Bereshit
By David Beizer, Kiryah REC 2005-06, 5765
This week’s parasha, Bereshit, details the first steps taken by God in turning the world into what it is today. He first creates the world, creating each aspect of it on its respective day and resting on the seventh. After every creation except for man, God recognizes that his creations are good. After creating the world he places Adam, the product of the sixth day, in Gan Eden, and creates a woman from Adam’s rib who is named Chava. Eventually, he drives them out due to the infamous transgression regarding the Tree of Knowledge. He punishes Adam and Chava for their actions, and makes it so that Adam must now toil over the ground to create food and that Chava will now suffer during childbirth. After Adam and Chava procreate, their son Cain, driven by jealousy, kills his brother, Able, and is told that the ground will no longer produce for him and he must wander the earth. The rest of the parasha details the lineage of Adam and various things that happen to them, until the tenth generation when Noach is born.
If one pays close attention to this parasha, one notices that there are a number of acts of separation present in it. During creation, God separates light from dark, the upper waters and lower waters (clouds and the sea), the greater light from the lesser light (the sun from the moon), the land from the sea and the various types of animals from eachother. Post creation, he separates woman from man, humanity from Gan Eden and Cain from wherever he was.
From this, a very important lesson regarding life can be learned. Whenever doing, becoming or creating anything, one of the first steps one has to do in order to recognize things as “good” is to differentiate and prioritize. One must recognize what is good and what is bad, what is moral and what is immoral ,and what is important and what is unimportant. Essentially, one must recognize what is light and what is dark. After this differentiation, one must assign each thing in its proper place and act based on that.
