Weekly Message
October 23, 2024
21 Tishrei 5785
Parashat Bereshit
Dear Friends,
Tohu wa-bohu or Tohu va-Vohu (תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ) is the state of the universe at the very beginning. The King James Bible translates it as “without form and void”. The JPS translates it similarly as “unformed and void." Everett Fox translates it as “when the earth was wild and waste” while Robert Alter’s recent translation continues along the same lines with “the earth then was welter and waste." Tohu on its own means emptiness or futility. This phrase appears elsewhere but only in reference to the original text in Genesis. I have commented on this phrase before. It has always caught my attention.
Why focus on this phrase, which appears within the very first sentence of our Torah? The music of the phrase has always captured me. I invite you to say it out loud and allow yourself to go with the feeling that it evokes. For me it has always evoked a sense of messiness -- untidiness in the most chaotic manner. It evokes an image of things swirling around in a random manner. If ever there was a time where this was true, it is now. Here is Robert Alter’s translation (and yes, all translation is interpretation and I am choosing this one): “When God began to create heaven and earth and the earth was then welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said, “Let there be light."
At the beginning of this new year, with all that is going on in the world, this first sentence of the Torah gives one hope - the possibility of order after extreme chaos.
At our final Scientists in the Synagogue event this past Sunday, we were made well aware of the way order and chaos reside side by side in our universe. We humans strive to find the order that has shaped our universe, testing out many theories in order to create a path through the complexity and lack of clear obvious answers.
We are living through a chaotic period in the world on every level. It is a time of “Tohu va-Vohu." Just as it was in the very beginning, we are experiencing the possibility of moving out of this place of chaos. One short year ago, extreme chaos entered our world and we continue to be shaken even as we grieve, searching for answers among the ashes.
As we find ways to dance once more, even through the pain of this time in which we find ourselves, our tradition is here to provide a way forward. Hearing the story of the days of creation, we are reminded that we have responsibility in this world to all that lives within so that we never go back to that moment where absolutely everything was swirling around. It was light that changed it from chaos to a world where life was possible. We are also reminded that if we look deeply into the days of Creation, that a day as defined in the Torah need not be a day in the life of humans. We are part of a larger, longer process and it is grander than any individual.
Every week when we celebrate Shabbat, we pay tribute to the process of going from darkness covering the deep to a place of light. As we light candles in the darkness, their true power is revealed as a source of hope.
This year as we go from a Yizkor service to celebrating Simchat Torah, we will recall what we have lost even as we embrace the future and begin the process of dancing, embracing, and struggling with our Torah anew.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Linda Shriner-Cahn