Simchat Torah/Parashat Bereshit: Genesis 1:1 – 6:4 By: Rabbi Denise L. Eger

This has been a season of new Beginnings. We of course, just celebrate Rosh Hashanah the beginning of the Jewish New Year. With sounds of the Shofar we ushered in 5769. Then ten days later we had another kind of beginning. Yom Kippur arrived to help us atone for our transgressions and errors of the previous year and to give us a new, fresh and pure start. By making teshuvah, by turning towards God and our fellow human beings with forgiveness and contrition we have begun the year with a new resolve to live our lives filled with holiness and faith. Then we have celebrated Sukkot, a week of celebrating the bounty and abundance of our lives. This acknowledgement is the beginning of a new outlook for us and our loved ones. The fragility of the Sukkah that still provides shelter from the storms of life reminds us of the fragility of our lives and the protection and peace we seek in our traditions and from God. This too is a kind of beginning for each one of us as we focus on the life of the spirit.

This week is yet another celebration of beginnings. We observe Simchat Torah which is the holiday of ending and beginning again the cycle of reading the Torah. With great dancing and celebration we rejoice in our Torah, symbol of our covenant with God at Sinai and a gift of love. As we read from the opening verses of Genesis we read of the mythic beginning of our universe.

Thus this coming Shabbat is Shabbat Bereshit, the Sabbath of Beginnings. In the span of a Jewish month we have had all kinds of beginnings: Spiritual and Practical and Torah related! Each beginning is helping us to start the year off right. And this teaches us an important lesson. Each beginning, each fresh start has many aspects to it. It is not simply at the practical level—a new year begins but it is deep and touches the heart, the soul and the mind. Just the same way we are to love God—with all of heart, all of our soul and all of our being.

As our year opened with many kinds of new beginnings, our Torah portion has more than one as well. In our parasha there are two stories of creation. There are two different versions. The first creation or beginning is the creation of humanity in general and the second creation story is the story of the first humans, Adam and Eve. The account of the events of creation varies in these stories. The order of creation is slightly different and of course the biggest difference is the focus on the story of Adam and Eve in the second account of creation.

But here too we learn that beginnings are not just one moment in time but a series of a starts and stops. For even Adam and Eve’s story is one of multiple beginnings. First there is just Adam and the animals. But then God creates Eve and so the beginning of the world has a different quality to it. And then Adam and Eve have a different beginning when they leave the Garden of Eve after eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Our parasha has multiple beginnings at the very beginning.

So we learn from this Holy Season and from the stories we read that we are always in the process of beginning. Beginnings don’t just happen at a single point in time but we are constantly beginning anew with each breath that we take. Beginnings happen at multiple layers in our lives and a fresh start is always possible.

In these troubling times that we live in it is good to know that we don’t have to be stuck or held down. Instead we learn from Jewish tradition that we have great opportunities for each moment, each breath, each day to be a new beginning for you and we give thanks in our morning prayers for awakening to each new dawn –so filled with potential for goodness and hope and the ultimate gift of love.

Happy Beginnings!