“Occasionally… what you have to do is go back to the beginning and see everything in a new way.” These words by American author and poet, Peter Straub, are essential to the Jewish experience of sacred text. We are back at the beginning of our scroll, the beginning of our grand story, which begins with a beginning of all things. B’reishit covers a lot of ground, from the creation of existence itself to two deeply routed mythical accounts of humanity’s beginnings, these early chapters of Genesis beg to be read again and again, and to be seen in an ever-evolving light.
While I tend to gravitate towards the worldview offered in the Genesis 1 creation story (where humanity was created last, male and female simultaneously), there is much to be gleaned from the drama that unfolds in Genesis 2 (where the animal kingdom is created for the benefit of ha’adam, the human/earth-creature, and where Eve is wrought from that creature’s rib…) In Genesis 2, humanity’s task is set: we are to work and to guard the Garden – and indeed the entire natural world. Both verbs are used separately, first in 2:5 when we learn that the earth requires a human hand to do its tilling (la’avod – to work), and again in 2:15 when both verbs are presented together (l’ovda – to work, u’lshomrah – to tend/to guard).
According to this view of the text, humanity was created in order to steward the earth: to work it, to till it, and to benefit from the literal fruits of that labor, but ultimately to tend it for longevity’s sake. Wether it is tilling a garden patch of one’s own, or picking up trash as we go along our way, our text demands that we pay attention and participate in the care of the world around us. Perhaps we don’t see it every time we return to B’reishit, but these first chapters of our Torah give us a clear sense of purpose – to care for the world around us, to work in it, and to guard it for future generations. Sometimes, we have to go all the way back to the beginning to be reminded of these eternal and fundamental truths.
– Rabbi Callie Schulman