#bereshit

[boomhauer]

Another mass slaying of Jews today—The first night of Chanukah this year. Chanukah that celebrates the Jewish refusal to submit to tyranny and extermination. I am reminded of two scriptures as we mourn the lives lost SIMPLY FOR BEING JEWISH.

Give tzdakah to the families, To Chabad of Sydney, anything. And may the memories be a blessing for those we lost today.

[unsolicited-opinions]

I'm old enough to have grown up reading Isaac Asimov short stories.

This very short story, first published in 1979, has been a favorite of mine for decades. I thought Jumblr might get a chuckle or two from it.

__________________________

How It Happened

My brother began to dictate in his best oratorical style, the one which has the tribes hanging on his words.

“In the beginning,” he said, “exactly fifteen point two billion years ago, there was a big bang and the Universe–”

But I had stopped writing. “Fifteen billion years ago?” I said incredulously.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I’m inspired.”

“I don’t question your inspiration,” I said. (I had better not. He’s three years younger than I am, but I don’t try questioning his inspiration. Neither does anyone else or there’s hell to pay.) “But are you going to tell the story of the Creation over a period of fifteen billion years?”

“I have to,” said my brother. “That’s how long it took. I have it all in here,” he tapped his forehead, “and it’s on the very highest authority.”

By now I had put down my stylus. “Do you know the price of papyrus?” I said.

“What?” (He may be inspired but I frequently noticed that the inspiration didn’t include such sordid matters as the price of papyrus.)

I said, “Suppose you describe one million years of events to each roll of papyrus. That means you’ll have to fill fifteen thousand rolls. You’ll have to talk long enough to fill them and you know that you begin to stammer after a while. I’ll have to write enough to fill them and my fingers will fall off. And even if we can afford all that papyrus and you have the voice and I have the strength, who’s going to copy it? We’ve got to have a guarantee of a hundred copies before we can publish and without that where will we get royalties from?”

My brother thought awhile. He said, “You think I ought to cut it down?”

“Way down,” I said, “if you expect to reach the public.”

“How about a hundred years?” he said.

“How about six days?” I said.

He said horrified, “You can’t squeeze Creation into six days.”

I said, “This is all the papyrus I have. What do you think?”

“Oh, well,” he said, and began to dictate again, “In the beginning– Does it have to be six days, Aaron?”

I said, firmly, “Six days, Moses.”

__________________________

(Someone will respond to this post that Asimov was not a Zionist. That's true. Nu?)

[kingercainedaddyissues]

[galaxy-manticore]

Genesis 4:8-12

And Cain spoke to Abel his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him.

And the Lord said to Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" And he said, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?"

And He said, "What have you done? Hark! Your brother's blood cries out to Me from the earth.

And now, you are cursed even more than the ground, which opened its mouth to take your brother's blood from your hand.

When you till the soil, it will not continue to give its strength to you; you shall be a wanderer and an exile in the land.”

———

As a Palestinian Jew, the ongoing genocide makes my heart ache with a pain unimaginable.

October 7th was Simchat Torah, which starts the Torah over with Bereshit. The story of Adam and Eve, and of Cain and Abel. I personally found a parallel between the Cain and Abel story and the Palestinian Genocide.

Along the top and side are traditional Palestinian embroidery patterns. In both Arabic and Hebrew the middle says “From the River to the Sea.”

[flipflopflying]

Adam and Eve

[girlactionfigure]

[gliklofhameln]

The story of Adam and Eve has been read, outside Judaism, as a story about original sin, by which we are all tainted. There are good grounds for not reading it this way. First the concept of original sin is not mentioned anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. Second it offends against justice. As Jeremiah and Ezekiel both say, guilt attaches only to the sinner, not to his or her descendants. Third, God explicitly forgives humanity after the Flood: ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood (Genesis 8:21). Fourth, there is a partial return to Eden through the covenant of Sinai. The ark the Israelites carried with them in the wilderness was adorned by cherubim, angelic figures mentioned elsewhere only in the context of Eden. The Torah is described in the book of Proverbs (3:18) as ‘the tree of life’. The sanctuary in space, the Sabbath in time, symbolise paradise regained, Eden re-entered.

     — Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt”l, in The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning

[geostatonary]

Tonight in Torah study: Bereshit- 10/10/2023

We begin our study of Genesis. For those familiar, Bereshit spans a bit over the first five chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Tora

Tonight in torah study, we talk about the creation of the world, comparative mythology, the applicability and failures of VtM as biblical fanfiction, and the possible existence of a "skin animal"