Home Shalom promotes healthy relationships and facilitates the creation of judgement free, safe spaces in the Jewish community. Home Shalom is a program of The Advot Project.
“God began by creating just one human being so that no one could say, ‘My ancestors were better than yours.’” Talmud Sanhedrin 38a
The rabbis in the Talmud entered into a long discussion about the nature of creation as described in the Book of Genesis in the Torah. They asked themselves why since God is said to have created all the animals in the world in a single day didn’t God simply populate the world all at once as well rather than create only one human being first as in Genesis 2:7, “God formed the Human from the soils humus, blowing into his nostrils the breath of life: the Human became a living being.” As they wrestled with this question, in typical rabbinic fashion they ultimately drew several powerful ethical lessons from this version of the text. The first lesson they taught was that this is to teach us that one who destroys even one life is counted as if he destroyed the entire world and one who saves even one life is counted as if she has saved the entire world.
The countless demonstrations and protests that have emerged throughout the world to the image seen over and over again of those horrific 8 minutes and 40 seconds of the tragic murder of George Floyd under the knee of former police officer Derek Chauvin have proven the truth and power of the insights of those Talmudic rabbis of two thousand years ago.
The second powerful lesson they derived from the story of the creation of humanity in the Torah is the lesson quoted above. They taught, “God began by creating just one human being so that no one could say,
‘My ancestors were better than yours.’” It is a lesson in the fundamental necessity of humility and a clear assertion of universal equality among all human beings.
To have written the foundational creation story of Jewish civilization in such a way that all humanity is said to have grown from the same ancestry is to assert that no one people, or race, or religion, or culture, or language or country is inherently better than another but that all are of equal value in the eyes of God who created us all.
In this time of such division and discord among peoples and nations, among races and political philosophies this is a lesson for all of us to take to heart so that we might build together a world that recognizes the humanity and worth of us all.
Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, Home Shalom
Naomi Ackerman, The Advot Project
