Derasha
There’s a concept called Chesed within Din, kindness within judgment. Even within horrible moments, one receives an unexpected gift which makes it more bearable.
One of my favorite moments of Chesed within the judgment over the last few years was having R’ David Fohrman here in the middle of Covid. He lived here for a year, and then off-and-on for another year. They arrived in time for Sukkot in 2020 and he spoke several times during the Chag. As he got to Simchas Torah, which was very abbreviated, he spoke in the evenings about Bereisheet, developing an approach he’s been working on. It’s very creative, as usual. I want to outline its salient points and then add a few observations that flow from what he said.
He prefaced his take on the verses with a description of the massive challenge of the beginning of the Torah. That is, the difficulty of describing creation to an audience that would have to appreciate sublime, dramatic things without the aid of the Hubble telescope. It’s no small feat to tell over cosmic events in a way that any audience, even an audience in the ancient world, could relate to while still giving a sense of the cosmic.
R’ Fohrman’s solution was to posit that the closest thing to creation in everyday life is the transition from night to day, or dawn. That’s the everyday transition from nothing to something. Let’s think about what happens at dawn -- what’s the catalog of what one notices? There is, of course, a flash of light; a sense of the atmosphere; sensing the difference between the great masses of land and sea; and then the chance to discern objects on the land like trees and vegetation; finally, seeing the actual orb of the sun; taking in the life forms of fish and fowl, and then other animals as they wake up; then (finally) the last to wake in the morning -- man. What R’ Fohrman thinks is happening in the verses is that many different details of dawn are being presented one by one.
That is his thesis. Among the things to note from this is that it opens up an approach to the often repeated phrase Vaihee Erev Vaihee Boker, there was evening and there was morning. It does not say Vaihee Yom, that there was "day," but rather “morning.” It is morning -- dawn -- and not the full day that is being described. And it is even better that Boker comes from the root which means “discernment.” "Bikeret" means criticism in the sense of discernment or discrimination. Dawn is the time of discernment.
And it also sheds light on the word “Erev,” which is used instead of “night.” The most salient aspect of night is the confusion that it causes. “Erev,” which means "mixture," captures that. Night is a time of confusion, of lack of discernment, when people don't see something at all or mistake what they see for something else.
The next important thing is the order, the sequencing of the events of dawn. It is of course -- uncannily -- the order that cosmologists dictate. Daniel Friedmann, the now-former CEO of Maxar, spoke here one Shabbat a few years ago about that. He has written a book mapping the six days of creation onto the billions of years of cosmic development.
But R’ Fohrman’s presentation highlights something else. When we were reading the creation story on Simchas Torah, we danced around the Beema at the end of each day. We would say, “Vaihee Erev Vaihee Boker, Yom X,” and then dance. We did that each day except for one: We did not do it on Shabbat. There is no Vaihee Erev Vaihee Boker for Shabbat. There is no differentiation of time on Shabbat. R’ Yitzchok Hutner used to point out that greetings during the week almost always include the time of day: good evening, good morning. On Shabbat, it’s “Shabbat Shalom” all day long. And so it’s not surprising that there is no dawn event on Shabbat.
By having Shabbat stand out like this, the Torah is already hinting, from the beginning, that there is something occurring which is beyond the currents of time. Shabbat points the way to a larger picture, a bigger context. It marks the six days as more than aimless physical creation. They are a prelude to something else; the point of the days comes when something timeless arrives. Countless generations have gotten this hint, and made Shabbat the centerpiece of time.
