Parasha Bereshit 5786

A thin flame illuminates the first letter and does not go out.
בְּרֵאשִׁית — Bereshit — “In the beginning,” and also “with the Beginning,” as if the world begins in the inside a single letter. The Torah does not open with an argument; it opens with authorship. From the first verb forward, the text appoints us as responsible readers who must annotate reality with deeds before HASHEM.

ETI Weekly Commentary on the Parasha

Bereshit 5786 — Light That Reads the World

I. The First Verb Is a Vow

“בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱ-לֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ.”
Bereshit bara Elohim et ha-shamayim ve’et ha-aretz.
“In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth.”

Rashi places a key in our hand: Torah begins with Creation so that history and land are known as HASHEM’s trust. The first chapter is not a museum placard; it is jurisdiction. If HASHEM is Author, every boundary—of time, speech, money, land—is under covenant, not whim. Ramban opens the text toward metaphysics: yesh me’ayin, being from nothing, and then a subtle substrate (tohu) from which form unfolds. Ibn Ezra bows to grammar: do not outrun the vowels. Together they teach: truth arrives as an entrusted order we must learn before we dare to build.

Quantum physics, in servant posture, gives a clarifying parable. Before observation a system admits many possible outcomes; after observation, one history. That is not a proof of Torah—HASHEM requires no proof—but a helpful picture of beriah: HASHEM “chooses” a world into being, and the human being—bearer of tzelem Elohim—echoes that pattern in miniature every time a moral decision collapses a swarm of possibilities into a faithful deed. Logotherapy stands beside this vow like a steady friend: life questions us, not the other way around; meaning is discovered when we accept tasks that only we can shoulder. The first verb, bara, is also a demand: create order where your life is formless, answer the summons that has your name on it.

II. Yehi Or — Light as Legibility

“וַיֹּאמֶר אֱ-לֹהִים יְהִי אוֹר; וַיְהִי אוֹר.”
Vayomer Elohim: yehi or; vayehi or.
“And Elohim said: ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”

“כִּי נֵר מִצְוָה וְתוֹרָה אוֹר.”
Ki ner mitzvah ve-Torah or.
“For a commandment is a lamp, and Torah is light.”

The Torah pairs cosmology with character. Or here is not only the physics of photons; it is the moral legibility that lets beings find their way. The mitzvah is the lamp hardware—finite, bounded, earthy. Torah is the field of illumination, the pattern that makes reality readable. The Zohar says HASHEM“looked into the Torah and created the world.” The world is not just made; it is written. Creation’s next verses enact a grammar lesson: havdalah—life-giving distinctions. Light from dark. Waters above from waters below. Sea from land. Day from night. Kinds from kinds. Work from rest. Ten divine utterances carve channels through the chaos so blessing can flow. Boundaries are not enemies of love; they are its vessels.

To see this, you don’t need a lab, only a week. Where you draw wise lines—bedtime, speech, expenditures, screens—life becomes legible. Where you refuse, everything bleeds into everything, and the heart hears static. Physicists speak of coherence, a signal guarded from noise. Torah gives you coherence as a mitzvah. The smallest lamp—Modeh ani said before touching a phone—can illuminate a day.

Logotherapy helps name this move without sentimentality. Meaning is not primarily inside our feelings; it is in the world that asks something of us. A person who accepts the discipline of a mitzvah experiences an enlargement of meaning because reality itself becomes readable: the lamp and the light work together.

III. Time That Remembers What It Is For

“וַיִּתֵּן אוֹתָם אֱ-לֹהִים בִּרְקִיעַ הַשָּׁמַיִם לְהָאִיר עַל הָאָרֶץ… לְאֹתֹת וּלְמוֹעֲדִים…”
Vayyiten otam Elohim birki’a ha-shamayim le’ha’ir al ha-aretz… le-otot u’le-mo’adim…
“And Elohim placed them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth… for signs and appointed times…”

The sky becomes liturgy. Time is textured for service. Days are not bricks in a wall; they are letters in a prayer. The seventh day crowns the sequence:

“וַיְכַל אֱ-לֹהִים בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי… וַיְבָרֶךְ אֱ-לֹהִים אֶת יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי וַיְקַדֵּשׁ אֹתוֹ.”
Vayechal Elohim bayom ha-shevi’i… Vayevarech Elohim et yom ha-shevi’i vayekadesh oto.
“Elohim finished on the seventh day… and Elohim blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.”

Shabbat is not a pause from creation; it is the completion of creation—the first sanctuary in time. Frankl would call it training for the attitudinal values: even if circumstances do not change, I can change the stance of my soul. The clock does not stop; mastery yields to majesty. Rav Kook’s stance—“הַיָּשָׁן יִתְחַדֵּשׁ וְהֶחָדָשׁ יִתְקַדֵּשׁ”—“the old will be renewed, and the new will be sanctified”—describes Shabbat’s pedagogy. The week returns to its Source, so the new can be made holy rather than noisy.

IV. The Human Image and the Ethics of Power

“נַעֲשֶׂה אָדָם בְּצַלְמֵנוּ כִּדְמוּתֵנוּ… וַיִּבְרָא אֱ-לֹהִים אֶת הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ… בְּצֶלֶם אֱ-לֹהִים בָּרָא אֹתוֹ.”
Na’aseh adam be-tzalmeinu ki-demuteinu… Vayyivra Elohim et ha-adam be-tzalmo… be-tzelem Elohim bara oto.
“Let Us make the human in Our image, after Our likeness… And Elohimcreated the human in [Divine] image… in the image of God created [the human].”

Tzelem is not spiritual décor; it is delegation. It grants agency under authorship. Dominion (ve-kivshuha) without reverence is plunder; with reverence it becomes caretaking. The Torah places the human at the seam between blessing and danger: speech can create or corrupt, technology can build a garden or burn a city. The ethical core of Bereshitis not the power to manipulate but the responsibility to cultivate and guard.

Here the law of arvut—mutual surety—enters like a chord: “כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל עֲרֵבִים זֶה בָּזֶה”— Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh — “All Israel are guarantors one for another.” Responsibility is nonlocal. Your blessings at breakfast bless beyond your table; your lashon hara dims a room you will never enter. Physics again provides a picture: entangled systems exhibit correlations that distance does not break. The laboratory speaks of statistics; Torah speaks of souls, but the image is helpful. Our choices are woven; our deeds ripple through the covenantal fabric.

Frankl’s triad of meaning—creative, experiential, attitudinal—gives the image-bearer daily handles. Create a small good. Receive one wonder with gratitude. Maintain dignity in an unavoidable struggle. When one door is locked, another remains. Image is not a feeling; it is a set of obligations that can be kept even in pain.

V. Havdalah as Creative Courage

Creation advances through distinctions. The modern heart often resists limits as if they were enemies of love. Bereshit insists the opposite. Without borders, love dissolves into weather. The Torah’s first page is a hymn to brave boundaries: guarding speech (so that blessing is not suffocated by gossip), guarding time (so that work does not eat its children), guarding appetite (so that desire serves life), guarding money (so that power is sanctified), guarding attention (so that imagination is not colonized). Each boundary births a new good. Each “Let there be” is answered by “And there was,” because a wise line has been drawn.

In the lab you isolate a signal. In a life you say: no phone in the bedroom; no unblessed food; no humiliating jokes; no work email after candle-lighting; no public shaming. The good that appears on the other side of these lines is not repression; it is fruit. Torah is not a suppression project; it is a composition project. You do not shrink; you sing in key.

VI. Naming as Responsibility

“וַיִּקְרָא הָאָדָם שֵׁמוֹת”— Vayyikra ha-adam shemot — “And the human called names.” Naming in Bereshitis not projection but stewardship. To name is to recognize purpose, to stand face-to-face with a creature and bless its place in the world. In an age of branding and spin, Bereshit returns naming to its sacred axis: we name best what we are ready to serve. Rav Kook writes that the holy task of the spirit is to “gather the scattered lights”—to gather, not to devour. Language is a net for sparks.

A brief, honest logotherapy turn clarifies the demand. Much suffering is not erased by insight, but it can be redeemed by purpose. The gardener who tends a difficult garden does not romanticize thorns; the gardener lets the cost become part of the beauty. When the Torah asks us to “serve and guard” (le’ovdah u’leshomrah), it does not deny hardship; it assigns meaning to it.

VII. From “Very Good” to “Guard Your Brother”

“טוֹב מְאֹד”— tov me’od — “very good”—rings over the sixth day. The very next narrative will speak of snake, exile, envy, and murder. The Torah is not naïve about decay. Order requires guardians. The plural in “קוֹל דְּמֵי אָחִיךָ”— kol demei achikha — “the voice of your brother’s bloods” — says that when Cain strikes, he strikes generations. It is the negative image of arvut. Responsibility neglected erupts as violence that ripples through unborn lives.

Here the physics parable shifts to entropy. Systems drift toward disorder unless energy is wisely invested. Torah is the discipline that invests energy week after week so that the social fabric does not fray into chamas(violence). Halachah is not an imposition; it is a maintenance plan for civilization’s coherence. The lamps keep the light from blowing out.

VIII. Rav Kook’s Posture for Builders

Rav Kook’s line—“renew the old; sanctify the new”—helps us walk between nostalgia and nihilism. Bereshit honors the ancient and welcomes invention. The move is not “either/or” but “under HASHEM.” Old forms renewed: Shabbat honored, speech guarded, the poor lifted, land rested. New forms sanctified: technologies yoked to compassion, data bent toward justice, attention defended from predation. The litmus is simple and hard: does this practice increase light and legibility under HASHEM, or does it thicken noise? If light, renew or sanctify. If noise, repent.

IX. A Small Lamp that Does Not Go Out

The world is not short of light; it is short of lamps. Lamps are small, stubborn, costly. They are the concrete acts that let Torah’s light do its work: the phone that stays outside the bedroom; the bent knee when you say Modim; the truthful invoice; the call returned; the worker paid on time; the delayed anger; the secret kindness. Bereshit is not a story to admire; it is a program to run.

“וַיְהִי אוֹר.”— Vayehi or. Let there be light in the minute you actually control. Choose one costly good before next Shabbat and do it in the sight of HASHEM.

Commentary Pack — Sources, Notes, and Prompts

✡ Core Pesukim (read in triplets)

✡ בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ — Bereshit bara Elohim et ha-shamayim ve’et ha-aretz — “In the beginning Elohimcreated the heavens and the earth.”
✡ ויאמר אלהים יהי אור; ויהי אור — Vayomer Elohim: yehi or; vayehi or — “And Elohim said: Let there be light; and there was light.”
✡ כי נר מצוה ותורה אור — Ki ner mitzvah ve-Torah or — “For a commandment is a lamp, and Torah is light.”
✡ ויכל אלהים ביום השביעי… ויברך… ויקדש — Vayechal… vayevarech… vayekadesh — “Elohim finished… blessed… and sanctified [the seventh day].”
✡ נעשה אדם בצלמנו כדמותנו… בצלם אלהים ברא אותו — Na’aseh adam… be-tzelem Elohim — “Let Us make the human… in the image of God.”
✡ קול דמי אחיך צועקים אלי — Kol demei achikha tzo’akim elai — “The voice of your brother’s bloods cries out to Me.”

✡ Classic Anchors (one-line reminders)

✡ Rashi: Creation first to assert divine authorship over history and land.
✡ Ramban: Yesh me’ayin and subtle first matter; form unfolds by Divine wisdom.
✡ Ibn Ezra: Grammar protects meaning; read before you theorize.
✡ Zohar: HASHEM “looked into the Torah and created the world.”
✡ Pirkei Avot 5:1: Ten utterances; creation by articulated speech.
✡ Rav Kook: Renew the old; sanctify the new.

✡ Integrated Physics & Logotherapy (supportive mashalim)

✡ Coherence vs. noise → mitzvot as lamps that preserve signal.
✡ Measurement/collapse → moral choice “fixes” a lived history.
✡ Entanglement → image for arvut(nonlocal responsibility).
✡ Entropy → why halachic discipline is ongoing maintenance.
✡ Frankl’s triad →creative/experiential/attitudinal values as weekly handles.

✡ Practical Halachic Disclaimer

Practice questions (Shabbat prep, blessings, speech-guarding, tzedakah) require local guidance. Refer to your local rabbinic authority.

Closing Kavanah

“וַיְהִי אוֹר.”— Vayehi or.
Let the letter whose hush begins the world awaken courage. May Torah be the light that reads the world through you—this week, in this place, before HASHEM.