Rabbi Breit's Blog

And so we start again. After much festivity, fasting, dancing, praying, laughing, and crying, we roll the Torah back to its beginning and read from Genesis 1:1.

A new beginning can be a wonderful and a terrifying thing. Maybe your kids have left for college… now what? Your friend got a new job — where do they start? Our freed hostages are finally home to begin life again, but how? That war has ended. And new wars will begin. What does a good beginning look like? We know B’reishit is good. The book says as much six times.

So what’s is the first thing that happens in the Torah? In the beginning, God creates.

There’s no discussion of believers or non-believers, no set up of who are the “good” people and who the “bad”. There’s no dogma or creed to buy into, no abstract theological claim to accept. There’s no destruction of what was or shouldn’t have been. There are no warnings or admonitions, no successes or failures. That will come later. There doesn’t even seem to be a lot of thinking. We only have one character and this character makes no claim to lineage or power. This character is God. God doesn’t explain. God goes out and gets creating.

Maybe that’s the best way to face a new beginning — not with stories or resentments, trying to destroy what came before, no master battle plans or CVS-receipt-length lists of resolutions. A good beginning is when you choose to go out and make something. Make one thing good. Maybe it’s art, or a gift, or a meal for someone in need. It could be a garden shed, or a piece of music, or a phone call to someone lonely. You start by making one thing. Maybe you like it so much you keep going. Maybe you keep making things until you’re satisfied, until you rest, and you look back and you’ve built a world of good.

I don’t think it’s an accident that we restart our story with “B’reishit bara elohim” “in the beginning, God created”. May it remind you that even when it seems the people around you try to begin by destroying what was before; or if they try to begin by asserting power; or they try to begin with words and no actions -- we remember a good beginning is a good deed, creative, building the world you want one element at a time.