From the Beginning Again

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you for joining me. I'm Rabbi David Lyon from
Congregation Meth Israel in Houston. This past week, Jewish communities
all over the world came together to celebrate a holiday
called Simcha Torah. It means the joy and happiness of Torah.
It's a holiday that celebrates the very last words of Torah.

(00:22):
But then the very beginning of Torah spoken with the
first words of Torah. And just so that you might know,
the very last word of Torah is the Hebrew word
ysra ale. The very first word of Torah is beret sheet.
Those two Hebrew words end and begin with a letter
Lamed and Bet, respectively. And when we put those two

(00:46):
Hebrew letters together, Lamed and Bet, they spell the Hebrew
word lev Lev means heart. And so we begin to
imagine that the heart of Jewish life is within the
pages of Torah, the scroll of Torah, from beginning to end.
That's why the rabbis thought that we should turn it

(01:07):
and turn it again, for all is contained within it.
So as we celebrate the new beginning, especially this year,
we can't help but reflect on what happened two years ago.
October seventh, twenty twenty three, when war and ravage unfolded
in Israel, and a war began between Israel and Gaza.

(01:29):
But this year hostages came home, and so there was
a renewed feeling on Zimca Torah, the celebration of Torah,
that it wasn't with disaster that we would celebrate, but
with hope, resilience and real joy again. So it's remarkable
that Genesis won one. When we begin, the Torah begins

(01:51):
with words it might be familiar to you, but war
maybe not familiar to you. But here's what Genesis one
one says. And for the first few verses we understand
when God began to create heaven and earth, the earth
being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of

(02:11):
the deep, and a wind from God sweeping over the water.
God said, let there be light, and there was light.
God saw that the light was good, and God separated
the light from the darkness. God called the light day,
and the darkness God called night. And there was evening
and there was morning a first day. Centuries ago, rabbis

(02:35):
asked the question how it is that this order unfolded
in the Torah as it's written. The rabbis believe that
it all came from God, but they still raised questions
about why this came first or second, or why something
appeared to be out of order in the sequence of
creation described in the Torah verses. Ultimately, the rabbis didn't

(02:58):
say that the Torah was mistaken or that the order
wasn't right. What they perceived and taught for generations that
followed them and for us to know, is that in
Genesis one one, where we read that the earth was
unformed and void, that was the very first thing that
we came to learn when God began creating. But what

(03:22):
followed was a hope and the outcome. How we face
a world that was filled with order and all that
it needed and contained, but as a result of all
of it, we begin to understand a sequence too that
in our world, in our life that may begin in

(03:42):
our soul or be perceived in our household or community,
there is also chaos and void. And therefore, what does
it become our responsibility to do to offer order, a
sense of organization, a sense of content, tenuity, and certainly
the hopefulness that Because the Torah also says that God

(04:05):
placed in human hands the responsibility to bring order and
peace to the world around us to have dominion. As
the English translation tells us, we have a huge responsibility
to get it right. Generally, history records that we have
not gotten it as right as we could. There are

(04:26):
times of peace, but many more times of war II.
Just this past week, in our Jewish day school, fifth
graders came into our chapel for our morning service, and
on Thursday morning we also read from Torah. On this
particular Thursday morning, the fifth graders joined me there. I

(04:47):
opened the Torus scroll to Genesis one one. Because this week,
as we simply and just celebrated simply Torah, we would
begin there. But it was also a time time for
them to begin their formal training to read from Torah.
So we hand them a book and the book is
called a tikun. Tikun means to fix. Sometimes we use

(05:12):
that word to describe a Jewish value. We call tikun
o lam to repair or to fix the world. The
book that they held in their hands, called a Tikun,
contains two columns on each page. One column is the
Hebrew of the Torah, written with vowels and markings that
assist us in learning how to read it. The second

(05:34):
column is the same words exactly what is written in
the previous column, but the way it appears in the
Torah scroll, without vowels, without markings, just the Hebrew letters,
no punctuation either. So a t kun, this particular book
is the book in which we repair and fix our

(05:56):
Hebrew reading so that we can approach the holy Torah
scroll and read it without any mistakes. As the Tora
should be read, and also the tour should be understood.
So as the students held their ticun in their laps
and opened to the first page to Genesis one pint one,
I stood on the bema where I unrolled the Torus

(06:17):
scroll to the very same place, and together we read
aloud the words from Genesis chapter one, verse one beret
sheet Bahrah Elohem when God began to create. When we
finished reading together the first day of creation, they closed
their books and I dressed the Torah. Of course, we

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recited the blessings before and after the reading, and then
I shared with them that as they in fifth grade
and their parents and grandparents, who were sitting near them,
view the world around them, of course they see brokenness,
they see poverty, they see beauty, they see wholeness too.
But we begin to understand, as they did that day,

(07:00):
that just as the Torah begins with words that describe
a world that is unformed and void, it doesn't end there.
It continues with acts of creation that help us to
see and perceive a world that is all God's doing.
And if we can use our eyes and ears, our mouths,
our hands also to see the beauty of creation around

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us and also accept our responsibility that God granted us
to participate in it and to make it better and
to refine it, then we begin to understand why we
continue to read the sacred text that we do. It's
because all is contained within it that we need to
understand what we need to accomplish, sometimes alone, but more

(07:44):
often together. Now I let the fifth graders know that
as they would leave the chapel that day, they weren't
fully responsible yet for all that needed to be done,
but their parents and grand parents would certainly be standing
by to assist them. But as they would accept increasing

(08:06):
responsibilities in their Jewish roles, in their Jewish families and
in the synagogue, it was up to them to understand
the role that they would play as readers of Torah,
as students of Torah, and most importantly doers of Torah.
It's the same for you in your own faith tradition

(08:28):
or in the life that you live without faith tradition.
There are increasing responsibilities and expectations for each of us.
Having been created as we are, we don't have the
privilege to live selfishly or alone without concern for others.
If we do live alone or without concern for others,

(08:48):
one responsibility is to not make trouble for others where
we shouldn't. But if we do live in community and
are concerned about others too. Many of the very morals
and ethics and deeds that we feel inspired or obligated
to complete do come from the sacred text which are
part of our faith traditions. They are long and enduring

(09:11):
lessons about common, civil and humane things to accomplish, even
where there strife or difficulty or war. Many of these
sacred texts help us to understand how to overcome them,
how even to fight a holy war, not a religious war,
but a war in a sacred way that helps us

(09:33):
to overcome an impassable challenge without violating humanity. So our
texts can help us to see that while life can
be filled with chaos, unfound and void. There are also
ways to find in the same text, ways to unpack, unfold,

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and complete the work that needs to be done. These
young fifth graders left with smiles on their faces, and
so did their parents, because they took with them a
book that was all about how to fix and repair
the words it needed to be spoken and read aloud
in public, and most importantly, the words that needed to

(10:15):
be understood. If we can begin with those basic levels
to understand the words that need to be understood, then
we're prepared to speak them and repeat them, and then
eventually to lead by those words and do what needs
to be done. In my own community, we have so

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many opportunities to do inter faith work, and what brings
us together around a common table is not the same
sacred book, but the fact that are in our respective
sacred books we find very common sacred lessons about how
to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and care
for the stranger, and how to bring greater peace and

(10:58):
harmony in communities that grow increasingly diverse. Where I live
and work in Houston, Texas, as you know, we are
actually one of the most diverse cities in the country,
and one sociologists claimed that by twenty fifty that the
rest of the country would look like Houston does today.
And he wrote those words some years ago, So by

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virtue of data and trend lines, he was onto something
that we know is increasingly true about the world around us.
What do we do about it? Well, even as the
Torah teaches in our own sacred texts, we can't hide
ourselves or transform the world into something that it isn't
meant to be. The Torah itself, and as we read

(11:42):
in Genesis tells us what the world is going to
be is going to be filled with lots of diversity
that is a function of God's acts of creation. And
so what we need to do is to see in
each act of God's creation, bark of God's creation, to

(12:02):
see in each human being, or each animal, or each plant,
or each resource that is available to us and sustains
us in life as something holy because it is created
in the world to live and to breathe wholly only
means set apart for very special reason or purpose. The
rabbis asked a long time ago, for example, what's the

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purpose and use of God creating a mosquito? We have
plenty of them in Houston. If you'd like some, we
can send them to you. But while we try to
eradicate them, there is actually a function for them in
the world. It's beyond me, but it isn't beyond God's
active creation. And if it's true about a mosquito, it's

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certainly true about people who live next to us, who
are different from us. To see in them God's holy light,
in God's holy purpose. Our hope is that they, just
as we would do for ourselves, would identify that holy
purpose in ourselves so that we can bring our very
best to a world that needs less chaos, less avoid

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more completion, more respect, more civility, and certainly greater peace.
I'm Rabbi David Lyon from Congregation Beth Israel in Houston.
To listen again or to share this message, please find
it out my podcast called Heart to Heart with Rabbi
David Lyon. You can find it at Sunny ninety nine
dot com on the iHeartRadio app. The Torah is filled

(13:36):
with so much to learn and understand, just as your
own sacred texts or favorite books are filled with lessons
and guide us through life. If they guide us potentially, well,
then we arrive at places that are filled with peace,
not only for ourselves and our own hearts, but between
us and others. And if that other is beyond our

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family or circle of friends, to find ourselves the company
of people who are so different from us, it behooves
us to see them also as an act of God's creation.
And if they too seek what we seek, then there's
potential for wholeness and friendship and real peace. There's only

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a challenge when we confront people who are not interested
in any of those things. If they're focused on death
or destruction, or violating one's civil rights, then we have
a challenge. I would urge you not to engage, but
to find others who join you in the company of
those who appreciate the blessings that we've been given, to
make a positive difference, to do what we can and

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to find wholeness in all of God's creations and to
give it an opportunity to demonstrate its goodness, just as
we would like to be given the same opportunity to
do for others. For now, let's continue to read our
sacred texts and find in them sources of joy and peace.
Thank you for joining teaing me today I look forward

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to being with you again next time.