Edited and adapted from Ari’s D’var Torah on Oct. 27, 2016.
We’re starting the Torah over again this week. Very exciting week. So there are two questions that have to be asked. Number one: Why is B’reishit important at all?
Why Does the Torah Begin With B’reishit?
Nobody understands B’reishit. You want to talk about the creation of the world in seven days? Nobody understands it. Every year when I learn B’reishit with Rashi or Ramban, whatever you read it with, you can’t understand it. What lesson is B’reishit teaching us? That God created the world in seven days, this was created on this day and that was created on that day?
And it’s not even that simple, because we say that you shouldn’t necessarily learn from the Torah that everything was created in chronological order. “B’reishit bara Elokim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz.” Wait a second. Where’s choshech? Where’s Ohr? Where’s light? Where’s dark?
So B’reishit does not mean that we necessarily take the days literally. When we say six days, we don’t really know what that means so much. Nobody understands the creation of the world.
What’s very interesting is that the idea of the Big Bang is not necessarily an original secular idea. The Ramban, Nachmanides, talks about this hayuli, this substance or energy from which everything came. That’s very nice. But it still doesn’t help me understand how the Big Bang happened.
If you understand that there has to be some process to create something, fine. There was a Big Bang. But why can’t you simply say the world always existed? The reason they can’t say that is because the universe is expanding. It changes. So even people who don’t believe in a Creator believe that somehow the universe had a beginning. They call it the Big Bang.
Fine. But now you have to explain the Big Bang. All you did was push the question back another level. Dark matter, whatever matter, something exploded and somehow created the world. Fine. Let’s say I accept it. Who created the Big Bang? And if you say nobody, why don’t you simply say nobody created the world?
I’m not going to get into the theological debate here. The point is that however far back you want to go in terms of creation, we believe that a Creator created the world. Saying “Big Bang” doesn’t solve the question, because now you simply have to go back to the next step and ask who created the Big Bang.
But all this stuff is completely over our heads. The Kabbalah talks about Maaseh B’reishit. You’re not even allowed to teach the real Maaseh B’reishit publicly. Every year, when I try to read through the meforshim, I ask myself, “What are they trying to tell me here?” It’s totally over my head. And all the meforshim say that we can’t truly understand it.
So the question goes back to this: If we can’t understand it, why is it written? What is it supposed to do for me?
There is Parshat B’reishit, the first parashah in the Torah, and then there is Sefer B’reishit, the entire Book of B’reishit. What is this all about? Why do we need this whole B’reishit? What possible message can we get from these days of Creation if we can’t grasp the idea of Creation itself?
You could say we need to know where we came from. Fine. Then just say, “God created the world.” Period. Next parashah. Get it out of the way. The fact that the Torah says He created this on one day and that on another day doesn’t help me at all in terms of my Judaism or my humanity.
So why is it there?
Pause that question. Let’s go to the end of the Torah.
Why Did Moshe Break the Luchot?
What is the last physical act of Moshe Rabbeinu that the Torah emphasizes? He broke the Luchot HaBrit. Moshe received the Luchot HaBrit from God, and one of the last acts associated with him in the Torah is breaking them.
If I’m writing a book or making a movie, wouldn’t I want to end it on a positive note? In fact, it’s halacha l’maaseh. When we read an aliyah in the Torah, we try not to stop at something negative. We end on a positive note.
So why does the Torah end by emphasizing Moshe breaking the luchot? It’s a crazy thing. Moshe Rabbeinu breaks the luchot that were carved by HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and God effectively says, “Good job.”
What’s the good job? If I’m not behaving myself, should I throw down the Torah? If Bnei Yisrael sinned, punish Bnei Yisrael. Why destroy the luchot?
When HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells Moshe that He is going to destroy Bnei Yisrael, what does Moshe say? “If You destroy Bnei Yisrael, take me out of the book.” So if Bnei Yisrael deserved punishment, punish them. Don’t destroy the luchot.
Think about it. What does breaking the luchot do? Imagine your son or daughter misbehaves, and instead of saying, “You misbehaved,” you take the rulebook and say, “No more rules. I’m breaking the rules. They don’t exist anymore.” What did you accomplish?
They should have been punished because of the luchot, and instead of punishing them, Moshe broke the luchot.
Why did Moshe Rabbeinu break them? We often say he was angry. When was another time Moshe Rabbeinu became angry? When he hit the rock. Did he get punished for that? Yes. Did he get punished for breaking the luchot? No.
Why not? If he did it simply out of anger, he should have been punished for it. Which is worse? Hitting a rock, or breaking HaKadosh Baruch Hu’s luchot? The luchot came directly from God. There was kedushah right there. He hits the rock and gets punished horribly. He breaks the luchot and HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, “Good job.”
One of the students suggested something beautiful. Moshe Rabbeinu knew that if he brought the luchot down, Bnei Yisrael would be held fully responsible for their actions and could be punished with destruction.
That’s beautiful. But now the question is: Do you think that by erasing the lawbook, a person is no longer guilty of what they did? They had already heard the first commandments from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. They had already been told not to make an idol. You can’t fool HaKadosh Baruch Hu by saying, “Well, it wasn’t written on the tablets yet.”
The Foundation Is Emet
So listen to this. When it comes to religion, Judaism, God and Torah, there is truth. There is objective and total truth. You can choose not to believe in that truth and live by something else. That’s your choice. That’s what we call freedom of choice. But it doesn’t change truth.
No matter how many times I call that dark door a pink elephant, it’s still a door. That’s objective truth. We say that Torah is objective truth. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is objective truth.
Why did HaKadosh Baruch Hu create the world according to Jewish tradition? According to what Derech Hashem says, the goal of creating the world was that HaKadosh Baruch Hu could give goodness to others and give us the ability to choose good.
But in order to choose good, what do you need in the world? Bad. Without that choice, you don’t own the good. The malachim, the angels, are not owners of good in the same way. They don’t have that choice.
Human beings were created in a world in which we have choice. That means good and bad have to exist as genuine choices.
Now Moshe Rabbeinu understands the ultimate truth. Did HaKadosh Baruch Hu create the world in order for it to survive and flourish, or in order for it to be destroyed? To survive.
He created the world, and He gave down the emet, the Luchot HaBrit, to Moshe Rabbeinu. “Take them down.” Moshe Rabbeinu sees Am Yisrael worshipping the Golden Calf.
Now there’s a problem. The world was created by HaKadosh Baruch Hu in order to survive and flourish. The Torah was given to Am Yisrael to keep in order to allow the world to flourish. If Bnei Yisrael are destroyed, what happens? The world becomes pointless.
Moshe Rabbeinu, knowing that the ultimate truth is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu created the world for goodness and blessing, understands that it is impossible for the truth of God to become the tool that destroys the very purpose for which the world was created. It cannot be that the luchot are going to destroy Bnei Yisrael.
Those luchot came from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That is true. They represent the truth that God gave down. But the ultimate truth of HaKadosh Baruch Hu is His ratzon, what He wants in this world: for the world to survive and flourish. And that can only exist if Bnei Yisrael are around.
Breaking the luchot was Moshe Rabbeinu realizing that the luchot are the kli, the tool through which we reach truth. But the luchot themselves are not greater than the ultimate truth they exist to serve.
So he breaks the luchot, and HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, “Good job. You understood the message.”
Moshe Rabbeinu looked beyond the immediate object and understood that there is truth in the world and that the luchot are the vehicle to that truth. That does not mean that we can decide on our own to change the Torah. We can’t. Moshe Rabbeinu understood something at that moment that HaKadosh Baruch Hu affirmed.
And then HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells him, “Write a second set of tablets.” Where did the first ones come from? Heaven. Where do the second ones come from? Earth.
The idea is simple: Lo bashamayim hi. It’s not up there. Our responsibility is here on Earth.
Truth has to do with every single second of your day. That doesn’t mean you should only be learning all day. That’s not what it means. Whatever you are doing, you have to carry that truth of the luchot with you.
Without B’reishit, There Is No Base
Now imagine if the Torah had simply started with Moshe Rabbeinu. We don’t even need Avraham Avinu. Start with the mitzvot. Start with the commandments. Start with the Ten Commandments. Perfect.
Why do we need this whole introduction of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov? There are almost no mitzvot there. In fact, we say that the forefathers did things that would later be against halacha. Yaakov married two sisters.
But it was before Har Sinai. After Har Sinai, that is not allowed. But before the Torah was brought down into the world in that form, it was different.
There’s one problem if you begin only at Har Sinai. There’s no base. We could say, “The world existed before. There was one morality before, and now there’s a new morality.”
That’s not the way it works. First of all, we have to understand that the world was created by HaKadosh Baruch Hu, by God. That’s truth.
If we don’t reach that understanding, if we don’t accept that, nothing else counts, because every other system of rules and laws is ultimately subjective.
My family once went on a trip to Africa, to Kenya. It was great. It was awesome. But their moral ladder and their traditions were completely different from what I knew from America, France, England or anywhere else in the Western world.
Some things seemed crazy according to me, because my Westernized understanding of the world looks at their culture and says they’re nuts. And you know what they thought about me? They thought I was nuts. We had no common language. Our whole view of life was different.
At one point, I accidentally entered what I would call a place of worship. I didn’t realize where I was until I looked around and saw golden statues, including literally a golden calf.
There was a sign saying, “Please keep quiet. The gods are sleeping until 12:00.” I promise you.
We laugh at that. But why do we laugh? Because we know the truth? Or because we think we know the truth?
If somebody doesn’t actually believe that God created the world, then perhaps he laughs simply because, “That’s stupid. That’s not my culture.”
They could look at us spending extra money on an iPhone or on real UGGs instead of fake ones and think we’re crazy. “I want money for food. You think I care where your shoes come from?”
That’s their culture. We have our culture. It doesn’t automatically mean their culture is better or ours is better. It means they are different.
So which one is true? Neither one simply because it is a culture. Culture and environment do not create objective truth.
I’m not going to give you my opinion on political issues. My opinion doesn’t matter for anything. Take abortion as an example. In 1950, abortion was broadly treated as murder and illegal. Today you have the concept of pro-choice.
I’m not getting into the discussion. I’m showing you that society’s moral standards change according to what society decides at a particular point in time.
So who is right?
Why are we able to judge Hitler? He believed he was doing the right thing. He believed he was doing a favor for the world.
Take a terrorist who blows himself up on a bus believing he’s going to heaven. Who says he’s bad? It depends how you are judging him.
Are you judging him based purely on your culture, which is just as subjective as his culture, or are you judging him against something objective?
That is why the Torah starts from B’reishit rather than from the luchot. Nothing exists without this.
According to our belief system, there is no reality without God. There’s no morality. There’s nothing without God. Whatever you or I happen to think is important does not define truth.
Use the World for Its Purpose
There are great people in this world who do great things for the world. Take Steve Jobs. He changed the world through Apple. But there is another level of importance in the world beyond the physical things we create.
The problem is that we can’t always keep our eye on the ball.
Now, the Torah does not say you shouldn’t use this world. That is not our religion at all. The Torah says exactly the opposite.
Why was man created last? Human beings are the most intelligent creature on Earth. We’re the ones with free choice. We’re the ones with moral responsibility.
So why weren’t we created first? Because the world was created for us. When you invite someone for dinner, you set the table before the guest arrives. He’s the guest of honor.
The Torah does not say, “Live in a cave.” The Torah says, “This is your world. Use it. Don’t abuse it.”
Use it. Don’t destroy it. Take care of the world. Use it—but use it for truth. Everyone thinks they are wise. The question is not simply whether you use the world wisely. Use it for truth.
The Torah eventually gives us the manual.
Remember the old VCR? If you owned a VCR, unless you were really smart, the clock was always blinking 00:00. Why did nobody know how to set the clock? Because nobody read the manual.
Imagine I bring a smartphone back to a tribal area in Kenya where they don’t have electricity, running water or mobile phones. I hand somebody my phone. He doesn’t know what a phone is.
Maybe he uses it like a hacky sack and starts kicking it around. I say, “What are you doing? I paid $850 for that iPhone!”
And he says, “What do you mean? I’m using it.”
No, you’re not using it properly. It falls. It breaks. He says, “But I had fun.” And he did. He enjoyed using the iPhone.
So what’s the problem? It wasn’t its proper usage. He defeated its purpose. Use a rock if that’s what you want to do. The phone has so much more potential.
The fact that we have fun doesn’t mean we lived life to its fullest. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have fun in life. Believe me, that is not what I’m saying.
But if life is not about truth, and you’re not using life the way it was intended to be used, then okay—you had fun. Now what?
So the idea of B’reishit is, number one, know the base. Know emet.
“B’reishit bara Elokim.” The last letter of B’reishit is taf. The last letter of bara is aleph. The last letter of Elokim is mem.
Put them together: emet.
This is not my idea. It’s from Rabbi Natan, the student of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, in Likutei Halachot.
That is the goal of B’reishit.
Why are all the details of the days of Creation there? You have to understand the detail that went into Maaseh B’reishit. The whole world is here for us.
That’s why man was created last. God created the world and then placed man into it. Don’t ruin it. Use it. Enjoy it. But enjoy it knowing there is emet in the world.
Know there is emet in the world.
Again, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. That doesn’t mean you can’t watch movies, go out or eat. That’s not the point.
Judaism says the world was created. Use it with truth—but use it and enjoy it.
We make brachot. We make birchot hanehenin, blessings over things that we enjoy. Something to eat, something to drink—we make a bracha.
You’re supposed to enjoy the world. But what happens when we enjoy the world without recognizing where it came from? We’re enjoying the world without using it in the truthful way.
Morality Cannot Come From Society Alone
Without our soul, without a neshama, what are we? An intelligent animal walking on two feet.
What distinguishes a human being from an animal is our moral responsibility, our neshama. If we don’t use the world with that truthful meaning, then we lower ourselves to the level of animals.
And no, we’re not merely animals.
That’s why when people tell me they don’t believe in God, I don’t yell at them. I say, “I think you’re much more spiritual and holy than you think you are.”
I don’t think you’re simply a more intelligent dog or cow. I think you are a spiritual being above the animal kingdom—not because we eat animals or don’t eat animals, but because we have moral consequence.
Animals don’t have moral consequence. You can punish an animal. That’s not moral responsibility.
Human beings are the beings who have moral responsibility. But that moral responsibility can only exist on a truthful level if it comes from something beyond society.
If it comes from society alone, it’s not objective morality. It’s social rules.
Society sets up borders and boundaries in order to keep itself functioning, and every few years it changes those rules according to its needs and comfort.
That may be law, and law has to be obeyed. But law and truth are not the same thing.
If I ask you, “Why aren’t you allowed to kill someone?” the answer should not be, “Because I’ll go to jail.” That is horrible education.
If you tell a child, “You can’t steal because you’ll get caught,” that is horrible education. Even if you tell someone, “Don’t make fun of another person because they’ll make fun of you,” that is still horrible education.
Why don’t you do these things? Because they are wrong. They are immoral. No matter what society says, they are wrong.
And I’m telling you this as someone in the army and on the political right: You can’t go around killing people because of their religion. No matter how much you think you hate them.
If somebody is coming to kill you, that is a different story. But otherwise it is wrong. No matter what name someone invokes to justify it, it is wrong.
At least according to our Torah, it is wrong.
We should also try not to hate people. Why? Because Moshe Rabbeinu broke the Luchot HaBrit rather than simply reject Bnei Yisrael—and they had just bowed down to an idol.
What could another person do that is worse than Bnei Yisrael bowing down to an idol?
Of course people make us angry. Everyone struggles with that.
But the real challenge is not merely that we sometimes do something wrong. Everyone does things wrong. The real danger is turning the wrong thing into something good.
You justify yourself once. Then twice. Then three times. Suddenly the thing you did isn’t merely permitted. Now you convince yourself it’s a mitzvah.
But it’s still wrong.
That’s how ideologies can pull people down like a whirlpool. Once you’re caught inside, it’s very difficult to get out. Nobody likes looking at himself and asking, “Am I doing right or wrong?”
But that is truth.
And I’m not saying I’m there. I’m saying that is what we learn.
Truth Is Supposed to Lift You Up
So B’reishit is the basis. The basis is emet. The basis is objective and total truth.
Rabbi Natan writes that whether you’re learning, eating, working or doing business, you have to find that nekudat emet, that point of truth.
Whatever you’re doing, there is always a point of truth. And no matter where you or I happen to be personally, no matter how bad we think we are, there is always a nekudat emet.
There is always that point of truth.
One of the worst failures of people who think they are pursuing truth is that they push themselves down too low. That is not what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants.
Truth is supposed to lift you up, not push you down.
If you realize you did something wrong, truth should lift you up and tell you, “I have to correct it.”
When people really fall is when they stop recognizing what is right and wrong. That is falling.
Getting upset about what I did yesterday because I want to fix it is not falling. That’s climbing.
Doing the same thing tomorrow and no longer caring—that is falling.
Someone who feels bad and is trying to correct something is struggling, and that can hurt. Not everything that is comfortable is good, and not everything that hurts is bad.
We’re happy that fire hurts us. If fire didn’t hurt us, we would burn ourselves to death. The pain makes us pull our hand away.
So pain is not always bad if it teaches us to move upward instead of falling backward. And comfort is not always good if it allows us to remain somewhere we shouldn’t be.
That’s what B’reishit teaches about truth.
The First Rashi: Who Owns the Land?
And let me give you a little political twist.
The first Rashi in B’reishit is unbelievable. Rabbi Yitzchak asks: Why does the Torah begin with B’reishit instead of beginning with the commandments?
Because the nations of the world will say to Israel: “You are occupiers. You stole our land. It isn’t yours. You are criminals. You took it from us.”
Read it inside.
And we answer the nations of the world: God created the world. God gave the Land to whom He wished, and He took it from them and gave it to us.
And by the way, it isn’t automatically secure in our hands. If we don’t live according to what is true, God forbid, it can be taken away from us again.
That’s the first Rashi. You have to know what’s true.
And when you want to convince somebody else of what is true, if you attack him personally, that is not truth.
You don’t have to be shy about truth. You say, “Listen. This is true. Hear the facts.”
Hear the facts.
But you can never use truth as a weapon to attack another person. You can’t go home and say to your parents, “Hey, Mom, Dad, you’re not allowed to do that.”
You can’t do that. That itself can become sheker.
Halacha even has rules about the way a child corrects a parent. You don’t arrogantly tell your parent, “You’re wrong.”
Someone learns something and suddenly thinks, “Now I know. My parents are wrong and I’m right.”
No. That is not necessarily emet.
Again, Moshe Rabbeinu broke the luchot rather than allow them to become a source of horrific punishment against Bnei Yisrael.
We have to watch ourselves constantly. You don’t have to be shy about truth. You have to speak about it and learn it.
But not in an angry way.
You don’t smack somebody and say, “This is the right thing to do.”
Menshlikeit Before Yiddishkeit
I’ll finish with one thing.
Someone once asked me: If God gave you a choice—your children will be shomer Shabbat, eat the strictest kosher, be machmir on everything in the Torah, but they will have a terrible problem with bein adam l’chaveiro. They can’t say thank you or please. They don’t know how to interact with people. They’re cruel.
Again, I’m not talking about how they deal with evil people who are trying to hurt them. I mean ordinary people.
Or your children will have the greatest derech eretz in the world, but they won’t keep Shabbat, Yom Kippur or the other mitzvot bein adam laMakom.
What would you rather have?
I hope God never gives me that choice. He told us to do both.
But—and this is a big but—there is no Torah without derech eretz. You cannot be a religious Jew and behave without derech eretz.
On a practical level, if my kids don’t behave properly, don’t say thank you and please, don’t open doors for people and don’t know how to treat people, I failed.
Not them.
If they aren’t keeping Shabbat, I can invite them over. I can show them how beautiful Shabbat is. That I can teach. That’s an experience.
But bein adam l’chaveiro? For sure I’ll take that. They have the base.
And again, I’m not really separating the two. There is no separation between them.
If there is a guy wearing a kippah, with his tzitzit hanging down to his ankles, but he doesn’t behave with derech eretz, and there is another guy who isn’t keeping everything but is full of derech eretz—what does God ultimately do with that?
I don’t know. I’ll let you know after 120 years.
But I know that there is no Torah without derech eretz.
They have to go together.
My grandfather used to say, “Menshlikeit before Yiddishkeit.”
For those of you who understand Yiddish: You have to be a mensch before you can be a Yid.
They go together.
Without that basic menschlichkeit, you cannot be a religious Jew.
Period.