In the beginning…
This week, we begin anew, going back to the beginning of the Torah, B’reishit, ready to cycle again through the creation stories, the miracles, the laws, the numbers, the blessings, and the curses. With a mere turn of a page, or smooth roll of a scroll, everything seems undone, and we have the impression of being back at square one, being formed from the earth, taking our first breath, finding ourselves once again in the lush perfection of the Garden of Eden.
Do you ever find yourself wishing that Adam and Eve might choose differently this time around? If only our creation stories were more like the Choose Your Own Adventure books of the 80’s, inviting you to drive the narrative, allowing you to reverse decisions when you don’t like the way they turn out! Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden, condemned to hard work and painful labor? No, thank you. I’ll take choice B. And just like that, the fearsome Cherubim guarding the east of Eden with a “flaming blade of a flashing sword” would disappear, the fruits would hang intact from the Tree of All Knowledge, and human beings would frolic about in their birthday suits, blissfully unaware of the concepts of shame, guilt, blame, and regret.
As much as we humans love nostalgia, ours is a journey forward through time. We cannot, as Joni Mitchell wished, “get ourselves back to the Garden;” we cannot undo all that we have all experienced in our lives. We are left in a landscape of a different variety, one full of “thorns and thistles,” requiring hard labor and promising both loss and painful rebirth.
While it might feel like we are starting over with B’reishit, this journey through the Torah will not be last year’s journey. How could it be? We are fundamentally different this time around. We have been through 365 days of experiences that have shaped us from a new clay, filled our lungs with new breaths. The meaning that we find in the text comes through the lens of fresh scars, joys, questions, and lessons from the year that was.
To borrow a bit more from Joni, we are not “captive on the carousel of time.” While we might wish for a fresh start, our progress through time cannot be erased; we enter each new cycle carrying past experiences along for the ride. Thankfully, as the Torah reminds us, we are created in God’s image, outfitted with creativity and a toolkit with which to tackle the challenges that lie ahead. Exile from Eden may leave us daunted, but we are not destroyed. Like Eve, we continue to foster new life, delivering new possibilities into the world, no matter how painful the labor. We carry on through thick and thin, partners in creation, helping to repair the world and learning the lessons that life sets before us.
Even when we don’t think we can handle six days of labor, we move forward with confidence that, as promised, rest and renewal await us on the seventh day. And when we lift our heads off our pillows the following morning, the work of creation begins again.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rebecca Abbate
