WRJ Voices: B'reishit

After several weeks of ritual activity:  preparing for the High Holidays, celebrating the New Year, reflecting on our past year’s successes and failures, sending good wishes to family, friends and visitors, asking forgiveness, forgiving ourselves, fasting, building and celebrating in temporary shelters, and finally, dancing with the Torah as we re-roll our sacred scrolls, I find myself pretty exhausted. I am ready for that quiet start to the Torah stories provided in the poetic description of the creation of time, space, and life found in this week’s Torah reading, B’reishit.

The first creation story in Torah is no loud bang of spectacle and explosions. In this version, God’s spirit glides over the darkness that covers chaotic waters and speaks light into existence with “Let there be light!” Then, like an artist admiring his own creation, “God saw how good the light was.” Each subsequent act of creating is God saying it is so: day and night, the sky and stars, the earth, seas, vegetation, plants, fruit trees, birds, sea creatures, creeping creatures, wild animals, domestic animals, and finally, humans. God proclaims each creation exists, even the seventh day as a day of rest. And, everything is good. For me, this story is especially powerful in its simplicity. Yet, if this were the end of the tale, what would be the point?

Of course, this is only the foundation, the potential of a perfect world. In the second creation story, life gets complicated with the introduction of man and woman, a commandment, a temptation, an act of disobedience, denial of guilt, loss of innocence. Struggle enters God’s perfect garden. As their punishment, man and woman and their progeny must work to live and they will experience anguish and death. The Torah story goes on to record the human introduction of murder and other “wickedness” of indeterminate sorts. God decides the only way to respond to this utter disappointment is to erase humans from the face of the earth. Luckily, Noah gives God hope for humankind and all is not lost.

So, what happened to all the good that God saw when he finished creating the heavens and the earth? It cannot be found in today’s headlines filled with corruption, human trafficking, gun violence, repression, genocide, war, and destruction of our world through the myopia of greed and self-interest. Why must we humans be so flawed? Why, on the other hand, do I feel satisfied with the complete creation story in B’reishit?

Without the need to work, to struggle, to experience anguish and death, there would be no accomplishment, no breakthroughs, no peace, no real experience of living. There would be no progress toward a more perfect world. Torah teaches us that we are (still) partners with God in tikkun olam or repairing the world. There is much in our world that is in need of repair. As Women of Reform Judaism, we work together as partners with God. We raise our voices through resolutions, advocacy guides and legislative lobbying in support of progressive change. We use our philanthropy to support progressive Jewish ideals. We cultivate the personal and spiritual growth of our members. As individuals and as members of WRJ, we work to reflect God’s good light. The good God created is in us all, but we need to work to let it shine.

Zabe Williams is a WRJ Board member, WRJ Midwest District First Vice President, and a Past President of the Temple Beth-El Sisterhood in South Bend, IN.