Chavarah- Jewish Community Learning

A blog of Jewish study and traditions. Notes from classes: Torah Study with Rabbi Marder, Toledot and Shabbaton as well as other details found of interest.

IF you want to be part of our Chavarah email group let me know at carol@traditionsrenewed.com

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Genesis 1:1 - A new start

Genesis – Bereshit – 3/15

What a great beginning it was at Torah Study last week. Many new faces joined us – that was really terrific.!

We learned about Bereshit – the word and the construct state that is not quite as it might be in Hebrew language usually. That is, the word would usually be followed by a noun but here it is followed by the verb for 'creation'. And of course we reviewed several interpretations of that. We can’t miss exploring the first word in Torah!

We also talked about several theories of why the first letter of the Torah is a Bet. There are several midrashim on that topic, the two we focused on was that the Bet visually is a guide to go forward. Which can also help to say that there may be other theories of creation from before but now we need to look forward through the Torah to get our answers. The other thought was that the Aleph is a silent letter and that before Bereshit there was silence.

We did move on to discuss the third word, Elohim, which is in the plural form. Why? Well the discussion covered several different thoughts on this as well. The one that stood out to me is that Elohim is so encompassing that the word should be plural.

We talked about the other creation stories from different cultures. Many of them contain violence and sexual implications which does not appear in Genesis 1 although other creation stories are implied in other parts of the Bible – especially in the prophets. This creation explanation has no violence but it is very planned and methodical. And it is “good”

Wikipedia includes some other interesting details about this first verse of Torah.

The significance of having Genesis and the creation in Torah gives a wider breadth of understanding for those who choose to study and follow the mitzvot.

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