The rabbis of the Talmud don’t agree with the beginning sentence of the Torah. The book of Genesis begins, as it is usually translated, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The ancient ones knew that there had to be more to the story than this.
The rabbis knew that there was a beginning before the biblical beginning – they knew that will precedes action, and ideally, thought precedes will. In the Midrash (early rabbinic commentary on the Bible), the rabbis discussed what was in the Divine Mind that preceded creation. The real beginning, you might say.
They seemed to agree that one had to assume a Divine mind and will that generated creation. The ancient rabbis’ term for the Divine mind and will that preceded creation was “supernal wisdom of the Divine Mind” – “chochmah shel ma’alah” – “Upper Wisdom”. A synonym for this supernal wisdom is “Torah”, referring not to the book we possess, but to Divine intelligence. Remember, that the word “Torah” literally means “teaching”, but in the ancient world the Hebrew word “Torah” was used to translate the philosophic term “Logos” – the aspect of the Divine mind that orders creation.
In fact, the Midrash tells us that the Five Books of Moses that we have is but a “novelet” (unripen fruit) of the upper wisdom (Bereishit Rabbah 17:5). In Midrashic thought, the Torah we have is a placeholder in the material universe for the mind of the Divine in the metaphysical world – an access point for entry into the upper wisdom. The beginning was the mind of God, which has no beginning.
What are the contours of the upper wisdom? “R. Zutra bar Tobiah said in the name of Rav: The world was created by means of ten capacities and powers: By wisdom, by understanding, by reason, by strength, by moral correction, by might, by righteousness, by judgment, by loving-kindness, and by compassion.” (Talmud, Chagigah 12:a).
In the world view of the ancient rabbis, before the beginning, Torah came into being, but not Torah as the text, but rather Torah as an energy, the Logos of the Divine Mind. Divine qualities compressed themselves into a singular thing that became the means by which the Divine could create.
Imagine you are trying to write a poem or a song, or any work of art, and imagine the prodigious mental and spiritual effort that precedes the act of creation. If the creative work flows outward, it means the living waters of meaning had already been taking shape down within the soul. Thought and will precede creation, even thought and will hidden in chambers of the unconscious.
Now imagine that the first words of the Torah were, “In the beginning there was a great song, a song sung in the darkness, singing out, hovering over the limitless abyss.”
The ancient Rabbis saw the Torah that preceded creation as such a song, an unarticulated poem put into words. They thought that every human being was trying in the depths of their souls to sing this song and recite these words.
An aspect of the Divine song was compressed into a singular phenomenon where divine energy took on physical mass, just enough for the universe to explode into being.
Other aspects of the Divine song – the song of creation – fill the universe and fill our souls.
The biblical authors had to begin somewhere, so they sighed and began at a beginning, “In the beginning”, that was no beginning, but at least that beginning pointed toward a deeper beginning that is trying to sing its way into our consciousness.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Mordecai Finley
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.