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Parshat B’reshit 5779 – In the beginning…

By: Dr. Jeffrey Buch

Just as in the creation of the Universe there are many points of creation in our own lives, that lead to new beginnings. These are moments of great discomfort and of great hope all at the same time. These are points of significant potential for growth or they can be times for disaster. No one will ever know how many times Hashem had created other worlds that failed, prior to creating this one that succeeded. In our own lives, how often have we had to pick ourselves up from the discomfort of failure, so that our hope and optimism could lift us to try one more time and finally succeed?

Think back, if you will, to specific times and places, the skinned knees of childhood, the bullying from peers as a teen, the bruising hard knocks of the adult “real world”. What would have happened to us if we had succumbed to self-pity and crawled into comfortable cocoons without further risk? Each of these points in our lives are moments of creation- times of growth – or if we let them, moments of destruction.

Creation comes out of chaos and darkness, much as in our parshat. Hope and optimism can and do spring forth as that proverbial silver lining in each dark cloud. In physics, the Big Bang which spawned the Universe came from a single point. In Hebrew, that point is Reshit. It is believed that this is much like a New Star or a New World coming out from the other side of a black hole, which as we know consumes and destroys.

The lessons of Creation are many, but for my simple mind, I focus on the most obvious. We, as often does Hashem, have choices to make at critical times in our lives. The right choice can lead to creation, that is- to new beginnings, to building new aspects of ourselves or building new relationships. The wrong choice can lead to a black hole of destruction, ruining relationships, or even ruining ourselves and our lives.

I urge us all to recognize these moments in our lives and to make the right choices. Let us embrace and become that creative light that illuminates the darkness and brings order out of chaos. Let us inspire one another. Let us lift each other up, when one of us is down. Let us create a better and brighter world, together!

Shabbat Shalom