3 Elul 5784

Rabbi Dean Shapiro

Beth Shalom, Auckland

It begins, and begins again …

Like waves that lap and lap at the shore, like children’s first steps, like the mourner’s path, an old story becomes new, is re-lived for the very first time.

We tell the story, and we tell it again, because a story is a living thing. A story changes. We tell it again because we, also creatures who change, are not the same people who heard it before. Our old story is new because we are new, born again at this moment, never existing before.

Genesis I: God takes six days to create the universe – light, waters, sun and moon, land, plants that bear seeds, animals, humanity in the Divine Image, male and female created at once and, on the seventh day, rest.

Genesis II: The earth already exists, does not need to be formed. A river divides into four and waters a garden. God forms Adam from the earth. Adam, the first human being, who is alone, who is lonely, who sleeps, and from whose rib Eve is formed.

Two creation stories, one right after the other. Both can’t be true, unless both are True – that is to say, not factual, but rather two ways to convey deep seated Truths about the Universe and humanity’s place within it. Rather than reading literally, we’re invited to read expansively. We begin, and begin again, in Torah as in life.

Why does the Torah begin – and begin again? To remind us that we, too, can begin and begin again. The stories of our lives are not yet written, not while we yet have breath. We are writing them, currently, with each word and action, with every thought and feeling.

That idea is enticing, liberating and yet, somehow, it doesn’t feel true. It feels like life is already set. The circumstances that surround us, the choices we’ve made, determine who we’ll become, for better and for worse. Our existences become predictable, settled, and tomorrow looks just like today. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The two creation stories are paired and planted both at the Birthday of the World and within each one of us, bearing a wonderful reminder: we can begin again.