As we approach the New Year, Rosh HaShanah, I’ve been wondering about what existed before existence, the formlessness of an uninhabited universe. We’ve recently watched horrific destruction caused by floods and fires. And seeing the earth scorched and drenched has made me wonder again about our creation stories. We celebrate Rosh HaShanah as the day the world was conceived, the moment that we began to move from tohu va’vohu, chaos, to the deliberate formation of life.
Drawing on the second verse of the Torah — “the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface…” (Genesis 1:2) — this month’s issue examines the nature of “chaos” and how it plays out today. In recent years, chaos and disruption have come to be known as instrumental to innovation and creative activity. We also know that chaos can be terrifying. The writers explore several fundamental questions: What role does chaos play today—spiritually and politically? What was the “unformed” before Creation? What is the relationship of creating distinctions and holiness?
To open the issue, I asked Melila Hellner-Eshed, a scholar of Jewish mysticism and Zohar, to share some of her favorite Creation texts. She delved into our mystical tradition and found “inspiring insight very relevant to our contemporary world. The transition from unsustainable tohu to the firmly established world, is only possible when we learn to celebrate difference and otherness, while also affirming complementary wholeness.” She goes on to compare God’s creation as a work in progress, “…raw, chaotic, unripe, or imperfect, but nonetheless, unformed potentiality and aborted efforts to create something from nothing. Judaism, then, teaches us to respect and love our in-progress and early works of art, thought, imagination, and love.”
I asked Julian Zelizer, a journalist and co-host of the podcast, "Politics and Polls," to write about the chaos of Donald Trump’s presidency. Julian offers several biting examples of how Trump uses chaos to destabilize his opponents, to distract from distressing headlines, and to avoid accountability. Julian writes that the “2020 election will be the biggest test for how chaos works in presidential politics. Should President Trump win a second term, the outcome would legitimate chaos as a style of political leadership
To bring in the voices of our rabbinic sages, I invited Rabbi Steven Exler, rabbi of the Bayit at Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, an open Orthodox synagogue in the Bronx, to look through the lens of biblical interpreters. He writes that Genesis 1:2 “emerges as a mirror for what we might want the beginning of creation to be about: God’s power; the weight of human choices; the existence of other-worldly physical and emotional states that live with us from the first moments of the world until today.”
I was wondering about how the blurring of identities and boundaries fits with the stark distinctions made at Creation. I asked Rabbinit Leah Sarna to explore these questions, and she writes, “Creation, as described in the Torah, is a series of cosmic orderings. Before God’s first creative utterance, there was chaos, tohu v’vohu. And then there was light, separated from darkness. Creation is a turn from chaos toward differentiation. The culmination of creation, the most orderly piece of it all, was to be the human.” She goes on to question whether some of those distinctions seem arbitrary: “Our brains love to draw hard distinctions but we know that many of those distinctions are false. Solids and liquids seem so very different — but life experience or rudimentary chemistry will teach us that it is only heat that divides them. Male and female sexes seem vastly different; that distinction is but one chromosome. Countries seem so different one from another, but we know that those lines are arbitrary and have changed dramatically over time.”
In NiSh’ma, our simulated Talmud page, three commentators examine the second line in Genesis: “The earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water.” (1:2) We begin with Rabbi Andy Bachman writing about Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Andy writes that creating and making order from chaos is the work of every generation. “Just as Melville’s generation reckoned with slavery and Civil War, our own is facing the ongoing scourge of racism, income inequality, and global warming.” Rabbi Adina Lewittes and writer and dancer Hadar Cohen respond to Andy’s commentary, exploring the challenges of chaos today, for this generation of American Jews.
This year, Sh’ma is partnering with the Global Technology Shabbat movement and its Character Day, September 27. The brainchild of filmmaker Tiffany Shlain (The Tribe, The Making of a Mensch), Character Day brings together millions of individuals, families, and groups in congregations, companies, homes to engage ideas and practices around building character (empathy, gratitude, social responsibility). This year’s theme for Character Day focuses on technology and character: How and when does turning off technology enhance our character? This framing coincides with the release of Shlain’s new book 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week. Character Day will provide discussion materials, an engaging global livestream, and a new set of lively #TechShabbatChallenges, designed for all ages and all beliefs. Everyone is invited, and participation is free. Learn more and sign up at Character Day.
Our digital PDF of the issue includes “Consider and Converse,” our study guide with prompts for conversations with friends and family. Print out the PDF and bring it to your High Holiday gathering.
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Please click here to share Sh’ma Now with your friends and family. B’vracha, Susan Berrin Sh'ma Now Editor-in-Chief |
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