On Simchat Torah we finish our yearly reading of the Torah, and start again “in the beginning.” This week, we offer these reflections on the Book of Genesis (B’reishit).
The story of God’s creation is immediately followed by a second story of creation. Beginning with Chapter 2 of the Book of Genesis, we find ourselves in the Garden of Eden—the Paradise eventually lost.
Biblical scholars have written extensively about these two seemingly contradictory stories of creation, and Christian theology points to the second story as the Original Sin. Continuing, however, on the theme of creativity, Rabba Sara Hurwitz offers a beautiful reading of the Garden of Eden. She writes:
As glorious as the Garden of Eden sounds, it was not a place of human productivity and creativity. Like everything created in the world thus far, this was God’s special creation. First God fashions Adam, and then the Torah tells us that God created the Garden of Eden…The Midrash in Kohelet Rabbah 9 explains that God showed Adam all of Gan Eden and told him: “See how beautiful my creation is; all of it is for you.” God is the only creator in the Garden of Eden. Eden is not a place suitable for innovative human growth and not a place where Adam and Chava could create their own life.
One of the great tensions of religious thought and life is that between determination and free will. I have long thought that the story of the Garden of Eden, and our leaving it, was the telling of a narrative of free will. God—in your understanding—might have created the world and set it into motion, but we have the potential and the power to create our own lives. Again—what might we create that we can say: See how beautiful my creation is!
—Rabbi Sari Laufer