Afterlife	Ethics	Messiah	Revelation
Angels	Evil	Mitzvot	Shabbat
Chosen People	Kabbalah	Prayer	Synagogue
Covenant	Life's Purpose	Prophecy	Torah
Creation	Love	Repentance	Zionism

 

Creation

Jewish cosmogony begins with the dual account of creation in the Torah. Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 describes God’s creation of the world in six days, followed by a day of complete rest. This creation features a carefully planned ordering of the cosmos: In the first three days God prepares the realms for life and habitation, as well as the means for sustaining life. In the second three days, God populates the various realms with the essentials of life and self-sustaining, self-reproducing creatures. Humanity is the climax of Creation and clearly the purpose of Creation, as well. Also distinctive in this account is that God creates via utterances (a sage reminder to us of the power of words for both good and ill) and by making distinctions. In this account, not only is there no hint of creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing) but indeed the Torah makes clear that matter existed prior to God’s Creation. The world was a watery, chaotic mess and much of God’s creating took the form of making distinctions between the undifferentiated mass of matter and bringing order to the chaos.

The second account of Creation opens with Genesis 2:4 and includes a separate, but complete story of creation centered on the Garden of Eden and its initial sole inhabitant, a man (ha-adam). The man is immortal and soon grows lonely, inspiring God to create a helpmate for him, a woman given a name meaning “life” - Eve (in Hebrew, Chavah). The second Creation story is less about God’s mastery over the primordial chaos and ordering of the cosmos, than it is about human mortality. The man and Eve are forbidden to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and when they violate this restriction, God deems it necessary to exile them from the Garden lest they also eat of the tree of life. With both moral discernment and immortality, they will be too much like God; what is more, they must not be both sexual and immortal. Therefore, God exiles them from the Garden and thus humanity is born of their newfound sexuality coupled with mortality.

The notion of “original sin” has no connection to Judaism nor, as far as Jews are concerned, to the biblical text. There is no curse of humanity mentioned in the Torah: The serpent is cursed (Genesis 3:14) but the people are not. To be sure, there are consequences to Eve and the man’s disobedience (they must live outside the Garden where work is required to cultivate food from the earth) and they will no longer be immortal. The pain of childbirth is not a punishment but rather the natural consequence of pregnancy; the sexual urge is the natural consequence of being a sexual being. Consider this: Had Eve not eaten the forbidden fruit, the man and Eve would still be living as the sole human inhabitants of the Garden and no other people would have come into being, include yourself. Consider the possibility that Eve knowingly and courageously chose mortality and reproduction (with all its consequent pain and suffering) in order that humanity might be born.

Scholars have long studied the points of similarity and difference between the biblical narratives of Creation and those of other ancient Near Eastern civilizations, particularly those of Mesopotamia. The most striking difference is the nature of the gods versus the character of God. Hebrew Scripture affirms a God who created humanity in love and with purpose, but also with free will. God cannot control them, but wishes them to make appropriate moral decisions.

In the Rabbinic period, the Creation narratives become the subject of numerous and multi pronged interpretations, ranging from mystical approaches to polemical approaches (e.g. refuting gnostic claims that God is not the sole Creative force in the universe). The Rabbis were also concerned with reconciling the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis to one another, for they contradict one another in a number of details. Two examples will suffice: Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai argued about the order of Creation, Bet Hillel claiming that earth was created before the heavens (on the basis of Genesis 2:4) and Bet Shammai claiming the opposite (on the basis of Genesis 1:1). They had a similar disagreement concerning whether God thought about each proposed act of creation by night and created by day, or vice versa. Concerning both disagreements, Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai is reported to have responded, “I am astonished! How could these great sages differ on this point? First, both [heaven and earth] were created simultaneously like a pot and its cover; and second, the intention was during both day and night while the actual fulfillment was in the waning of the sun.” Shimon ben Yochai, a disciple of Rabbi Akiba, living during and after the last great revolt against Rome, reflects the need in his generation to curtail excessive metaphysical speculation that threatens the unity of the community. Nonetheless, metaphysical speculation was rife and continued through the ages.

Much was written through the ages to explain the Creation narratives and extend Jewish cosmogony in many directions. Overall, the narratives were not interpreted literally, but rather seen as touchstones for delving into the core issues of life: mortality, ethics, human free will, the purpose of life, the relationship between God and humanity, human suffering. Jews did not concern themselves with whether God created the world in precisely six days, but rather with the religious meaning which can be derived from the stories, and the interpretations which could steer life in a better direction. The discrepancies between the two accounts (e.g. names of God, whether God initially created two sexes, or just one man) have long been recognized, but were not seen as impediments to interpreting the texts in such a way that people could use them as springboards to living their lives more fully and ethically. This was true for early mystics, medieval philosophers, the classical commentators, and modern scholars.

There is no conflict between Jewish cosmogony and modern science. Jews are deeply involved in the intellectual pursuits of modern physics, and do not promote the ideas of “Creationism” which we find intellectually shallow, narrow, and based on fundamental misunderstandings of the biblical text. Hebrew Scripture does not purport to be a scientific textbook about how the world came to be; it is a work of religious art concerning why the world came to be. Modern people would do well to learn to read the book on its own terms, particularly those who hold it to be the literal word of God.

Lastly, it is important to recognize that Shabbat is an integral part of Jewish cosmogony. While other metrics of time (the hour, day, month, and year) depend upon the physical structure of the universe, the week has no inherent connection to the physicality of the universe. It is a mirror of Creation itself. For six days we are commanded to work (Exodus 20:9), thereby reenacting the original Creation, but on the seventh day we are commanded to cease from our labors (Exodus 20:10), again engaging in imitatio dei (imitation of God) (Exodus 20:11). Thus Shabbat hallows both the Creation and the notion of sacred time, which has always been more important to Jews than sacred space. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel expressed it in The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man:

Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. Unlike the space-minded man to whom time is unvaried, iterative, homogeneous, to whom all hours are alike, quality-less, empty shells, the Bible senses the diversified character of time. There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious.

Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn; a shrine that even apostasy cannot easily obliterate: the Day of Atonement. According to the ancient rabbis, it is not the observance of the Day of Atonement, but the Day itself, the "essence of the Day," which, with man's repentance, atones for the sins of man.

In a time and age that worships material possessions, this is a timely reminder that our most precious resource of all is time. How we spend our time is a great determiner of the quality of our lives, as well as the quality we add to the lives of others.