File: toreng1.htm

The Academy of Jerusalem – Torah from Zion Project,

The New Israeli Genesis Exegesis

(The Book of Genesis as a Redemptive Scenario and Rebiographic Guide)

Exegesis for the Parashah of Bereshit (Gen 1:1 – 5:8)

A. The Place of the Book of Genesis in the Pentateuch, and the Pattern of the first Genesis Parashah-Portion.

According to the teachings of later (Lurianic) Kabbalah, the whole of Being (HaWaYaH) is structured in a five-stratum pattern (each as if “below” the predecessor), which are called: 1. Adam Kadmon (Primordial Humanity), 2) Atziluth (Emanation or Divine Consistency), 3) Beri’ah (Creation), 4) Yetsirah (Formation), 5) Assiyah (Making or Actuality). Most of these names are gleaned from the prophetic verse (Isaiah 43:7), which details the work of Creation: “every one that is called by my name (and recall that Adam is the one who calls names – Gen. 2:20), for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him, yea I have made him”. Of all these strata, only the one – the fifth and lowest one – is capable of sensory perception. We see the Action, but not the processes of Formation, not the thought that brings about the planning, and not the whole array of forces – “The Nature” or haTeva, which has the gematric value (the sum of the numerical values associated with the letters that make up the Hebrew word under consideration) of 86, which is the gematric value of Elohim (the word for “God” in the Book of Genesis). (It should be noted that the word Elohim is in the plural form, as a plurality of forces or “Laws of Nature”. This means that, in a certain sense, Elohim-God is identical to “The Nature”, as we shall discuss in the sequel).

The text also testifies that the intention of the Creation was to form Adam-mankind beTsalmenu kiDemutenu - “in our Image-Tselem - after our Likeness” – (here too, God’s own regard to himself is in the plural form), as well as “so God created Mankind in his own image (Tselem), in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them (1:27). Namely: if the Adam is in the Image of God - also the converse is true: Elohim-God is in the Image-Tselem of “Adam”, and this is the hidden secret of “Adam Kadmon” – who is primordial and God-Elohim is made in his image.

In this context we may also note that the first word, Bereshit (commonly translated as “In the Beginning”, which gives less than one percent of its plethora of meanings) can also be read – as is done in the Zohar, not as the adverb ‘in the beginning”, but as a proper noun of a hidden entity who created God! “Bereshit created Elohim-God” – or, that through the agency of “the Beginning-Reshit” God-Elohim was created. The Book of the Zohar identifies this Bereshit with the Torah, and with this – with the Sephirah of Hokhmah-Wisdom, and bases this identification on the verse in the Proverbs (8:22), where Wisdom is personified as saying “the Lord created me in the beginning of his way”. This exegesis follows that of Bereshit Raba 1:1 that notes “there is no other Reshit (beginning) but the torah”. The Zohar then equates the name Elohim (God) with the Sephirah of Binah (Understanding), which issues from Hokhmah-Wisdom. The first verse of the Book of Genesis can thus be understood as dealing with the creation of God-Elohim, or with the birth of heaven and earth, where Bereshit is the Father and Elohim-God is the Mother.

The Book of the Zohar - which regards the Torah as an entity that preceded the creation of this world, something like a guidebook for the creation (see the introduction chapter above) – was revealed in our world at the precise beginning of the Sixth Millenium. Only at the sixth millenium of the Creation – or the sixth “Day” of the Hebrew Calendar, which is the “Day” for the creation of Adam – could there be performed the additional stage, the attempt to contend theologically with the concept of “Adam Kadmon”. From the Book of Etz Hayim (the Tree of Life) that relates the teachings of the Holy ARI of blessed memory, there is brought the conception that this Adam Kadmon is the primordial substance, which created the Torah, which in turn created God-Elohim who is the sum-total of the Laws of Nature.

The whole structure of the Pentateuch corresponds, to a certain measure, to this scheme of five strata: the Book of Genesis-Bereshit (the combination of the words BaYiT (house) and RoSh (head) as we shall presently see) is the story of the Adam, as we shall presently see. The Book of Exodus-Shemot – which carries the great stories of divine revelation at the Exodus from Egypt and the Giving of the Torah – represents the level of Atzilut-Divine consistency. The Book of Vayyiqra- Leviticus (literally God’s Calling) – which calls upon Israel to fulfil the Torah – is on the level of Creation-Beriah. The Book of Numbers-beMidbar – namely within the divine Dibur-Speech – is on the level of Formation-Yetsirah, whereas the book that seals the Pentateuch - Deuteronomy-Devarim – is the summary of the practical commandments and actions that should be performed for the restitution of Adam – and relates, therefore, to the level of Action-Assiyah.

It is interesting and characteristic that the names of these five books constitute together a meaningful sentence, which enfolds the essence of the process of Bereshit- Creation and all the process of restitution: Bereshit Shemot vayikra baMidbar Devarim – “In the Beginning, Names (were) called, Objects of (the Divine) Speech”. Namely: the Beginning of the work of Adam is to call Being (HaWaYaH) by Names (Gen. 2:20), and for this aim he calls in the Midbar – the Creation which is all made of divine utterances the specific things that ought to be performed.

In the sequel, we shall discuss the three Genesis versions of the Creation from the perspectives of the worlds of Beri’ah, Yetsirah and Assiyah.

1 The First Story of Genesis – World of Creation Version of Bereshit

About the Creation as Divine Utterance

It is plainly stated in the Book of Genesis that all the Creation of the six days was performed through divine utterances whose number is ten:

1. “Let there be light”.

2. “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide waters from water”.

3. “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear”.

4. “Let the earth bring forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth”.

5. “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth”.

6. “Let the waters swarm abundantly with moving creatures that have life, and let birds fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven”.

7. “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after its kind”.

8. “Let us make Mankind in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth”.

9. “Be fruitful, and multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it”.

10. “Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, on which there is the fruit yeilding seed; to you it shall be for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food”.

Of these primordial utterances, the first seven are “sayings about”, of an objective command (“I-It” relationship in the language of Buber), whereas the last three are “sayings to” with an address towards self and other (an “I-Thou” relationship), in an air of consultation.

The idea of Creation through speech and divine utterance returns also in later sources. “By the word of the Lord-YHWH wre the heavens made, and allthe host of them by th breath of His mouth” (Psalm 33:6), as well as “For ever, O Lord-YHWH; Thy word stands fast in the heavens” (Psalm 119:89).

There are those who insist that at the basis of the belief in one God there must be Creation out of nothing, and that that Creation must have occurred on a specific moment. In our times – those who believe so seek a validation for the Biblical cosmology in the modern cosmological theory of “The Big Bang”. But Maimonides, for example, who leaned to the opinions of Aristo about the preexistence of the universe, claimed that there is no religious significance to the difference between a unique creation and ongoing continuing creation.

The “Alte Rebbe”, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Habad (Chabad) teachings, taught, based on the above noted verse (“For ever… Thy word stands fast…” which is in the present tense), that the whole of creation is recurring every infinitesimal period, through these ten divine utterances that keep standing there recreating the world for ever. Moreover, the letters of these utterances – according to this conception – are the raw material of all and every manifestation and these letters turn about in all their permutations and combinations to create everything, much like human speech comprising the sum of letter permutations. (The Book of Tania, Gate of Unification and Belief. See especially the (Hebrew interpretation of Rabbi Adin Even-Yisrael (Steinsalz) to this book).

Our analysis of the first creation story in the Parasha of Bereshit will therefore relate to the structures of letters and words, in the assumption that coded in them are the primordial patterns that serve all the processes of creation and of restitution-Tikkun. We shall examine the letters and words as if they were kind of mathematical formulae of instructions for building viable patterns.

In spite of the clear count of ten utterances, the sages said “Bereshit Ma’amar nami” (the word “Bereshit” is also an utterance). Our understanding of their saying is that the letters and words of the first sentence of Genesis comprise a hidden “utterance” in which are encoded the principles of the Creation.

(This is akin to the formula on which is based the fractal geometry of the Mandelbrot Group. This is an extremely short formula - Z² => Z-a – which pertains to the conditions of existence and stability of all the “offspring” derivations of every reference point in two, or three, dimensional space, which multiply times their own values and lose a fixed quantity during their “generation”. In most places in this space, the “offsprings” will multiply and tend to infinity within a few “generations”, but from certain points in the space the offsprings will survive within a limited region of defined existence. Through continuing iterations (inertia), the formula creates rich complexity – in fact infinite – of complex “landscapes”, in which stability is maintained in spite of the many reproductions – and the basic form of the group, a semblance of a sitting Buddha, is repeated in an infinity of small reproductions).

Numerical Patterns in the First Creation Story of Genesis

That recent fashion of searching for numerical codes and “jumps” in the Bible (Droznin et all), brought in a veritable deluge of wiseacring nonsense, and is likely to give a bad name to the concept of systematic and meaningful number codes in the scriptures. Even the traditional gematrias are largely mere diversions, which can “prove” just about any thing - as the sages said: “Birds’ nests (bird sacrifice issues) and onsets of menstruation (for sexual conduct) are “the body” of ordinances; the movements of the stars and gematrias (calculation of letters) are mere “deserts” for teachings” (Wisdom of the Fathers, 3:18). Yet there still are authentic numerical codes that were apparently sacred already when the scriptures were composed. The Pythagorean mystery schools, where the members made vows not to reveal their secrets, are perhaps the more exposed edge of the hidden work of the ancient scribes.

Sefer Yetsirah (“The Book of Creation”, the first book of the Kabbalah, and which can be regarded as a characteristic Pythagorean work[a], emphasizes the subject of counting (Sephirah), Sephirot and numbers (Misparim) in the works of the Creation. The scribes of the scriptures were called Sophrim, which literally means “counters”, and it stands to reason that they took care to count the verses, words and letters in their books. In the first verse of Genesis, at any rate, we do find primordial patterns, Tavniot Bereshit, patterns from which whole worlds were created. To start with, we find fractal patterns of self-similarity already with the first letter, the first word and the first verse of Parashat Bereshit:

The Letter Beyt at the Beginning of the Book of Genesis –
its pronunciation, form and meaning.

Many Midrashim (exegeses) have already been written about the choice of the first letter of Genesis. The MaHaRaL (“Our Teacher Rabbi (Betzal’el) Loew” of Prague, the legendary creator of the Golem) explains that the letter Beyt, which is the second letter in the Hebrew alphabet, shows the duality that is in the basis of the created world. Franz Rosenzweig (in his book “The Star of Redemption) explains that the letter B expressed the specification (in his language “Besonders”) against the generalization of the first letter A (in his language “Alles”).

The annunciation of the letter B’ is the first annunciation of the child. The baby generally learns to say “Abba” (father) before “Imma” (mother), even though the mother is much closer to him/her. Likewise Creation-Beri’ah itself – namely Birth – starts with the letter Bayt, whereas the part of education and instruction – the commandments part of the Torah – start with the letter Alef - Anokhi YHWH elohekha – “I am the Lord Your God”.

The meaning of the letter Bayt is Bayit – house – and that is also its shape. That first word Bereshit can be broken down (among other ways, see below) into the two words Bayit – house – and Rosh – head, one inside the other, a head inside a house. The form of the accentuated Bayt (Bayt degushah) that opens the book of Genesis-Bereshit is also reminiscent of the seed (the accent point) inside the womb (which is the primordial house of every born creature). These two meanings, birth and building are relevant here. The form of the letter Bayt has already been referred as exegesis on the creation of the world as a process of a birth from a womb, in whch one does not know what precedes what, what is above and what is below, but one got to emerge out and start contending with the world. The second word, Bara – “Created” (which is already enfolded in the first word Bereshit, as Bara – Shith (“created six”, see below)) also means bringing out and separation, much as at birth.

But the creation of Bereshit is also of Building, the building of the orderly world – the Cosmos – and the introduction to the building of the Temple – the House of YHWH – in the world. This is not an unconscious creation but planned building, a “house”- Bayit - in which there is a “head” – Rosh – which means consciousness, which is symbolized by the spherical human head.

The letter that corresponds to Bayt in the in the European languages (whose script is derived from the Phoenician-Hebrew script) is the letter ‘B’, whose implicit meaning is (especially in English) is Existence – Be, Being. In the following we shall see that the letter Bayt also functions among the letters of the first verse of Genesis, in the same way that the accent point functions inside the letter Bayt, as Being or consciousness.

The letters inside the first word - BeReShIT

The first word is made of six letter, the first one of which is accentuated. The word Bereshit is divided, as already noted, to two words: “Bara – Shith”, namely “created six” (shith is in Aramaic “six”). This is the beginning of the building of the cosmos in six days. The ancient symbol for orderly building – of Cosmos – is the perfect cube, which has six faces. The cubic pattern expresses sanctity both in Judaim (the form of the Holy of Holies and of the phylacteries), in Christianity (the cube of “The New Jerusalem” in the ending of the Christian Bible) and in Islam (the Kaaba).

(In his essay [b] “The Meaning of the Numbers in the Book of Genesis: a Pythagorian and Numerological Interpretation”, Dr. Me’ir Bar Ilan of Bar Ilan University, Israel, dedicates a primary place for the number 6, precisely because it signifies conscious building, because a brick or hewn building stone has six faces. According to his analysis, the basic numerical pattern in the Hebrew scriptures is of “n + 1”, so that the 7, the seventh day of Genesis, is of a different quality than of the six days of Action.) the accent in the Bayt is the clue for the seventh element, the consious center that is nested within the cube with its six faces.

The Pythagorians saw in the number six “a perfect number”, because the sum of the numbers it is divided by (1, 2 and 3) equals the number itself. It seems that the author of the Book of Genesis wanted to start the account of creation with such a perfect number.

The letters in the first verse in the Book of Genesis

In the first sentence there are 7 words (in the language of the Sages Tevot – “boxes”) in which there are 28 letters. In the language of Sefer Yetsirah these are 7 “houses” (Batim) built from 28 “stones” (Avanim)

We claim that these two numbers are not random numbers, but are very intentional. The seven words correspond to the pattern of the seven days of creation, which are enumerated in the first creation story, which issues from this sentence. But there is reason to note that the number 28 is the second “perfect number” (the Pythagoreans apparently knew only these two perfect numbers). 28 is divided by 1, 2, 4, 7 and 14, whose sum is 28. Moreover, these two numbers, the 6 corresponding to the number of letters of the first word, and the 28 corresponding to the number of the letters in the first sentence of Genesis, comprise the sum of the important primary numbers 3 and 7. Thus 1+2+3 = 6, whereas 1+2+3+4+5+6+7 = 28. Therefore it is appropriate to start the account of the creation by the perfect creator with these two perfect numbers.

The number 28 appears, for instance, in the account of the 28 “times” – “A time to be born, and a time to die..” etc (Eccles. 3:2) – which are also counted in seven sentences. The wheel of 28 divisions is common to various esoteric systems and serves as representation for the schematic month: 4 weeks = 28 days. In many Sufi diagrams, including in the ceiling of the dome at the El-Aksa Mosque (which is not the Dome of the Rock) at the Temle Mount, there appears the motif of the wheel made of 28 divisions.

In our times there became known a structure of a zodiac wheel with 28 sections, “The New Jerusalem Diagram” investigated by John Michell. Michell claims that many of the world’s ancient monuments, such as the Great Pyramid and the Neolithic temple of Stonehenge in England and many others, are based on the proportions of this diagram. This diagram indicates, first and foremost, the image of the camping of the Twelve Tribes around the Tabernacle. There is a reason that this diagram, which is relevant for the Tabernacle and the future Temple, as we shall still see at the close of our discussion of the Book of Genesis, is already enfolded in the first verse of Genesis.

[presentation of John Michell’s New Jerusalem Diagram]

The Numbers 28 and 27.

We have already seen the n+1 relation between the numbers 6 and 7. Such a relation exists also between the number 28 and the one near it – 27. It is possible to divide the 28 letters of the first sentence of Genesis to two groups – the first letter, the accentuated Bayt with which we have already dealt, and the rest of the 27 letters.

We have already seen the number 6, which represents a sacred cube as a symbol for the cosmos – the orderly and constructed part of the universe. The number 27 is a cube of 3 in the 3^rd power. 27 equal cubes comprise a large cube, each edge of which is of 3 units. In the language of Sefer Yetsirah, the 27 letters are “stones” that together build the square “house” (Bayit) – the cube or the Kaaba.

Just as we have shown the accent (Dagesh) nested within the letter Bayt – the House – it is also possible to see the letter Bayt itself as representing consciousness or Being, which is nested inside the cube of the 27 letters-stones. It is also worth noting that even though we are used to attribute 22 letters to the Hebrew alphabet (and this is how the Sefer Yetsirah, regards them), there are actually 27 letters in the Hebrew alphabet – 22 ordinary letters and 5 final letters. Therefore the large cube can be seen as the housing (Mishkan) of the 27 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, and the passage of consciousness between them creates the sequences of letters that comprise the various utterances that can be expressed in the Hebrew language – including the utterances of Bereshit. There exists also a tradition, according to which the tablets in the Ark of the Covenant were actually two stone cubes, a cubic cubit each, on which there appeared miraculously the letters of the Ten Commandments.

(There is another number which related to the two numbers above, which is the number 26, which is connected to with the gematric value of “the Name of Being” (YHWH) and with the very meaningful number 13. But this number does not appear in the first account of Genesis, which is associated with the name of Elohim, but with the second account, which is attributed to the name YHWH, and we shall discuss it there).

We may thus make an intermediate summary and note that the explicit story of creation contains also an implicit numerical parable (hidden at least for the generations who forgot the code) of whole Creation and Formation. But the numerical codes in this Parasha are not exausted with the numbers of letters and words, but also pertain to the number of repetitions of the key words in the account.

The Numbers 10 and 32 in Parashat Bereshit

In the Creation narrative that includes the ten utterances (namely the six days of creation), there appears the name of God Elohim 32 times, until the summary: “And God-Elohim saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31) (in the sequel, the appelation Elohim will appear three more times, in the section that deals with the declarqation of the Sabbath).

We have, therefore, a verbal pattern made of ten (utterances) and thirty-two (appearances of Elohim). This is a pattern that is treated intensively in Sefer Yetsirah – the earliest of the Kabbalah texts – and this is its language: “In thirty-two wonderous paths engraved YaH… and created His world in three Sefarim (both “book”, “counting”, “account”, “story” and “writer”)…. ten Sefirot Bli-Mah.and twenty-two letters. (Sefer Yetsirah, 1:1-2).

The pattern of the ten Sephirot is prhaps the general basic (and hidden) pattern of Being, Creation, the Soul of Man and the World of Tikkun (Restitution), and the majority of the Mekubalim (Kabbalists) employed it extensively. (We may single here The Bahir, Yoseph Jikatila’s Sha’are Orah (Gates of Light) and of course The Zohar. Since their publication, it is common to see in the ten Sephirot the essence of the esotric teachings in Judaism, though we shall later mention the later, and less known, Kabbalah). There is no need therefore to explain it here. But we shall note one aspect that is important for understanding the realization of the Acts of Bereshit in our times, and which has not yet been noted by the interpreters.

The primordial decimal Bereshit pattern, which constucts the Tree of the Sephirot, will bring us to a system made of 10¹⁰ elements. This is according to the assumption that each Sephirahis made of a tenfold count of the Sephirah below it (in other words, that the ten primordial utterances has a fractal structure, and each one of them is made in the decimal pattern, so that each Creation utterance multiplies the possibilities ten-fold), so the sum total is 10 billion.

According to a theory developed by the English researcher Peter Russel in his book “The Global Brain”2, ten to the power of ten is precisely the number needed for a system, in order to grow to an incomensurably more complex system, which allows the emergence of entirely novel and far more developed characteristics. This is, for example, the average number of atoms in a living cell, and this is the order of size of neural cells in the cortex – the “thinking” portion, or the seat of consciousness – in the human brain. This order of size – 10 to the power of 10 – also pertains to the number of stars in the galaxy we belong to – the milky way – and this is also the estimate for the number of galaxies in the universe. Russel claims that the human population upon earth is likely to stabilize on a population of about ten billion humans, which would allow from a quantitative point of view the ttransition to a new supra-human organization, which will act as one creature, with super-consciousness, much as the brain is the suoer-organization of the neurons it is made of.

Also the philosopher Engels, the partner of Karl Marx, tried to determine a historical law, according to which “quantity turns into quality”, in the transitional stages of socio-historical development. More organized workers, he claimed can bring to the threshold of new qualities. Russel calls this super-creature, made up of about 10 billion human beings who are connected together by the name of “The Global Brain”. But we can call this creature simply “Adam”, the one that is emerging towards the end of the sixth millenium according to the Hebrew calendar, a date that will occur at about the year 2240 of the common era.

The 32 Paths of Wonder

In spite of the common exegesis of Sefer Yetsirah, it se3ems that the number of “32 Wonderous Paths” is not just the sum of the decade (ten) and the 22 Hebrew letters, but it also a whole and meaningful entity by its own. Even traditional interpretations for Sefer Yetsirah which explain “the 32 Paths of Wisdom” as different types of Sekhalim - “intelligences” – (such as of the RaABaD, and inadequate as they are), make no inner distinction of 10 and 22 among them.

From pure numerological perspective, 32 is 2 at the 5^th power. At the beginning of our discussion we have surveyed the five-fold patternof the books of the Pentateuch and of the “worlds” in the scheme of the later Kabbalah. IF we note that the number 2, just like the letter Bayt which we discussed earlier, is the sign for division and discrimination, then the number 32 will serve well to represent the range of distinctions that are generated in the transitions between 5 worlds. Already in the hidden world of Adam Kadmon there is a certain distinction (signified by the letter Bayt as the beginning of the Book of Bereshit), for else it would not be possible to refer to it as a “world” that contains some components. This primary distinction is becoming more detailed in the world below it (Olam ha’Atsilut) into further distinctions[c]. These distinctions pass further division and distinctions at the world below it (Olan haBeri’ah), and so on at the World of Yetsirah-Formation and then in the world of Assiyah-Action, which is largely apparent to our senses, there are already 32 primary distinctions. The number 32 is associated with Wisdom-Hokhmah, precisely because it requires wisdom to observe the existence of the primary distinctions – as well as of the possibility of annuling these distinctions and return affairs to the state of Unity.

We have already mentioned that one representation to the number 28 can be found in our times at the dome of the El-Aksa Mosque at the Temple Mount. It may be even more interesting that the most magnificent representation of the principle expressed by the number 32 can also be found at the Temple Mount – in the magnificent pattern on the ceiling of the very Dome of the Rock. It is likely that contemporary Moslems are not aware of these meanings (much like most Jews nowadays are not aware of the meaning of the numbers and patterns in the Torah), but it is very likely (and there are supporting sources to it) that the Sufi artists-designers of the shrines at the Temple Mount belonged to ancient sects of “Free Masons” and secret knowledge (such as the circles of Pythagorians and Mekubalim), who studied the secrets of the Temple of Solomon and of the Tabernacle, and who strove to have “the Spirit of Wisdom” like Betsal’el (the architect of the Tabernacle) who knew “to combine the letters from which heaven and earth were formed” (Talmud Bavli, Tr. Berakhot 55:1). At any rate, it is noteworthy that in the sacred precinct in Jerusalem there are found even today specific (albeit unrecognized) representations for the secrets of Bereshit and of the Temple.

The Twelvefold Pattern Enfolded in Parashat Bereshit

The decade pattern of the ten utterances and the ten Sephirot is surely the hidden, and recognized, pattern of Being (HaWaYaH), of the Creation, of Adam and of the World of Tikkun, and we shall still mention and use it a lot in the sequel. But there is still another hidden pattern enfolded in the first verse of Genesis - and which is extended and interpreted in the sequel of the book of Genesis in the story of the sons of Jacob and the founding of the tribes, and in the rest of the Bible in the manner of the camping of the tribes around the Tabernacle and the division of the land into homesteads – and that is the pattern of the Twelve.

It is instructive to note that the Sefer Yetsirah, which was the first to make explicit the principle of “The Ten Sephirot”, does not deal with accounts of tens, but prefers counts of 3, 7 and especially 12. We know that the twelve, as in the division of the Zodiac, was very common in the ancient world and also in Israel, and evidence for this abounds in the mosaic floors in synagogues from the Second Temple period and onwards, as well as in hymns to the zodiac signs which apparently were voiced in those same synagogues.

It is therfore surprising to find that the Twelve is not mentioned explicitly in the Story of the Creation (and one may even suspect that it is intentionally hidden, so as not to add validity to the worship of the stars and constelations which were current in the ancient world). Yet there is no doubt that this principle was implied. If we accept that the story of Creation-in-six-days amplifies the concept of Cosmos as a cube, then elementary spatial geometry shows us that every cube of six faces also has twelve edges. Whereas the conceptual cube is constructed from the six faces, an actual cube is hewn or cunstructed from material, and when a cube is built in actuality, the construction is through the setting of twelve edges. In the Book of Genesis, too, there is a need for the birth of the tribes and their establishment upon earth in order to realize the divine plan, which is expressed in the pattern of the six days.

The Sevenfold Pattern and Sefer haZohar

As we have shown above, there are seven words in the first sentence and there are also six paragraphs in the first account of Creation – corresponding to the seven days of Genesis-Bereshit/

The sevenfold pattern is of course, before all else, the pattern of the seven days of creation and the “Seven Sephirot of Construction”. The Zohar equates the seven days to the system of the Sephirot of the Kabbalah. The names of most of these seven lower Sephirot are derived from the verse of David (I Chron. 29:11): “Thine, O Lord-YHWH, is the Greatness-Gedulah, and the Power-Gevurah, and the Glory-Tif’ereth, and the Victory-Netsah, and the Majesty-Hod, for all that is in heaven and on earth is thine, thine is the Kingdom-Malkhut (In the following, these names will be given with few of their multifaceted meanings)

The Zohar exegesis for Parashat Bereshit builds the parallels between the seven days of Genesis and the seven lower Sephirot, “The Sephirot of Construction” in great detail. The Zohar deals, as noted, with the first word – Bereshit and translates it to Aramaic: “Bara Shith” – or “created six”. Namely: in the beginning there was created the sixfold pattern of the Sephirot of Construction, and with them the world was created in six stages.

Already the Talmud dealt in various passages to the concept of “The letters of Creation”, such as “Betsal’el knew to combine the letters in which heaven and earth were created” (Talmud Bavli, Tr. Berakhot 55:1). Rabbi Akiva (the greatest authority for the Talmud) was known as one who would have an exegesis about each and every letter in the Torah. But it was only about a thousand years later when the Mekubalim in general, and the Zohar and its offshoots in particular, set to formulate a whole systematic scheme, in order to interpret each word and each letter in the account of Bereshit, and to show how there are encoded in them the basic instructions for the building of the worlds.

The Zohar thus regards the word ELoHIM – God – as the dynamic combination of the concepts of MI (Who?) and EleH (these), in accordance with the verse (Isaiah 40:26) “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who-Mi created these-Eleh things?”. The Zohar details and presents Creation as a dynamic process within God-ELoHIM, a process in which MI (Who) created – that is brought outside of it – EleH, “These”. The gematric value of the letters of EleH is 36, namely six squared, which reinforces the identification of these EleH with the more overt six “Sephirot of Construction” and the six days of Genesis. Each day of the Creation has a parallel among the Sephirot: The 1^st Day – Hesed (Grace, Love), 2^nd Day – Gevurah (Severity, Judgement), 3^rd Day – Tif’eret (Beauty, Articulation), 4^th Day – Netsah (Overcoming, Eternity), 5^th Day Hod (Thanking, Splendour) and 6^th Day – Yesod (Foundation, Thoroughness). These are the overt Sephirot. We prefer not to rely on gematrias in our exegesis, but in such a case, of using basic numbers and their squares, we deem that the gematrias are based on the authentic numerical patterns and codes of the scriptures.

MI (Who), on the other hand, is connected with the number 50 (its gematria value) – a number associated in the Kabbalah with the concept of “The Fifty Gates of Binah (Understanding)”. The number 50 is found explicitly in the scriptures in connection with the counts of the years of the jubilee and of the days between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot (Pentacost, and literally “weeks”). It is made there of the 49 days of seven weeks (just as the number 36 is six sixes) and an additional day. We can therefore understand the meaning enfolded in this Midrash about the name ELoHIM as containing the revealed and the hidden together. The six sixes of the created world issue from the hidden seven sevens, of the secret of the Sabath, and of the unique One which is above all. (The legend says that to Moses were revealed “the 49 Gates of Binah, but the 50^th Gate, the most hidden one, remained hidden from him too). This means that in the world ELoHIM (God) there is a geometrical pattern akin to what we saw in the word BeREShIT – here as the array of EleH (These - 36) explicit Laws of Nature arrayed like a square (of 6x6), and nested within the square (of 7x7) of the hidden MI-Who? – whereas the One, which is even more hidden, connects with them all. In this sense, Elohim-God has a three-strata structure or Image – Tselem Elohim – in which Man was created.

The process of Creation is cyclical: Creation is the division of the hidden MI-Who? From the (potentially identifyable). In the course of creation, EleH – These – are separated from the MI – Who? – fal down, and become manifest as heaven and earth. Their ability to reunite is dependent on the answer to the question “Me bara Eleh?” (Who created These?). In the very ability to reach in consciousness the One God – these return and connect. The process of the rectification of the divinity, the return of the Elohim to the pristine unity, is tied to our reaching awareness of God, and in the realization and answer to the question “Who created These?”.

The identification of Bereshit with Bayit – House – and Rosh – Head – forms a framework for the entire Bible. The Hebrew Bible is sealed by the declaration of the emperor Cyrus (whom the prophet called Messiah – Isaiah 45:1) in the end of the Book of Chronicles: “The Lord-YHWH God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and He has charged me to build Him a house in Yrushalayim (Jerusalem), which is in Yehudah (Judea); Whoever (Mi) is among you of all his people – the Lord-YHWH God be with him, and let him go up”. So “the House of God” is already implied in the first three words of the Bible, and in the verse that ends it. This final call for action seals the intention in the creation of heaven and earth.

[the figure of the first verse of Genesis as “The House of Elohim”]

This means that the whole Torah could be regarded as given primarily for the goal of teaching how to build the House of YHWH. And indeed, if we examine the Torah quantitatively we shall find that whereas the Torah allocates for the whole description of the whole process of Genesis, the creation of Heaven and Earth and all their host, including humankind mere 34 sentences (and in the strict action, until “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host”, only 31 sentences) – then the erection of the Tabernacle, a man-made temporary structure, is described in det5ail through 256 sentences that deal with the plan of the Tabernacle, its design and construction, and another 75 sentences about the design of the priestly garments and their preparation [d]

This means that from the perspective of the Torah – the erection of the Tabernacle-Mishkan, which is the prototype of “The House (of God) in Jerusalem which is in Judea”, is seven times and more (and in a different version: ten times) more important than the creation of Heaven and Earth and all their host. The Torah, which begins with Bereshit, which comprises as we have seen both “House” for the “Head”, continues then to elucidate the conditions required for completing the creation of the world through the construction of the “House” in order to house the divine “Head”, the divine presence – the Shekhinah – in this world.

The sages have noted that the construction of the Tabernacle was made in the same pattern that heaven and earth were created.

Just as the story of Bereshit repeats in three different versions (see below, section 3), so also the description of the erection of the Tabernacle is repeated in much detail three times: first time in the description given by the Lord to Moses – which corresponds with the level of Creation-Beri’ah and revelation; second time in the description given by Moses to Betsal’el – which corresponds with the level of Formation-Yetsirah; and another, third, time about the construction itself – namely at the level of Action-Assiyah. Now – as we have noted the correspondence in the patterns – we can return to the different stories of the creation.

The first creation story is sealed with the aim, which is the subject of the Sabbath – which in the Kabbalah is that of the Sephirah of Malkhut - “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host. And by the seventh day God ended His work which He had done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. And God blessed the seventh day, and He sanctified it; because in it He rested from all His work which God had created to be performed”. The concept of Sabbath-Shabat should be understood also in the sense of returning-hashava and answer-Teshuvah – the answer to the question of the meaning of human existence, of returning the world to its creator, to prepare His House and to sanctify the world.

II – The Second Creation Story – The Yetsirah Version of Bereshit

Yetsirah-Creativity and Yitsriut-Passion:

The Tree of Knowledge and the destiny of Adam and the Adamah-Living Earth

“These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord-YHWH God-Elohim made the earth and the heavens… And the Lord God (YHWH Elohim) formed Man-Adam of the dust of the ground-Adamah…. And out of the ground-Adamah the Lord God (YHWH Elohim) formed every beast of the field…. (Gen. 2:4,7,19)

Here we have the second Story of the Creation, which is entirely different from the first one. Not just different but quite the reverse: Adam is created on the day the creator made Heaven and Earth, before he formed the שיח השדה or the animals. This is no longer the “objective” account of the primordial creation, but the story of Yetsirah, a dramatic story in which humans and their passions are in focus.

(The Hebrew word Yetsirah – Formation – is associated with the Hebrew words Yetser – instinctive-emotional urges – that appears later in this story (Gen 8:21), and has to do with Tsur – to form or fashion and its product Tsurah – “Form” or “shape” – as well as with Tsar –“narrow”, and also “enemy” – and its female form Tsarah – trouble. Yetsirah – Formation – has to do with artistic fashioning from already available raw materials, which is distinct from Beri’ah – Creation that is bringing out something entirely new, “ex-nihilo”. But this distinction hardly exists in English. Thus Yetsirah would be translated as “creativity”, yet we should keep the Hebrew distinction in mind).

YHWH (YeHaWeH) – Yotser Bereshit

But not only is the order of the Creation reversed, but even the main protagonist, the Yotser or the Creator Himself, is called here by a different appelation – YHWH Elohim. There are those Biblical critics who saw in this the vestiges of a negligent editing of two or three different traditions that were preserved. Others see in it the mark of different writers – or even writeress ⁽²⁾. But we do not accept this simplistic explanation as explaining the richness and depth in the story of Genesis, and are looking for a method that calls for this difference and requires it.

Let us therfore return to the verse in Isaiah (43:7): “Every one that is called by My Name: for I have created him for Me Glory, I have formed him, yea, I have made him”, and to the claim that the world was created, formed, and made in different strata. From this follows that until now the account dealt with Olam haBeri’ah, “the World of Creation”, which is a world of (mathematical and structural) laws, whereas now it turns to deal with Olam haYetsirah, “The World of Formation”, which is the world of creativity, feelings and urges - Yetser.

And indeed, this is confirmed by the wording of the text. In contrast with the opening words of Bereshit Bara – more or less “Foremost Created” – here we have vayitser YHWH Elohim et ha’Adam…. Vayetser… kol Hayat haSadeh – “Then the Lord (YHWH) God (Elohim) formed the (or rather “would form” – as explained towards the end) humans (Adam)… and (would have) formed all the animals of the field”.

This is why there is now required also a change in the name of the Creator and Fashioner - YHWH[e] - a name that can be called upon. For how would a human being call his maker when he calls Him(/Her): Elohim – which is in the plural form? That whose meaning is hidden (the letters of Who (are) These)? Elohim-God is, as we already noted, many different forces/laws, 32 pathes of Wisdom; or – according to its gematria – “The Nature”. Should man cry out and appeal to “the Nature”?

But YHWH is a primary form of communication. According to the Torah Or (Torah of Light) of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (the “Alte Rebbe” and founder of the important HaBaD school of Judaism), the first letter of this name, the Y’od - which has the (pronunciation and) form of the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, almost a point – is the Tsimtsum-contraction, the wise focusing on the point of what is to be communicated to the other; the second letter of the name, H’eh - which has the expansive form (and pronunciation, like breathing in or out) – is the building and expansion from that point for elucidation; the third letter of the name, W’aw – meaning “hook” and which has the form of a line, and is used in Hebrew as the connector – is the “pipe” (Tsinor) of communication through which the information is transmitted to the receiver; and the additional, final, H’eh, is the building up of the information at the receiver’s mind.

Another way to approach this divine name is to relate to its literal meaning – Being, Existence, HaWaYaH – in a grammatical form that signifies both becoming and its cause. The letters of YHWH repeated three times are the letter (in Hebrew) for “Was, Is and Will be”, and the name represents the three of them together, an eternal process of Being which is beyond time and for which Time is completely transparent.

The name of YHWH is the name that appears in conjunction with the issues of the Garden of Eden and of the ideal state of Israel in the statue of “the People who know Thy Name”. But through the many generations of exile there has grown a huge avoidance from relating directly to the Holy Name of YHWH, and without reflection there has grown a whole system of strange names (that most often are like words of revulsion) that “succeeds” in making the Jew forget the experience of the Lord his God – and this is perhaps the real expulsion from Eden in our times.

(On the other hand, there are many gentiles who have no compunction from trying to call the Lord by names like “Jehovah” or “Yahweh”. Such names are definitely meaningless, and their users, who often regard this name, anyway in derision and revulsion haven’t got a clue what they are referring to. Both gentile and Jew refer to YHWH as a proper name, which is to miss the whole point altogether. Thousands of years after the giving of the Torah and ostensibly basing world culture on the Bible, people’s conception of the divine are more primitive and uninformed than were those of the gentiles in Abraham’s time.)

The recoil from “pronouncing the name of the Lord in its letters (lahagot et shem YHWH be’otiyotav”) is based perhaps on a proper sense that it is not possible, in fact, to pronounce the Name in its true level. This is a name that is composed from vowels without any consonants, from the three most subtle letters in the Hebrew alphabet, those that serve to mark the future tense, that which has not yet happened. This “Tetragramaton” name, YHWH, constitutes a perfect representation of the process of creation-formation, in which “things” pass from the realm of taciturn thought to the letters of speech and into action. The description of “a river went out of ‘Eden… and from thence it was parted and branched into four streams” (Gen. 2:10), is also correct for the holy Tetragramaton, YHWH.

When the letters of the Tetragramaton become more material (the vowels turn into the consonants nearest to them in pronounciation), this name become realized into four primary meanings, from which the whole world is formed and maintained:

1) Existence – Havayah – and subsistence – Hivuy. As noted above, “was, is and will be” – Haya, Hoveh ve’Yiheye. These comprise the New Adam.

2) Will – Yahav – or Passion – Ta’avah. “The Holy One desired to dwell among the lowly – nit’avah haKAdosh Barukh Hu lishkon batahtonim – and that is why He created the world.

3) Love – Ahavah – without which surely the world would not survive - with all its subjects (like Yohaveha – He would love Her – Ye’ehavuhu – they will love Him – etc. The 13^th century Mekubal Rabbi Avraham Abul’afia prophesied that before the Redemption there will be revealed an important Holy Name AHWY. This prophetic name may be associated with the pronounciation of Ehevi – (please) Love (me/us, addressed to a feminine form of the divinity.)

4) Experience – Hawayah – of the presence of the divine in life and action.

Significantly, it is in the first Creation Story, when the creator is impersonal, He calls (six times) His creations by names: “And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night… And God called the firmament Heaven… And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas” (Gen. 1:5, 8, 10), and also “Let us make Adam”. Whereas in His personal appearance in the second Creation Story, He leaves the work of calling names for the Adam. It is the Adam who will fill the world with knowledge and imagination.

About the Gematric-Geometric Meaning of the Name of YHWH

The Mekubalim have persistently dealt with the numerical meaning of the gematrical value of the name of YHWH, which is 26. In the late Kabbalah of the Holy ARI (the great15^th century master of the Kabbalah “The Divine Rabbi Yitzhak Lutia Ashkenazi” and his disciple Rabbi Hayim Vital, there are employed much the gematrias of the name of YHWH with the “fillings” of its letter combinations (the names of AV (72), SaG (63), BeN (52) and MaH (45). It is possible that this excessive dealing with the name is a certain compensation for the Jewish avoidance of using the name as it is spelled and pronounced, but still the question remains – are these numbers meaningful within the Biblical text?

It is evident that the number 13 (2 x 13 = 26) is meaningful in the Bible (and the gematrias of 13 for both Ahavah – Love – and Ehad – One – are also quite appropriate). For example, the fact (or incidence?) that the numerical values of the names of the Patriarches make multiples of 26 in a descending series begs attention (Isaac-YITsHaK – 208 = 8x26; Jacob-Ya’AkoV – 182 = 7x26; Joseph-YOSePh – 156=6x26). But our approach gives inherent value for gematrias only when they contain also geometrical message. The symbolic-geometrical meaning of the number 26 is in its connection with the cubic number of 27. 26 relates to 27 in the relationship of n-1. This means that from the central point within a cube, one can observe the 3-dimensional space from its 26 directions: 6 faces in directions of Up, Down, Right, Left, Forward, Backward; 12 edges in combined directions (such as up-forward, Left-Down, etc.); and 8 vertices in triple directions (such as Forward-Up-Right, Forward-Down-Left, etc.). These six directions and their combinations have symbolic meaning of the relationship of one person to another or the environment. The number 26 therefore represents the sum of our types of relationships to others and to the world around us, and enables to sum up the rectification of our relationships in each of the types of humanly meaningful relationships. The full realization of the divinity in this world means the recognition of infinity beyond the restrictions that surround one in all the twenty-six meaningful directions one might be oriented in.

The Names of the Protagonists of the Drama of the Tree of Knowledge

Let us relate to the names of the three protagonists of the second Creation Story, the Yetsirah account, or the Story of the Garden of Eden: Serpent-Nehash, Eve-Havvah and Adam. All three represent different modes of knowledge, and they are tested, therefore, through the Tree of Knowledge.

The Serpent – Nahash – as to do with guessing/speculation – Nihush. The Serpent-Nahash develops many theories, and would like to verify them, but is not interested in testing and experiencing by himself. The Serpent guesses why the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was forbidden, he guesses what will happen to the one who would eat from it, but prefers to remain outside the action and not to change himself. He leaves the experience – Havayah – to Havah-Eve, who prefers to live – Hayah – and experience – havoh – by herself.

Adam is the middle position between thesee two. Adam medameh-imagines the experience-Havayah to himself, but joins the action only when pressed. On the face of it, there is no great difference between speculation-Nihush and imagination-Dimyon, but in fact there is a considerable qualitative difference. The Adam, who was indeed formed from the taciturn earth-Adamah, was also frormed with a similarity-Dimyon to his maker – on one hand, it is God’s wish “Let us make Mankind-Adam in our image-Tselem after our likeness-kiDemutenu, whereas the human aspiration os Adameh le’Elyon – “I will be like the most High” (Isaiah 14:14). The whole pattern of the Adam is the pattern of the Tree of the Sephirot (see the preceding chapter), which is also the pattern of the Torah-the Tree of Life with its 248 (ReMaH) members and 365 (ShSaH) sinews, in body and in soul.

The serpent, who does not want to change – is punished by change. He was erect, but was sentenced to go upon its belly. (In this context, a side note: today we are aware, through recent research on the ancient dinosaurs, that the reptiles – among which the serpent belongs – were indeed with legs and erect bodies, so that the snakes that survived them, indeed lost their legs). No less interesting is the common vulnerable state of these three protagonists. Traditional interpreters and translators refer to the word Arum (Gen. 3:1) given about the serpent as “crafty”, but this word means in Hebrew also “naked”. The it is well known that the serpent is the animal that sloughs (sheds) its skin, and remains in certain times naked and vulnerable (and aware of it). Adam and Eve did not feel naked before they ate of the fruit of the Tree, but through the experience there came the knowledge. So the serpent managed to make them naked as he was.

The three of them are representatives of an alternative world – the paradisical world, of the Garden of Eden.

We are dealing here, as noted, with the World of Yetsirah-Formation. The beautiful expression of the World of Yetsirah/Formation is the place called the Garden of Eden (Gan be’Eden), which forms a very intuitive image that appeals to every person. We all regard a beautiful garden, full of trees, as a desirable thing. In translations, the Garden of Eden is caled “Paradise”, from the Persian word – that was also absorbed in the Hebrew language – Pardes. The word Pardes appears in the last and latest part of the Hebrew Bible. Thus the beloved appears in the Canticles (4:13) as Pardes Rimonim – an orchard of pomegranates – while the poet of Ecclesiastes (2:5) describes the ultimate riches through the Pardes: “I made great works for myself…. I made gardens ans orchards (Pardesim)…..”.

In the Talmud we meet again with the Pardes, with the four sages who entered it and what happened to each one. The medieval scholars would translate this as PaRDeS or as the acronym for Peshat-literal, Remez-hint, Derash-exegesis and Sod-mystical/ secret (meanings of the Biblical text), but it seems that the intention (Ezrahi, 1997) of the sages was to the original meaning, to the Garden of Eden (regarded as the Holy of Holies in the Temple), to the passage through the Cherubs and the “bright blade of the revolving sword” (Gen. 3:24), with the attending dangers, for entry to the Tree of Life.

The image of the ideal garden is thus deeply imprinted in the human condition (something like the “D.N.A Gene” – which remarkably has the same letters as the Hebrew “GaN AdeN”). This is not fortuitous that at present – the end of the Sixth Millenium according to the Hebrew Calendar, namely, the end of the Sixth Day of This World, the “day” of the creation of Adam and his appointment for the caretaker of the Garden – there is an amplification of ecological consciousness, with the strong nostalgia of return to nature and to the Garden. But it should be noted that Adam was not introduced into the garden for pleasure, but “to till it and to keep it” (Gen. 2:15). That is: if Adam’s primary task were accomplished, if humankind only succeeded to keep the ecosystem undamaged from the beginning – there would have been no need to disturb the ecological balance further through the development of agriculture.

This is important to remember: according to the Biblical view – the garden of Eden is still extant, and the way to it and to the Tree of Life is a possibility, that is why it was necessary “to place “the Keruvim at the east of the Garden of Eden, and the bright blade of a revolving sword to guard the way to the tree of life”, so as to make it 'difficult to those who seek to return to the garden, so that one cannot return there just by whim. And since the Temple was destroyed and the Cherubs upon the Ark of the Covenant disappeared – the re-entry is still more difficult and dangerous, as would be testified by the experience of those four sages.

About the Topology of the Garden of Eden

“And a river went out of (the Garden of) Eden… and from thence it was parted, and branched into four streams”: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Hiddeqel and the Prat. Let us try to examine what are these four rivers. Concerning the Hiddeqel and the Prat – there is little doubt that what is meant are the rivers called the Tigris and the Euphrates. Their origin is in the inner Taurus Mountains in Turkey, whence they separate, and then return and unite a little North of the city of Basra, in order to flow into the Persian (or Arabian) Gulf. Concerning the Gihon and the Pishon there is no semantic continuity, especially since the only water source that kept the name Gihon is the pulsing (Gah) spring around which there developed Jerusalem. But this is a tiny spring, compared with the immence water sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris (albeit there is a prophecy that in the future a great river will go forth from Jerusalem). It is necessary, therefore, to examine the further hints given by the scriptures about their basins – the Pishon “which compasses the whole land oh Havilah, where there is gold”, whereas the Gihon “it compasses the whole land of Kush”. From these RaShY deduces that these are the Nile sources, the White and the Blue Nile, which separate in East Africa, in the present Ethiopia, and return to unite near Khartum, to flow together into the Midetreanean. IF so, we are dealing here precisely with the four rivers that gave the life to “The Fertile Crescent”, and which enabled the existence and development of humans in ancient times. It was not for nothing that when Lot, Abraham nephew, decided to settle “at the plain of the Yarden (Jordan), that it was well watered everywhere” (Gen. 13:10) it was compared to the waters of the Nile “like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Mizrayim (Egypt)”.

Upon reading the sentence: “And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted, and branched into four streams”, we intuitively assume there was a single source from whence flow these four streams – but this is not so. Not only do these rivers not meet, they even surround the whole region of the Fertile Crescent, from the North and from the South. We should then assume a source river that surrounds the whole region of the fertile crescent as if in a circle, and gives the gift of water, that is – the vitality (Hayut). The river that went out of Eden seems to have disappeared, along with the garden, but left behind the four streams, that still preserve a few facets of paradise. Without them, the whole wide region that is considered as the cradle of human civilization would have been a desert.

The Bible was written in Hebrew, the language of the people of “Ever haNahar” – the other side of the River – and is marked by the character of that environment. The site of the Biblical Garden of Eden must have been here, in the Fertile Crescent that is in the Middle East. But since this region is, in fact, at the center of the earth’s continents[f], at the sacred center-point for all humankind, the ancient Biblical parable (Meshal haKadmoni) holds a universal meaning for all humankind.

But it is not mere geographical territory that we are dealing here with, but mainly with psychological-symbolic territory. We have already related to the river from Eden as surrounding. With this, we return to the Kabbalah symbols, where a world surrounds a world: the World of Assiyah-Action is the central circle, and is limited to concrete things. It is in turn surrounded by the World of Yetsirah, with which we are dealing here, and whch is structured to contain still much more.

Thus, for example, the separation of the surrounding one into four streams: The pattern of the Four is called in the ancient Hindu teachings “Mandala” (which actually means in Sanskrit a circle), and is a model of the world. Such a model, made of four elements, is not exclusive to Indian beliefs, but is common around the world, ever since the times of ancient Sumeria.

The psychologist Jung reported that people who have entered into chaotic states, and have started to reorganize their lives – are inclined to draw Mandala-type drawings with clear fourfold symmetry. Often these drawings also contained two trees in the middle. This cannot be explained away by referring to the Judeo-Christian tradition within which Jung operated, because such elements appear already in ancient Sumeric art.

We shall leave for a moment the fourfold pattern and return to the Kabbalah sages, who form from the story of Genesis seven-fold patterns: seven mansions of the lower paradise and seven of the higher paradise, and against these seven kinds of earth and seven regions of hell. These patterns are based on the pattern of the Creation in seven days and the Sabbath, as well as on the first seven words of the Torah (Bereshit bara Elohim et ha’Shamayin ve’et ha’Arets – “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth”).

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

“The tree of\life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (2:9). These two trees bring the drama of the Garden of Eden to a climax. The Tree of Life has all the flow of life in it. Man is lodged in its web, like a fish in the water, and is not able to perceive it, because he cannot (as long as he lives) to regard life in a detached view that brings awareness. The Tree of Knowledge, on the other hand, requires a certain detachment, an examination and inquiry, and then merger, just like with the sexual union which Da’at-Knowledge represents (“And the man knew Havvah his wife” (4:1)

At first, Adam was only forbidden to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. As if God was wary lest His children acquire education and knowledge. Ostensibly, if they would only taste of that tree, there would be revealed to them the most arcane secrets of the Creation. But what was that knowledge to which “the eyes of them both were opened”? “and they knew that they were naked”.

Thus – sexual knowledge, the ability of making a sexual selection, is the most basic knowledge, is the one that makes them to be as gods. This is also the way that God discovers that the transgression was made “And He said – who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee that thou should not eat?”

Till here, we have became familiar with the kind of man that was completely under the rule of the urge (Yetser) and instincts, who “there was not found a help to match him” – or as RaShI interpreted, he was constantly in heat. When he ate of the Tree of Knowledge, sex became a conscious thing. “And the man knew Havvah his wife”. And clothing is the counter-measure. There is no incest (Giluy Arayot – Hebrew for “uncovering the genitals”) without clothing.

The Aggaddah goes still further and brings an assumption that Adam kept himself separate from his wife for a hundred and thirty years (RaShI for 5:3). Such separation would have been inconceivable under the conditions of ignorance of Adam in the Garden of Eden. The urge, or natural inclination, is of the characteristics of the Garden of Eden, whereas choice belongs to the outside world.

It is for a reason that there formed traditions that identified the Tree of Knowledge with wheat (e.g Genesis Raba 15:7). According to this theory – Adam was punished with the subject of the transgression. They sought to eat of the fruit of this garden – and that was given them, forever, with the good and the bad of it. There ended the age of “Of every tree of the garden thou mayst freely it” (2:15) and instead there came the age of “in the sweat of face shalt thou eat bread” (3:19).

We have already mentioned in the introductory chapter the importance of the cultivation of cereals for the development of human civilization, a development that transformed humankind from the pastoral stage to that of fixed settlement – that ostensibly saved us from the fear of hunger, but got us bound in slavery to the earth, and initiated the problems of population density. These brought about the formation of social classes, to landowners and serfs, but – in the spirit of the Tree of Knowledge – also to further specialization and knowledge. In other words – which we shall further discuss in the next section – here lie the roots of the continuing conflict between shepherds and agriculturists, between those that get enslaved to property and the people of freedom, between the patriarchs, who were taken out of their land and brought to other places, and their offspring, who were educated by the Torah to become permanent settlers.

There is, therefore, no wonder that the picking of the fruit was attributed to the woman, who was – as the archeologists concur – the mother of the domestication of plants and of agriculture. The men were the hunters-gatherers and they pushed for the wandering life, whereas the women became the growers of cereals and fruits at fixed places, and pulled the men for sedentary life upon their homesteads.

The entire Torah is a testimony and chastisement about the dangers to the human spirit entailed by servitude to the soil. Idolatry was strongly connected with the tenure of the soil – at every place in the world, the cult of the gods of corn required sacrifices, including human sacrifices, and in the environmental conditions of the Middle East the main object of idolatry was to force the gods of the sky to bring the rain.

That is why already in the first story about the beginning of humankind – the story of Adam and Eve and their sons – this conflict is already enfolded. In the next stories, about the further attempts to re-establish humankind, we shall see the development of this tension. In the first war between brothers in human history according to the Book of Genesis – the struggle between Cain and Ebel, was the prototype of the struggle between agriculturists and pastoralists. “Noah Ish ha’Adamah” (the husbandman of the soil (really “living earth” or “Gaia”), was the next one chosen to establish a new humankind. After he failed, Abraham and his family, a family of wandering shepherds, were chosen for the next experiment. It was important for the editors of the Torah to teach a nation of agriculturists who incline after the deities of the land that their forefathers were shepherds, men free from servitude to the soil and its negative influences, and who worshiped a single superior God, and not the gods of Canaan, the idols of rain and of cereal.

Cain, the founder of the first city, is the representative of the great idolatrous kingdoms, such as Egypt, Assyria and Babylon that were enslaving. The tribes of the Torah were meant to have a collective memory of free shepherds, unfettered by social and religious domination, whether they themselves come to settle in great walled cities or when dominated by urban cultures. The self-image of the nomad is of a relatively free person, who can develop his potential through choice and not through coercion.

It is the woman, as we noted, who observed the fruit of the Garden of Eden and the potential of its separation from the tree and the cultivation of its seed.

The Kabbalah regards the transgression not in the actual eating from the tree, but in eating the fruit, or in its language in “the cutting of the shoots” (kitsuts biNeti’ot). The trees of the Garden of Eden are formed, according to the Kabbalah, in the pattern of the Tree of the Sefirot, and that man and his wife transgressed in that they separated the Sefira of Malkhut (“Kingdom”, concrete reality) from the rest of the Sefirot (the more abstract and causal realms), namely, they chose to separate the food part of the tree from its other parts, which together comprise the whole of the tree. This utilitarian behavior neglects the reciprocal relations and the factors that form and create and limits itself to the pleasurable things that issue from them. This is an exit from the world of Formation (Yetsirah) and certainly from the World of Creation (Beri’ah), which is the world of Health (Beri’ut) and wholeness. (In this context it is fit to recall the “Indian Bible”, the Bhagavad-Gita, according to which human vocation is “to act without desiring the fruit of action”, a practice that even Mahatma Gandhi confessed at the end of his life that he did not succeed to accomplish).

We shall deal in the sequel extensively with the implications of the characteristics of the Tree of Life upon those who eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and just note here that the curse of the Tree of Life of our times – namely of science and technology – has brought eventually to a human population increase that it is doubtful whether the earth can accommodate.

The Tree of Life

"ועץ החיים בתוך הגן",, namely, embedded in the garden, in its overall pattern and in every detail thereof. This is a distinct case of the Self-similarity noted before. Therefore, the Tree of Knowledge may be embedded within the Tree of Life and vice-versa, as we saw that the knowledge hidden within the Tree of Knowledge includes also the knowledge of death. Ostensibly, this is the punishment expected to those who eat of it: “for on the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt surely die” (and really death is not “punishment” for the case of the Tree of Knowledge, because the creator then says (3:22) that if the man would only eat later of the Tree of Life he would not die, from which we may surmise that the man was due to die from his inception. So the eating from the Tree of Knowledge only brings the fact of death into awareness.

Then did God regret the punishment with which He initially threatened the first man? For according to the text, Adam lived long (930 years) and begot many offspring!

But the real, and automatic, punishment of any man who eats of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was the knowledge of death, the fear of death. The very awareness of death changed his conception of time and all his being.

The names of the two sons of Adam testify to this conception. With the one there is an attempt to contend with this dire verdict and to increase possessions – Qinyan – from thence the name Qayin, with the other there is resignation in the manner of Ecclesiastes: “Havel havalim ha’Kol Hevel” (“vanity of vanities, all is vanity).

Therefore, according to the view of the Alte Rebbe, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (the RaShaZ, the founder of the HaBaD (Chabad) movement, in his book Torah Or), there is a measure of compassion in the new edict that was issued on Adam “and now what if he puts forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eating, live foe ever”. rather than a punishment. For initially, the eating from the Tree of Life was not prohibited. But after they became knowers of “Good and Evil”, and good and evil became mixed within them, they would most likely suffer for the rest of their life. The angels, like God Himself, are not influenced by the evil, but they are capable of observing all the worlds with a detached, objective or quasi “scientific” observation. Whereas man ends up fighting with evil for the duration of one’s life, and it is better for him that this struggle will be relatively short, for a few decades, rather than endure for millenia.

Ever since the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the Trees of Life and of Knowledge must balance each other, and the struggle is now at its fiercest. Let us then examine the assumption we brought at the introduction chapter, according to which we are living now at the sixth millenium, namely at the “Sixth Day of Creation” – the epoch of the creation of Adam.

A close examination shows that this Sixth Day started about 1240 C.E. It is quite interesting that these are the years in which there developed the Kabbalah in general and the Book of the Zohar in particular, and there became known the Tree of the Sefirot, as the pattern of the Trees of Life and of Knowledge.

A thousand years earlier there3 was developed the symbol of the Cross, the symbol of the separation between body and spirit, between earth and heaven and which denies the concept of the Tree of Life, through the belief in the doctrine of “The Original Sin” – the “sin of the First Adam” – from which there is no restitution. The concept of the “Original Sin” is a late invention of the founder of Christianity, St. Paul, (with preludes at the Dead Sea sect) – an invention that gave the church an enormous power over its believers, by explaining to them that they are all sinners from nature and would certainly perish in hell unless they obey all its dictates. Since then there took root in humankind the opinion that the moral of the entire Bible, and especially of the story of the Garden of Eden, is to tell about “The Original Sin”.

But in fact in the entire original Hebrew Bible there is no single divine teacher or prophet (who dwell at length upon the iniquities of the people) who saw in the story of the Tree of Knowledge any special “sin” that is worth mentioning. Moreover, the whole pattern of the Torah, as we have shown and will do so in length in the sequel, is of ongoing restitution and not of an unredeemable original sin[g], and the exegesis of the Church fathers is an arbitrary interpretation based on a small section that goes against the entire context of the Torah. Regarding the terrible sufferings that this doctrine inflicted upon many millions of human beings, we may well see in the formation of this doctrine (of the original sin) the very original sin of Christianity.

The Kabbalah - and especially the Zohar – believe that the whole vocation of man is in the ability to change and mend. IT was not for nothing that the Zohar called the Cross “The Tree of Death”, as an antithesis to the elaborate Tree of Life it pointed to.

For this comparison between the two religious conceptions I would like to add here also the Moslem conception, whose impression appears in the decorations of the Dome of the Rock at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and especially upon the inner side of the Dome. These decorations can be seen as an attempt to depict the Garden of Eden[h]. In my opinion, the pattern within the Dome can be seen as a visual representation of the Tree of Life and a visual exegesis upon the Sefer Yetsirah, within the canons of the non-figurative Islamic art. In this pattern there are 32 special figures, decorated with vegetal motifs, that surround the center which is related to the One God and which form – together with the spaces between them – 160 “leaves” or “fruits”. Each couple of such figures – along with the spaces between them, form one Kabbalistic tree, and the whole ensemble is tree-like, which is made of many trees, and which is difficult to perceive as such, because we are, in a sense, inside it, as components of it.

The Encounter with the Tree of Knowledge in our Time.

Since the middle of the sixth millennium (and in the Common Era, since the 18^th century), science – namely “scientia” – namely Knowledge – knew a tremendous development. Human knowledge started admittedly to accumulate in former millennia, we know about Chinese wisdom of Greek philosophy. But the tools, the technologies, have gathered momentum only in recent times. Two main thrust stood behind this development: that of achieving a military advantage, and that of achieving economic advantage. The welfare of the whole world as a living system – namely the Tree of Life – has never been the main concern of humankind. But the amazing outcomes of the technological race, will force us to return and to taste of the tree of life. The human population of the earth has grown five-fold in the last hundred years. If we desire only the “fruit” of the Tree of Knowledge – of science – and disregard its whole structure, the mutual connections among its branches, and maintain them as separate scientific branches and disjoint disciplines; if we will not wise up to use the bio-ecological knowledge about the importance of the mutual relationships among the various natural factors, if we will not bring the technological development into a sustainable stead-state, the Tree of Knowledge will overwhlem us, an ecological disaster will happen, and we shall bring on us the curse of the Tree of Knowledge by our own hands: “cursed is the ground (Adamah – the Living Earth and female for of Adam) for thy sake” (3:17).

It seems that there cannot be a more important message for our times – we live now at the end of the sixth millennium and just before the encounter with the Tree of Knowledge. In order to overcome the environmental holocaust it is necessary that all human beings upon the earth will decide and act together, and from this issues the transformation of all humankind to an individual – into Adam.

3rd Genesis Account – the World of Action version of the Works of Bereshit

The third version of the Story of Genesis appears in the Book of Genesis chapter 5, and it brings a still different version about the creation of humans: “This is the book of the generations of Adam (Man). In the day that God (Elohim) created humankind-Adam, in the likeness of God he made him; male and female he created them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam (Man), in the day they were created”.

Let us compare this new version to the two former versions of the story:

Undoubtedly, the version we study now is syntactically similar to the 2^nd version and goes still further from the 1^st version. Let us lay them in parallel:

2^nd version, Gen. 2:4 3^rd version, Gen 5:1

These are This is the book of

the generations the generations

of the heaven and of the earth of Adam (Man/humankind)
when they were created.

In the day that the Lord God In the day that God created Adam
made the earth and the heavens In the likeness of God He made him
. male and female He created them.

There is, thus, a parallel between heaven and earth and Adam – being both male and female – and there is a parallel between “EleH-these” (as a part of the essence of God-Elohim = MI EleH, as we explained above), which is a kind of counting, and book-Sefer, which is accounting and noting. The Zohar sees in “The Book of the Generations of Man