This will be a regular feature on IsraelSeen by Dr. Yitzkak Hayut-Man. An innovator, futurist, visionary and Bible scholar. I am not sure he will agree but I certainly 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. Enjoy.
Part I First installment
Introduction: Genesis as Prophetic Book and Guide for Re-Biography
By Dr. Yitzhak Hayut-Man
Preface:
The question that guided me in this book is whether the Torah (the Bible on the whole and the Book of Genesis in particular) contains guidance how to solve the existential questions of the contemporary renewed Israel and the problems that threaten all humankind.
“There are seventy faces to the Torah” said the sages, and left us hundreds of Midrashim (exegetic interpretations). Rabbinical Judaism and Christianity – and to a large extent Islam – are actually based on Midrashim to the Torah. Following the spreading of these religions, which have affected history, human history has become to a large extent a product of Torah exegesis, or that history itself formed other layers of exegesis and Midrash for the Torah. The Midrash that we offer in this book is special among all the Midrashim in being “A New Israeli Midrash”. While it is supported by over two thousand years of Jewish Midrashim (and it also relates to the Christian and Moslem Exegesis that are found at the basis of these religions), it issues from the conception that the Torah was destined to be renewed in the Hebrew-speaking Israel. In fact, this Midrash may be seen as “Midrash of Shem and Ever” that strives to expose the Hebrew (Ivrit,) meaning (Mashma’ut) of the Genesis text.
As we shall see in the introduction, the torah is not written in past tense, but in an “inverted future tense” that represents the extra-temporal order of hayah-hoveh-veyiheyeh – “was-is-and-will-be”. The interpretations offered to the Book of Genesis by the different religions and sects have become, as noted, a part of the ensemble. It is nowadays possible, and possibly necessary, to regard the Book of Genesis as a prophetic history-forming book with a special message for our times and not just a book of past history.
This Midrash Bereshit (Genesis) uncovers several deep structures in the Torah, some of which have not been discovered till now, which allow in our opinion to expose the true original intention of the text. Among other things, there is reference to a basic layer of patterns that is at times built upon symbolic numbers. This does not mean the “Bible codes” of equal “skips” (that seem to us baseless) or the popular promotion of a book of “The Moses Code” (that seems to us to be nonsensical), but to symbolic number codes, much like Pythagorean procedure (contemporaries of the editing of the Torah) and later Neo-Pythagorean (contemporaries of the estimated writing of Sefer Yetzirah {the Book of Formation}, whose principles will be mentioned in the sequel). Also we employed a limited usage of Gematria (assigning of numerical value to the letters of words – a practice often used by the sages, and especially the Qabbalah), but especially Gematria that have geometric meaning, which gives a validation that is often lacking in common Gematria.
Since it seems clear that not every reader feels comfortable with mathematical or geometrical treatment of the text, most of the mathematical insights were relegated to appendices. In other places are given guidance where to skip.
One “Midrash Shem v ever” that serves our Re-Genesis exegesis is the interpretation of the Parashot (pericopes – the weekly portions of the Pentateuch read in the Shabbat (Sabbath) service in the synagogue) according to the name (shem) of the Parashah. That name is taken as a code that holds the major meaning of the Parashah.
This book started in lessons on the weekly portions in the Yakar community in Jerusalem and continued by writing comments and gathering of insights for well over 15 years. Many sections have been presented in the Internet and received at times criticism and comments from readers. I owe special thanks to Dr. Asher Eder. Most thanks are due to my wife, Tirtsah Arzi that the book would not have been written without her excellent editing.
I owe thanks for nurturing sensitivity for patterns to my distinguished teachers, professor ?ri Jabotinsky, Buckminster Fuller, Professor Christopher Alexander, Julius Stulman and Professor Gordon Pask and to my friend John Michell. Thanks to Rabbi Mordekhay Attiyah, Professor Moshe Idel and to Asher Madar who opened for me gates to the Qabbalah. Special thanks are conveyed to Rabbi ?din Even Yisra’el (Steinsalz) who opened to me the window to the wisdom of the Torah through the teachings of the Alte Rebbe of Chabad. If we have gained some Torah innovations (kidushe Torah), this is mainly through their merit.
Preface for the English version
Serious Bible scholars have long realized that no one can find the deeper meaning of the scriptures without knowing something about their Hebrew originals and origins. As an example, Sir Isaac Newton studied Hebrew in order to understand the dimensions of Solomon’s Temple and Ezekiel’s visionary temple[1], these as means to understand the dimensions of the earth and of outer space (heaven).
Jesus did not speak English [2] (and probably neither Greek), he spoke Hebrew and Aramaic. There is nowadays a growing “Hebrew Roots” movement that attends to Hebrew clues even for the understanding of the Christian Bible. Many use the Biblical Hebrew Dictionary of the late professor James Strong (1822-1894).[3] From the living Hebrew perspective, these attempts are in the right direction, yet many of them just scratch the surface, and even Strong’s work is too weak for the task. There are layers upon layers of meaning and a peculiar flexibility in the Hebrew text, accessible almost only to fluent native Hebrew speakers.
Part of the glory of the re-emergence of Israel in the modern era is the restoration of the Hebrew language as a living language that serves as its cultural infrastructure. Admittedly, this often profanes the Holy Language, yet it also breeds lovers of Hebrew who connect most intimately with the Hebrew Scriptures and resonate with its peculiar clues.
This edition thus often draws terms back to their Hebrew origins and transliterates them (much in agreement with the transliteration rules of the Israel Academy of the Hebrew Language) quite differently than is commonly offered in most English versions of the Bible, in particular with Biblical names. We put such transliterated words in italics and often bring the Hebrew letters as well, because many of our interpretations depend on Hebrew “word games” and letter permutations which are lost in translation. Admittedly, this can make our text rather cumbersome for some readers. So we tried to avoid excessive pedantry and bring such transliterations just once or twice in each chapter. Noting that the Biblical Hebrew script is made only of the consonants and very often does not include the vowel letters, and that the Hebrew insights are based on the letters of the text (which could be pronounced in a number of ways by assuming different vowels) – we often bring the transliterated words and names in capital letters and the interposed vowels in small regular script. This is particularly so in case of Hebrew abbreviation words made of the initial letters of the words of an expression[4]. Again, this could render the text cumbersome, and we’ll try to put it just once or twice in a chapter.
More to follow…
