Repairing the world, beginning with action
Genesis 1:1 – 6:8
There’s a line from “Fiddler on the Roof” that I can’t get out of my mind: “It may sound like I’m complaining,” Tevye casually says to God, “but I’m not. After all, with Your help, I’m starving to death.”
The Jewish people are not starving, I know. But honestly, the sentiment still works. The times we are living in are dark, sad and frightening; each day we desperately forage for signs of hope so we may begin healing. In fact, a Pew study from March 2024 found that an astounding 83% of Americans feel sad when they hear about the war in Israel and 37% of Americans feel afraid when they hear about it.
This week’s Torah portion, Beresheit, refers to the world before creation as tohu vavohu — “… being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep, and a wind from God sweeping over the water.” The creation story is about creating order out of that primordial chaos. And I think we might be there again. So, as we read the Torah this week, here are some things to keep in mind:
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One of the fundamental ideas in Judaism is imago dei, which is Latin for “image of God.” This idea that each of us is created in God’s image is a theological term applied uniquely to humans, and denotes a symbolic relationship between God and humanity, the notion that humans mirror God’s divinity. We learn that people are holy because God is holy.
This concept follows throughout the rabbinic ordinances and laws we call mitzvot/commandments; we are commanded to behave in holy ways — to care for the stranger for example, because God cared for the People of Israel when they were leaving Egypt, or to visit the sick because God visited Abraham after his circumcision. Each of these are ways to be holy by imitating God. God’s creation of the world out of tohu vavohu is no exception to this rule. As God creates, so do we.
God’s creative process has three steps that we see throughout the creation story:
1) The Imagination. To create something, there must be something to create. In our parsha it sounds like this: “And God said, let there be…”
2) The Will. A desire to bring something to action, and the execution of it — the work of making the idea happen. In our parsha it sounds like this: “…and there was…”
3) The Recognition. And finally, we acknowledge that our work is done. In our parsha it sounds like this: “…and God saw that it was good.”
Through creating the natural world, God models for us that when we create, it is holy. So where does that leave us when our present-day world is so terribly broken?
How does one begin to repair it when the problems of our times seem so vast?
This past April, following Oct. 7, my daughter came home from Israel for Passover. Anticipating her visit and the tender condition she would surely be in, our seder leader asked her to prepare something to contribute, if she wished. My husband and I did not know about this idea until we heard her voice rise from her place at the seder table.
Reading with a toneless voice and trembling hands, Ella eloquently shared what the past six months had been like for her. She shared stories of sadness and anxiety, fear and confusion, perseverance and persistence. Since she had not been called up to reserve duty, and her semester at the university was being repeatedly pushed back, she decided to work. “The best way to contribute was to do something,” she said plainly.
There were multiple lists of volunteer positions that needed to be filled throughout the state: meals to cook and uniforms to launder, therapists and dentists whose skills were in high demand, and displaced people from the south filling hotels that needed systems put in place. She has strong logistical skills so she signed up to work at a nearby hotel. Throughout the following few months she became “the queen of the lobby.” She organized rooms of sorted donations — packages of diapers, clothes and toy umbrella strollers — she stood witness to children melting down, made game rooms and arranged volunteer yoga teachers for the mothers. There were no young men, she told us. There were boys and elderly men, but the hotel was predominantly filled with traumatized and disoriented women and children.
Ella wrote dispatches from the field about her time at The Leonardo to process all she was doing and seeing, describing the wide, watery eyes of barefoot children in pajamas who came from the south in the dark of night after being unsuspectingly yanked out of their beds in the heat of summer, and the red, dry hands of their mothers. When Ella finished talking, everyone was silent. (Have you ever heard a silent seder table?)
Like in our parsha, we begin with action. We imagine what this broken world might need (like logistical support at a hotel full of lost souls), we use our will to make it happen (like standing witness, organizing donations, making yoga classes) and we recognize that our work is good (by sharing at the seder table or writing dispatches from the field). After all, as The Rav Nachman of Breslov famously said, “If you believe that breaking is possible, then you believe fixing is possible.” PJC
Rabbi Kara Tav is a Pittsburgh-based educator, chaplain and counselor. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Clergy Association.
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