Today the World is Conceived
Rosh Hashanah 1984
Saratoga Springs, New York
This day, Rosh Hashanah, is also known as Yom Harat Olam, “the day the world is conceived.” From this name, it is clear that on one level, this holy day is about Creation. I’d like to share with you a series of observations made by Jews and non-Jews over the centuries about the nature of creation.
Observation #1, made two thousand years ago by a rabbi living in Palestine: “Just as the human body has skin, so the earth is covered with soil. And just as the human body sprouts hair, so the earth sprouts trees and grasses. And just as the human body is protected by nails and teeth, so the earth is protected by plates of rock. And just ass the human body is filled with the breath of life, so the earth is filled with winds.”
Observation #2, made by Dr. Lewis Thomas, in his book Lives of a Cell: “The other night, driving through a hilly, wooded part of New England, I wondered: What is the earth like? What is it most like? Then, for a moment, it came to me. It is most like a single cell.”
Observation #3. Modern physicists tell us that the activity of the minute, infinitely small particles within the atom most closely resembles the inconceivably vast movement of matter and energy in the universe.
Observation #4: The medieval Jewish mystics conceived of the cosmos as a hierarchy of ten worlds, which they charted out on a figure of the human body—the highest world on the head, then the right and left arms, the heart, the gut, the genitals, the right and left feet…each human part represents one world of being. Thus they imagined that the entire Olam—all of time and space—had the form of a human being.
Observation #5, made one thousand years earlier, by a rabbi of the Talmud: “One who saves a single life, it is as though they have saved the entire universe.”
In their reflections on creation, the ancient rabbis intuited what modern science is now confirming: that the universe resembles one of those wooden dolls which keep opening up to reveal smaller identical dolls. The universe, our planet, our bodies, our cells and the tiny universe of our atoms—each is a living, pulsing system of smaller bodies, a harmony of spheres. And perhaps there are even smaller universes, or even vaster universes, which are still beyond our knowing.
It was these recurring patterns in creation that inspired the rabbis when they gave Rosh Hashanah its second name: Yom Harat Olam—the world is conceived. Why? What do these repetitions in creation have to do with Rosh Hashanah?
Let me digress for just a bit. Rosh Hashanah is only one of four new years mentioned in the Talmud. We have a New Year of Trees, a new year for taxes, a new year for the pilgrimage cycle, and this day, the first of Tishri, the new year of the self.
This is the most difficult season for most of us to celebrate because it commemorates no historical event. These days have nothing to do with agricultural cycles, or seasonal phenomena. This holy day cycle is purely internal. It marks the rebirth of the human being.
An unfortunate development in our culture has been the appropriation of the language of religious rebirth by “born-again” Christianity. The style and content of the Christian born-agains is so repulsive to most Jews that we have jettisoned the whole notion of religious rebirth. It is unfortunate because it is really our religious heritage, and defines the basic idea of this new year season.
Rosh Hashanah is the new year of the self, a day which gives birth to a new person.
Now remember the patterns the rabbis saw in creation? Since a new person is just a smaller version of an entire new cosmos, on Rosh Hashanah we celebrate the birth of a new person by recalling the birth of the universe.
I would like to read with you the beginning of the Biblical story of creation. But on Rosh Hashanah we have to go beyond the simple meaning of the text. We have to work to learn the meaning of the first chapter of Genesis. That work is called midrash. Here is one midrash, a digging down into the text, to be learned specifically on Rosh Hashanah, the day which gives birth to new words, and to new people.
Genesis chapter 1, verse 1: When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was emptiness and chaos, and a great wind was sweeping over the face of the earth. Think of the cosmos as a person. That person was born out of chaos. The tohu vavohu, the emptiness and chaos of the beginning was a violent, beginningless, endless storm at sea, in utter darkness and waves and rain which mingled so fiercely that there was no separation between sky and ocean.
Each of us, sooner or later, find ourselves in that storm at sea, sightless and terrified and sea-sick and freezing cold and wet. That is tohu vavohu, the chaotic emptiness in which a world, and a new person, will be born.
Genesis chapter 1, verse 3: and God said “let there be light.” And there was light. This verse bothered the rabbis. They knew the rest of the story, and knew that the sun, the moon and the stars were not created until the fourth day. So what was the light of the first day? What did it look like? What did it feel like?
On the scale of rabbinic difficulty, this question was only a five or a six. The rabbis thought of the universe as a human being, and they imagined that original light as the soul of the universe, what we might speak of as consciousness or awareness. From one point of view, the creation of that original light on the first day was the only miracle of creation. After that first light, the first awakening, everything else—earth, oceans, trees, birds, animals—all followed quite naturally.
It is the same way with our mini-creation today. The only miracle required of us is the creation of light. If we can perform the miracle of brave, honest self-awareness, then the rest of our personal creation follows naturally.
Genesis chapter 1, verse 5: And there was evening and there was morning. One day. One down, five to go. The rabbis wondered: Why did God take so long? Why did He cerate the world in so many steps? Clearly, if God wanted to do it all at once….hey, He’s God, right? No problem! So what was the problem? Think of how much more amazing it could have been. One moment, nothing. And one command and boom. EVERYTHING!
The message is that creation doesn’t happen that way. Worlds are not born all at once, and human beings are not born all at once. On Rosh Hashanah, don’t expect lights flashing, shofars blasting, and the heavens opening up with choirs of angels singing. In Genesis, waters had to exist before plants could come into being. And only after the plants could animals emerge from the oceans. It is the same way on Rosh Hashanah. One small improvement leads to another, and those of us impatient for sainthood are going to be disappointed.
Genesis, all of chapter 1: And God said.
God said “let there be light.” God said “let there be a separation between the waters.” God said “let the dry land appear.” God said, God said, God said. God is a talkative guy! You can tell this is a Jewish story. Who else would think of God bringing the universe into being by talking?
Our tradition has always taken absolutely seriously the creative power of words, and on Rosh Hashanah, words are our basic tools for creation. Our rebirth cannot happen in silence. The creative moments of Rosh Hashanah are all spoken: we confess our sins; we ask each other for forgiveness, we forgive each other. All with words.
Genesis chapter 1: And God saw that it was good. This phrase is repeated after each day of creation…with one exception. The creation of human beings is not automatically pronounced good. The reason for this, explained the rabbis, is that the creation of human beings is not complete. God gives each of us the potential for both good and evil, and then sit back and waits and sees. Only time will tell whether or not our creation will be declared good.
The tradition teaches that it is the same with repentence. Many of us experience a sense of teshuvah, of turning to God, at this season, but it is only good if it carries over into the year. High Holy Day remorse can feel tremendously significant for a few hours, but then it is easy to go home and turn on the TV, and put the sincere searching of heart and mind in the file marked “sincere soul searching,” which might not get pulled out again until next fall. The creation of atonement is a potential creation. Only months from now will we know whether or not we may say “ki tov”—it is good.
The first word of the Biblical story of creation is bereishit, in the beginning. And the first letter of bereishit is bet. Why, asked the rabbis, did the letter bet have the honor of beginning the Bible? The special merit of the bet, they taught, lies in its shape. The bet is closed on the top, closed on the bottom, and closed from behind. With its very shape, the betlets us know what is closed to our understanding. We can never know of the worlds that exist above us or below us. Nor can we know of what existed before the beginning of the universe. That beginning is locked in mystery. The Biblical story does not attempt to crack the mystery of creation. It is not meant as an eye-witness account of what actually happened when the universe came into being.
It does, however, point us toward the deep meaning of the creation of a world. And the creation of an entire world is just the same as the creation of a single cell. Which is just the same as the creation of the cosmos as a whole. And the creation of the universe, we are taught by ancient wisdom and by modern science, is the same as the creation of a human being.
Shanah tova.