Bereshith: Divine Regret

Bereshith: Divine Regret

Why does the Torah provide a description of creation? Rashi quotes Rabbi Yitzchok asking this question and answering that the documentation  that Gd created the world gives Gd  the right to distribute the lands of the world . The allocation of the Promised Land to the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is justified.  The creator is the rightful owner and can distribute the real estate.  Unfortunately, the real-world basis  for  possession was not who could create, but who could kill and destroy. Thus, Rashi never saw the Promised Land that he was so sure that Gd had granted him. He saw the Crusades  on their way to Palestine instead. 

The Ramban says that Rashi's explanation is not complete.  The story of creation is שורש האמונה, the root of faith. There is a beginning - the world is not eternal, the world is not a logical necessity, it is a grant.  

 There is a creator to whom we owe gratitude for a beautiful and generally hospitable world. Our minds seem programmed to easily accept this idea, but it brings with it an obligation of appreciation. Much of the Torah is concerned with how to realize that goal. 

As technology moves forward, reading Genesis becomes stranger as it begins to make more sense. Let's  go to: And E said 'Let there be light.'  Now, almost any person can say the same words... and there will be light ( per Alexa, Google, etc).  The power to say something and have it happen has descended from the Divine to the mundane. The story of the powerful E creating the world lends itself to the science-fiction of a techno-deity, a being so much more advanced than humans that it is natural to consider that being divine.  

It is how Gd relates  to  the actions of  the creations that is most informative. When the people eat from the Tree of Knowledge, curiosity overcomes law and loyalty. Gd reacts by clothing the humans who are  now aware of their nakedness.  Cain's Envy leads to the murder of Abel.    Gd exiles the killer to a place where there is no one to covet.

Ultimately we have the most disturbing verse :   וַיִּנָּ֣חֶם   כִּֽי־עָשָׂ֥ה אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֖ם בָּאָ֑רֶץ וַיִּתְעַצֵּ֖ב אֶל־לִבּֽוֹ׃ 

 And the LORD regretted that He had made man on earth, and His heart was saddened.

The idea that the perfect Gd could regret and be sad is outrageous.  It is a violation of a certain idea of perfection, and thus anathema. For me, it is a demonstration of perfection. This is not the perfection of the machine, it is the most precious quality that Gd shared with us, the ability to look at the true consequences of actions  and improve. 

Regret is a statement of responsibility. The text does not tell us that Adam and Eve or the serpent regretted  their violation. Cain is very concerned about the punishment that he recognizes he deserves, but there is no statement of regret. 

I had a most interesting conversation with a young man who had returned from a more dissolute lifestyle.  He told me that he  was not convinced that he had free will. He believed that  his actions were determined by the forces of the universe.  I asked him if there was anything he regretted. Remorse was the evidence that he owned the decisions. 

 Gd is the author of regret.   It is another gift to be used with compassion ( for ourselves as well as others) and with wisdom 

   

Haazinu: The spiral 

The poem is introduced with a request that  eternity  ( heaven and earth) serve as witnesses to the truth of what is to follow.  The story begins with  Gd finding desperate Israel in the desert and bringing them from survival to flourishing.  By emphasizing the role of their own actions in their success, prosperous Israel takes credit for its triumph, rejecting Gd's role and ultimately rejecting Gd.  Gd rejects the renouncing  people  and removes their protection.  Enemies arise and nearly destroy Israel.  Gd comes to the rescue and Israel rises from the devastation. Coda: Moshe delivers the poem with instructions to keep the rules of the Torah as a away to prevent the downfall. Afterward: Moshe is given his terminal instructions. 

The cycle of ascent, triumph, complacency, defeat and rebuilding describes all the human histories of survivors; and it is the survivors who tell the story. The events take place through time, a process that we perceive as linear and progressive, so the circle can be viewed from the side and it becomes a sine curve, a spiral.  The circles are not all equally large in this time axis. But the periodic nature is inexorable. 

In my  lifetime, we have  seen the ascent and  apogee of the process.  My parents were impoverished, uneducated immigrants who had lived the lowest point in Jewish ( maybe all) history.  Every affliction enumerated in every execration of the Torah had been visited upon them and their  (murdered)  families.  I came into the world as they rose, became American citizens, seized their portion of the promised opportunity.  My generation became doctors, lawyers, wealth workers, scholars.  People of achievement. The hard work paid off...was it the only active force?

I cannot have the magical beliefs of my grandparents.  I have seen photographs of  earth taken from the moon and beyond, so heaven can no longer be the blue firmament that I see when I look up.  That has become the light diffraction pattern of water vapor in the atmosphere  and I am convinced that beyond  the atmosphere there is the darkness of space organized into stars with planets, and galaxies. I am somewhat less sure that the laws that govern the motion of the celestial beings are universal (note the dark matter and the cosmological constant in this years Physics Nobel Prize), but the estimation of these laws, as they apply locally, has improved and fostered progress.  The awareness of an older explanation for nature is an aid to the skepticism necessary to drive reform and improvement. 

From the perspective of the poem, science has encouraged the attribution of events to the No-gd  (v.21), and some even insist upon this principle.  I do not understand anything well enough to leave out the theological cosmological constant: Divine intervention. 

Vayelech: Ethical Will

What can a person approaching the end of life convey to those about to embark on their adventure? 

Can they accept encouragement from a man denied entry into the Promised Land? How should they handle the threat of exile and suffering embodied in a song that they will carry with them from now on?

We are coming to the end of the Torah. This week's parsha, Vayelech, the third from the last, forms a complementary match, with the third parsha: Lech Lecha.   In Lech Lecha, Abraham, our founder, is instructed to go and explore the land that will be granted to his offspring.  He is to leave  is ancestral home and follow a set of, yet to specified, instructions. This leads him to a land that his (not yet born) offspring will inherit.  The mission is obscure, but the action is definitive


 In Vayelech, Moshe goes...The text does not specify where he is coming from or where he is going. (In talmudic hermeneutics such a hanging word is meant for interpretation rather than translation).  In contrast to Abraham, there is ambiguity about how and where Moshe was raised. He was  raised as a prince in the palace of the Pharoah, and he knew he was the son of slave Hebrews. He has no attachment to his homeland. He had long been an exile and an immigrant.

  We are soon told where Moshe is going and where he is not going. Moshe is going to die and he is not going to enter the promised land. Moshe  tells the people who are about to enter the land explored by father  Abraham to be brave and fearless.  He tells them to keep the commandments. He knows that violation and exile are inevitable.  There is a song that they will carry and it will be testimony.

To what does the song testify?  To the predictability of the future:  the inevitable exile that follows from the unavoidable transgression?  We keep this song as justification for  the recurring  defeats and persecutions that its people, our people, have suffered. We, Gd and Gd's people, turn to this song of foretelling to keep faith in each other.  The song says: I told you so. Is that a comfort? Actually it is.  Because it ends with the redemption and re-ascendance of the people ( but that will need to wait for next week).

This week we deal with the inevitable, the statistically predicted, the deathbed declaration ( and death is the most reliable prophecy). The message is: continue.  Terrible things will happen  - but do not despair.  Leaders will change, do not rebel. The ancient tradition will stop making sense; keep it anyway.  It works.

And so my grandson ( Yisroel Arye ( Srulik), Theodore Irwin, Teddy) was circumcised on his eighth day.