Do you feel inspired? Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkos and Simchas Torah fill us with high-octane spiritual inspiration. Then we read the first portion of the Torah- Bereishis.
Chassidim say that Shabbos Bereishis sets the tone for the New Year. It’s the first “normal” Shabbos of the year. It invites and challenges us to translate the uplifting Yom Tov season into real life.
Which is why it makes sense to read the story of Creation at this time. We are in the process of re-creating our world for another year, full of promise and possibility. The story of G-d’s original Creation offers us a good model to emulate.
What does not make sense is why we start the year- and the translation of inspiration into action- by reading a story of dramatic human failure.
Here is the story of the first human, created by G-d’s own hand and imbued with hyper awareness of the Divine. Adam discerned the spiritual code pulsating within every living creature, and foresaw the full course of human history. G-d gave this archetypal man a single instruction: “Do whatever you want, just don’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge”. Our Sages understand that, after a mere three hours, Shabbos would have entered and the prohibition would have lapsed.
Still, Adam failed.
What message does that give us? Adam was fashioned by Hashem’s own hand. He had an acute awareness of G-d at all times and received just one, short-term instruction straight from the Divine. Yet, knowing the dire consequences of his actions, he still bungled!
We are simple people. We don’t converse with G-d regularly, and certainly don’t have Him talk to us. Hashem gave us a long list of time-consuming and often inconvenient observances to follow. Our negative voice lives comfortably inside and appears far more alluring than Adam’s serpent did. Is there any chance we will not fail?
Why does the Torah begin with such a depressing message?
Nobody’s perfect
We all make mistakes, and we hate them. Some of us get depressed over our failures. Perhaps it’s because we take ourselves too seriously. We expect to be perfect. If we let ourselves down, instead of realising that we have failed, we think we are a failure.
That is precisely what Hashem wants us to know from the outset: He designed humans to fail. We will fail more often than we succeed.
And that’s ok.
Had Hashem wanted a perfect world, He would have stopped creating after He made the angels. Angels and perfection are not the goal of Life, though. He wants humans, He wants our foibles and weaknesses; our failures and mistakes. He loves us for our mess-ups.
More importantly, He’s designed us to achieve real growth out of error. In Torah terms, we call that yeridah tzorech aliyah or descent for the sake of ascent. In simple terms, sometimes you have to go backwards to be able to go forward.
As we start a new year, Torah wants us to know that the only real failure is if we get stuck in failure. The moment we grow from a negative experience, we fulfil the ultimate purpose for which Hashem created humans: To transform adversity into success and darkness into light.
