“Let’s Get Practical”
Now, while we’re dancing with our one Book, with our one set of ideas, we need to make use of the opportunity. It's not enough just to dance and be happy and sing. It’s a good beginning, but it’s not enough, because if we won’t make use of this Book that teaches us how to think and what to think, then what’s the use?
Imagine someone gives you an instruction manual for life and he tells you that this is the only book you’ll ever need. “Don’t bother looking elsewhere,” he says, “just in here.” So what will it help if you’ll dance with it? You have to open it and study it too.
So that’s what we’ll do. If we’re beginning the new cycle of reading from our nation’s sefer, so the first thing we should do is practice up making use of it. We’re a very open-minded people; all the ideals and attitudes and lessons in our book we want to open our minds to them, and so we’ll take Parshas Bereishis and we’ll practice. We are reading Bereishis now and so we’ll study our subject with a few examples from this sedrah.
Now, I have upstairs in my notes a list of at least twenty-five attitudes that we learn just from Parshas Bereishis – I say ‘list’; it’s more than that. Each one has many details. Just at random I’ll pick some of them, just so you’ll see what it means to think along with the Torah, to get the hang of it.
Seeing His Word
When you look only in the Toras Hashem, what’s the first thing you see? קִ י ם רָ א אֱ ל רֵ א שׁ ִ י ת בּב. It means that once there was nothing. Not that there was something and it became a world; not that there were atoms or molecules or even space – there was nothing, nothing at all. And then בִּדְ בַר ה' שָׁ מַיִם נַעֲ שׂוּ – by His word the universe was brought into existence, בְּרוּחַ פִּיו כָל צְבָאָם – and by what came out of his mouth all the hosts of Heaven, everything, were created (Tehillim 33:6). That’s what Bereishis bara Elokim means.
Now, that’s a revolution in the way a Torah Jew looks at the world. Because it means there is no world! It’s only imagination. Whose imagination? Hashem’s Imagination! There’s no sky. There’s no earth. Wherever you look, it’s only the Word of Hashem.
That’s how the Torah teaches us to see the world. לְעוֹלָם ה' דְ בָרְ ךָ נִצָּב בַּשָּׁמָיִם (ibid. 119:89). If you look at the sky, don’t think it’s a sky – it’s the Word of Hashem that you’re seeing only that it took a form and shape like a sky.
Hashem said, “Yehi!” and His word became clothed with sky, with the sun and stars and planets. He said “Yehi,” and it became earth. It became air and trees and rabbits and cats and roses and rain. His word became oceans and fish and whales. His word became everything in the universe.
Now, those who don’t look only in the Torah, they look at the world through the newspaper’s eyes or through the eyes of books, so to them there are cats and monkeys. There’s a sky and an earth. There’s a Big Bang and other foolish ideas. But they’re living a lie! Everything they see is wrong because they took their eyes out of the only book that matters.
It’s All Good
Another example. What else does the Torah say about creation? Yes, it’s all Hashem’s Imagination; that’s already a revolution in how we look at the world but there’s more yet: וַיַּרְא אֱלֹקִים אֶת כָּל אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה וְהִנֵּה טוֹב מְאֹד – Hashem looked at His creation and he gave His psak: It’s a very good world (Bereishis 1:31). You know what it means a psak of Hashem? You don’t have to think maybe a different dayan, a different book, maybe he’ll say differently. Oh no. The psak of Hashem is final; it’s the only truth. And what does He say? וְהִנֵּה טוֹב מְאֹד - It’s all good. Not just good. Tov me’od – very good.
You hear that? Wake up children! Don’t listen to liars, to complainers. You’ll listen to Victor Hugo and you’ll get the idea that things are miserable. Marx tells you it’s a miserable world. The newspapers, bad news all the time.
Hebrew Poetry
Listen to the poets and they say the same thing. I once told you about a Hebrew poet who wanted to make a poem. So it was raining on the window, and as the rain was hitting the window, he said, ‘What does the rain teach us?’
Now if he would listen to Bereishis, to the real Poet, so he would know that the rain teaches us the kindness of Hashem. Of course, it’s not only rain. אֶת כָּל אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה means everything that He made is good – but it’s a good time of the year now – soon we’ll be saying the tefillas hageshem – to use the example of rain. The Torah teaches us that the Creator is a tov u’maitiv, that Creation is very good. Every drop of rain is a pearl! It’s chiyus! It’s life! Water is life!
But this ‘chochom’ poet looked in other places. He was a connoisseur of Hebrew literature, of Hebrew newspapers and so what did he say? “Drip, drop on our window panes, like a man weeping bitterly.” That’s what this meshugener saw in the rain. Raindrops are pattering on the window, so he says, “It’s sadness. It’s like weeping tears of sadness falling on the window pane.” So if you read poetry you learn that rain is sadness. And don't say “it’s just art, it doesn’t have an effect”; absolutely it does. It’s impossible that it shouldn’t.
Hashem’s Weather Report
People, frum people, read the papers their minds are corrupted with ‘nasty weather’, ‘bad weather’ and if they read the college books so the reader becomes corrupted with all the words meant to hide the Borei: the hydrologic cycle and evapotranspiration, the orographic lift, whatever it is, to pollute the mind by hiding the Borei and the tov me’od of the Borei.
And so Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, “One sefer! Take My sefer and think along with Me. וַיַּרְא אֱלֹקִים אֶת כָּל אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה וְהִנֵּה טוֹב מְאֹד! Hashem said “It’s tov me’od.” He didn’t have to say it but מַה הוּא אַף אַתָּה – if He said it, then it’s a model for what we have to do all our lives. We also should say “Tov me’od!” All of mankind – at least the nation of One Book – chimes in and says “Tov me’od!” Ah! It’s a beautiful thing when it rains. And it’s beautiful when it doesn’t rain. It’s beautiful when the wind blows and when it doesn’t. Summer and winter; it’s all tov me’od!
Making Man Great Again
Now, number three. Our third example – just in this sedrah – is the following possuk: וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹקִים אֶת הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ – Hashem created man in His image (ibid. 1:27). A thunderous declaration! Man is made in the image of Hashem!
It means that when you look with Torah eyes, so when I look at you, I don’t see just a heap of chemicals. That’s how a reader of books sees you – that’s what you are; you’re a certain amount of nitrogen, a certain amount of calcium, a certain amount of carbon, a certain amount of oxygen, hydrogen, other elements. If you take all these elements and separate them and try to sell them to a drugstore man, he might give you five cents for it or ten cents for it. Is that what a person is? No! בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹקִים בָּרָא אֹתוֹ – Man was created in the image of G-d (ibid.). Ooh wah! So now I know how to look at you. When we look at you, we see tzelem Elokim! That’s what your face is, a mirror of Hashem! Your face is a tzelem, a reflection of the Glory of the Creator! Every face that you look at – you’re talking about a good face, a decent face, a frum face, don’t think you’re looking at Mr. Rubin or Chaim or Mr. Greenberg or Dovid, you’re looking at greatness.
You Say Small, We Say Big
Do you know what an opposition there is to the greatness of man? Millions are writing today and preaching today that man is nothing but an accident! That once upon a time, he was nothing but a germ floating in a mud puddle. Now that’s insanity of insanities; it’s the silliest of theories to even dream that this could have happened by accident. Nevertheless, anything goes in the battle against the truth of the Torah and therefore, the libraries are jammed with books. Every day the book presses are publishing new books, big expensive books with expensive pictures and charts and the entire public are being corrupted against the idea of gadlus ha’adam, the greatness of man.
The truth is we have more appreciation of goyim than the goyim have of themselves. We say the goyim are tzelem Elokim and they say they’re frogs, they’re baboons. They’re trying their best to become frogs but we continue to shout “No! You’re tzelem Elokim! That’s what our sefer says! We won’t listen to what you say, that you’re frogs. You’re tzelem Elokim!” And only by Torah can we learn this. If you look in other places, it’ll reduce the greatness of man. It’ll minimize him and finally you won’t realize it at all!
But we have the instruction manual! The Torah is given to us that we should know the great truths. We know b’tzelem Elokim bara oso! We know Bereishis bara Elokim! We know vi’hinei tov me’od!
And we know why Hakadosh Baruch Hu insisted on only one sefer. Only the Torah, because it’s an entirely different way of looking at the world. Instead of seeing the world through the eyes of Victor Hugo and Karl Marx and all the writers, all the science books and newspapers,
