Perashat Bereshit 5776

Perashat Bereshit 5776

Everything in life appears to have a beginning. Life itself, eating the first foods, the first steps, first class, first time visiting something and many other examples can come to mind. Yet, it is customary to have a mourner eat an egg during the first meal of Shib’a - sitting; to convey the message that similar to an egg, it has no begging or end but where it begins, it seems to end, and vice versa. The lesson is that life has no beginning and end; it is continuous like the shape of a whole egg. 
 
Perashat Bereshit seems to teach us that indeed there is a beginning; its name alludes to that:  “In the Beginning”. The Torah begins with the reading of Bereshit, and as we conclude the reading with “VeZot Haberakha” we ‘begin again’ with “Bereshit”. 
 
This reminds me of a children’s song, “Michael Finnegan.” The earliest documented reference to this song is in the Hackney Scout Song Book from 1921. The song says: “There was an old man named Michael Finnegan He had whiskers on his chin-again. They fell out and then grew in again. Poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again.” The singer is never able to stop as it says to ‘begin again’; it is known as an ‘unboundedly long song. 
 
Life indeed is a Michael Finnegan song; it really has no end or beginning - it is continuous, like a shape of an egg. We ‘finish’ one thing and we ‘begin’ something else. Yes, it appears as though we are finishing and we are beginning, but what we are really doing, is transforming one thing to another. Indeed, The 1st Law of Conservation of Matter states that, “matter cannot be created or destroyed, but can be transformed.” How is it then our understanding of “Bereshit”? is it a beginning or it is only a transformation of Matter?
 
This is where we humans differ with G-d. The A-mighty is able to create matter and indeed He created it. That is what Bereshit is all about! He created matter and He instilled in it its Laws of Conservation.  He is the only one that has created, and continues to create. We only transform matter, we continue this process of transformation by ‘creating’ other forms of matter and by continuing life. 
 
It is important that every year, as we ‘begin again’ a New Year, a new season, a new school cycle, and a new cycle of the reading of the Torah, to reaffirm our Emuna - faith in the A-mighty as the Creator and Master of the world; we are His creatures and He created us in this world to build a just society that has its belief in G-d and in His principles. During the year and throughout our lives, we are very busy ‘transforming matter’ -be it in our personal lives, in our professional lives and in everything that we do. We tend to forget that the world had a beginning, and that beginning had a Creator that is G-d A-mighty - and that G-d continues to create and remains involved in the world. 
 
May this new ‘beginning’ be inspirational, encouraging and promising to usher success in our endeavors, blessings in our actions, and goodness in our deeds.