Topics in this digest: Bereishit 5765
By Rabbi Dr. Barry Leff
“In beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” These are the
famous opening words of the Torah.
Note I did not say “in THE beginning.” That would not be an accurate
translation of the Hebrew. It says “b’reishit,” not “bareishit.” There
is no definite article, at least not according to the Masoretic tradition
which added the vowels to the Torah. The significance of this little
grammatical detail is that this is one way of telling the story of the
beginning of the universe. There are other ways as well.
One of those other ways is told in a lecture called “The Beginning of
Time,” given by one of the world’s most eminent physicists, Dr. Stephen
Hawking. Dr. Hawking begins his talk as follows: “In this lecture, I
would like to discuss whether time itself has a beginning, and whether it
will have an end. All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe
has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion
years ago. This is probably the most remarkable discovery of modern
cosmology.”
The most remarkable discovery of modern cosmology—that the universe had a
beginning, that it is not, in fact, “eternal.”
Let’s compare this observation with one made by Ovadia ben Yakov Sforno, a
16th century Italian rabbi, mathematician and philosopher. Sforno’s
commentary on the opening verse in the Torah reads “In beginning. This
means at the beginning of time, the very first moment which could not be a
part of time, since time did not exist prior to this moment.”
Five hundred years ago a rabbi said the same thing modern physics says
today: that the universe had a beginning, that, in fact time itself had a
beginning.
Science and theology both say that to ask what came before the beginning
is a somewhat meaningless question. There wasn’t even time before the
beginning. The laws of physics and the structure of the universe didn’t
exist.
But science and theology both continue to struggle with the question of
“why was there a beginning at all?”
In his lecture Hawking said “There is no dynamical reason why the motion
of bodies in the solar system can not be extrapolated back in time, far
beyond four thousand and four BC, the date for the creation of the
universe, according to the book of Genesis. Thus it would require the
direct intervention of God, if the universe began at that date. By
contrast, the Big Bang is a beginning that is required by the dynamical
laws that govern the universe. It is therefore intrinsic to the universe,
and is not imposed on it from outside.”
Hawking said that the Big Bang happened because it is part of the
structure of the laws that govern the universe. It had to happen. Of
course he does religion a big disservice by taking the dates in Genesis
literally, but I’ll “dan l’chaf zchut,” give him the benefit of the doubt
because what I do to physics is probably as bad as what he does to
religion.
There is a school of thought in Judaism which says something similar to
what Hawking said, that the Big Bang happened when it did because it’s
part of the structure of the universe. The Baal Shem Tov (Besht), the
founder of the Chasidic branch of Judaism in the late 18th century, wrote
“Why didn’t God create the world before He did?” The Besht says that
action is always better than lack, than nothing. So what changed in God’s
will to go from not wanting to create the world to wanting to change the
world? Did God somehow change His mind, and just decide, “gee, I think
I’ll start up the world today?” But isn’t God the one thing in the
universe that is eternal, that is not subject to whims of changing one’s
mind?
The Besht explains that God is not like humans. People grow and learn.
The knowledge we have today is superior to the knowledge we had yesterday.
We have to acquire knowledge. If you want to build a house by yourself,
you go out and learn how to build a house, and when you’ve figured it out,
you’re ready to start building. But God does not need to acquire knowledge
in this way—God’s knowledge is integral, not an acquisition. God is not
lacking anything that She needs to learn something before taking action.
Therefore, the Besht comes to somewhat the same conclusion that Hawking
does: that the Universe was created exactly when it needed to be created.
It’s not that God changed God’s mind—God ALWAYS had it in mind to start
the
universe at that particular time.
Structure is an essential feature of the universe, whether you’re a
physicist or a theologian. The Besht says that God created the world at
exactly the right time when it needed to be created. If Shabbat is the
crown of creation and in fact the goal of creation, as posited by the
Jewish mystics, why didn’t God just create a world that was all Shabbat?
It’s because Shabbat doesn’t mean anything without the six days of work
leading up to it. It’s part of the structure of Shabbat. Is it really
Shabbat if it’s not preceded by work?
I love the Jewish holidays. They bring richness and meaning to my life.
But on a day like today, a Shabbat which comes after two days in a row of
holidays, my feeling about Shabbat is distinctly different. It doesn’t
feel so much like Shabbat as it comes after a day which is for all intents
and purposes another Shabbat. A major part of what makes Shabbat Shabbat
is the contrast between the busy-ness and craziness of the work week.
Remove the busy-ness and craziness and the day is not really Shabbat.
Therefore, Shabbat needs to come in its time—after the six days of the
work week, and not before. Similarly, the universe needed to come when it
came—and not before.
As much as I enjoy it when I find Torah and science saying the same
thing—as in Hawking and Sforno both saying that time had a definite
beginning—I don’t look to Torah to tell me about the physical structure of
the universe. I look to the scientists to tell me that. What I look to
the Torah for is to tell me about the spiritual structure of the universe.
When we study Torah and think about how to apply Torah to our lives, we
are engaged in a process of trying to understand that spiritual structure
of the universe, just as scientists use particle beam accelerators to
understand the physical structure of the universe. When we do mitzvot, we
are trying to align our lives with the “laws of the spirit” as opposed to
the laws of physics.
As we read the beginning of the book of Genesis, may we remember that just
as time has a beginning, time has an end…and our time in this world also
has a beginning, and an end. Therefore, we need to make the most of the
time that we have.