if it was a tie, two for two, G-d could decide the tiebreaking vote.  Why did He have to throw Truth into the ground? What's more, why didn't G-d consult with a few more angels? Maybe He would have a majority then.  And if it had to be unanimous, Peace still said that you should not create man, but here we learn something very important, and that is that the world is created on truth, that truth is very, very important. In fact, that is one of the reasons the rabbis say we have three fathers. Abraham taught us the importance of kindness, that kindness and compassion and love and harmony must be the basis of our religion.  

Abraham stands for Gemilas Chasodim. Yitzchak stands for Pacha, for establishing a relationship between man and G-d, and that our relationship with G-d gives us meaning so we are able to treat human beings with dignity and respect and we are able to just say no to things because we know that we have a higher purpose in life.  Then you have Yaacov who stands for truth.  One of the problems with modern man, especially modern Jewish man, is that they do not believe that the Torah is really true.  They believe that Jewish laws and customs are only folkways, that they are very pleasant and nice but they really do not have truth in them. Therefore, the Torah starts out, "In the beginning G-d created" which means there is truth.  That is what the last letters stands for:  truth, the Torah is true.  

However, when we discuss truth we have to realize that truth has to always be put into a context.  Truth has to be thrown down to the ground, that in almost every instance you cannot have something like abstract truth. Truth has to be put into context, that even one plus one does not always equal two.  One plus one only equals two in mathematics, but one plus one in biology can equal two, three, four, five, depending on how many children you have.  If you are a sea urchin it could be 16 million.  Truth has to always be put in a context. We have to be very careful how we handle truth.  People can take facts and put them in all sorts of different contexts and then they are playing, basically, with the truth.  

We learn, too, that Eve made a fundamental error.  What was her fundamental error which led her to eat from the forbidden fruit? That for a good cause she exaggerated the truth.  She said that G-d said we can eat it but we cannot touch it.  According to the Medrash the serpent then nudged her and pushed her against a tree, and she was pushed against the tree and saw nothing happened to her so then she thought she could eat it, too.  She thought she could eat the fruit also because she was tempted by what the snake said.  The snake said that G-d was denying man great creative powers, as Rashi said, that we can create worlds.  Eventually G-d was going to give man this creative power to create worlds, but not now because they were still too immature.

We see even today that man has great power but the more science we learn, the more power we have to do evil as well as to do good. The more physics we know the greater energy sources we can create, but also the greater atomic bombs we can make.  The more chemistry the better food production we can create but also the better chemical weapons we can create.  

Knowledge is a two-edged sword and can be used to harm man as well as to help man.  Eve made a fundamental mistake:  she exaggerated the truth. We see that many times.  True, the Torah says the rabbis can put a fence around the law but they have to differentiate clearly between what they are saying and what the Torah says. When parents exaggerate the truth they do not do their children any good.  When people say if you smoke marijuana you are going to become a dummy.  Your brain is going to become stupid. That is not true for one smoke of marijuana.  When kids smoke it for one time they do not become stupid, but if they smoke it for one year or two years they definitely are going to become stupid.  Their brain is going to become addled, but not just one time.  You cannot tell a girl that if she kisses a boy she is going to get pregnant, and when she finds she is not going to get pregnant she will go further.

You have to be very careful that you do not exaggerate the truth.  Unfortunately, there are many Jewish religious organizations which exaggerate the truth.  There are many religious newspapers who do not tell the Halacha the way it really is, and, therefore, they exaggerate it, and because they exaggerate it then people feel that it has no relevance to the modern world and feel it is completely impractical but, not only that, they see that it does not really work the way the Halacha says it is going to work.  You cannot exaggerate the truth.

Finally we learn about Cain and Abel. The rabbis say that the reason that G-d did not turn to Cain’s sacrifice was not because it was a good sacrifice.  Some rabbis say it was inferior but others say it was just as good as Abel's.  The difference was that Abel also brought himself.  It says, "And he brought also himself," whit A Cain only brought a sacrifice.  Cain, of course, was very disgruntled, very disappointed and very hurt and that hurt was very true.  He felt it deeply in his heart and, therefore, because he felt that his feelings were true he could do anything he wanted.  He could take his revenge against his brother.  Even when we know that our feelings are true and right it does not give us the authority to act on them. Many people feel that if their feelings are true, therefore, they can do anything because their feelings justify what they want to do.  

This is especially prevalent today where many people will tell me, "Rabbi, I feel it in my heart so, therefore, I can do it." It does not make any difference if you feel it in your heart.  If something you are feeling is true it still does not mean that you should act on it.  You only act on feelings if they are for the benefit of not only yourself but also your family and of the whole world.  You cannot just act on feelings even if you feel that it is true in your heart.  So many people have said, "Well, I just feel that that is right." That is not enough in Judaism.  You cannot just feel that something is right and act on it.  You can create so much harm if you do that.  So we see that truth is an integral part of the world, but truth is a very difficult concept.  It has to be put into context.  It must never be exaggerated and when we feel that our feelings are true we cannot act on them unless there are other indications that what we are going to do is also right. We know that unless we put truth in context we are going to end up in a lot of trouble.  

That's the basis of most humor where we take something that is right in one context and we put it in another context and everybody sees that it is absurd. In this Torah portion, too, we learn about the birth of Noah, and we learn how G-d has become disgusted with humanity because they are so immoral and Noah was a righteous man.  

Jokes and humor are meant to show how truth, when it is taken out of one context and put into another context, can be absurd.  That is one of the ways we can test the truth that we are speaking now to see if it is right. When we say it out loud, is it humorous?  Is it absurd? We can truly say this statement, that Noah was the greatest financier who ever lived. Why was Noah the greatest financier who ever lived? Because Noah floated stock when all the rest of the world was in liquidation. It is a true statement but we know that it is absurd, and that is why, of course, that we put truth in the proper context.  

In a political campaign especially they try to take truth and put it out of its right context and they create wrong impressions and lies.  That is terrible.  That is deception and that is, of course, misleading the people.  The truth must be put into a context. Truth must never be exaggerated, and even though our feelings we feel are true we cannot act upon them unless they are also moral and right and will bring benefit to ourselves and to others.  Let us all hope that we will remember this about the truth so that we will have a just society, a wonderful society so the Mashiach will come quickly in our day.  Amen.