Two Beginnings: Teshuvah and Endless Renewal

1“In the beginning God created” [Bereishis 1:1]. Rashi quotes R' Yitzchak: “The Torah did not need to begin here. It could have begun with ‘This month shall be for you’ [Shemos 12:2], the first mitzvah Israel was commanded. Why, then, did it open with Bereishis? Because of ‘He told His people the power of His works’ [Tehillim 111:6]. If the nations of the world should say, ‘You are bandits, for you conquered the land of the seven nations,’ Israel can answer them: ‘The whole earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He. By His will He gave it to them, and by His will He took it from them and gave it to whomever is upright in His eyes¹.’”

2The plain meaning of Israel's answer is this. Hashem made a condition with the work of Creation: if Israel, and Israel specifically, accept the Torah, well and good; if not, “I will return you to tohu va'vohu,” to emptiness and void. This is the meaning of the extra letter hei² in “yom hashishi,” “the sixth day” [Bereishis 1:31], as Chazal teach (Shabbos 88a). So the whole world had no lasting existence until we accepted the Torah, and the whole world is ours by virtue of that acceptance. Besides, the nations' claim is not just in any case, since the entire conquest was carried out by “the words of the living God,” at Hashem's own command.

3aBy way of remez, allusion, this Midrash can be explained through the words of my father and teacher, R' Yechiel of Alexander, zt"l. He explained the Tikkunei Zohar, which reads “Bereishis” as beis reishis, “two beginnings,” on the basis of what the Shelah HaKadosh writes (Laws of Rosh Hashanah) about the inner intention of the shofar blasts sounded all through Elul. Put simply, the first tekiah, the long unbroken blast, alludes to “God made man upright” (Koheles 7:29). Next come the shevarim and the teruah. They allude to a person who sins and twists his path. Just as the body can fall ill, so can the soul, and he has fallen ill in his soul. That is “genuchei genach,” “he groans a groan,” as the Gemara describes the shevarim [Rosh Hashanah 33b]. When he goes on sinning until, Heaven forbid, he reaches “the gates of death” [Tehillim 107:18], that is “yelulei yelil,” “he wails a wail,” the way one wails over the dead, Heaven save us. Even so, he can take to heart how many are his rebellions and transgressions, before Whom he sinned, and how far the damage reaches. If he then “returns to Hashem, and He heals him” [cf. Yeshayahu 6:10], he becomes a new creation, as on the day he was born. That is what the final tekiah alludes to. This is the meaning of “The ways of Hashem are upright (yesharim)” [Hoshea 14:10]. In His kindness Hashem created two kinds of uprightness: uprightness before a person sins, and uprightness after he has sinned and returned. So far the Shelah, with the changes of wording our subject needs.

3bThis is “two beginnings.” The first is when a person is born. The second comes after he has twisted his way and sinned, and then returned to Hashem with all his heart: he becomes a reishis, a beginning, like a newborn child. Perhaps the Shelah means that both kinds of uprightness are in the verse itself: “The ways of Hashem are upright; the righteous walk in them, and transgressors stumble in them.” The tzaddikim who walk in them have the first uprightness. The second belongs to the transgressors who, Heaven forbid, stumble in them. Even so, through teshuvah they too become upright.

4aWith this we can explain Rashi's words: “The Torah did not need to begin except with ‘This month shall be for you,’ the first mitzvah Israel was commanded.” All of nature, and the whole course of the stars and constellations, depends on Israel. The Yerushalmi explains this (Sanhedrin 1:2) on the verse “I call to God Most High, to the God Who completes things for me” (Tehillim 57:3): if the beis din lengthened the month, a girl's signs of virginity return³. Through this mitzvah of sanctifying the new month, Israel's greatness and exalted standing became known to all.

4bBut to this the nations reply: “All that was while you did Hashem's will and dwelt on your own land in Jerusalem, when ‘Torah went forth from Zion’ [Yeshayahu 2:3].” When they see Israel sinning and driven into exile, they say, “If you have sinned, the land of the seven nations is no longer yours.” For the ways of teshuvah are hidden from them; among them it does not help. All the more so, since the very idea of teshuvah did not occur even to Torah or to Wisdom, as the Midrash relates (cited in Yalkut Shimoni, Tehillim 702 and Yechezkel 358, and in the Yerushalmi, Sanhedrin⁵): “They asked Wisdom… they asked Prophecy…,”⁴ until the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself declared the way of teshuvah. So we answer them that He gave the Land “to whomever is upright in His eyes”: to the ba'al teshuvah, who has become upright in the eyes of Hashem, “Who tests hearts and minds” [Tehillim 7:10]. True, we have sinned. But have we not returned from our sins? Through that we have become upright in His eyes.

5Following the approach of my father and teacher, we can also explain “two beginnings” another way. First we need the words of the piyut for Simchas Torah: “Therefore we constantly join the beginning to the completion, so that the shed, the demon, not go slandering this people with falsehood.” The piyut is explained by a Midrash cited in the Siddur Kol Bo. When Israel finishes the Torah, the Satan goes before the Holy One, blessed be He, to accuse them. He says, “Israel learns Torah but does not finish it.” As soon as they finish it, the Holy One, blessed be He, says to him, “Have they not finished it?” He answers, “They finish it, but they do not begin it again.” And when they begin it again through the Chasan Bereishis, who is called up for the opening reading of Bereishis, the Holy One, blessed be He, answers, “Have they not begun?” So the Satan cannot accuse, and that is why the day is called Simchas Torah. That is the paytan's intent on the simple level.

6We, however, have explained it differently. The main vessel for keeping and learning the Torah is humility. As Chazal say (Taanis 7a), “Just as water rests only in a low place, so does the Torah”; the Torah is not found among the haughty. And the humility must be genuine, “humility and righteousness” [Tehillim 45:5]. Before they finish, the Satan's accusation is that they do not learn the Torah wholly and properly, “with dread and awe, with trembling and sweat” [Berachos 22a], in order to fulfill it, for the deed is what completes the thought. Afterwards, when they finish, the joy and the hakafos stir them to teshuvah, and they repair whatever they had damaged in their Torah. Then he immediately accuses them of something else: that they are important in their own eyes and haughty, feeling that they have already learned the Torah and grasped it. That is arrogance and foolishness, for no one can know its measure: “its measure is longer than the earth,” and “Can you find out the depths of God?” (Iyov 11:9, 11:7). That is why each and every one begins the Torah again at once. He testifies about himself that he has not yet begun even the edge of the Torah and must start anew. The more his knowledge of Torah has grown, the more he knows that he has not attained it and needs a beginning.

7aThis is the meaning of the paytan. The shed is the Satan, and “that he not go slandering this people with falsehood” means that the falsehood of thinking one has finished should not enter the heart of Hashem's children. This is also “its end is wedged in its beginning” [Sefer Yetzirah 1:7]: the Torah's last words, “before the eyes of all Israel” [Devarim 34:12], join its first words, “In the beginning He created.” Moshe Rabbeinu instilled this in Israel by his great power, being “very humble, more than any man” [Bamidbar 12:3], so that they would “remember the Torah of Moshe” [Malachi 3:22]. This was the whole of his avodah and the purpose of all “the signs and the wonders” [Devarim 34:11]: to show “before the eyes of all Israel” that it is still “In the beginning He created.” After all the learning and toil, we should know that we stand at Bereishis. We must begin anew to think, to investigate and to seek knowledge of Hashem, Who has no limit, the Infinite One, “and His greatness is unsearchable” [Tehillim 145:3].

7bThis is “two beginnings”: the beginning of learning, and then, after all the learning, beginning Bereishis once again. There is no end, for it is infinite, and everything is only a beginning. “The Torah, Israel and the Holy One, blessed be He, are one” [cf. Zohar III:73a]. No one can grasp the measure of Hashem, for He is infinite, and “the ultimate of knowledge is that we do not know.” In the same way, no one can grasp the measure of the Divine wisdom that is the holy Torah, “the words of the living God” [Eruvin 13b], whose “measure is longer than the earth.” And so too with Israel. Every Jew has a Divine portion that Hashem “blew into his nostrils” [Bereishis 2:7], and “one who blows, blows from within himself.”⁶ This spark will never go out: “even though he has sinned, he is still Israel” [Sanhedrin 44a]. The Divine portion, called “the portion of Yaakov” [cf. Devarim 32:9], is like “the middle bar that runs through from end to end” [Shemos 26:28]. It is without end and has no measure, neither above nor, Heaven forbid, below. No creature can grasp the innermost point in the heart of a Jew except the One “Who tests hearts and minds,” as it says, “I, Hashem, search the heart and test the mind” [Yirmiyahu 17:10].

8This is the meaning of the verse “The heavens for height, the earth for depth, and the heart of kings is unsearchable” (Mishlei 25:3). “The heavens for height” is the exaltedness of Hashem, Who is called “Heaven.” “The earth for depth” is Israel, who are called “a land of desire” (Malachi 3:12), even when a Jew is very far down, in the lowest state. “The heart of kings” is the innermost intent of the Torah, which is called “kings,” as the Midrash explains (Bereishis Rabbah 80)⁷, as it says, “Through me kings reign” [Mishlei 8:15]. All of them are unsearchable. Therefore, even if it seems to a Jew that, Heaven forbid, there is no hope, because the Days of Awe, Sukkos, Shemini Atzeres and Simchas Torah have passed and he still has not returned and remains outside holiness, let him strengthen himself. A Jew, and the portion of Hashem within him, has no end and no limit, even below. It is always time to begin, to stand at Bereishis. That is why, right after the holy days, we begin Bereishis, and “its end is wedged in its beginning.” And as we wrote above, the higher one rises in holiness, the smaller he should be in his own eyes, and he will keep rising through a new beginning, a reishis. (From the author's handwritten manuscript.)