By Rabbi Jessica Lowenthal

Yesterday I said that new beginnings never come from nothing. Today we read: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 

If there was ever going to be a beginning that came from nothing- this would be it.

But in actuality, even the creation of the world was not without a foundation. The text says- V’ha’aretz hayta tohu v’vohu. Our translation says “and the earth was without form and void”. That certainly sounds like nothing. For centuries, the interpretation held that God created the earth from nothing. Before Genesis, there was only God. Then God spoke and the first particles of matter appeared. 

In reality, this interpretation of the Hebrew dates from ancient Greece in 250 BCE, before the common era. This was when the septuagint was written- the greek translation of the Hebrew bible. It should be stated: all translations are interpretations.

The original language of Hebrew has nuances that cannot be conveyed when translated, in Greek or english, or anything else. The theology that we have inherited- that God created the world from nothing- is an idea not native to the Hebrew.

Let’s look back at the first three verses of Genesis. We normally read- In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. But Rashi- a medieval french commentator on the Hebrew bible- tells us that these words should not be read chronologically. Everett Fox translates with Rashi’s comment in mind- 

“At the beginning of God’s creating of the heavens and the earth, 2 when  the earth was wild and waste, darkness over the face of Ocean, rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters—3 God said: Let there be light! And there was light.”

This is quite different than our translation. Before God began the process of creation, primeval matter existed. There was darkness, and water, and wildness- it was chaos. 

This seems to reflect the scientific reality of physics. Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, says that the beginning of existence is linked to “dark energy”, of which little is known. It seems to be a vacuum-like energy that is responsible for the continued expansion of the universe. Compare this to the dark and chaotic scene laid out in Genesis. It is possible that, despite being separated by over 2,500 years, the author or Genesis 1 and Lawrence Krauss are talking about the same thing. 

What does this mean for a Jewish understanding of creation? We are not locked into the belief that the world was created from nothing by a Divine being. Indeed, it seems that is a foreign concept, and the original Hebrew accepted that there was pre existing matter rushing around what we now call the world. 

In that case, what was creation? 

In the book of Genesis, God is creating order from chaos. God took the rushing, wild existence and formed it into something beautiful and logical, something that could support life. First, there was light- which allows for growth and sight. Then there was the creation of the sky and the earth, the separation of the land from the waters. Next, the planet was put into orbit, in perfect placement from the sun so that the newly formed earth could support life. Then all arrays of animals were created- evolving from the infrastructure that now existed. And finally, humans come into being, relying on everything that came before in order to survive. 

All of this came from order, from separation, from creating boundaries. 

On the seventh day, God rested. 

Genesis Rabbah, a collection of Midrash- stories that attempt to answer questions left by Torah, says, “What was the world lacking? Rest. The Sabbath came, and so came rest. The work was complete.” 

The story of creation is big and dramatic. Purely with language, everything snaps into existence. The earth rises from the ocean, trees tower over the land, animals cover the planet. But it isn’t until Shabbat, until rest, that creation is completed.

We are told over and over again that Shabbat exists because we must emulate God- God rested and so humans must rest. But that isn’t the only thing we must learn. God’s creation was order. We must also emulate God’s creation of order- finding structures that allow us to live a full and fulfilling life. When our worlds are in chaos, we cannot truly be happy, we cannot truly be at peace. By creating structures that work for our own lives, setting boundaries to protect what is holy to us, we can live a complete life. 

This year, take a serious look at your world and check in- What is your holy shabbat? What do you need to protect? Time with your family? Rest for yourself? Re-engaging with a favorite hobby? It is so easy to let our boundaries become porous, until there is no separation between work and rest, and we find ourselves in chaos. Give yourself permission to assert your needs. Do not be afraid. 

“Then the heavens and the earth, and everything within them were finished. On the seventh day, God finished the work and God rested. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because God rested.”

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