by rabbi lavey derby
Bereshit
Genesis 1:1-6:8
Isaiah 42:5-43:10
My father the rabbi began his career as a mathematician. And even as he led a New York congregation for 43 years, he often carried a mathematical puzzle in his pocket in case he had a few moments of free time.
Mathematics shaped his worldview and his theology. Influenced by the naturalistic theology of his teacher, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, my father came to view God as “the fundamental equation of the universe.”
To solve any equation, one needs only plug in the correct constants and use the proper operations to discover the value of the variables. As a theologian, my father believed that the questions of life (the variables) could be solved in the same way, because God’s world was logical and orderly.
Although this is not a theology I ever found particularly satisfying (algebra still gives me a headache!), for my father it was the source of religious meaning worthy of a lifelong dedication.
Parashat Bereshit, with its sweeping story encompassing the creation and the cosmic prehistory of humanity, always suggests to me an equation of its own.
Bereshit begins with a highly stylized and poetic description of creation as a systematic process guided by conscious wisdom, with clear boundaries creating a structure in which life might thrive. The world is created perfect, with everything in its right place. There is no death, no violence, no killing — even for food. All is harmony, and a sense of wholeness and completeness — of Shabbat — envelopes all of creation.
This was the world God undoubtedly intended to create. This is the world that becomes the prophetic model for the messianic era, and insight the rabbis understood when they called Shabbat “me’eyn olam habah” — a taste of the world to come.
Yet this world does not stand. Harmony is shattered by murder. The children of Cain build cities, promote animal husbandry, invent musical instruments and forge iron and copper tools. While they create more advanced levels of culture and technology, their moral sense rapidly deteriorates. Lamech boasts that he kills indiscriminately (4:23-24) and places his faith in newly forged weapons rather than in God.
Men find themselves driven by lust and engage in unnatural unions. The parshah ends with humankind in deep moral depravity, and God, who announced that the world was “very good,” now feels regret. What began with hope for harmony ends with despair, and the hint of a coming cataclysm.
What has been added to the equation of harmony that turned it so disastrous? Simply, the introduction of human free will.
Bereshit insists on it. As God is absolutely free to act, humanity also must be free. Without free will, we would not be in the image of God; with free will, God’s equation of perfect harmony is destroyed. If a perfect world plus human free will equals corruption, violence and decadence, what new variable could be included the equation to return it to its original state of goodness and wholeness?
As moderns and readers of the Torah, we think of this moral algebra as our equation to solve, but, poignantly, the Torah makes the predicament God’s. We are left with the image of God, suffering, angry at the unraveling of God’s great cosmic equation, outraged that the very free will that makes humans godly is also that which is capable of destroying everything.
It seems to me that the rest of the Torah is God’s attempt to solve this equation. In next week’s parshah, one possible solution is tried and rejected. The prophet Jeremiah, who will witness the Temple’s destruction as the consequence of Israelite rebelliousness, will suggest an equally radical solution: “I will inscribe my teaching on their hearts … and all of them … shall heed me.”
But for the moment, we are left with God pondering how to save the project of creation. As we begin reading this story once again, we might ponder God’s dilemma — and ours.
Rabbi Lavey Derby is the senior rabbi of Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon and on the faculty of the Wexner Heritage Foundation.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California