Who’s the Hero and Who’s the Villain?

Oct 10, 2012 By Richard Kalmin | Commentary | Bereishit

To state things up front, my claim is that Adam and Eve did not just undergo a fall, but also a significant rise; to make that claim, I’m going to argue that two of the main characters, the snake and God, have often been misunderstood. The snake has gotten a bum rap, and God has usually gotten off much too easily.

Bereishit with a Capital Bet

Sep 22, 2013 By David Marcus | Commentary | Bereishit

With this week’s parashah, we once again commence the cycle of reading the Torah from the first chapter of Genesis, which begins with the Hebrew word bereishit.

An Anthology of Beginnings

Oct 9, 2015 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Commentary | Bereishit

“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” These opening words of the Torah in most translations are clear, straightforward, and well known. But they don’t render the Hebrew original correctly. As Rashi already pointed out, the first verse of the Torah is not, by itself, a grammatical sentence. Instead, it is part of a longer sentence that continues through the end of verse three.

Creation As Preparation for Sinai

Oct 21, 2006 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Bereishit

Why did the Torah begin where it does, at the very Beginning, rather than with the first commandment given the children of Israel, which comes well into the Book of Exodus?

Bereishit

Jan 1, 1980

¹ When God began to create heaven and earth — ² the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water — ³ God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

Minding Our Words

Oct 17, 2014 By Anne Lapidus Lerner | Commentary | Bereishit

On Simhat Torah, we complete the reading of the humash—all 79,796 Hebrew words of it—and when we’re done, what do we do? We roll it up to the very beginning and start to read it all over again. Words, words, words. Devarim (Deuteronomy)—which, of course, means “words”—ends with Moses’s death after the conclusion of his lengthy final oration; Bereishit opens with God demonstrating the power of words by creating the world with them.

Bereishit

Jan 1, 1980

⁵ Thus said God the Lord,
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread out the earth and what it brings forth,
Who gave breath to the people upon it
And life to those who walk thereon:

Mortals and Immortals

Oct 17, 2014 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Commentary | Bereishit

We human beings tend not to see something that doesn’t fit our preconceived notions, including when we read the Torah.

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