(31) And God saw all that God had made, and found it very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
(4) Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created. When the LORD God made earth and heaven—
What is puzzling about these verses?
Determine at least 2 questions you have about these 2 verses from Genesis?
From a homiletical point of view, (Shemot Rabbah 30,3) the critical word here is the word אלה, “these.” Whenever this word appears in the Torah it represents a break in continuity with what had been written prior to that word. This word is also the basis of the statement by our sages that G-d had been building and destroying a number of worlds prior to creating the present one. At that point, He had saidדין הניין לי ודין לא הניין לי , “these please Me whereas the others do not please Me” (Bereshit Rabbah 3,9). The wording “He created and destroyed,” is not to be understood literally; it means that G-d looked at various plans of various universes He had contemplated creating and after finding them inadequate He went back “to the drawing board,” to plan an even better universe I have discussed the matter already in connection with the words יהי אור.
(ז) אָמַר רַבִּי יְהוּדָה בַּר סִימוֹן, יְהִי עֶרֶב אֵין כְּתִיב כָּאן, אֶלָּא וַיְהִי עֶרֶב, מִכָּאן שֶׁהָיָה סֵדֶר זְמַנִּים קֹדֶם לָכֵן. אָמַר רַבִּי אַבָּהוּ מְלַמֵּד שֶׁהָיָה בּוֹרֵא עוֹלָמוֹת וּמַחֲרִיבָן, עַד שֶׁבָּרָא אֶת אֵלּוּ, אָמַר דֵּין הַנְיָן לִי, יַתְהוֹן לָא הַנְיָן לִי. אָמַר רַבִּי פִּנְחָס טַעְמֵיהּ דְּרַבִּי אַבָּהוּ (בראשית א, לא): וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת כָּל אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה וְהִנֵּה טוֹב מְאֹד, דֵּין הַנְיָין לִי יַתְהוֹן לָא הַנְיָין לִי.
(7) Rabbi Judah bar Simon said: it does not say, ‘It was evening,’ but ‘And it was evening.’ Hence we derive that there was a time-system prior to this. Rabbi Abbahu said: This teaches us that God created worlds and destroyed them, saying, ‘This one pleases me; those did not please me.’ Rabbi Pinhas said, Rabbi Abbahu derives this from the verse, ‘And God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good,’ as if to say, ‘This one pleases me, those others did not please me.’
This Beratia is the earliest record of the approach of multiple worlds. it implies that ה׳ created and destroyed worlds until he was happy, and that can explain the difference in time. This can also explain fossils such as dinosaurs that have been found- they came from previous worlds.
(17) For behold! I am creating A new heaven and a new earth; The former things shall not be remembered, They shall never come to mind.
What is Isaiah implying?
- The Zohar (1:262b) suggests that God did not actually build these prior worlds, but only thought about building them.
- That this world was not the first that God created was believed to be indicated by Isaiah 65:17: “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth and the former shall not be remembered nor come to mind.”
FROM BOOK TWO, MYTHS OF CREATION
The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the
Warsaw Ghetto by Nehemia Polen
PRIOR WORLDS
- Before the world was created, God alone existed, one and eternal, beyond any boundary, without change or movement, concealed within Himself. When the thought arose in Him to bring the world into being, His glory became visible. He began to trace the foundations of a world before Himself, and in this way God brought a heaven and earth into being. But when God looked at them, they were not pleasing in His sight, so He changed them back into emptiness and void. He split and rent and tore them apart with his two arms, and ruined whole worlds in one moment. One after another, God created a thousand worlds, which preceded this one. And all of them were swept away in the wink of
- an eye.
- God went on creating worlds and destroying worlds until He created this one and declared, “This one pleases me, those did not.” That is how God created the heaven and the earth as we know it, as it is said, “For, behold! I am creating a new heaven and a new earth” (Isa. 65:17).
How might it matter if there were prior worlds that God created?
What, if anything, changes about your personal understanding of God, Torah and the world?
Why doesn't the Torah begin with the letter Alef ?
- Why the Letter bet begins the Torah
- Zohar Hadash identifies the prior worlds as totaling 1,000,
- as does Or ha-Hayim 1:12, which states that before God created this world, He create a thousand hidden worlds. These hidden worlds were created through the first letter, aleph. That is why the Torah, in the report of the Creation of this world, commences with the second letter, bet. The existence of the 1,000 worlds is linked to the verse
- You may have the thousand, O Solomon (S. of S. 8:12).
- Other sources, such as Midrash Tehillim 90:13, give the number as 974 worlds, which were said to have been created and destroyed over 2,000 years.
- Zohar Hadash identifies the prior worlds as totaling 1,000,
- Rabbi Yitzhak Eizik Haver (1789-1853) found evidence of prior creations in the fact that the Torah starts with the letter bet, the second letter, rather than with an aleph, the first letter. “The verse begins with the letter bet to hint that Creation was divided into two realms—that God created two beginnings.”
Origin Stories
Once, when Aaron the Priest, brother of Moses, was offering sacrifices on Yom Kippur, the bull sprang up from beneath his hands and covered a cow. When that calf was born, it was stronger than any other. Before a year was out, the calf had grown bigger than the whole world.
God then took the world and stuck it on one horn of that bull. And the bull holds up the world on his horn, for that is God’s wish. But when people sin, their sins make the world heavier, and the burden of the bull grows that much greater. Then the bull grows tired of its burden and tosses the world from one horn to the other. That is when earthquakes take place, and everything is uncertain until the world stands securely on a single horn.
So it is that the bull tosses the world from time to time from one horn to the other,
causing earthquakes and other catastrophes. And if people only knew of the danger, they would recognize how much they are dependent on God’s mercy. For if they would only observe the commandments and sanctify God’s name, the bull would stand still and the world remains quietly on its horns.
- Moroccan Myth
What creation myths are you familiar with in other cultures?
Why do creation myths exist?
Entrance to the Gate of Beit Yaakov 3:8
Simply put, God’s light was clothed in garments, which enabled the creation to perceive the light. This is as it is said in the Zohar (Balak, 204b): The primordial light which God created shined with such intensity that the worlds could not withstand its power until the Holy One, blessed be He, created a light for this light (to be enclothed in a kind of luminous vessel), so one could dress within the other, and similarly with all of the lights, so that the worlds could stand in their place and endure it.
- Although a great many prior worlds are said to have been created and destroyed, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev insisted that “Everything God created exists forever, and never ceases to be.”
- God made the present world out of those broken vessels
- Why did God decide to keep and not destroy our world?
- Sefer ha-Zikhronot 1:1 suggests that when it entered God’s mind to create the world, He drew the plan of the world, but it would not stand until God created repentance. Thus repentance is the key element that made our world possible.
- The belief that God destroyed the prior worlds implies that God’s creations of these worlds was somehow in error. Some Christian apocryphal sources, such as The Gospel of Philip 99a, describe even the present world as an error: “The world came into being through a mistake. For he who created it wished to create it imperishable and immortal. He did not attain his hope.”
The Gemara provides sources for the notion that each of these phenomena was created before the world was. Torah was created before the world was created, as it is written: “The Lord made me as the beginning of His way, the first of His works of old” (Proverbs 8:22), which, based on the subsequent verses, is referring to the Torah. Repentance was created before the world was created, as it is written: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God,” and it is written immediately afterward: “You return man to contrition; and You say: Repent, children of man” (Psalms 90:2–3).
The Gemara asks: Is that so? Was there uncertainty at that point as to whether Gehenna had already been created? But isn’t it taught in a baraita: Seven phenomena were created before the world was created, and they are: Torah, and repentance, the Garden of Eden, and Gehenna, the Throne of Glory, and the Temple, and the name of the Messiah. The Gemara provides sources for each of these phenomena. Torah was created before the world was created, as it is written: “The Lord made me as the beginning of His way, the first of His works of old” (Proverbs 8:22). Based on the subsequent verses, this is referring to the Torah.
