There is power in ancient tradition to lift our gaze from the complex present and challenges of war to an eternal perspective • Once again we begin anew the cycle of Torah reading and learn how to read history • 10 comments on Genesis.
1.
A year ago, as we celebrated Simchat Torah, as the barbarians attacked us and murdered, raped, burned people alive, and destroyed peaceful communities in southern Israel, we still didn't fully grasp the magnitude of the catastrophe. Yet, our ancient tradition guided us amid the familiar order of things: we concluded the cycle of Torah reading and began again with "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). Indeed, this was a war of genesis, an existential war; it threw us violently and without warning back to the beginning. We were forced to confront the stark truth of our existence as a people in our ancient land, living in a reality that has not ceased to bleed ever since we returned home
In such moments of truth, when our lives are in immediate danger, we, as individuals, return to our roots, to the fundamental truths of our existence. We do so collectively too, as a nation. In the very first week, as the scale of the disaster began to unfold, I wrote that we were experiencing a biblical event in every sense. The past year has written a new chapter in the Bible, There is still significant work to be done in ridding the world of evil. The God of the Bible has His ways of speaking to us. Once, there were prophets, and over the past year, we have heard extraordinary words from mothers and fathers at the graves of their sons. These words shook us and touched primal chords, as if they had been carved out from another place and an ancient time – prophetic words for the people dwelling in Zion and for the entire world.
2.It is not by chance that I talk of the Bible here. Many of us, engrossed in the present and examining reality in materialistic terms, have awoken to the realization that our enemies are not fighting us over territory but over our ancient identity. For a moment that felt like an eternity, we experienced what our ancestors had endured over thousands of years of exile – we were plundered and pillaged, without the ability to defend ourselves. The transformation that we underwent as we arose from the depths of national humiliation and shook off the ashes of the destroyed communities and fought back, was made possible by the self-sacrifice and dedication of a generation of heroes we had once lamented for its lack of spirit. Suddenly, it emerged as a magnificent link in the chain of the heroes of Israel throughout the ages: "A people that rises like a lioness, leaps up like a lion." This generation reshaped not only our inner selves but also our collective consciousness.
The mission of this generation extends beyond the military realm; it requires us to define and shape this identity in a way that is appropriate for our time, while preserving the ancient spiritual core that gives us life as individuals and as a nation. The waves kicked up by the great storm into which we have been cast will continue to lash out in the coming decades, and the great spirit that swept over the nation will sustain us for a long time to come.
3.
Our people needed to retell the foundational stories that gave birth to it, until they became embedded in our collective psyche. But if the Torah of Moses is a book of laws, why does it require such an extended introduction? No other legal code in the world has such a precedent.
In the 11th century, in the French city of Troyes, the greatest biblical commentator, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, known as Rashi, pondered this question. In 1096, when he was in his fifties, the First Crusade began and after three years, Jerusalem fell to Christian control.
On their way to Jerusalem, the Crusaders passed through cities in Germany and France, committing horrific massacres against Jewish communities, especially along the Rhine River. These massacres were singed in Jewish memory as the "Gezeirot Tatnav" (the edicts of the year 4856 in the Hebrew calendar). The Crusaders slaughtered thousands, raped, burned, and looted. Those who survived were forced to choose between conversion or death. Some three hundred years later, a similar cry ("Cross or death") would be heard during the pogroms of Seville in Spain (the 1391 massacres).
Rashi knew these communities well as he did the great Torah centers of Torah study that were destroyed, and where he had spent time among the greatest Torah scholars in his twenties. He lamented the destruction in one of his piyyutim (liturgical poems):
Demand revenge for the insult of your pious ones / and the blood-letting of your scholars at the hand of the illegitimates / the destroyers of your students who tore the parchment [of the Torah scrolls] / and stepped on its writing and with great ferocity / destroyed our sanctuary.
4.
When the barbarians desecrated the sacred and our people were trampled upon, Rashi chose to begin his great commentary enterprise on the Torah with an idea that seemed disconnected from any context. He cited the question posed by Rabbi Yitzhak in the Midrash: Seemingly, since the Torah is a book of laws and commandments, it should have begun with the commandment of sanctifying the new month, the first mitzvah given to Israel. "Why, then, does it begin with 'In the beginning'[i.e. the creation]?" Rashi asks, and then answers, "For should the peoples of the world say to Israel, 'You are robbers, because you took by force the lands of the seven nations of Canaan,' Israel may reply to them, 'All the earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it and gave it to whom He pleased. When He willed, He gave it to them, and when He willed, He took it from them and gave it to us.'"
Every year, I marvel at the power of this interpretation. Rashi is not writing here merely as a commentator but as a far-sighted national leader, seeking to uplift his people in the depths of exile: "Raise your heads! We will rise from the ashes of the destroyed communities and rebuild ourselves, and one day, we will return to our land. If not in our time, then our descendants will reestablish our destroyed kingdom. When that day comes, you will face the eternal question: Are you thieves, for the land does not belong to you, but to the inhabitants who lived there while you were absent. And the answer will always be: 'In the beginning, God created... the earth.' The land is the whole world, but for us, it is the special land meant for our people."
5.Some 840 years later, in January 1937, David Ben-Gurion stood before the British Peel Commission and declared: "Our right to the Land of Israel does not stem from the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration. It precedes those... The Bible is our mandate… the Bible, that was written by us in our Hebrew language, and in this land itself, is our mandate. Our historical right has existed since our beginnings as the Jewish people, and the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate recognize and confirm that right."
The Bible is the foundation of Western civilization and a source for much of the Quran. As the eternal people, Israel can and must speak on the international stage about our natural right to our land derived from the Book of Books. Even in the so-called "rational," "secular," "interest-based" world of diplomacy – in fact especially there – it is important that the nations raise their gaze and consider the through a historical, cultural, and spiritual perspective spanning thousands of years. We have risen and are emerging from the mists of history, returning home, as our prophets and great sages foretold, including Rashi, who, in the depths of the destruction of the Ashkenazi communities, chose to begin his epic commentary with our right to the Land of Israel. Ben-Gurion continued from where Rashi had left off, as if he had written it the day before his appearance before the Peel Commission. For what are 800 years in the perspective of eternity? "For in Your sight a thousand yearsare like yesterday that has passed, like a watch of the night."
6.
The Book of Genesis, as a foundational text, not only recounts the formative stories of our beginning as a nation but also teaches us historiosophy – how to read both past events and the burning issues of the present. It consistently presents two ways of interpreting history: a causal view and a moral one, as described by Rabbi Kook. At a superficial level, one event leads to another, but beneath this lies a deeper meta-historical current that drives events and is reflected in Genesis through the dreams of its protagonists, or through a duality in the narration of events where things unfold on two levels.
Toward the end of Genesis, things become clear: Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery in Egypt, thinking they've rid themselves of him. However, it is this very act that fulfills his dreams of kingship. Not only Joseph's dreams are fulfilled, but also the dream of his great-grandfather Abraham during the "Covenant Between the Parts": "Know well that your offspring shall be strangers in a land not theirs, and they shall be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years… in the end they shall go free with great wealth… and they shall return here in the fourth generation" (Genesis 15:13-16). The plan was in place from the beginning, and those who could read the duality were not surprised. Even in the depths of woe, they believed in the good future that awaited us, knowing that at the end of exile, a generation would arise and return
7.
This dual pattern appears from the very beginning, in the story of the creation of the world and of man. It then appears in the tale of the Garden of Eden and the sin of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Garden of Eden is like a cosmic womb, with the fetus of humanity in the form of Adam and Eve as the seed and egg, awaiting the moment of birth, in other words the beginning of human history. The knowledge of good and evil dependent on both context and time, but before everything there is knowledge, and it is the knowledge we accumulate that allows us to discern between good and evil. What would humanity be without science, without accumulated knowledge?
Is it possible that of all things, the only prohibition God placed was on knowledge itself? If everything is permitted except for one forbidden tree, it becomes the focus of everything until nothing else matters but prohibition itself. After placing the prohibition, God gives humanity a gift: woman. Even though she will cause man to break the command, she is not portrayed as a trap like in the myth of Pandora. On the contrary, she is described as a "fitting helper for him."
8.On the face of it, the story of the Garden of Eden is one of prohibition and sin. Yet, below the surface, God is telling humanity, like a father would to his only son: "You may eat from every tree in the garden" (Genesis 2:16). Look around you: the entire creation awaits you. But the most important thing for you and for the future of the world – knowledge – you must acquire for yourself, through the power of your own will over My will, by transgressing the sacred and breaking the divine prohibition.
The very desire to rebel against the divine command is itself the essence of knowledge: the free choice to establish our own independent will from the depth of our consciousness, and to bear responsibility for our existence. Immanuel Kant defined "enlightenment" as "man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity" – this immaturity is our inability to use our understanding without guidance from another. Sigmund Freud described a similar process in parent-child relationships with the concept of "Oedipal rebellion," or patricide, the symbolic killing of the father. If a child knows how to stand up to their parents, there is hope that they will know how to stand up to other authorities later in life. Psychoanalyst Margaret Mahler described this in terms of "separation for the sake of individuation" – the process of separating from our parents to form an independent self.
Openly, God prohibits the acquisition of knowledge; secretly, however, His actions direct humanity to acquire it through its own strength. This pattern in Genesis is both profound and awe-inspiring: on the surface, there is struggle, rebellion, and the transgression of sacred norms. Beneath the surface, however, a deeper current leads events towards restoration (Tikun) and construction.
9.There is yet another force pushing humanity toward knowledge: "Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild beasts" (Genesis 3:1) – cunning in its wisdom. In many cultures, the serpent guards the fountain of life and the hidden treasures of knowledge from man. In the biblical story, however, the serpent plays a different role: though it guards the treasure of knowledge and life, it does not guard it against humanity but opens the gate, urging man to seize the treasure. The serpent, wise and cunning, teaches the woman (and through her, the man) that God expects them to make the critical step upon which heaven and earth depend: to acquire knowledge. The serpent is not necessarily an external figure to Eve; it can be read as a part of her personality – the snake-like aspect within her, the law breaker who defies the supreme command. Through this, she helps humanity take the fateful step.
The serpent thus appears at a fateful moment of transition. It stands at the threshold of the cosmic womb, awakening the pangs of birth. Before us is a meta-historiosophical model, a typical structure through which other human events can be understood: at the moment of crisis, when reality seems to have reached a dead end, the serpent appears. And what is a crisis, if not birth in all its forms? "For the children have come to the birth (mashber), and there is no strength to bring them forth" (Isiah 37:3). In biblical Hebrew, mashber (crisis) refers to the mouth of the womb, from which the child emerges. In the language of Our Sages, it also refers to the birthing stool upon which a woman crouches during labor. Today, a crisis – mashber- represents a decisive turning point, the threshold of transition from one state to another. The serpent, as a meta-symbol, helps humanity leave the Garden of Eden and embark on the journey of history.
10.
On the surface, the world is noisy and tumultuous, disaster follows disaster, and the fragile sukkah we have built seems on the verge of collapse. But beneath the surface, beneath the waves, a different reality is being woven – one we cannot yet see because our minds are distracted, focused mainly on what our eyes perceive. Yet if we are patient and read history with an eternal perspective, we will witness the birth of the next stage in our redemption and the salvation of our souls. This, it seems, is what Rashi saw in the depths of the devastation of the 11th century, and it applies to our time as well. The victory over our enemies begins first and foremost with the change of the old consciousness, the abandonment of the "conception" that is steeped in the here and now and quick to despair, and then an elevation to be equal to the greatness of the hour in a way that will bring about a new and higher awareness among us.
"Master of battles, Sower of acts of righteousness, Causer of deliverance to sprout forth; Creator of cures. Awesome in praise, Master of wonders, He renews in His goodness, each day, continuously, the work of creation… Shine a new light upon Zion and may we all soon be privileged to [enjoy] its brightness"(from the morning daily prayer). The war plants the seeds of justice, bringing forth salvation and healing our wounds. This renewal resembles the act of creation, and in light of the historiosophical pattern that Genesis teaches us, we know that a new light will shine upon Zion. We saw its light with the establishment of the state; even now, in the depths of war, we will see it again.
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