Teshuvah and the Two Beginnings of Torah

1R' Yitzchak said: “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 say, ‘You are bandits, for you conquered the land of the seven nations,’ Israel answers them: ‘The whole earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He. He created it and gives it to whomever is upright in His eyes. By His will He gave it to them, and by His will He took it from them and gave it to us’” (Rashi on Bereishis 1:1).

2aWe want to explain Rashi's words, and also a question everyone asks: milah and the prohibition of the gid hanasheh were commanded earlier, so how is “This month” the first mitzvah? The answer is that the word mitzvah, as is known, comes from tzavta, togetherness and connection. When a person does Hashem's mitzvos, they join him and make him cleave to holiness, and they bind his soul to the light of the Infinite One. Beyond that, he merits the goal of true knowledge: to know Hashem, that there is nothing besides Him [cf. Devarim 4:35]. He brings all that exists into being, gives existence to every being and causes all causes, and “there is no place empty of Him” [Tikkunei Zohar 57].

2bChazal say (Shemos Rabbah 15:2) that the ministering angels asked the Holy One, blessed be He, “Master of the worlds, when do You set the festivals?” He answered them, “I and you will agree to whatever Israel decides when they fix the months and add a month to the year.” Through this mitzvah Hashem showed how great, precious and exalted Israel is, and His abundant, powerful love and special affection for the seed of Israel, His treasured nation. He went so far as to tell the heavenly court, “I and you will go to the beis din below.” This is what Rashi means when he writes that the Torah should have begun with “This month shall be for you,” “which is the first mitzvah.” Through this mitzvah, more than through any other, the world came to know how precious is the love, connection and bond between Israel and “the light of the countenance of the living King” [Mishlei 16:15]. It is first in connection, not in time.

2c“Why did it open with Bereishis? Because of ‘He told His people the power of His works.’” At first glance Rashi's words are puzzling. Would the order of the Torah be changed just for this? The Midrash also says [Bereishis Rabbah 1:2]: Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, reveal to Israel what was created on the first day and on the second? Because of the nations of the world, so that they should not taunt Israel, “Are you not a nation of plunderers?” Israel answers them, “Is it not plunder in your hands as well?… When He wished, He gave it to you, and when He wished, He took it from you and gave it to us.”

3The simple meaning is that Israel answers them, “Are we not the pillars of the world?” As Chazal say (Shabbos 88a), Reish Lakish said: “The Holy One, blessed be He, made a condition with the work of Creation: if Israel accepts the Torah, well and good; if not, I will return you to emptiness and void.” So the whole world had no lasting existence until we accepted the Torah. If so, by right the whole world is ours.

4aTo explain Rashi's words more deeply: the nations say, “You are bandits, for you conquered the land of the seven nations.” They mean: we see that you needed a war, that you had to fight us, and that shows you are bandits. The Land is not yours on account of the worth of your deeds, for you do not do the will of your Father in Heaven. Because of your sins you were exiled from your land and driven out “from the inheritance of Hashem” [cf. Shmuel I 26:19]. When you do the will of your Father in Heaven, you are called “children of Hashem your God” [Devarim 14:1]. Then He would have given you the Land in goodness and goodwill, with no need to win a war against us. But the ways of teshuvah are hidden from them. They neither know nor understand what teshuvah is, or how it helps a Jewish soul repair the damage it has done. What is more, even Torah, Wisdom and Prophecy knew no remedy for the sinning soul, as explained in Yalkut Shimoni (Tehillim 702)¹. But Hashem, in His great mercy and kindness, seeks ways to help His children, a cure for the ailments of the Jewish soul, “so that none who is banished be cast away from Him” [Shmuel II 14:14]. So He decreed that teshuvah works. How much less, then, many times over, will the idolaters in their foolishness understand it!

4bThis is the essence of teshuvah. A person sins, twists his path and betrays Hashem [cf. Vayikra 5:21]. Even so, the sparks, embers and flames of “the flame of God” [Shir HaShirim 8:6] can awaken within him. He takes to heart “the affliction of his heart” [cf. Melachim I 8:38] and his bitter state. He considers before Whom he sinned and how far the damage reaches: he traded an eternal world for a passing one. His soul was bound to “the portion of Hashem's inheritance” in the heavens above, for the source of every Jewish soul is hewn from beneath the Throne of Glory. Yet he “forsook the source of living waters, to hew himself cisterns, broken cisterns” [Yirmiyahu 2:13], and “exchanged his glory for what does not avail” [Yirmiyahu 2:11]. Then, out of deep humility and a broken heart, he cries out before Hashem, “the Rock of his heart and his portion” [cf. Tehillim 73:26]. He will answer them, for “a broken and crushed heart, O God, You will not despise” [Tehillim 51:19]. He “returns to Hashem, and He heals him,” and he becomes like a new creation, as on the day he was born. As David HaMelech said, “I have this day given birth to you” [Tehillim 2:7].

4cThis is what my father and teacher, R' Yechiel of Alexander, zt"l, said, following the Tikkunei Zohar: Bereishis is beis reishis, “two beginnings.” He based it on the Shelah HaKadosh (on the intentions of the shofar blasts, Laws of Rosh Hashanah), who says there are two kinds of uprightness. There is uprightness before the sin, as in “God made man upright” [Koheles 7:29], which the first tekiah indicates. And there is uprightness after the sin, which is the final tekiah. These are the “two beginnings” (see above, maamar 1, at length, and study it there). This explains Rashi's words. “If they should say, ‘You are bandits’”: since you have sinned, the land of the seven nations is not yours, and had you done the will of your Father in Heaven, there would have been no need for war. Israel will answer, “The earth and its fullness are Hashem's” [Tehillim 24:1]; everything is His. “He created it and gives it to whomever is upright in His eyes”: to ba'alei teshuvah, who have become upright as they were before the sin.

5This also explains Rashi's precise wording, “upright in His eyes.” The essence of teshuvah is hidden from human understanding, as we said. Sefer HaIkkarim asks how teshuvah, which is leaving sin and regretting it, only matters of the heart, as the verse says, “his heart will understand, and he will return” (Yeshayahu 6:10), can undo a sin that was actually committed. But in truth no thought can grasp it; it is above the world. It is purely one of Hashem's ways. A person should constantly keep all this in mind: how great Hashem's works are, and how abundant His kindness to the seed of Israel, His treasured nation. He opened the gates of teshuvah for us to repair what we have damaged. More than that, afterwards one becomes upright just as before the sin, as when God first made him upright. That is why Rashi wrote “upright in His eyes”: only in His eyes is he upright, for He sees into the inner uprightness of the heart. As David HaMelech said, “Your eyes behold uprightness” (Tehillim 17:2).

6This is the meaning of “By His will He gave it to them, and by His will He took it from them and gave it to us.” By the power of teshuvah a person merits to “make will” for the Creator, to arouse His goodwill. And His good will is to bestow good on His creatures, especially on the seed of Israel, His treasured nation, to have mercy on “the people close to Him” [Tehillim 148:14] and to gather in “the dispersed of Israel” [Tehillim 147:2]. This is what we say after Hallel: “And Your pious ones, the tzaddikim who do Your will,” for the tzaddikim make will for the Creator. As our great Rebbe of Peshischa², zt"l, said in his holiness on the blessing “HaRotzeh biseshuvah,” “Who desires teshuvah”: through teshuvah we make will for the Creator, and bring Him to do good to us all the days of our lives, “as on this day” [Devarim 6:24].

7Another explanation of the Tikkunei Zohar's “Bereishis: beis reishis, two beginnings” is possible, following what we said on Simchas Torah about the words of the paytan: “Therefore we constantly join the beginning to the completion, before he can slander this people with falsehood³.” In an old version I found it written: “so that the shed, the demon, not slander….” The simple meaning follows the Midrash cited in the 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 through the Chasan Bereishis, the Holy One, blessed be He, answers, “Have they not begun?” So he cannot accuse, and that is why it is called Simchas Torah.

8aTo explain the Midrash, we can use Chazal's words (Koheles Rabbah 1:1) on “He made a feast for all his servants” [Melachim I 3:15]. R' Y.⁴ said: From here we learn that one makes a festive meal for the gomrah, the completion, of the Torah. Gomrah is related to mugmar (Berachos 43a), fragrant incense made of fine spices, “the powders of the perfumer” [Shir HaShirim 3:6]. In other words, the celebration is for one who has absorbed a good fragrance from the holy Torah. As Chazal say (Midrash Mishlei 13; Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer 25), it is like a person who enters a perfumer's shop. Even if the perfumer sells him nothing and he buys nothing, he leaves with himself and his clothes smelling fragrant. This is the main goal of learning: that a person teach and shape himself, and cleave his soul to the light of the countenance of the living King. Through the Torah, “spirit draws spirit” [cf. Zohar II:162b], binding and joining the soul to the light of the Infinite One. Through the light of the holy Torah he acquires wholeness of soul.

8bThis is what Chazal say (Shabbos 118b): “May I be rewarded, for whenever I saw a young scholar who had completed his tractate, I made a festive day for the Rabbis.” The heart of his joy was that the young man had “completed” (dashlim) his tractate. I mean that through learning the tractate he had acquired sheleimus, wholeness of soul, for that is the main goal of learning. But one who boasts and prides himself that he has learned and finished the whole Torah shows by this that he has not yet entered even the doorway of the gatehouse to the gates of Torah. For “Can you find out the depths of God?” (Iyov 11:7). Who can know the measure of the Torah, “whose measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea” [Iyov 11:9]? And who is greater for us than Moshe Rabbeinu, the teacher of all Israel? After all the perceptions and knowledge that he attained with his great power, he said, “You have begun to show Your servant” [Devarim 3:24]. As Ibn Ezra writes (Parshas Ki Sisa)⁵, Moshe prophesied forty years in the wilderness and grasped many secrets that Hashem revealed to him at Mount Sinai. Yet before his death he says, “You have begun to show Your servant Your greatness”: only now have You begun to show me Hashem's greatness. And this is true, for “His greatness is unsearchable” [Tehillim 145:3].

8cThe more a person perceives and the more he grows in learning, the more he knows that “the ultimate knowledge is that we do not know.” This is the meaning of the verse (Tehillim 118:15, 19): “The sound of joyous song and salvation is in the tents of the righteous… Open for me the gates of righteousness.” The heart of the tzaddikim's song and prayer is “Open for me the gates of righteousness.” In his humility and humble righteousness, the tzaddik knows that he has not yet entered the gates of holiness themselves, the inner hall. He stands only at the King's entrance, like a pauper at the door, begging and crying out, “Open for me the gates of righteousness; I will enter them and thank Hashem.” Fortunate is he who merits to win the King's favor and enter His palace within. But those who imagine that they have finished and completed the entire Torah lack understanding; “the understanding of a man is not theirs” [Mishlei 30:2]. They have not yet absorbed the fragrance of the Torah at all.

9This is “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.” My grandfather⁶, zt"l, explained that Moshe Rabbeinu did this “before the eyes of all Israel”: he taught them and showed them to know “In the beginning God created.” The Creator precedes the entire world. He is One and Unique, He brings all that exists into being, and there is nothing besides Him. As it says, “You have been shown, in order to know” (Devarim 4:35), and Rashi explains: When the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the Torah, He opened the seven heavens for them. Just as He tore open the upper realms, He tore open the lower ones, and they saw that He is alone. That is why it says, “You have been shown, in order to know.” According to our approach, Moshe Rabbeinu, “very humble, more than any man” [Bamidbar 12:3], instilled this by his great power, 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”: to show “In the beginning He created,” that he was still at the beginning of the service of Hashem. This is “its end is wedged in its beginning”: at the end, he knew he was still at the beginning.

10This explains the Midrash quoted above. The Satan accuses Israel of not “completing” (magmirim) the Torah. He means that they have not “perfumed” themselves from the holy Torah at all; their learning has not made their souls fragrant with its scent. Worse, they are important in their own eyes, and in their coarseness they think they have perfected their souls through learning Torah, so that they will not need to begin it again. But Hashem, in His great mercy, understands and looks into the inner heart of Israel, as “I, Hashem, search the heart” [Yirmiyahu 17:10]. He sees their humility, that they know where they stand: they have not yet even begun. They have only taken on a firm resolution and good will, and their hearts have offered themselves to begin anew. This is what Hashem showed the Satan: that they begin again from Bereishis. This is “Therefore we constantly join the beginning to the completion”: we begin Bereishis immediately after finishing, “so that the shed not slander this people with falsehood.” As Chazal say, “He is the Satan, he is the accuser, and he is the yetzer hara” (Bava Basra 16a). The meaning is that he should not become a habit⁷ among the holy people and plant in their hearts the falsehood of growing proud in their own eyes, as above. And this is “two beginnings”: even after learning, a person must know that he still stands at Bereishis. He must begin anew to seek and search out knowledge of Hashem, which has no end and no limit.