Parashat Bereishit
Tishrei 27, 5780 / October 25-26, 2019
Torah Reading - Genesis 1:1 - 6:8
Haftarah - Isaiah 42:5 - 43:10 (Ashkenazim);
Isaiah 42:5-21 (Sephardim)
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FUTURE PERFECT
"And the heavens and the earth and all
their hosts were finished. And by the seventh day God finished all God's work
that God had done, and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that God
had done. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because on it God
rested from all the work of creating that God had done." Genesis 2:1-3.
The above verses are chanted in the synagogue
and at the Shabbat evening table as the lead-in to Kiddush. In their book,
"Five Cities of Refuge", Rabbi Lawrence Kushner and playwright David
Mamet point out that work and Shabbat observance go together – they are
inseparable. Like God, we can truly bless our work only by refraining from it
for a day, and then by reflecting on the work we have done.
They also point out that the chapter and
verse structure of the Torah is a construct, which artificially separates
Shabbat (Chapter 2) from the rest of Creation (Chapter 1). This is symbolic,
they suggest, of our broken world. And it is a reason why we silently say the
concluding words of Chapter 1, "and there was evening and there was
morning, a sixth day", before chanting Kiddush.
I would note that the Jewish mystics have
taught that a way to repair the world is through "yichidut", the
Unification of God's Holy Name. One way we can “repair” Shabbat, then, might be
to reunify Shabbat with the rest of the week - not by working on Shabbat, not
by resting all week, but by realizing that our work, which is never done, can
have meaning for us only if we take time off to contemplate that which we have
not created - and understand that we play a role, however minor, in perfecting
that Creation.
Rabbi Richard A. Flom
הַלּוֹמֵד מִכָּל אָדָם ?אֵיזֶהוּ חָכָם
Who is wise? The
one who learns from every person.
Ben Zoma - Pirkei Avot
4:1
