{"id":2321,"date":"2004-10-05T10:37:13","date_gmt":"2004-10-05T14:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2004\/10\/05\/2321.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:46:44","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:46:44","slug":"parshah-breisheet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2004\/10\/05\/parshah-breisheet\/","title":{"rendered":"Parshah B’reisheet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week’s parshah is called B’reisheet (or Bereshith, or Bereshit, or what you will) because that’s the first word of the text, and it means ‘in the beginning’, and, you know, it’s the beginning. It’s also the name of the book, translated into Greek as Genesis; I’ll use the Greek\/English names here. I’ll also link to the first verse at the Blue Letter Bible<\/a>, which has different translation (and the Hebrew) but I won’t give you the page numbers in Hertz. OK, fine, it's pp. 2-20, but next week you are on your own. Anyway, enough administrivia, let’s begin!\n\n

Genesis 1:1<\/a> \ufffd 6:8\n\n

Wow, a lot of stuff happens here. I mean, in addition to the whole world being created out of tohu-bohu, there’s the Adam and Eve story, the Cain and Abel story, the generations all the way up to Noah and the introduction of Noah. And it's all stuff I have known since before I remember; can you remember not knowing about the Garden of Eden? Our task, Gentle Readers (or rather Your Humble Blogger’s task, in which Gentle Readers all may help, please please please) is to identify a few moments when things could have gone differently, when a character might have made a different choice. These moments are chosen to get a dozen or more people talking, and thinking, and wanting to re-read the thing again. OK?\n\n

Most obviously, of course, is what happens if Eve doesn’t eat the apple?<\/I>. Actually, I’m sick of that question, and if I’m sick of it, I imagine Rabbi is even more so. But here’s a question, what happens if Eve eats and Adam doesn’t? (3:6<\/a>) Knowing that Eve has eaten the apple (or pomegranate), Adam has a hell of a choice, doesn’t he? Quick, here comes the Lord? What do you do, punk? What do you do?\n\n

OK, here’s another. What if Abel survives Cain’s assault?<\/i> (4:8<\/a>) I mean, what if Cain just punches his big brother in his big ugly face and walks away? What does Abel do? How does the Lord deal with it?\n\n

My third is cheating, in a way, as it isn’t a question about a person but about the Lord, but I find it interesting: what if the Lord had made the world in four days, or fourteen?<\/I> Why seven, and how does that week influence our lives? (2:2-3<\/a>) Is one day of rest out of seven the best possible amount? Or, perhaps, was it the best for an agrarian society, and our current week-end is better for us? Or would one day a fortnight be enough?\n\n

What are your thoughts, Gentle Readers all?\n\n

                           ,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week\u2019s parshah is called B\u2019reisheet (or Bereshith, or Bereshit, or what you will) because that\u2019s the first word of the text, and it means \u2018in the beginning\u2019, and, you know, it\u2019s the beginning. It\u2019s also the name of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scripture"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17147,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321\/revisions\/17147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}