[Avodah] RSRH on the First Pasuk in Bereishis

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 06:24:28AM -0400, Yitzchok Levine wrote:
: IMO Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch's commentary on the 
: first pasuk in Bereishis...
:                              Yeish Ma ayin. This constitutes the basis of 
: the conviction that the Torah seeks to instill within us.
: 
: The opposite notion is the belief in the eternity of the world, which
: is the cornerstone of pagan belief until this very day...

Actually, yeish mei'ayin and the eternity of the world are NOT
opposites, and can in fact coexist.

The key is to remember that time itself is a nivra.

Therefore maaseh bereishis can not preceed existence in time. Besides,
what would it mean that the first moment has something that happened
*before* it?

Thus, HQBH causes the universe in a manner that is entirely different
than temporal sequence. And thus, yeis mei'ayin means that Hashem is
logically prior and the cause of the universe and everything in it --
not just that He took what was otherwise caused and gave it form and
order (shitas Plato).

But I believe the Rambam holds that Yahadus could have continued
unchanged had we not believed the universe had a beginning. It's only
that lemaaseh it did, and that our chakhamim and neviim said so, that
makes him insist it did.

How? HQBH is the non-temporal cause of everything. Therefore, had HQBH
wanted a universe with no beginning, He could have made one. He would
still have been the cause. A mashal: A printing press publishes a
poster, a timeline of the history of the universe (leshitas Seder Olam)
from Adam to 6,000. It stamps out the whole timeline at once. For
imaginary people living within the timeline, the line is a progression
of events; but the printing press has a different dimension of time. HQBH
has no different time, but like our mashal, isn't within our concept of
it. There is no reason why HQBH couldn't have "stamped out" / "is
stamping out" / "will stamp out" an infinite timeline, if He so chose.

There is a diqduq oddity that means that we really don't even understand
the first word of chumash very well. The word "bereishis" is in semichut,
meaning "in the begining of", but the pasuq has no obvious "of what".
RSRH writes:
: Our verse, then, means: "In the beginning of all existence, it was
: God Who created"; or, if we add to the predicate the two objects that
: follow: "From the very beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
: In any event, "Bereishis" proclaims that nothing existed prior to God's
: act of creation, and that heaven and earth were created only through
: God's Word. Scripture thus teaches us that the world was brought into
: existence from nonexistence, Yeish Ma ayin. This constitutes the basis of 
: the conviction that the Torah seeks to instill within us.

He struggles, but ends up with two versions:
inserting the "of what" manually -- "all existence" and
"from the very beginning" -- although there is no leading "mi".

Rashi is so convinced the diqduq oddity has no literal explanation,
he brings midrashim about "with something called 'reishis'" into the
realm of peshat.

But lulei demitztafina hayisi omer that we should read the pasuq
exactly as written:
    In the beginning of 'G-d created the heaven and earth'..."
Meaning that "bara es hashmayim ve'es ha'aretz" is a permanent
relationship between Creator and created, and the week of creation was
the unfolding, the beginning of it. Again, dividing between our temporal
experience of time as having a beginning, and His creating of time,
which is "orthogonal" to our beginning and end. Thus we have a "reishis"
but for HQBH it's all perfect tense, "bara".

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where
micha at aishdas.org        you are,  or what you are doing,  that makes you
http://www.aishdas.org   happy or unhappy. It's what you think about.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Dale Carnegie