Creation in and Out of Time

Professor Judith Baskin

Past, present, and future are imprecise categories in the Hebrew Bible and in Judaism in general.  The divine plan for creation and for human creatures, as we discern it from biblical literature, appears to be plotted in a linear trajectory beginning with Genesis 1 and heading for a messianic End of Days or Kingdom of God. Then, the prophet Isaiah's hopes of a world without war when the mountain of God's house will be established as a place of spiritual nourishment for all peoples will be fulfilled. However, the actual practice of Judaism is cyclical, plotted according to the weekly Sabbaths and the range of festivals and holy days positioned across the seasons of each year.  Although these holy days are generally linked to the ancient agricultural calendar, most of them also have historical associations that resonate in the present, just as they did in past times.  The Jew does not simply remember the Exodus from Egypt; she re-enacts it personally through the seder narrative.  On Shavuot, all of Israel again stands at Sinai and newly understands the divine revelation through the lens of the present moment.

   So, too, with Creation.  The narratives of Creation which appear in Genesis, especially the sublime narrative of Genesis 1-2:4, are not locked in times past.  Jews re-experience creation anew in a variety of ceremonies and customs.  Most central is observance of  the Sabbath.  In the version of the Ten Commandments that appears in Exodus we are enjoined to observe the Sabbath as a remembrance of Creation during which God labored for six days and rested on the Sabbath.  We, too, like God, are to pause from daily concerns and strivings as the Kiddush on Sabbath eve reminds us.

   Creation is invoked in the seven blessings of the wedding ceremony where we learn that marriage was part of the divine intention for human beings.  As the Genesis 2 narrative indicates, God did not want the initial human creature to be alone and constructed a companion from the very body of the first 'adam.  Only when two loving partners are reunited physically is true spiritual completion possible.

    The biblical Creation stories suggest the possibilities of new beginnings in human life.  The growing interest in mikveh immersion in Reform Judaism conveys the timelessness of rituals of rebirth based on immersion in water, the most primordial of elements.  Indeed, in Genesis 1, water, in the form of "the deep," exists even before the beginning of the beginning.  In some sense mikveh immersion, whether as a symbol of conversion, prior to marriage or any other personal milestone, or as an indication of healing, recovery from trauma, or the determination to wash off the past and mark a new beginning, is a highly physical remembrance and re-enactment of Creation that Jews have always known about and that has much to offer in the present.


   And finally, I return to Passover as our national Creation story.  The ancient Jewish calendar began in the spring, in the month of Nissan, the time of blossoming and rebirth.  Passover celebrates the birth of the Jewish people through the crucible of Egyptian slavery, redemption from oppression, and the revelation in the wilderness that forged a mixed multitude of former slaves into one people made unique through their covenant with the one God.  It is this Creation that unites and identifies us today and that we affirm each year during these ten days of Tishrei. Past, present, and future are united in our remembrances of Creation that reflect the eternal timelessness of our Creator and our own spiritual strivings in specific times and places.


With best wishes to all for a sweet and healthy SHANAH TOVAH.

Creation throughout History

Rabbi David Aaron

Rosh Hashanah does not exist in the Torah, at least not in the form we know it.  The first day of the seventh month constituted a shofar blasting day.  The eighth chapter of Nehemiah records the first public reading of text in the square by Jerusalem’s Water Gate.  It takes place on the first day of the seventh month, but even Ezra (or Nehemiah, both 5th century b.c.e.) did not relate to it as the new year celebration.  Rosh Hashanah as we know it took its form during the rabbinic period (as did Yom Kippur), and the freedom to make of it what they wanted provided the rabbis with considerable latitude.  One of the images attached to the new year celebration was the birth of the world.  But the notion of creation on Rosh Hashanah was relevant primarily for declaring God’s sovereignty over the world.  To the best of our knowledge, there was never a tradition of reading Genesis 1 on Rosh Hashanah—that had to wait until Simhat Torah, when the annual reading cycle was reinitiated.  But this too must be considered a rather late innovation, probably best ascribed to a Babylonian tradition, since the Jews of the land of Israel preserved a longer, three and a half year reading cycle for quite some time.

Creation imagery in the Torah is pretty much confined to Genesis 1 and 2.  In contrast, numerous psalms elucidate creation and many prophetic passages relate to creation themes when proclaiming God’s power over the world.  No where is this more poignant than in the literature of the so-called “Second-Isaiah” (or “Deutero-Isaiah”).  This is the author to whom we ascribe chapters 40-55 in the book of Isaiah.  Living after the Babylonian exile, this author was quite fixated on the principle that only the God whom Israel worshiped was involved in creation.  Here, then, are a series of proclamations asserted in God’s own voice through the prophet:

44:24 Thus said the LORD, your Redeemer, Who formed you in the womb: It is I, the LORD, who made everything, who alone stretched out the heavens and unaided spread out the earth;

45:6 So that they may know, from east to west, That there is none but Me. I am the LORD and there is none else, I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe -- I the LORD do all these things.

45:12 It was I who made the earth and created man upon it; My own hands stretched out the heavens, And I marshaled all their host.

45:18 For thus said the LORD, The Creator of heaven who alone is God, who formed the earth and made it, who alone established it -- He did not create it a waste, but formed it for habitation: I am the LORD, and there is none else. (JPS 1985 translation)

The language here is not particularly reminiscent of Genesis 1 and chances are that its author would not have known the first chapters of the Torah, either because they had not yet been written or they had simply not become the dominant rendition of creation in ancient Israel.  This author’s notion of creation is quite visceral.  Rather than having God speak to create—as in Genesis 1—the author depicts God as using is own hands to stretch out the heavens.  Even so, the emphasis is on his aloneness rather than the specifics of his activity.

If nothing else, the various texts we’ve touched upon over the past few weeks indicate how fluid Judaism was in antiquity, even when it came to imagery as fundamental as cosmology.  No single text gained ascendancy over the imagination of Jews until the Torah emerged as the official core of the biblical canon.  But once that took place, there was still no way for the imaginations of subsequent generations to be harnessed and prevented from reflecting anew on the mysteries of creation.  Were we to bring medieval texts on these first two chapters of Genesis to light, we would read reflections on the birth of the world as filtered through centuries of Greek and Arabic philosophy.  And if the Zohar were brought to bear, an entirely different vision of creation and creativity would emerge as dominant.  Whereas Isaiah was fixed on God’s aloneness, the Zohar (released around 1300) was quite adamant about God’s dependency, not on other deities, but on humankind itself for sustaining the existence of the universe.  Without the renewal of creation with each generation, the world’s structure would weaken.  The Zohar compares the study of Genesis 1—and the Torah in general—as the very act that renews the heavens.  With these words of the Zohar I then leave you, wishing you a year of health and fulfillment and a never-ending sense of wonder at the marvels of creation:

One should expend great effort in studying Torah day and night, because the Holy One, blessed be He, listens to the voice of those who study Torah, and every new interpretation of the Torah that is originated by someone who studies Torah makes a firmament. . . .
All new interpretations of wisdom become firmaments, which have a perfect existence in the presence of the Ancient of Days.