BEREISHITH 1994

We are once again beginning reading the Torah. We begin the Torah portion BEREISHIS. The Torah portion BEREISHIS, in fact, the whole book of BEREISHIS, of Genesis, contains much more than just stories. There is a very deeply worked out philosophical explanation of what the world is about and what we are doing here and what we should be doing here.  

In fact, in the Torah portion BEREISHIS we learn about evil and we learn that there are 3 different types of evil. We learn how there is physical evil, moral evil, and in the Torah portion Noah we learn about religious evil. Physical evil, of course, came to this world, according to this Torah portion, because man could not live by G-d’s command not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and, therefore, he was kicked out of a pleasant world, a nice world in which there was not physical evil and he was forced to come to another world, in which the very basis of this world is violence, one animal eating another, in which we have terrible storms, in which we have pestilence, in which we have all sorts of problems to overcome, problems which can slay us, can injure us, harm us, and make it impossible almost for us to live.

The physical world in which we live in not a perfect world.  It is far from a perfect world.  It is, in fact, an atrocious world, a very hard world. That is why people who think that nature is benign do not know what they are talking about. Nature is not benign. There are no wounded animals in nature, no sick animals in nature because all the other animals immediately attack them and devour them. People who like to show National Geographic videos to their children are making a terrible mistake. These videos show one animal consuming another animal. There may be beauty in death but it is a terrible thing to show your children, especially your impressionable grammar school children. Evil exists in this world, physical evil, and, of course, we know about moral evil when Cain killed Abel, and in the Torah portion Noah we learn about religious evil, how the people organized themselves to build a tower and all that meant anything to them was the completion of this tower. They were willing because they thought this was such a worthy goal to forget about all other values in their pursuit of this one worthy goal, and, of course, we find this throughout world history. People in pursuit of what they consider good goals are willing to use all sorts of terrible means. This is what happened in the communist world, how the Russian intellectuals became mass murders because they felt that they had to achieve their goal.

We all hope and pray that in Israel today where the Labor government of Rabin is trying to put forward a police plan when the Labor Party, itself, only has 26% of the population in it with another 1% for the extreme left and it is only 33% of the ; population. We hope that they do not try to use extra legal means in order to force down the population a peace program which most of the population finds unpalatable. That, of course, would be an example of religious evil, of ideological evil, where people because they feel their goals are so good and wonderful that they can use all sorts of illicit means in order to achieve them. America was really based upon the fact that there were so many people in Europe who tried to impose wonderful goals upon people that we had to make sure that there is due process and make sure that when people work for good goals they always use good means as well.

There is another type of evil which is spoken about here in this Torah portion and it is an evil which comes because of the dual nature of the human being. We are not dually natured because we are opposed to body and soul, as the Greeks would have it. We were given both a divine nature and a divine command, and many times the divine nature and the divine command conflict. This is how Rabbi Soleveitchik explains the two creation stories that are found one right after the other in the Torah portion BEREISHIS. Biblical critics will tell you that it is just two traditions that are joined together, but it does not seem logical. You mean the rabbis did not know how to read? It means that these two stories which seem at first blush to be contradictory were put there on purpose by people in order to look like fools? The rabbis tell us, no, that G-d gave us these two stories in order to teach us something about the nature of humanity.  

In the first story we learn how on the sixth day G-d created all the animals and then it says, "And G-d created man in His image, in the image of G-d He created him male and female, He created them." It does not tell us how G-d created us, from what He created us.  It just says He created us and it says He created us originally both male and female. The rabbis learn from this that originally Adam was hermaphrodite, both man and woman, and only later G-d separated him.  In the second creation story we learn how G-d created man. It mentions there how G-d created man "dust from the ground", and it does not use just the word Elohim.  It uses Adonoi Elohim, which means that G-d also wanted to relate to this man that He created. He created him from "dust in the ground and He blew into his nostrils a breath of life and man became a living soul." Then it says that G-d placed him in a garden and gave him a job. What was the job? To work in it and to guard it. In the first story we are told that G-d commanded man to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth and to conquer it, so man was given a divine mandate and that was to sally forth and to conquer things, while in the second story he was told just to preserve things, to till the garden and to watch it. From here we see that man was given two different commands, supposedly, of what he was supposed to do on earth.

Then we learn later on that after G-d brought before Adam all the animals and Adam, the story says, was very lonely and G-d said it was not good for man to be alone, "I will make for him a mate opposite him," and then it says, "And G-d caused a sleep to fall on man and He took one of his sides and G-d built the side which He took from man into a woman and He brought it to the man." Then it says, "And therefore man should leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife and become one flesh," and one flesh refers to the baby that is born, which is composed, of course, of the flesh of the mother and the father. We all know that baby has the genes of both the mother and the father. So we see that in the first story G-d gave man a divine mandate and in the second story He gave him a divine nature, which means that man has an urge to relate. Therefore, man needs both to conquer the world and to establish relations in the world.

The problem is, how do you balance these two needs? Is the most important thing to go forth and fulfill your ambition, or is the most important thing to create successful relationships? We will notice that when He talked about the command to go out and conquer the earth it also talked about "male and female He created them", so man and woman are composed of the same need to fulfill the command and also of the need to relate, although in practical terms usually although their parameters overlap men are more aggressive. Men want to go out and conquer more. Women are more interested in relationships. We see that vis a vis soap operas. Woman are usually much more interested in soap operas than men because soap operas have to do with relationships and the intricacies of relationships while men are more interested in sports. Sports have nothing to do with relationships. They all have to do with achievement, with picking up a ball and running across a line, that there is a clear goal in mind and there is a winner and a loser and man could not care less about the personality of the person who is playing, what he looks like or what he dresses like or whether he can interact with him in a personal way. Everything is actually very impersonal.  

I am reminded of the story they tell about a man who was complaining about his wife and asking how she. could be interested in soap operas and the problems of people she did not even know. The woman turned around and said, "How can you be interested in watching a man who you do not even know picking a ball and running across a line?"

So we see that men and women have different perceptions many times about what is important, but in the modern world these things have become blurred. In fact, one of the reasons why there is so much divorce now is that the roles of men and women have become impossible. Men do not know what they are to do. Are they to relate, to conquer? Women do not know the same. Are they to fulfill their ambition to conquer or are they to relate? Because we have confused these roles we have had so many divorces because it is almost impossible now for people to know exactly how to relate or how to fulfill their ambition, and the world has become a very complicated place.

In a previous generation where both men and women worked together, where there were mama and papa stores, they were both working to the same goal and they were both relating at the same time. In farming communities  it is the same thing. The husband and wife will run a farm together and they will also relate at the same time, but here it is almost impossible for a man and woman to know what to do. They pursue different professions and sometimes do not get a chance to see each other. They are also involved in different types of relationships with all sorts of different types of people and none of them very deep and some of them very unsatisfactory and it is a very difficult situation to know what to do. This has caused evil to come to the world, too, because people do not know when they should be striving to fulfill their ambition and when they should be relating and in our society today where we stress only achievement many people will dump wives and children or husbands and children just to pursue their career. They will not make time for their career and their husband or wife.  If it comes to a choice between moving or not moving they will not move because it is good for their career or will move because it is good for their career.  

In fact, this is the exact opposite of our experience when we first went to Israel in 1970 to visit some of my wife's relatives, The first thing that they told me was that when they came to Israel the hardest choice they had to make was where they were going to live because they wanted to live by their friends and relatives and later they would find, a job, but they had to be able to find their relatives and friends first because the most important thing to them were their relationships. At the time I thought it was very strange because I came from America and in America the job is first, but at least in those days, and I think it is changing in Israel, too, it was relationships that were the most important thing. How are we to balance these things? It is a very, very difficult program. It is a very difficult problem and we are going to have to learn how to solve because unless we learn how to solve it we may only be able to satisfy one part of our nature and by trying to satisfy only part of our nature we will do terrible injustice to the other part of our nature and also destroy all sense of family and community.

I am reminded of the story they tell about a man who fell in love with two women, one was a poetess and the other made wonderful cakes and cookies and pastries. He did not know what to do so he went to a marriage counselor. She told him to tell her a little bit about the people. He said that one woman was a wonderful poetes and the other one was a beautiful, wonderful baker. The marriage counselor looked at him and said, "You just have to choose between whether you want to be married for batter or verse." Of course, what we all have to know is that we create a great deal of evil if we do not know how to balance our interpersonal relationships with our ambition. Let us all hope and pray that all of us will learn how to balance our ambition with our relationships so that we will be able to satisfy both our divine nature and our divine command so that we will have wonderful families and a wonderful society so the Mashiach will come quickly in our day. Amen.