ספר בראשית

The first thing G’d embarked on when creating the material universe was to create heaven and ‎earth.” It is an axiom, general principle, that G’d created the entire universe, and having done so, ‎never withdraws from the universe for even a single moment, [unlike sculptors or painters who, ‎once they have completed a sculpture or painting, move on to something else, having “finished” ‎with their previous “creation.” Ed.] This axiom is true both of what He created in the heavens and ‎what He created in the material, three-dimensional part of the universe. We pay tribute to this in ‎our daily prayers when we say ‎יוצר אור ובורא חושך‎, “He creates and fashions (present tense) light, ‎and He creates darkness.” When speaking of any accomplishments of G’d’s creatures however, we ‎speak of them in the past tense, i.e.‎יצר כסא‎, “he shaped a chair,” or ‎עשה מזרון‎, “he made a ‎mattress.” G’d’s creative activity is never completed, as the Torah testified in Genesis 2,3 ‎אשר ברא ‏אלוקים לעשות‎, “which the Lord has created in order to complete it.” This means that G’d is part of ‎every creature He ever created, and once man realizes that he is nothing without G’d Who has ‎created him and Who provides him with all the strength and creative stimuli that he possesses, he ‎will be able to relate to Hashem as an ongoing creative Force in His universe. This is ‎reflected every morning when we get up [after having used the washroom] and we refer to G’d ‎with the words ‎אשר יצר את האדם בחכמה‎, “Who has fashioned man with ‎חכמה‎,” the word ‎חכמה‎ ‎meaning the opposite of ‎אין‎, “nothing.” It is appropriate therefore that in that prayer we refer to ‎the creation of man in the past tense, as opposed to the line we quoted earlier, seeing that we ‎refer to something or somebody who already exists, i.e. ‎יש‎. This explains why the Ari z’al , ‎Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, said that when we refer to G’d as ‎ה' מלך‎, usually translated as “Hashem ‎‎is King,” the reference is to the ‎אין‎, “nothing,” i.e. G’d at any given moment ‎gives us life, -by not withdrawing it from us.- The implied meaning of the expression is that man is ‎‎“nothing” unless he continues to exist as part of G’d’s creative activity. The so-called ‎אין‎, “nothing,” ‎in terms of metaphysical beings, rules supreme in the regions beyond those that are part of the ‎physical universe, the one that we conveniently refer to as “nature.” This so-called ‎אין‎, is not really ‎a “nothing,” in terms of the universe, its “nothingness” is such only vis a vis the ‎physical part of the universe; in the celestial regions this “‎אין‎” rules supreme. [as opposed to the ‎חכמה‎ in our part of the universe. Ed. Although ‎יש‎ and ‎אין‎ are popularly perceived as absolute ‎opposites, not having anything in common, this perception is built on a fallacy; the linkage between ‎יש‎ and ‎אין‎ are the mitzvot, Torah commandments, performed by the Jewish people. The ‎commandments are performed in the section of the universe known as ‎יש‎, as a result of which ‎close contact is maintained between the aforementioned two domains of the universe. Ezekiel 1:14 refers to the “mitzvot” in their capacity as providing the link between the terrestrial ‎and the celestial part of the universe with the words ‎והחיות רצוא ושוב‎, “and the chayot ran ‎to and fro”. According to the Zohar II 288, the mitzvot and the Torah respectively, ‎are viewed as related to one another like the “hidden” is related to the “revealed,” both being part ‎of the same whole. Torah and mitzvot provide the link between these two domains, so that ‎each domain is not completely divorced from the other. This concept is contained in the letters of ‎the word ‎מצוה‎ when we divide it up into ‎מצ‎ and ‎וה‎. The letters ‎מצ‎ when we read the alphabet ‎backwards, starting with the letter ‎ת‎ are equivalent to the letters ‎יה‎, symbolising the totally ‎abstract Divinity, whereas the letters ‎וה‎ symbolize the hidden parts of the universe, ‎יש‎. The first ‎half of the word ‎מצוה‎ being read with the two letters used in reverse order of the aleph ‎‎bet, alludes to the “hidden” part of the universe, the domain exclusive to Divine, abstract ‎forces. Let us explain something about what precisely is “hidden” and what is “revealed,” when it ‎comes to the ‎מצוה‎, “Torah commandment.” When we perform a ‎מצוה‎, we cause G’d to become ‎pleased with having created man, the choicest of His creatures. When we comply with requests ‎made to us by a fellow human being, we can immediately gauge whether he is pleased by our ‎actions or not, either by his face indicating this, or by words of approval, something that is not the ‎case when we comply with G’d’s requests from us. Since He is invisible, and does not speak to us ‎as He did to Moses, “mouth to mouth”, we have no way of knowing if our efforts to please Him ‎have been successful. When we try to perform deeds that are for our (immediate) personal ‎benefit, we are able to determine if our efforts have succeeded. This then is the “hidden” element ‎present whenever we perform any of G’d’s commandments, ‎מצות‎. This is what the Torah had in ‎mind when it wrote (Deuteronomy 29,28) ‎הנסתרות לה' אלוקינו‎, “the hidden aspects of ‎‎mitzvah performance are reserved for the Lord our G’d;” on the other hand, ‎והנגלות לנו ‏ולבנינו עד עולם‎, “the benefits which the performance of the Torah confers upon us will be ‎revealed forever.” This is also the meaning of the words ‎בראשית ברא אלוקים‎, (addressed to us) “at ‎the beginning of G’d’s creative activity G’d created the ‎יש‎, a physical domain of the universe.” ‎Through His creating ‎יש‎, i.e. ‎ראשית‎, a beginning, the creation of heaven and earth came into being, ‎for prior to that there was only the ‎אין‎, the abstract universe. This is the meaning of Targum ‎‎Yerushalmi who renders this verse as‎ 'בראשית בחוכמא ברא ה‎', “at the beginning G’d created ‎by means of using intelligence found in the domain of the abstract regions.” ‎חכמה‎, as we pointed ‎out earlier, is a quality inherent in the terrestrial domain.‎