The first words of Parashat B’reishit(Gen. 1:1–6:8) state: “In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth.” It is the very beginning of all things compacted into seven Hebrew words that describe a massive expansive event that resulted in time, space and all matter flashing into what we perceive as reality—yet the Creation story takes up less space than the Torah’s description of the marriage between Isaac and Rebecca. The brevity of the latter episode is a hint that the universe burst forth into a complex, finite existence, instantly.
The late Dr. David Medved, an observant Jewish physicist, in his book Hidden Light: Science Secrets of the Bible, speaks of science’s limited understanding of how the universe began, even so, the Torah's description of the universe's beginning aligns with current ideas in theoretical physics. To demonstrate this, Medved rephrases the first sentence of B’reishit, by expressing its meaning in scientific terms:
“In the beginning God created space-time (Ha Shamayim) and compacted matter (eretz).”
Even the Torah’s use of the Hebrew word et, as in “...et Ha Shamyim ve’et Ha Eretz” reveals what is known as the Law of Conservation of Energy. Et is spelled aleph, tav, which are the first and last letters of the Hebrew aleph bet, which suggests the beginning and the end of something and all that is in between.
It’s a way of expressing totality.
This scientific principle holds that all the energy created in the very beginning is the total amount of energy first created, and it remains constant; we cannot create energy or destroy it. We can only transform it from one form to another. This totality is seen all through the six days of Creation. The Torah teaches, for example, “The earth brought forth seed-bearing plants of every kind.” In other words, all living things were first created finished and carry within them, the ability to replicate and reproduce themselves.
The unity of the Creator with His Creation can be seen in the instant all things came into being. Science that tells us the universe began with “the singularity”, an infinitely dense pinpoint containing the sum total of massive potential energy that would become the universe. This pinpoint was the “mysterious” initial state before time and space, as we know them, came into existence via the Big Bang. It was in 1927 that this theory was first proposed—in the modern era—by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest, astronomer, and professor of physics. However, this concept has been understood for centuries by the great Torah scholars like the Rabbi Isaac Luria, aka The Arizal (1534-1572) who taught that Creation began when God contracted or withdrew His infinite light to create a space for the world to exist. According to this concept, in order for finite beings to exist and have free will, God needed to create a space that appeared devoid of His presence. This contraction or concealment is known as Tzimtzum.
Many core Torah concepts emerge in the opening passages of B’reishit.
For example, the Torah exclusively employs the word Elohim for God, until Genesis 2:4. Elohim, which, in other contexts means “judges”connects this aspect of God to the natural laws He created and harnessed to bring order to world. It’s no coincidence that Elohim and HaTeva, the Hebrew word for “nature” have the same gematria (numerical value) of 86. It demonstrates that the physical realm is a manifestation of God's divine will and wisdom.
Proverbs 3:19 tells us, “By wisdom, God laid the foundation of the earth. He established the earth by understanding.”
Embedded in the word B’reishit is the word sheth, meaning Foundation. The fact that B’reishith is an exhilarating mix of metaphor and symbolism that, at times seems to conceal its subject, is itself a lesson: Our God is hidden from mortal eyes. That concealment allows Free Will. God created the earth and saw that it was good. And we emulate God when we choose to do only Good.
The moment we open the Torah to B’reishit, we choose to accept or reject the Creator of all things. On the sixth day, God created (bara) Adam from the dust of the earth brought to the Foundation Stone, the same stone that the Ark of the Covenant would later rest. In Genesis 2:7, HaShem forms(yitser)Adam. Physicist Adam Goldfinger states, in his book, Thinking About Creation: Eternal Torah & Modern Physics, that the word, yitser contains two yuds, revealing that Adam Rishon was formed with two unique aspects, the yetser ha tov and yetser ha rah—what we call a conscience—the ability to choose good or choose evil. In the Torah’s telling of the first murder, Cain killed his brother Hevel. God marked Cain for this act. The text tells us the mark was to identify and protect him from being harmed. One has to wonder if God also did this because Cain had brutally marred the physical aspect of another being, "created in the image of God".
HaShem formed us in His image so that we can access wisdom and understanding. We achieve that by fearing God and embracing Torah precepts as key to all knowledge and understanding, making us co-creators with the Creator. We can form our lives for good, build our world and establish it, according to Torah.
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