On Creation

Rosh Hashanah morning, 5758

Rabbi Melanie Aron

I now routinely get up and speak in front of large groups of people, but I imagine that those who know me better will not be surprised to learn that I was a very shy child, hard pressed to speak even just in front of my classmates and teachers. In fact I remember being particularly overwhelmed in my first year of High School as I made the transition from my Jewish day school of about 150 students to the urban public high school I attended with almost 4,000 pupils.

For the first few days I said nothing. Then one afternoon, in my ancient and medieval history class, the teacher asked: "What is the first sentence in the Bible?" Finally a question on which I felt confident- after all one couldn't graduate from the eighth grade of a Solomon Schechter school without knowing with the same certainty that 2 and 2 equals 4, that the Torah begins- bereisheet Bara Elohim. So I raised my hand and proudly answered: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Silence, then the teacher called on another student. It seemed the answer he was waiting for was, "In the beginning there was the word and the word was God. (From the Gospel of John)"

Well I was rather shocked by this alternative, though I did learn later in Rabbinical school that even the first verse of Genesis is not as straightforward as it might seem.

Typically translated: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth," the text is more correctly rendered: "In the beginning of God's creating the heavens and the earth....."

What's the difference?

Well, for Maimonides and the philosophers of the middle ages, there was a great difference. The difference between those who believed that God created the world out of nothing- creatio ex nihilo, and those who believed that God formed the world out of existing matter, was one of the great disputes of that era. The difference in translation had implications for whether we believe the world is eternal or whether we believe that it has a beginning and an end.

We could talk a great deal about this --- about current scientific discoveries and their implications for our perspective on the origins of the cosmos, - my husband Michael would be glad to host such a discussion- but I have always preferred fiction to non-fiction, so I would like to leave the world of the philosophers and the scientist and travel back to the world of the story tellers.

The rabbis of the midrash, were also unhappy with the traditional reading: "In the beginning God created...." For them it closed off all the really interesting questions. Why did God create the world? What did God think about in creating the world? Why did God create our world the way it is and not with a different set of rules?

For the rabbis- the constructive- bereishit- in the beginning of- opened up a door to further exploration. They believed that our world was not the first to be created. Rather they imagined God creating many different worlds, but having trouble getting them just right. God was like a chef, with a new recipe, trying hard to get the ingredients in just the right balance.

In particular, they imagined God having difficulty with the balance of justice and mercy. God tried a world with absolute justice, but it could not endure. God tried a world with absolute mercy and was also displeased. God wanted perfect justice and perfect mercy, but even God couldn't get everything He wanted. At some point, God just decided to move ahead anyway, and while the angels were still arguing about whether a world without perfect justice was worth creating, God said yehi or- let there be light and it was so.

I find that story reassuring, perhaps because I am not that much of a process person, and sometimes, like God I want to leave the quibbling behind me. Move forward, I say, and we'll figure out the details as we go along.

But I think I also like the story, for another reason.

I like it because I know that perfection is no more accessible to me, than it was to God. Since, my day often ends with things unaccomplished, or even worse, regretted, I find some solace in thinking that God had the same experience. God could not have perfection in this world we live in, and I cannot be the perfect rabbi and/or the perfect parent, or more simply the perfect human being I would like to be. My life is filled with a certain tension, as I hold up the ideal and compare it to the real.

If the world had been created with perfect justice, then the most significant aspect of human existence would be our imperfections. What do we deserve? Not half so much as we have. Often we call God to task for injustices we feel have been committed by the universe against us and our loved ones. And while these are very real, in a world of perfect justice, we would also be called account for every wrong that we committed. The rationalizations we often provide for ourselves would be disregarded, and we would be continually guilty. While the Jewish God is often identified by Christians as a harsh God of justice, I think it is classical Christianity which imagines us living in this kind of a world, a world in which we as human beings are always found wanting.

The world of strict justice makes a world of perfect mercy sound pretty attractive, but I don't think that it would remain so after more consideration. Some of us have met children raised in such a universe, where all is forgiven, and is someone else's fault anyway- and we know that being called to be responsible for one's actions has an important salutary effect. The struggle for justice also has its place.

R. Neta Hirsch Frankel, himself a minor figure, as compared to the greats of his generation, offered this perspective:

If I knew that I could be only what I am- I could not endure. But if did not strive to be like the Vilna Gaon, then I would not be even what I am.

While the rabbis imagined God struggling between justice and mercy in the world, we struggle to find the right balance between judging ourselves and forgiving ourselves, between holding ourselves up to an unattainable standard, and letting ourselves off the hook, when we could demand more of ourselves. But the balance between judging and forgiving, is not so easy to strike. Like the other balances in our lives, balances between work and family, self and others, our local community and the greater world at large, it is hard to find that shveel hazahav, that golden mean, that Maimonides was so fond of.

To return, in a way to the religious context of my history teacher, I rarely feel in balance and am usually robbing Peter, to pay Paul. I steal time from my family, to visit someone who is sick and in the hospital, then steal time from my sermon preparations, to interview a baby-sitter, when my regular sitter, announces she can no longer work on Mondays and Fridays. I steal time from the sleep I really need, to read the books I want to read, and time from the Confirmation class for which I am responsible, to fulfill my annual obligation to teach something for the Jewish singles group which meets only on Tuesday nights. When I am doing something for the community at large, I feel the weight of all that I should be doing within our smaller Temple community, and when I consider all the advantages we have in our fairly comfortable suburban setting, then I wonder how our problems are even worth mentioning in the same breath as some of the struggles that others of God's creatures face every day.

I find for myself personally there is no way I can do everything I want to do- not to mention to do it as well as I would like to do it.

Clearly this is, in part, an occupational hazard. Rumor has it in the rabbinical community at least, that the man who wrote the One Minute Manager series was an ordained Rabbi. But I think it is more than that.

My guess is that your lives are not much different than mine. If you don't have dependent children, you have dependent parents, and you may even be lucky enough to have both. If you don't have a congregation, you have managers and colleagues, supervisors and staff. You are called upon to volunteer by the Temple and the PTA, but also wonder whether there isn't something you could be doing about Bosnia, and the battered children here in San Jose. Is there any one of us who is able to do everything we would like to do as well as we would like to do it?

God has a great advantage over us. However imperfect the world that God created, at least when the end of the sixth day came, God was able to say that it was completed- and God was able to stop. In fact the midrash tells us that this is the origin of one of the names of God- El Shaddai. El, the God, who was able to say- dai- enough. This is not a novel observation- but it remains true. If we don't learn how to say dai- that is- enough- in Hebrew, then some of us will say die, in English. When you tune a violin, you must tighten its strings to get a pure sound- but if you tighten it too far, it pops and makes no music at all.

Rabbi Jack Reimer has suggested that Judaism plagiarize Club Med and offer- Club Shabbat- the antidote to civilization.

He suggests an ad, to spoof the Club Med advertisement. It would read in part:

Among the rewards of living in the modern world, there are a few booby prizes. Among them are phones that ring too long, too loud and too often, alarm clocks that go off before we are ready to face the day, traffic jams, newspapers that are full of bad news, blaring radios and the tensions that come from living in such a complex world. That is why, more than nineteen hundred and fifty years ago, we created Shabbat, a unique holiday based on the belief that to shed the trappings of civilization one day a week is the most human way to live.

Today, in more than nine hundred Jewish communities all around the world, you need not be bothered by television sets, telephones, radios, newspapers or alarm clocks. Nor will you miss them. Instead you will be spending sunny afternoons with your family and joining your comunity in prayer, study and song, feasting on three lovely meals, featuring our justly famous Jewish cuisine with its freshly baked challahs, kiddush cups brimming full of wine , making good conversation with friends and relatives and playing with your children.

What's more there's no charge at all. And as you avail yourself of all the pleasures that the Sabbath offers you, you will realize that on the Sabbath, time is something to be savored not rushed or worried about.

As human beings we need one day off a week and the rabbinic idea of limiting Sabbath activity remains as vital to us today as it was 2,000 years ago. We need a day without the computer, the washing machine and the things to pick up at the dry cleaners. We need a day when we are not accomplishing anything- when there is no tightly packed schedule.

I am not the best at avoiding sweets and other non-healthy foods- but I never crave ham, and never cheat on Yom Kippur. The religious meaning of these actions gives them a sense of rightness for me. Can the meaning of shabbat, as a religious observance, strengthen your resolve to find time for family and friends, for study and prayer?

In addition to the Sabbath, Judaism can help us achieve some kind of balance in our lives, in a second way, by reminding us of our priorities. We need to accept that there will be possibilities out there that we, with our finite lives, will not explore. There will be mountains that we will not climb, programs that would be great for our kids that they will not participate in, good ideas that we will not pursue. We cannot do everything. Sometimes, I find it important sometimes to remember my friend Anita Green, talented teacher, artist and mother of two, z'l' who insisted that I repeat as a mantra- not everything worth doing is worth doing well. We need to prune our lives aggressively, so that there is room for what is really important.

Finally, Judaism can help us by reminding us that there is more to the world, than our petty stresses. Judaism can turn us to the world of other people- so that we recognize how blessed and fortunate we are. Sometimes what we need is not another hour for ourselves- sometimes we need an hour where we are helping someone else--- not our family, not our work, but operating in another realm, of humanity and human caring. Therapy helps with some things, prayer helps with others, and going out and doing good, helps with still other things.

I remember earlier this spring and summer, when I was spending a lot of time visiting with people who were profoundly ill and feeling badly because of what I could not do for them. It wasn't that my schedule was empty, but duty called, and at the urging of the Social Action Center of the Reform movement in Washington, I went down to Watsonville a number of times, taking the place of more illustrious national figures in our movement. There I would meet with Christian clergy who were working with the farmworkers, and mostly, just be present as a form of insurance against violence. I remember one afternoon in particular, when I drove down, to stand with other clergy between the workers, on one side of the street singing "nos, nos moverans," which is unfortunately about all the Spanish I know, and the office of the owners, which was surrounded by non-union trucks coming to pick up produce. There was no real threat of violence, but it wasn't exactly lovey, dovey, either. And when I left to go back to my car, and a big rig followed closely on my heels, I was definitely calculating how fast I could run in my ladies dress shoes.

Still, it was satisfying that afternoon to be able to do something, to attack problems that were more amenable to my action than the diseases ravaging my friends, and it was therapeutic to believe that I could really make a difference. Even less adrenaline producing activities, like bringing food to the hungry, playing with children in a shelter, or driving an elderly person to services- make a difference in real lives, and remind us, that though finite, we can do something.

A friend of mine likes to quote a poet, who wrote: There are two kinds of madness that one should guard against. One is the belief that we can do everything. The other is the belief that we can do nothing.

Naaseh Adam, Betzalmanu, Ubeitmunateinu- let us make Adam in our image and in our likeness. Perhaps this year, recognizing that even God had to make compromises- we too can accept the limitations of human life. We can stop judging ourselves harshly for not being perfect, and take ourselves to task for those things that we can change. We can stand back from what we are doing, in order to create Shabbat for ourselves and our loved ones. We can limit our involvement in things of no enduring merit and find some time to fight the good fight for our community, our people, and our nation.