Parshat Bereishit - Creating The Universe

The Torah begins with the story of the creation of the universe—telling us immediately that it was created from absolute nothingness. 

The first book of the Torah, like the first weekly chapter in this book, is therefore called “Bereishit” (“In the beginning”):

“In the beginning of G-d’s creation of the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.  And God saw the light that it was good, and God separated between the light and between the darkness.  And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night, and it was evening and it was morning, one day” (Bereishit 1:1-5).

In Hebrew, “heavens” is “shamayim” and “earth” is “aretz”.

In the Torah’s very first verse, the original Hebrew reads: “Bereishit bara Elokim es hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz”—and which again, of course, translates to, “In the beginning of G-d’s creation of the heavens and the earth.”

Translated to English, “et” here is a preposition, which denotes not only an exclusive statement, but also an inclusive statement, like the preposition “with.”  That is, “et hashamayim” is to be understood not just as “the heavens” but also as everything connected with the concept of “the heavens,” meaning everything outside Planet Earth: the sun, the planets, the stars, the comets, the galaxies, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms and so on.  At the same time, “et ha’aretz” is to be understood as the earth and everything on the earth: the soil, the water and all their components.

Now, the first word of the Torah is the word “Bereishit” and the first letter of that word is the Hebrew letter “beit.”  In every Torah scroll, no matter which one we select, the Torah’s first letter of beit is larger in size than the letters following it. A person who reads only Hebrew, of course, would never think that it is a capital letter, because in Hebrew there are no uppercase or lowercase letters.  Then what is this?  Why is “beit” larger than the other letters?  In the text of the Torah, errors are nonexistent—its writing, like the rhythm of every verse, strictly follows the tradition that is 3,300 years old, with an explanation for every detail of that tradition. And that means if that particular “beit” is enlarged, it is surely no coincidence.  The oversized beit must tell us something.

The human mind is limited.  There are things we cannot understand.  Could a kitten understand the airplane?  Could an ant comprehend human behavior?  Just as well, there is a limit to the capabilities of our own minds.  With all our ability for abstract thinking, in the end we just generalize what we see, hear and touch, namely that which we detect with our senses.  Consider: can our brains form a representation of what it was like before the creation of the universe?  We are material forms of existence, of matter, of time and space.  That is why it is useless trying to imagine what it was like before the beginning of the universe, or where space ends.

What is the message, then, of the oversized letter “beit?” What is it telling us?  It is closed on the top, bottom and on right, but open on the left (as we read right to left in the Torah).  This tells us that we are inside of a created universe—and that because of that, we can in fact imagine what came after Creation, but not prior.

Speaking about the act of creation, the Torah uses the word “bara.”

This verb means creating from nothing: creating something absolutely new, never before existing.  Interesting, however, is the fact that in the Book of Bereishit, the word only appears a total of three times.

The first time, “bara” is expressed in the first verse to invoke creation of matter. The second time—“Vayivra Elokim et hataninim hagedolim” (“and G-d created the great sea serpents”) (1:21)—“bara” refers to the creation of life, where G-d created animals possessing animal souls. The third time—“Vayivra Elokim et ha’adam” (“and G-d created the man”) (1:27)—refers to the creation of a living being which, in addition to possessing physical life like all animals do, also possesses a divine soul which remains even after death.

In the second verse of the chapter, what does the word “tehom” (abyss) mean?  It means great depressions and open spaces in the ground, vast canyons and valleys, where later water gathered in staggering amounts to form both today’s oceans, as well as underground springs.

We must especially take note of the words “ruach Elokim,” the “spirit of G-d.”  These words introduce the concept of movement.  Thus, if the first verse is about the creation of matter, the second is about the creation of movement.

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I am reminded of December 1943. The war brought to Kazan, where I lived at that time, a multitude of scientists—almost the whole Academy of Science of the USSR, headed by its president, Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov, to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the birth of Sir Isaac Newton.

There were four papers presented then: “Ether, Structure of Matter, and Light According to Newton” by Vavilov; “Mathematical Works of Newton” by my teacher, Nikolai Grigoryevich Chebotaryov; “The Structure of the Moon According to Newton” by Idelson; and “Portraits of Newton” by Gerasimov.

But especially interesting and deep was Vavilov’s papers.  It began with something like this: “At the thought of Newton’s genius, one’s hair stands on end!  Three hundred years ago, one person foresaw so much of today’s science!” The academic then quoted extensively from Newton’s book, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or Mathematical Beginnings of Natural Philosophy.  Among those quotes were: “Anywhere in the Universe, between any two points, there are always counteracting forces of attraction or repulsion, electrical or chemical.  In this I see the omnipresence of G-d.”

I remember I shuddered: to risk uttering such a thing!  What it must have cost him to say that phrase, or at least to add that here Newton pays tribute to the views of his time.  But Vavilov neither omitted nor added anything.  And I thought: “The whole earth is full of His glory!” (Yeshayahu 6:3)—the world itself sings praises to its Creator.

By By Rabbi Yitzchok Zilber ztk”l, Founder, Toldot Yeshurun