Friday, October 20, 2006

DVAR TORAH: Bereishit/Shabbat Machar Chodesh

I have before mentioned certain scribal oddities that assist in finding specific places in the Torah. I would say that this Torah Portion, Bereishit (also known as Genesis) is one of the easier ones to find. This is on account of the large ב that begins it. Oh yeah, and it also happens to be the very first thing in the Torah. I think this qualifies it as the easiest thing to find in a Torah scroll. Finally, a south paw like me can easily do hagbah on the Torah.

Why does the Torah begin here? According to many of our sages it should have began with the mitzvah (told to us during the preparations for the Exodus) to mark Nisan as the first of months, a formative event in Jewish history. Instead, we start with THE formative event in universal history (in more ways than one): the Creation of the World and the Inception of Time.

We start in the beginning; the very beginning.
If you were Adam or Eve and you had the choice of whether or not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge (of Good and Evil), what would you do? Before you decide, consider the possible ramifications of both.

EATING FROM IT: Death, illness, painful childbirth, labor, knowledge accumulation, uncertainty, insecurity

NOT EATING: Paradise, Immortality, innocence, obliviousness, God providing everything, security, repetitiveness

I realize that people rarely if ever post comments, but I ask for a response on this one to vote for whether or not you would vote. A simple online poll. If you would also be willing, tell me why you voted for your choice in the comments section of this blog entry.


If you were Adam or Eve and had the choice to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, would you eat from it?
Yes (Eat)
No (Don't eat)










Okay, it also happens to be Machar Chodesh, my Bar Mitzvah Haftarah (which occurs when Rosh Chodesh falls on a Sunday (except for a few certain months)). It speaks of the greatest friendship of all time, Jonathan and David. Jonathan, Crown Prince of Israel, and David, the shepherd who was already anointed to succeed King Saul (who was told he’d lose the throne in Chapter 15) were still best friends (even though they logically should have been competing for the succession) and were willing to die for one another. What do you think about this?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

yes, we have all those bad things because of eating the apple, but if we did not eat the apple, we would not be here today, because we would've fullfilled gods purpose for creating the worl, and he would've ended it by now if we did not make another mistake