We start it all over again. This week, we begin reading Parashat Bereshit, the beginning of the book of Genesis. That first word in the Torah - Bereshit - is actually not so easy to translate, but means something like ‘in the beginning’ or ‘began’ (as in, 'when God began to create'), or ‘at first.’ But interestingly, commentators focus much less on the ambiguous meaning of this first word of the Torah, and focus more on the first letter itself.
Why did the Torah start with the letter bet, the second letter of the alphabet? Wouldn’t it have made more sense for the Torah to begin with aleph, the first letter? I want to share two responses to this question, and I think they both speak to what it means that we read the Torah anew every single year.
A midrash teaches that the form of the letter bet - closed on all sides but open at the front, towards the direction in which we read - suggests that we too can only approach the text with a sense of moving forward. When we start something new, even something we’ve done before, we may feel a desire to dwell on the past. We might feel bound by how things had previously been, looking backwards, but the bet asks us to have an orientation toward the future.
And I think the bet of Bereshit is also a reminder of the opportunity for second chances. Sometimes the first time we try something (or the second or third…) it doesn’t work out the way we’d like, but the bet reminds us to try a new path. Plan B, plan bet.
Both of these interpretations inspire me as we start the reading of the Torah anew, this Shabbat. When we’ve read the same stories, the same Torah, over and over again, it may be our instinct to fall back on lessons we’ve learned in the past or ways that we approached the text previously. Bet reminds us that we can find new meaning, that we can go forward anew even if we’ve been in the same place before. And as we’ve just started a new year, there are always second chances. There are always re-dos. We can always learn something new from the stories we’ve seen before, we can always approach the text in a new way.
I hope this Shabbat Bereshit reminds us that even when we re-read Torah for the umpteeth time, or even when we’re in a situation that we’ve been in before, we try to look at it with a fresh perspective. We have the ability to move forward, approaching the text or situation with a sense of openness about what new insight it might teach us.
Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Sarit
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