Perashat Beresheet 5779

Perashat Beresheet 5779

We are poised, ready.
Beresheet, the beginning.

We tend to see things in their simplest forms:
Beginning. End. 
Happiness. Sadness. 
Success. Failure.

However, the truth is anything but simple. Every end is really a beginning. Every beginning is also an end. When things end, however painfully, they make a space. In that space we build new, often better things. And when things begin, they tend to close previous chapters.
We must fail in order to succeed. If we aren't failing at all, odds are we aren't truly succeeding either. The greatest rewards come from the greatest risks. True happiness is hard work. These polar opposites, upon closer inspection, are not nearly as far from one another as we like to think. 

Our Beresheets, our beginnings, are always built on our Vezot Haberachas, the last perasha of the Torah. Whether the ending was what we had hoped for, or not, it becomes a beracha in retrospect, when we learn from it, build on it and grow from it. 'Vezot Haberacha', and this is the blessing.

Our Rabbis teach us that the first letter of the Torah, Bet (Beresheet), and the last letter in the Torah, Lamed (Yisrael), spell the word Lev, or heart. So we learn that the Torah is meant to be inscribed on our hearts and not just our lips, that our missvot should be done with passion, and that we use its commandments and wisdom to develop a sensitive and caring heart. 

But this lesson always bothers me, because if that is what it is trying to teach me, it doesn't do the best job. The first letter is a Bet and the last is Lamed, which spells Bal not Lev! 
The answer is that when a person first starts learning Torah it IS Bal. Bal is the root of the word Balbel, which means to mix up or confuse. The Torah is meant to be a lifelong mission. It is meant to DISRUPT, to challenge us, to challenge our ideas and to redirect our passions and open vistas of generosity, empathy and all types of personal growth and self control. So when we first start to study it catches us off guard. Bal.

Then we get to the end. As we begin again, it starts to sink in and to make sense. It starts to speak to our hearts. Then, as we go from end to beginning, it truly is in our hearts. Lev.
This is not a journey along a straight line. It cycles round and round spiraling ever higher to greater and greater heights of success. Each time, when we conquer the next challenge, we are again stretching ourselves beyond our comfort zones, Bal, until we make it to the next peak, Lev.

Bal, Lev, Bal, Lev, so on and so forth, in a beautiful swirling pattern of progression.
After the magnificent Simhat Torah we experienced, and after celebrating our past year with such zeal, joy, passion and fervor, we are truly ready and poised to begin. Building on our past. Securing our future.
Again.

Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Shlomo Farhi