PDF version of pages 1-3: Breishit 5785 Tzedek part 1
PDF version of page 4: Breishit 5785 Tzedek part 2
Text version of materials shared for Tzedek Chicago Torah study 10/26/24.
PAGE 1
Before God makes any act of Creation, the Earth is “Confusion and Chaos.” Torah does not explore the Confusion and Chaos or examine what is under the surfaces of water and Deep. Some teachers consider these dangerous directions of inquiry and suggest that the Torah’s initial ב / bet is pointing us, very specifically, forward – i.e., leftward in Hebrew –
[The text above is linked with an image showing a stylized Torah scroll open to “Breishit Bara Elohim… – – In the beginning God created…” and an arrow pointing leftward into the scroll’s story.
The text below is linked with an image showing a stylized Torah scroll open to the final words: “…l’einei kol Yisrael — …in the sight of all Israel” and a “prohibited” circle symbol on top of an arrow pointing beyond the end of the scroll.]
Moses dies, and the God-Wrestlers’ wilderness journey ends at a river crossing. Torah does not venture beyond that river or watch the Yisraelites step into history. Instead, the final lamed [ל] of YisraeL [ישראל] bends around toward that initial bet [ב] of Breishit [בראשית], restarting the tale, and returning us to more universal territory.
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This process of return in the Torah cycle, linking that last lamed to that first bet, forms lamed-bet = לב = lev, “heart.” This “heart” leads to many teachings, including these:
- The heart of the Torah is the people relating to the tale and trying to live its words; • The heart of Torah is the “white space” between the words, our interpretations in every age;
- We cannot spell “lev” without starting over, learning again and again;
- And the heart of the Torah leads us, again and again, to consider the interplay between
- — the particular — the relationship of one group of people and the prophet, Moses, to God — and
- — the universal: light, soil, labor, knowledge, exile and the search for home.
Looking further into the lev letters: That initial ב [bet] can be read as cautioning us away from some inquiries: Some say we are not meant to ask what is above, what is before, or what is below. The final lamed [ל] looks open both to what is behind us and to what is to yet come: The top embracing the relationship story just told; the bottom reaching around to new cycle, new insights.
[Image shows large letter lamed, with a note pointing to the rightward focused top of the letter]
“Top embracing the relationships developed and stories just told”
note pointing to the leftward focused bottom of the letter
Bottom reaching to embrace a new telling [with long arrow pointing back to a large bet, noting]
“closed to what is above, closed to what is before; closed to what is below…open only to what is ahead”
PAGE 3
More Hebrew word-play links the Torah’s opening and closing words:
[בראשית] breishit, bet-reish-alef-shin-yud-tav] AND
[ ישראל] yisrael, yud-sin-reish-alef-lamed
The Torah’s 2nd, 3rd, and 4th letters form the Hebrew word for “head,” rosh: [ר–א–ש ] reish-alef-shin
As the Torah closes, rosh appears transformed within the name, Yisrael: [ש–ר–א] sin-reish-alef
[Images show the same graphic of stylized Torah scroll, this time with head outlines on either side of the scroll, faces looking outward and bet-reish-alef-shin one one end and lamed-sin-reish-alef on the other.
With each new Torah cycle we have an opportunity to wrestle differently, to approach the relationship anew.
Is there a mind-set you’d like to transform this year for yourself and/or the community?
Is there unexplored relationship territory that could help us build in new directions?
[Then a pair of outlined heads facing one another]
What might we face in, or through, Torah in the coming year?
PAGE 4
Ecclesiastes 8:1
Who is like the wise man, and who knows the meaning of the adage:
“A man’s wisdom / chochmat adam lights up his face [ta’ir panav]
[v’oz panav y’shuneh — and/but strength, his-face, changes (translations differ)]”
Rashi links this verse with Exodus 34:29-30, in which Moses’ face radiates light after coming down from Mount Sinai. Ecclesiastes Rabbah 8:1 includes several stories illustrating how learning a new bit of Torah can light up a person’s face.
Another story relates that it was obvious Adam had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil when his face lit up…. so light, knowledge, and sin are linked…. Eve never seems to end up with any light or knowledge, just sin.
We could read “chochmat adam” as a less gendered “earthling’s wisdom” and consider what kind of wisdom would light up someone’s face and what kind of change would ensue in the individual and in others?
Or we could take a more specifically gendered view that accounts for power
Kohelet only sees non-slave males as fully human, specifically disparaging and objectifying toward women See also Annabelle Farmelant’s poem “Skyscraper” (1960) — below.
More translations:
Bishop’s 1568 but vnshamefastnes putteth it out of fauour
Geneva 1587 the strength of his face shalbe changed.
King James boldness of his face shall be changed
Brenton Septuagint 1851 A man’s wisdom will lighten his countenance;
but a man of shameless countenance will be hated.
NIV changes its hard appearance.
New Living Translation softening its harshness.
Berean Study Bible sternness of his face is changed.
New American Standard Bible makes his stern face brighten up
NASB 1977 causes his stern face to beam.
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Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and AnnabelleFarmelant. Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 2016. Poem originally appear in Hebrew in Iyyim bodedim (Desert Islands), 1960.
גורד שחקים
יֶלֶד, הַכִּכָּר שָׁטוּחַ
זְהִירוּת, הַמּוֹרָד שָׁקוּעַ
מוּלְךָ, הַשַּׁחַק, עָצוּם.
תְּכַסֵּהוּ, הוּא עֵירֹם
תִּהְיֶה לְאִישׁ, כְּאָדָם הָרִאשׁוֹן
אֶת כָּל הַשְּׁחָקִים תִּגְרֹד
לְאַט יֶלֶד, הַיָּם עָמֹק.
תַּעֲמִיק מֵעָל
הֱיֵה אִישׁ חָלָל. — (c) Annabelle Farmelant, 1960
SKYSCRAPER
Child, the plaza is flat.
Take care, the slope sets
before you, the sky, immense.
It’s naked. Cover it.
You will be a man, like Adam
you will scrape the whole sky.
Slowly, child, the sea is deep.
Descend up.
Spaceman. — (c) Adriana X. Jacobs, 2015
“Adam Rishon,” the first Adam, appears in Jewish legend.
R. Eleazar said: The first man reached from earth to heaven…But when he sinned, the Holy One, blessed be He, laid His hand upon him and diminished him…
— B. Sanhedrin 38b (other legends speak of his size, East to West)
Adam Rishon took up all the space. Sort of like God before tzimtzum — the contraction that made space for Creation. And not unlike men in the poet’s experience, in the 1950s. So much of Farmelant’s writing itself — and her attempt to carve out a literary career — focuses on the difficulties she and other women experienced just trying to take up space: on the sidewalk, in the home, in the workplace, and, most particularly, in any world of “ideas.”
Annabelle (Chana Biala) Farmelant was born in Boston in 1926; she died in New York City in 2019 and was buried in Boston. With the exception of a few years in Israel in the early 1950s, Farmelant spent most of her life on the east coast of the U.S. She attended local public schools in Boston as well as the high school program of Hebrew College and then Hebrew College (Boston). She wrote Hebrew poetry in college and for some years afterward but then focused on writing plays. See introductory material in Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shore and “Hebrew on a Desert Island: The Case of Annabelle Farmelant,” by Adriana X. Jacobs, Studies in American Jewish Literature, Volume 34, Number 1, 2015.
More on https://songeveryday.org/2019/02/11/descending-up-and-a-rambling-prayer/
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Final page is just copy of image, showing an individual standing in a puddle which reflects an urban skyline
"A Song Every Day" 