shaping the universe by Phillip Ratner
Rashi explains from the first verse in the Torah that the entire reason for the description of Creation is to establish that G-D is the Master of the universe, Who creates, sustains and affectionately empowers all that exists. Israel’s function on earth is to perfect the world under the sovereignty of HaShem. This mission is largely achieved through revealing the Divine unity of existence and bringing mankind to the awareness that G-D is the one and only absolute reality – that there is nothing outside of Him and that all of Creation exists within Him. Israel’s mission of Divine perfection requires us to uplift this world to its highest potential – the original ideal behind Creation from its inception.
The goal of history, which is clearly revealed at the end of the story, is what has been pushing all world events from the start. All people and occurrences up until today have only existed for the Divine goal that will be gloriously revealed through its ultimate fulfillment. Man – the crowning pinnacle of Creation – was not fashioned until the sixth day. Everything else appeared to have been set up in advance. In fact, the only thing we see introduced after human beings is the Shabbat. While it could be assumed that something as important as mankind or Shabbat should have been fashioned before all else, an explanation is found in the Lecha Dodi song, which states sof ma’ase b’machashava t’chila – “last in deed, first in thought.” Shabbat was the last act of Creation, but primary in HaShem’s Divine blueprint for the world. Whenever a great project is envisioned, several preparations must be made in order for that project’s goal to be attainable. That there would be a weekly day of kedusha in Creation was foremost in G-D’s plan. But the entire universe had to exist beforehand.
The same idea holds true for mankind. The finale reveals the original objective. In the Shabbat Musaf prayer, the first twenty-two words of the paragraph Tikanta Shabbat begin with the letters of our alphabet in reverse order, going from Taf to Aleph. This concept, referred to as Tashrak (Taf, Shin, Reish, Koof…), shows Aleph as symbolizing the One – the Divine Torah Ideal of unity and perfection. Taf represents the illusion of multiplicity within existence. It symbolizes the base and material as opposed to the evident kedusha represented by the Aleph. The closer something comes to the Aleph – to its ultimate goal – the more explicitly its holiness is revealed. While at the stage of Taf, the grandeur of a project is hidden as things appear mundane (or often iniquitous), the idea of Tashrak teaches that the ideal comes at the end of a development in order to reveal the kedusha of the entire process. Enterprises of great value are most often built from the bottom up with secure foundations that usually appear insignificant when judged in isolation from the greater endeavor.
In Netzach Yisrael, the Maharal of Prague explains that Creation begins with the most mundane and then leads up to the formation of man and eventually Israel. He points out that Am Yisrael was the last of the nations to enter the stage of history while every other people had previously existed. Israel was created last, but forever inherits the mission of man – to bring every living creature to fully actualize itself as a player in the story of Creation and as an aspect of the greater reality that we call HaShem.
The purpose of Creation is to build a world of total perfection where all will perceive that the G-D of Israel is not only the Creator and Divine Source of all that exists but is in fact Himself all of reality and beyond. It is the Hebrew mission to establish a world that is entirely just and at peace through the universal recognition and awareness of HaShem.
“And G-D saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good.” (BEREISHIT 1:31)
The Rambam comments that everything was fit for its exact purpose and able to function appropriately within Creation. He further teaches in the fifth chapter of his introduction to Pirke Avot that “Man should place one goal before his eyes: the comprehension of G-D – glorified be He – to the full extent of mortal potential. This means to know Him. One should divert all of his activities, endeavors and even his relaxation toward that goal, to the extent that none of his activities are purposeless – i.e., that they do not lead to this goal.”
The Divine Oneness of HaShem and the harmonious unity of existence within Him is the deterministic blueprint of all human history that will be revealed to mankind through the story of the Hebrew Nation. The Kingdom of Israel will rise and – as the heart of mankind – pump Divine blessing to the rest of Creation. Jewish political sovereignty over Eretz Yisrael is the prerequisite for our bringing the world towards perfection and higher consciousness. The prevalent immoral doctrines – with all of their deceptions – will evaporate as the holy culture of Israel begins to shine and shower humanity with the light of Torah. The full Redemption of the Jewish people in our land brings with it an entire revolution in the thinking of man. Concepts of morality, justice and truth will be redefined and clarified through Israel’s national ascension and shining example. This will occur through the Israeli Nation living a full and all encompassing life of twenty-four-hour-a-day kedusha that infuses all of national life with meaning and blessing, from economics and governance to agriculture and diplomacy. The light of HaShem’s Presence will be perceived in everything that exists as His chosen people build a model society in our homeland. The ultimate good pushing history forward from the start will be revealed through the Redemption of the Hebrew Nation.
The Tur, commenting on the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 286), discusses the idea of Tashrak regarding Israel’s Redemption. The concept of the Divine Ideal becoming exposed in all of its glory at the end of a seemingly mundane process refers specifically to the Redemption of the Hebrew Nation. History has begun to witness this process through the Land of Israel bringing forth abundant produce after so many centuries of dismal infertility. The world has experienced a revival of the Hebrew language and Jewish independence over much of Eretz Yisrael. Israel has achieved miraculous victories in war and tremendous innovations in the fields of medicine and technology.
While there are still those who doubt the value and historic significance of what is currently transpiring, these skeptics can rest assured that when we reach the Aleph of the process, all will be able to appreciate the kedusha of even the seemingly extraneous Taf. Even that which appeared to be secular, or at times hostile to our ancient collective aspirations, has come only to prepare the way for the full expression of G-D’s Name. The strong physical body of the Hebrew Nation reborn in our land, erected by those who seem uninterested in Torah, has only been built in order to house the giant spirit that will come to bring all of Creation full circle to its ultimate goal – the Aleph that has been pushing since the beginning of time.
With Love of Israel,
-Yehuda HaKohen
And Dr. Eli Lasch and his understanding on Bereshit. He passed on in 2009
The Head in the House
This is illustrated by the first word of the book of Genesis: Breshit – translated as “in the beginning”. The question poses itself: The beginning of what? And the Torah continues: of the creation of Heaven and Earth. The next question to ask ourselves is: Created out of what? The source of the word “Breshit” and the second word of the sentence bara, are only used, when the Torah speaks about creation ex nihilo – out of nothing. And here we find ourselves again in accordance with modern Astrophysics – Before the Big bang there was – nothing. After it everything we know came into being.
The spelling of the Hebrew word puts us in front of one of the quandaries the Bible is so fond of. As we can see it is made out of six letters, bet, resh, aleph, shin, jod, tav. Here we come to a seemingly paradox: the first letter of this word which implies creation is bet, which, however, is only the second letter of the alphabet and not, as we would expect, first. Since ancient times, scholars have asked themselves why the Torah does not begin with the first letter of the alphabet, the aleph ? which also has the numerical value of 1.
As the Torah is supposed to be the blueprint of creation, the choice of the second letter of the alphabet implies that there existed something before the physical creation, as we know it. This is exactly what is claimed by the kabbalah: Before our universe there existed light. According to quantum theory, light has a very interesting characteristic: It is made out of both waves and particles. The wave however is nothing but a probability, until it is being measured, observed or named. Only observation causes fixation or, to use a term of quantum physics: “It causes the wave to collapse.” Only after the collapse of the wave function, does light become particle and for us, reality. This explains why it is not bet, but aleph which is the first letter of the creation. Aleph, the first letter of the alphabet, is identical with a wave function or probability. As long as it is not named or fixed by a vowel, it is nothing. It doesn’t exist – the ayn of the kabbalah. Its graphic form ? fits also with this theory: One armlet of the letter points to the past, the other one to the future. One points to the earth and the other one to heaven. Heaven and earth are thus bound and separated at the same time, a problem we’ll discuss in details later on in the text.
We now come to the letter bet ?, the first letter of the Torah and the second of the alphabet (see annex II). Its form is very significant too. As Hebrew is written from right to left, the form of the letter bet shows: After creation has occurred, all potential directions but one are closed. The only one left open is the direction of the script itself. One can also say that it is only open to the future, not to the past. Once the unmanifest becomes manifest, once the potential has been realized, once one way is chosen, there is no way back. This fits in very well with the view of quantum physics: As we now know, before creation is perceived as such, light and by implication anything else is at the same time a wave and a particle. We also know that a wave has no fixed form, that it has the potential to become everything.
The letter bet has two more important aspects, both significant to our discussion. The first is that the numerical value of the letter is two – symbolizing the duality mentioned previously. Of more importance, however, is the name of the letter. As “bet” in Hebrew means “house” or “container” , this letter-word thus implies the existence of a duality, as a container is necessary only, when there is something to be contained. Could that be the reason that in the text of the Torah this specific letter bet is bigger than all the other ones? Could that possibly emphasize the importance of a house? Its prime importance.
Let us now consider what that might mean. According to an ancient tradition, God was holding the Torah in his hand and consulted it before creating the world. This tradition seems to us totally incredible, but maybe it is trying to teach us something about the creation of the world. In a previous chapter, we have already discussed the possibility that the world did not “just happen” and was not created in a haphazard way by a blind interaction of forces. As we have seen, it is more than probable that our world was created by an intelligence we called “the programmer” – which can also be designated as “divine”. The former view is the one which is now widely accepted. This, however, was not always true. Bible scholars of the past referred to the verse in Proverbs “JHVH has created me at the beginning of His way before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning before ever the earth was.” The Bible uses here the Hebrew word rosh which also means “head” for the word “beginning”. To an additional meaning of this word we’ll return later. The word “I” in this verse designates the Torah. Thus the word reshit (translated as “beginning”) also designates the Torah. Seen that way, the Torah existed before creation or even before Elohim, since the Torah speaks here about JHVH and not about Elohim. Breshit thus means “inside the Torah” and in the Torah Elohim was created. It’s also but logical that the Torah must have existed before Elohim, since He used it as a blueprint for creation.
If we accept the premise that the world was created by a cosmic or divine intelligence, it is more than probable that IT followed the four steps which we follow when we want to create something: vision, planning and design (the creation of a blueprint), production and trying out the product.
This postulate would fit in with the old hermetic principle: As above, so below. It would also fit in with the biblical notion that man was created in the image of God.
No real creation is possible without a vision. No creative process can start, before it has been visualized by its creator. That by itself is, however, not enough. In order for a vision to become reality, it has to go through the other three steps. To become that which we call reality, it has to be realized, materialized. Or, to go back to the language of the Torah, each creation, big or small, contains the vision of its creator, and nothing can be created without the containment of the vision. It would always remain a vision – a phantasm. Let’s use an analogy of daily modern life: In the engine of a motor-car, matter is changed into energy. If this wouldn’t happen inside a cylinder – a container – the energy would disperse. The Kabbalah uses a similar schema, but talks of four worlds: Aziluth or vision, something which comes out of the nothing, but has not yet left it. The first step in the direction of manifestation is Beriah, the creation of a blueprint, also called creation ex nihilo; then comes Jetzirah, the manifestation or production itself and finally Assiah, the trying out of the product.
That this is really what the Torah wants us to understand becomes clearer, if we look at the whole word, Breshit (fig.2).
As shown previously, it consists of six letters. The three letters coming after the bet – reish, alef, shin – together constitute the Hebrew word for head, rosh, the place where visions originate. But “head” in Hebrew also means “the beginning”, the most important part of something. The last two letters of the word Breshit are jod and tav. If we add these two letters to the first one, bet, we now get the complete word bajit (container). Looking at all the letters we realize that the word for “head” is bracketed – contained – by the word for “container“. The real meaning, therefore, of this first word of the Torah is not “in the beginning”, but “there was a vision which was contained” – or literally: “the head in the house”. Thus duality comes into being and the first step towards the materialization, the realization of the vision, is taken. Creation has begun!
Prof. Dr. Eli Lasch
Art by Phillip Ratner ratnermuseumThis is a regular feature on IsraelSeen by Dr. Yitzkak Hayut-Man. An innovator, futurist, visionary and Bible scholar. I have the utmost respect for the man I consider a friend. He is among the few that is courageous enough to allow the “open source” of the Torah-Bible to be presented in new and interesting ways for our greater understanding. for more go to his web site: http://www.global-report.com/thehope/a78-re-genesis-now-project-preface-introduction
The First Story of Genesis – World of Creation Version of Bereshit
About the Creation as Divine Utterance
It is plainly stated in the Book of Genesis that all the Creation of the six days was performed through divine utterances whose number is ten:
1. “Let there be light” – “And God saw… that it was good”.
2. “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide waters from water”.
3. “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear” – “And God saw that it was good”.
4. “Let the earth bring forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth”.
5. “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth” – “And God saw that it was good”
6. “Let the waters swarm abundantly with moving creatures that have life, and let birds fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven” – “And God saw that it was good”.
7. “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after its kind” – “And God saw… that it was good”.
8. “Let us make Mankind in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth”.
9. “Be fruitful, and multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it”.
10. “Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, on which there is the fruit yielding seed; to you it shall be for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food”.
It is not written “And God saw… that it was good”, neither about the separation of the upper and lower waters on the second day, nor about the making of humankind on the sixth. It is only in the comprehensive context that it is written: “And God saw everything that He had made (with humanity inside the wholeness of Nature) and, behold, it was very good”. The decision whether the creation of humans was a good idea depends upon the actions and decisions of humanity, as we shall see in the second part, concerning the issue of “The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”.
Of these primordial utterances, the first seven are “sayings about”, of an objective command (“I-It” relationship in the language of Buber, or “meta-language” in cybernetic parlance), whereas the last three are “sayings to” with an address towards self and other (an “I-Thou” relationship), in an air of consultation.
The idea of Creation through speech and divine utterance returns also in later sources. “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth” (Psalm 33:6), and “For ever, O Lord, Thy word stands fast in the heavens” (Psalm 119:89).[6]
There are those who assume that at the basis of the belief in One God there must be Creation out of nothing, and that that Creation must have occurred on a specific moment. In our times – those who believe so can seek a validation for the Biblical cosmology in the modern cosmological theory of “The Big Bang”.[7] But Maimonides, for example, who leaned to the opinions of Aristotle about the preexistence of the universe, claimed that there is no religious significance to the difference between a unique creation and ongoing continuing creation.
The “Alte Rebbe”, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the chabad (Chabad) teachings, taught, based on the above noted verse (“For ever, O Lord, Thy word stands fast in the heavens” which is in the present tense), that the whole of creation is recurring every infinitesimal period, through these ten divine utterances that keep standing there recreating the world for ever. Moreover, the letters of these utterances – according to this conception – are the raw material of all and every manifestation and these letters turn about in all their permutations and combinations to create everything, much like human speech comprising the sum of letter permutations.[8]
Our analysis of the first creation story in Parashat Bereshit will therefore relate to the structures of letters and words, in the assumption that coded in them are the primordial patterns that serve all the processes of creation and of restitution-Tiqqun. We shall examine the letters and words as if they were kind of mathematical formulae of instructions for building viable patterns.
In spite of the clear count of ten utterances, the sage Rabbi Yohanan said (Bavli, Rosh haShanah 32a): “Bereshit Ma’amar nami” (the word “Bereshit” is also an utterance). We can understand from this saying that the letters of the first word and the words of the first sentence of Genesis comprise a hidden “utterance” in which are encoded the principles of the Creation.
(This is akin to the formula on which is based the fractal geometry of the Mandelbrot Group. This is an extremely short formula: Z2 => Z-a; relating to the conditions of existence and stability of all the “offspring” derivations of every reference point in two, or three, dimensional space, which multiply by their own values and lose a fixed quantity during their “generation”. Through continuing iterations, the formula creates rich complexity – in fact infinite – of complex “landscapes”, in which stability is maintained in spite of the many reproductions – or it disappears).
