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Richard D

(9,623 posts) Thu Feb 13, 2025, 11:40 AM Feb 13

Judaism and The Rhythms of Nature

I am fascinated by this idea of God and the creation story in Genesis. The more I study it the more I realize that the common idea of the God that atheists so easily debunk - the dude up in the sky pulling the strings - is utterly and totally obliterated by the first sentence in Genesis. I was thinking this morning, did God create the universe, or is that which created the universe, God. The second option gets very big. “You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.” (Douglas Adams)

I love the Kabbalistic idea that all of creation is a reflection of that which created the universe. It's all in code that can be learned and understood, thus leading to the highest human emotions: appreciation and gratitude.

Anyway, just some non-political thoughts for today's Holy day from a non-religious Jew who appreciated and wants to share this piece:

Creation

To a religious person, the universe is filled with hidden voices and secret meanings. The natural world, being the creation of God, signals the awesomeness of its Creator.

The Torah opens with the dramatic words: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” It does not begin with the story of God’s revelation to the Israelites at Sinai; nor with specific commandments. The first chapter of Genesis establishes in powerful terms that God created the universe and everything within it.

An ancient Aramaic translation of the Torah interprets the Hebrew word bereishith (in the beginning) to mean behokhmah (with wisdom). According to this translation, the Torah opens with the statement: “With wisdom did God create the heavens and the earth.” A human being, by recognizing the vast wisdom of God as reflected in the universe He created, comes to a profound awareness of his relationship with God. Indeed, experiencing God as Creator is the beginning of religious wisdom.

Moses Maimonides, the pre-eminent Jewish thinker of the middle ages, has understood this truth. He wrote:

Now what is the way that leads to the love of Him and the reverence for Him? When a person contemplates His great and wondrous acts and creations, obtaining from them a glimpse of His wisdom, which is beyond compare and infinite, he will promptly love and glorify Him, longing exceedingly to know the great Name of God, as David said: ‘My whole being thirsts for God, the living God (Psalm 42:3)’. When he ponders over these very subjects, he will immediately recoil, startled, conceiving that he is a lowly, obscure creature…as David said: ‘As I look up to the heavens Your fingers made…what is man that you should think of him (Psalm 8:4-5)?

https://www.jewishideas.org/article/judaism-and-rhythms-nature

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Judaism and The Rhythms of Nature (Original Post) Richard D Feb 13 OP

Thank you. I very much appreciate this contribution to the Jewish Group forum. Beastly Boy Feb 13 #1

Awesome! Richard D Feb 13 #2

Never thought of this comparison, but it is so spot on! Beastly Boy Feb 13 #3

Beastly Boy

(11,777 posts)

1. Thank you. I very much appreciate this contribution to the Jewish Group forum.

Reply to Richard D (Original post)

Thu Feb 13, 2025, 01:05 PM

Feb 13

To add two cents to the subject on the subject from another non-observant Jew, which may clarify the question raised in the citation: at the foundation of the Kabbalistic understanding of God and creation, there is a conception of two aspects of God: one is an all encompassing and unchanging in perpetuity state of God called "Ein Sof", meaning "never ending" and indescribable in any other way and is beyond human understanding, and the other one as Creator of the universe we inhabit, which is the extent of human understanding of God. The universe is but a tiny part of Ein Sof as God's perpetual state of being, a ripple in it that and, by implication, it has an end. It also has a beginning, as in "bereshit" which marks the beginning of the universe and the Torah, both, reflected in the reverence for Torah by virtually every sage, are one and the same, Thus, the study of Torah is essentially the study of the universe, a notion which is reflected in the words of Moses Maymonides in the passage you cited. This first word of the Torah is full of Kabbalistic mysteries, the notable one being that creation of the universe started before God gave Himself a name.

So, in an attempt to answer the question of this morning: since the Ein Sof aspect of God extends beyond our universe, the universe is God's creation and does not begin to fully define God.

And the common idea of the God being the dude up in the sky pulling the strings is utterly and totally obliterated by the first word in the Genesis. Possibly, as another pre-eminent sage, the legendary founder of the study of Kaballah Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai once stated, the first letter of the the word. He suggested that the dot in the Hebrew "beit" that starts the Torah is a signifier of the presence of God in the entire act of Creation, and even precedes it, way before any dudes, or the sky, or any physical or virtual strings, ever came into being.

Richard D

(9,623 posts)

2. Awesome!

Reply to Beastly Boy (Reply #1)

Thu Feb 13, 2025, 01:41 PM

Feb 13

I'm just starting to study Kaballah. It feels like an infinite Mandelbrot set.

Beastly Boy

(11,777 posts)

3. Never thought of this comparison, but it is so spot on!

Reply to Richard D (Reply #2)

Thu Feb 13, 2025, 02:09 PM

Feb 13

The basics of the Kabbalah are deceptively simple. But the interactions between the ten basic elements that comprise its structure allow for an infinite number of variations.

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