Genesis, 1:1 – 6:85

Portion Summary

Beresheet (In the Beginning) is the first portion in the Torah (Pentateuch). It tells the story of the creation of the world in six days, and the rest on the seventh day. It talks about the creation of man, his arrival at the Garden of Eden, and the creation of woman. This portion also narrates the stories of the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, Cain and Abel, the generations from Cain to Lamech, the ten generations from Adam to Noah, the corruption that engulfed their generations, and the renewed hope that emerged with the birth of Noah.

Commentary

Beresheet contains more stories than any other portion in the Torah. In many ways it is also the deepest, as it discusses the basis of our being—the creation of the soul.

The common soul was created out of the will to receive delight and pleasure, or simply, “the will to receive.” That will is the soul’s core, and it is affected by six qualities: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, and Yesod. These qualities penetrated the substance—the will to receive—and designed it in synchrony with the upper force, the Creator. The reason why man is called “Adam” is that the word comes from Adamah, from the verse, Adameh la Elyon (“I will be like the most high,” Isaiah, 14:14). This refers to Adam’s similarity to the Creator—the sublime bestowal, sublime love—the upper force that gave birth to him.

Adam is the structure of the soul that is equal in form to the Creator, and is in Dvekut (adhesion) with Him in the Garden of Eden. A garden means “desire,” and the garden is the part of the creature, Adam’s substance—it is the will to receive. Eden marks the degree of bestowal, the degree of Bina. Adam, who is on the degree of Bina, is in the Garden of Eden.

This does not pertain to our world or to the universe we know, but rather to the common soul that the Creator created. From the very beginning, the common soul has undergone a special preparation, “the sin,” because at its inception it was part of the upper force. This means that the soul had no authority of its own, nothing to its name, or any sense of independent existence. In a sense, the soul was like an embryo in its mother’s womb—on the one hand, it exists, on the other hand, it is part of its mother and each of its actions is ruled by that superior entity.

Such is the structure of the soul. While it exists in the Garden of Eden, the garden itself does not permit independence. “Independence” means that a person is beyond another’s control, in a state of preparing to assume self-control. The structure of the soul is the creature, the created being.

The word, Nivrah (creature), comes from the word, Bar (outside). In order to allow the structure of the soul to actually become a creature, it must be taken out and removed from the Creator. Put differently, it must be made opposite from the Creator, and this oppositeness is obtained through the sin.

Explaining the Sin

The soul consists of two forces: Cain and Abel. Abel wants to exist by raising the Hevel (breath/vapor), meaning the Reflected Light, or bestowal, the giving force. Cain is the opposite, wanting to draw all the pleasures, all the lights, inward, into the soul.

Cain—the quality that draws the pleasure, the light to itself, and not for the sake of the Creator, draws it until Abel, the desire to bestow, disappears. This act is called “Cain’s killing of Abel.”

The Kli (vessel) of the soul that receives light not for the sake of the Creator shatters into pieces, bits of self-centered desires. Each such desire is an individual soul that becomes enveloped in a wrapping similar to a Klipa (shell/peel). During the formation process of these broken souls, additional falls and descents occur along the spiritual degrees. They bring us to where we are in this world, each of us being a part of the single, common soul that was created.

It is precisely because we are detached from one another by our egos—immersed in the will to receive instead of in the will to bestow—that we now have an opportunity to correct. Because we were already corrected in the past, we can begin today to correct the ruin and sin that took place in the past. Although we aren’t the ones who committed the sin, our souls are prepared within to enable us to carry out the correction.

This correction is called “repentance,” constituting a return to precisely the state we were in while in the Garden of Eden. We must hurry and achieve that state, however, because the whole world is already moving toward connection, an essential process of unity and the perception of ourselves as a single soul. And finally, when we are all in bestowal and mutual love, we will succeed in returning to the structure, the state we maintained prior to the sin. In so doing, we will obtain the state we were in while in the Garden of Eden, and we will rise once more above the reality of this world.

Our current reality will disappear because it only exists when we are immersed in the will to receive in order to receive. When we have the intention to bestow, however, we can no longer exist in our current reality. Rather, our existence becomes completely spiritual and leads us back to the state we were in prior to our creation.

Questions and Answers

What is the meaning of Creation and what preceded it?

“Creation” refers to the creation of man and the world. The creation of the world preceded the creation of man by five days. The qualities Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, and Hod, are the first five days, and the quality called Yesod, the collection of the previous five, is the sixth day. Yesod ties them all together and becomes the Yesod (foundation) for the creation of man.

The wisdom of Kabbalah describes many actions preceding the creation of the world, such as “existence from existence” and “existence from absence.” These are the two forces that create all the states: the four phases of Direct Light, the worlds, Adam Kadmon, and Atzilut. However, we don’t relate these actions to our world because the creation of our world and of man are connected only to the world of Atzilut.

What is the Meaning of Beresheet (In the Beginning/Genesis)?

In Kabbalah, the word Beresheet (in the beginning/Genesis) doesn’t indicate the first act that took place in Creation. Beresheet indicates that Creation began from heaven and from earth, meaning from two opposite qualities. Heaven is the quality of bestowal, and earth is the quality of reception. Every other state of the creatures derives from those two qualities.

Why does the Torah tell the story from the middle and not from the beginning?

The Torah tells us only the part that is relevant to our correction. It is useless to learn what doesn’t belong to our correction because we neither feel it nor understand it, nor do we have those levels or qualities. The structure of Creation is vast, yet we learn only a fraction of it—that which is necessary for us to organize ourselves for the present time. This is exactly how we expose children to the world, as a gradual process, showing them more and more of the world as they mature so they can grasp and use their knowledge to their benefit.

What is a soul?

The soul is the will to receive that is already corrected into bestowal. Although its nature, its substance, is the will to receive pleasure, above that substance is a correction that man makes—working for the sake of others.

If there are only two forces in Nature—the will to receive and the will to bestow—where is everything else?

Indeed, there are only two forces, and degrees of the same two forces, meaning manners and levels of connection between them. The degrees relate to the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels.

The two forces in our world manifest as positive and negative forces. We know them as “electrons” and “protons,” and their various combinations form the different substances. These substances not only become solid, meaning “still”; they also become plants, or “vegetative.”

Plants possess a structure of absorption, emission, metabolism, and so forth. The next level, the “animate” level, demonstrates a structure that perceives itself as existing, moving, and growing.

Next develops the “speaking” level, the structure of a human being, unique in the story of Creation. Yet, in the end, everything is composed, in various states of development, of electrons and protons.

What is a woman and what is a man?

The will to receive within the soul is called a “woman,” and the will to bestow within the soul is called a “man” (Gever), from the Hebrew word, Hitgabrut (overcoming), because it overcomes the will to receive.

What is the meaning and purpose of the stories in Beresheet?

The stories in Beresheet should not be taken literally, as tales of a man and a woman who sinned, stories of snakes and apples, and so forth. In fact, the stories describe the qualities of the will to receive and the will to bestow.

All the qualities of bestowal and reception we read about in this Torah portion are our own foundations. Initially, our soul is one soul, a desire to receive filled to the brim with light. It is in perfect congruence with the light, the will to bestow, and is therefore at the degree of the Garden of Eden—the degree of Elokim (God).

This has nothing to do with our world, nor with anything we see and feel here and now. All the qualities described in the portion are forces of the upper dimension, from which the soul declines in quality, yet not as low as the corporeal world.

All the falls of the soul are preparations for our present situation. We, along with the universe, develop from the state in which the soul broke and received the will to receive, when the ego began to develop. We have been developing from that point ever since. However, it appears that we have been developing in only one dimension. Now, from our generation onward we are beginning to evolve in a more qualitative manner, ascending in our mental development.

As we are discovering the negativity in our lives, we are beginning to feel that life could and should be better, that our development is leading us to a dead end. Today when we study the Torah, we study it not only as a historic document, but rather we aim to use it to help us move toward our designated goal. That is, we must rise once more to the level, the state, and the qualities that we had in the Garden of Eden. This is actually our goal.

Today we are experiencing many crises because these forces disclose to us the depravity of our situation, and that we must correct ourselves and rise. This Torah portion, Beresheet, sheds light on our lives, on the world, and on the irreversible process we are going through.

What is the difference between our time and the time of Noah?

In Noah’s time, people weren’t as connected as they are today. It’s true that we have always been egoists, striving to succeed and to profit for ourselves. However, in the past, Nature didn’t press us as it is doing now, and we could do what we wanted.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us that we have been advancing very well using our egos to build our society. However, we now have reached the end of the road, although most of us have yet to recognize it. Our planet’s resources are dwindling, and we are interwoven in a network that binds us together against our will. We recognize that something is stopping our progress and preventing us from doing what we want. And when we cannot continue our business-as-usual approach to life, we become alarmed, and call it a “crisis.”

Today we are feeling these crises in family ties, in our culture, in education, science, and the economy. We have the sense that we are no longer in control of the world we live in. We’ve always run it according to the whims of our egos, but now we can’t. The world is closing in on us, forcing us to become congruent with one another. Bit by bit, the state that existed in the Garden of Eden is manifesting itself—a state in which we are tied to one another in mutual guarantee. In the Garden of Eden we were connected “as one man with one heart,” as a single family, a single soul. Now we must achieve that state, but we are not equipped for it; we’re broken.

How can a story such as that of Cain and Abel set an example?

The story of Cain and Abel doesn’t serve as an example of good things. From the moment contradicting forces appeared in Adam, he was driven to sin. Now we must return to the state we were in prior to his sin. The states we are experiencing today are compelling us to do it. We won’t be able to escape it. Life will pressure us until we seek a solution, and the solution will be to adapt ourselves to the state of infinity that existed when we were all connected as one.

From The Zohar: The World Was Divided into 45 Kinds of Color and Light

“Adam HaRishon followed the serpent down, and descended to know all that there is below. That is, he went down to extend the illumination of the left from above to everything that is below, to the place of the missing Malchut, like the serpent, since extension of the illumination of the Zivug (coupling) from above downward is the prohibition of the tree of knowledge. Therefore, because he came to draw from above downward, he was promptly attached to the Klipot (shells/peels).”

Zohar for All, Beresheet, 2, item 287 - 

Is the serpent the cause of all troubles?

The serpent is indeed the cause of all our problems. The serpent represents our every thought and desire to use others to the maximum. It is always in us, whether we’re aware of it or not.

It is not our fault that we are like that. We are at fault for only one thing: for being idle. We suffer not because we were born egoists or unkind, but because we are lazy about correcting ourselves. It’s as if we were children who received certain qualities at birth and cannot be blamed for it. However, if a child can do something about those traits but avoids doing it, society’s attitude toward him changes.

What we can do today? 

We can begin to learn about the new world we live in, where nothing works as it did: this includes the economy, industry, commerce, family, and education.

Today’s young people don’t know what to study—or if they should study at all. They can’t even decide if they should have children! People are faced with an unclear environment, where things appear blurry and unpredictable. We must examine and learn from Nature what is happening to us, but most people prefer not to hear about it. That reluctance to listen stems from the ego—the serpent.

We are facing a huge problem. The pressures are still not serious enough for people to understand that big troubles await us if we do not change. Therefore, we must circulate the information about the new world and make people aware in order to make things easier for them, before they suffer the consequences.

Moreover, if we advance before we face these blows, we’ll be like smart children who understand that otherwise they will suffer. Thus, we need to study harder and improve ourselves, or we will be forced to study and improve, regardless of our choice.

The challenge is for all of us, as this network keeps closing in on us, and the tighter it gets, the more difficulties we will experience. Economists will be unable to affect the world’s economic crisis—only if all of us unite can we bring change to the world. If we can do this, the monetary system, unemployment, industry, health, and the rest of the systems will be reorganized and improved. Without that mindset, no system will advance favorably.