A Curious Student's Guide to the Book of Genesis

Enduring Life Lessons for the Twenty-First Century

Reuven Travis

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725256941
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Genesis contains a rich, nuanced text, and yet, when taught to children, it is often done through a series of "factoids, " such as the number of animals brought into the ark or Esau's red lentil soup. Worst still, children are frequently discouraged from asking questions about its complex storylines. This book was written to redress both pedagogical shortcomings. It does so by reminding children that the Bible teaches us to be truly good people via amazing stories of brave men and women doing incredible things. However, the most valuable lessons we learn from the Bible seem to come from people's daily lives: how they speak to their spouses, how they treat their children, how they interact with their neighbors. Perhaps most importantly, the Bible teaches us to ask questions. At times, the answers to our questions come easily. At other times, the answers we seek are hidden away, and so we are left to think and wonder. Nonetheless, ask we must, because by asking questions, we can deepen our connection to the ones we address the questions to, be it parents, teachers, or even God himself.

Bereshit

(Gen 1:1–6:8)

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

Summary of This Week’s Reading

Bereshit tells us about the creation of the world. The first thing God does is create all the material He needs to build the heavens and the earth. (One way to think of this is that God makes something like LEGO® pieces that He then puts together on each day of creation to form new stuff.) Each day, for six days, He puts things together—things like the sun, moon, and stars as well as the oceans and dry land. He then forms all kinds of living creatures: birds in the sky, fish and other sea creatures in the oceans, and many different wild animals that roam the dry land. The only new things God creates (rather than just assembling them from the material He made before) are the “great sea monsters” that He creates on day five and humans, whom He creates on day six. At the end of the sixth day, God stops building and assembling things. On the seventh day, He rests, and by doing so, He gives us the whole idea of the Sabbath.

When God creates the first person, Adam, He forms his body from the dust of the earth. God then blows the breath of life into his nostrils, and Adam becomes a living being. At first, Adam is alone, unlike every other living creature, but God decides that it is not good for him to be alone. So God creates the first woman, whom Adam calls Eve, and they become husband and wife.

After they are married, God puts them in the Garden of Eden to live. They can do as they please and are to work the garden. The only thing they cannot do is eat the fruit from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

In the garden with them is a serpent, who tricks Eve into eating the forbidden fruit. She shares the forbidden fruit with Adam. Because they did not listen to this one command, God makes them leave the garden.

After leaving the garden, Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain decides to give a present to God, something we call a “sacrifice.” Abel thinks this is such a good idea that he also gives one to God. Looking at both gifts (the fruits Cain found growing from the ground and the animals Abel himself raised), God decides that Abel’s is nicer. This makes Cain so angry and so jealous that he kills his brother Abel.

This sad story is not the end of this week’s reading. It goes on to tell us that Adam and Eve have a third son, Seth, and that from Seth’s family comes Noah, whose story we will read about in our next chapter.

Life Lessons from Bereshit

The first of the Torah’s weekly readings, Bereshit, has many important stories that are familiar to many people. It also makes us ask some very important questions about how we learn Torah and how we should live our lives.

Ready to get started? Good.

Creation Facts or Creation Story?

Not surprisingly, the Torah begins with the story of creation. This makes sense. After all, much of the Torah is intended to teach us about life and our place in the world. Why not start with how the world (and all of us!) came to be?

As you read through the opening verses of Bereshit and its description of creation, you can’t help but wonder: How did this all work? Scientists have been asking this question for hundreds of years, and today, the most widely accepted explanation of how the universe began is something called the “big bang theory.” Its name describes it very well. Scientists believe that the universe as we know it started with what they call a “small singularity.” (Scientists may understand what this means, but most of us don’t!) Non-scientists like to think of the universe as starting with a “big bang.” This means that all the parts of our universe—atoms, energy, everything—simply came into being in an instant. BANG! Just like that.

This big bang theory is not news to the Jewish people. The rabbis and Jewish sages were discussing and writing about this idea as early as the time of the Talmud. They believe that the very first verse of the Torah teaches us that God created everything from nothing (yesh me-ayin in Hebrew).

Still, this does not answer our question about how this all really happened. The Torah tells us that God spoke ten times to create the universe. For example, “God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”

Got it now? Probably not, and not even the greatest Torah scholars or the most brilliant scientists can explain how exactly creation happened from verses like this. So what are the opening verses of the Torah trying to teach us?

First, the Torah is telling us that there are some things in the world, maybe even many things, that we humans cannot understand. We believe that God created our world, but the exact details are too hard for us to fully understand. Scientists have ideas about how creation actually happened, but they don’t know for sure. Jewish thinkers have tried to understand why God created the world, and they have no good answers, either. Accepting that there are things in life we cannot explain or understand helps us to be more accepting of life and happier in the lives we lead. This does not mean that we should stop asking questions. We should simply stop expecting answers to all our questions.

Second, these verses make clear that the Torah was written for people in a way we can understand. This is why many Jewish scholars and teachers see the beginning of Bereshit as a story full of important lessons. They believe that Bereshit should not be read literally (Again, what does “let there be light” really mean? How exactly did the light come into existence?) but rather as a story written in a way that people can learn from.

Now, there are some people who insist that the creation story must be true and that it happened exactly as it is written in the Torah. But the better way to read it, according to many Jewish thinkers and teachers, is as a story meant to teach us certain lessons. Here is another reason why this is so.

Bereshit tells us that God created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh, which is why we have the Sabbath (and the Sabbath is one of the most important parts of the creation story). But if you read the story very carefully, you will see that the sun and moon do not appear until day four. How can days be counted without a sun and a moon? Maybe the Torah is teaching us that creation took place in six steps or stages, and it is just using the word “day” so that we understand that each step had a beginning and an end, just as a day does.

Can you think of something that happened in your life that actually taught you an important lesson? Do you have a favorite story or book that also ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Bereshit—Let’s Start at the Very Beginning
• Noach—The Rains Come and Come and Come
• Lech Lecha
• Vayera—Visitors and More Visitors 35
• Chayei Sarah—Changes in the Family
• Toldot—When Mom and Dad Can’t Agree
• Vayetze—Tricks and More Tricks
• Vayishlach
• Vayeshev
• Miketz—One Dream or Two?
• Vayigash—Long Time No See
• Vayechi—All Good Things Come to an End
• About the Author