ABRAM ARRIVES IN CANAAN

God commands Abram to leave the land of his parents and move to the land that He will show him. God promises to make Abram the patriarch of a great nation. Abram obeys and moves to Canaan (Israel). Abram takes his wife Saray and his nephew Lot. Once Abram arrives in Canaan, God promises He will give that land to his descendants. Abram, at 75 years old, still had no children.

EGYPT
Abram looks for a place to settle, but a great famine caused by drought forces him to move to Egypt, where there is food. In Egypt, and at Abram’s request, Saray pretends to be his sister, fearing that the Egyptians will kill Abram to take Sarai. As Abram suspected, Saray was forcibly brought before Pharaoh because of her extraordinary beauty. But God punished Pharaoh and the members of his palace with plagues, prompting Pharaoh to hastily release Saray and expel her and Abraham from Egypt.  Pharaoh rewarded Abram with lavish riches as dowry for Saray, so Abram returned to Canaan as a rich man.

LOT MOVES TO SODOM
Lot also made his fortune in Egypt, and the Tora tells us that Lot’s shepherds fought with Abram’s shepherds over territory. Abram offers Lot to part ways, and Lot then moves to the city of Sodom, famous for its ruthless inhabitants. God again promises Abram that his descendants will inherit that land and become as numerous as the dust of the earth.

LOT AND THE LOOT
The land of Canaan is invaded by various Middle Eastern kings fighting each other. The kings laid waste to the region of Sodom and took captives, including Lot. Upon finding out, Abram assembles an army of more than 300 men, defeats the contingent carrying the prisoners, frees them, and returns the spoils to the king of Sodom. The king thanks Abram for the captives and offers him the spoils of war as a gift. But Abram does not want any man to say » “I made Abram rich,” and he rejects the offer. Abram desires that his wealth and blessing be attributed solely to God.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PROMISE
God speaks to Abram again and promises He will reward him for his righteousness. Abram then mentions that he has no children for the first time: “Who will inherit me if at my age I still do not have a son? ” God assures Abram that he will have a son and promises that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky.
God and Abram made a covenant as testimony that his descendants would inherit that land. God also tells Abram that his descendants will be exiled and suffer slavery for a long time, but then they will return and inherit the land of Canaan.

ADOPTING HAGAR’S SON
Seeing that she cannot give a son to Abram, Saray suggests that Abram have a child with her Egyptian servant, Hagar. Hagar conceived and then began to be contemptuous of Sarai, who responded with a heavy hand, causing Hagar to run away. An angel encouraged Hagar to return to Sarai’s house, promising that her son would become a great nation. Hagar obeyed and gave birth to Yishmael.

PROMISES AND COVENANTS
God added the Hebrew letter “HE” ה to Abram’s name, making him “Abraham”, which means: the patriarch of numerous nations. God makes another covenant with Abraham and his descendants: the circumcision of all male children at eight days. Saray’s name is replaced by Sara, which means “The Princess”, or “The Queen”. God promises Abraham that he will have another son, but this time by his own wife, Sara.
At the age of 99, Abraham circumcised himself, his son Yishmael and all the members of his estate.

PROBLEMS IN GOD’S LAND

This week’s Parasha begins with the story of Abraham, our first patriarch. God blesses Abraham repeatedly, assuring him that numerous peoples and civilizations will come from him and inherit the precious land of Canaan (Israel). But things happen differently than Abraham would have expected. Shortly after arriving in Israel, a tremendous famine hits the region, probably due to a lack of rain. The Midrash says that there was never such a famine in the land of Israel, and Abraham is forced to escape. But he does not return to the north, where he came from. Abraham traveled south to Egypt, which, thanks to the generous Nile, was not affected by droughts.

PROBLEMS IN THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS

Abraham arrives in Egypt as a refugee escaping from starvation. In Egypt, he is a foreigner who can be easily abused. And besides, he has a very delicate problem. Despite her advanced age, his wife Sara was still a very beautiful woman. And Abraham knows the duplicity of Egyptian morality. For the Egyptians, adultery was forbidden, and marriage was sacred. And not even Pharaoh could take a married woman. But there was no moral or legal problem in taking a widow! Therefore, it was very tempting for any Egyptian to kill Abraham and take his wife. Human life in those times was worth nothing, especially that of a foreigner. Foreseeing all this, and with few other options, Abraham devises a plan: posing Sara as his sister. That way, Abraham when the Egyptians would come to Abraham asking for his “sister’s” hand, he would negotiate for months… He would start by demanding an exorbitant dowry for Sara, leading to long negotiations, and in the meantime, Abraham could sell all the merchandise he brought with him, buy some food, and return to Israel as soon as possible. The plan is perfect!

MURPHY LAWS
But Abraham’s plan did not work as he expected. Why? Because Abraham underestimated his wife’s beauty. And he never suspected that Pharaoh himself would be interested in Sara! When the king’s men saw her, there were no negotiations. Pharaoh’s men took Sarah by force, without Abraham’s consent, and then showered “her brother Abraham with gifts”, probably exceeding any exorbitant sum Abraham expected to be offered as a fake dowry.  Abraham is now desperate. God is not communicating with Abraham to tell him what to do, and he could not be sure if Sara’s kidnapping was part of a Divine plan to return to Israel and look for another wife to have children or if he had to wait for some type of Divine intervention.

REPARATIONS

Miraculously, and while Sara is still untouched, Pharaoh and his entire court suffered a rare affliction that the monarch correctly interpreted as a sign of Divine punishment. Pharaoh discovers the actual marital status of Sara, and he summons Abraham, rebukes him, and returns Sara to him. Then he expels Abraham from Egypt. Without knowing what had exactly happened in Pharaoh’s palace, Abraham is now safe, sound, and ironically “rich”. He returned to the land of Canaan with his beloved wife Sara.

Nothing contradicts the idea of Simchat Torah more than drunkenness.

Maimonides writes:

“During Yom Tob [and this includes Simchat Torah, Y.B.], a person should not drink too much [alcohol]… because drunkenness and frivolity are not part of the mitzvah of being joyful; they are part of vulgarity and ignorance… and [the Torah has commanded us] to reach a level of happiness that reflects our service to Hashem… a person cannot serve God with frivolity, mental lightness, or drunkenness” (Ibid., 6:19). “The highest way to serve Hashem is by feeling happy to fulfill [His will by observing] His commandments…” (Maimonides, MT Hilchot Sukkah veLulav, 8:15).

As HaRambam explained, a Jew does not need to become intoxicated to express their happiness. Someone who needs to become drunk to feel happy is doing so to “forget” his misery, shut off his reasoning and consciousness to escape his present, and, most of the time, to flee from a senseless life.

We, AM ISRAEL, are the chosen people.

In Simchat Torah, we do not drink excessively because we should embrace and celebrate the privilege of belonging to the people of God with full sobriety and awareness.

THE GENERATION OF THE FLOOD
When God created man, He granted him a neshama, a soul: his intelligence. The ability to think, analyze and make choices. The Biblical text defined these faculties as “the image and likeness of God”. Unlike all living beings, humans were conceived as supernatural beings endowed with free will. That is the possibility of choosing good and evil, following the word of God or the drives of their earthly instincts.
Ten generations after being created, man chose the path of evil. Humanity began to decline. The Tora tells us that rape and corruption became widespread in that generation. The stronger abused the weak (Genesis 6). And the law of the land was the law of the jungle: the survival of the strongest. Man degraded himself, forgot his Divine image, and followed his instincts. This tenth generation after Creation is known as Dor haMabbul, a corrupt generation that deserved to be erased from the face of the Earth by the Flood. But this Flood did not mean the end of humanity. A man named Noah turned out to be the exception to the rule. Noah was an individual who, concerning the rest of the world (or despite widespread corruption, according to another opinion) behaved with integrity and lived conscious of God’s existence, something other humans chose to ignore.
God saved Noah to save humanity, giving us a second chance. Noah builds the ark and, together with his wife, their three children, and their wives – 8 people – survives the devastating Flood.

FIRST LAW
When Noah descends from the ark, he builds an altar and offers sacrifices to God in an unmistakable gesture of gratitude for saving his life. God blesses Noah, tells him to reproduce and repopulate the Earth, and presents him with a code that contains two explicit laws. The first law has to do with animals. God allows Noah and his children to eat animal flesh (Genesis 9: 3), which until then was not allowed since the diet that God indicated to the first man consisted solely of plants: seeds, vegetables, and fruits. Now God will enable humans to kill animals for food. However, the Creator establishes a prerequisite that must be fulfilled before consuming animal flesh. Men can not mutilate a living animal to consume its meat, as carnivorous predators do with their prey.
Before consuming its meat, the animal should be slaughtered.

SECOND LAW
The second law that God commands Noah is about murder, killing another human being. This law is formulated in a very basic way. Instead of the “You shall not kill” that we find in the 10 Commandments, this law determines that murder will be punished with execution. “If a man sheds the blood of another man, his blood will be spilled, because the human being has been created in the image of God. “(Genesis 9: 6). This law mentions again that man was created in the image and likeness of God. A reference to the widespread corruption that the Tora denounced in Genesis 6, explaining that powerful men (bene elohim) were abusing the weaker men (adam). God reminds Noah that every human, regardless of social status, deserves to be treated with respect for having been created in the image and likeness of God.

THE COVENANT BETWEEN GOD and NOAH
In the next verses (Genesis 9: 8 to 9:17) God establishes a covenant with Noah and his children. God promises not to bring another flood. The rainbow will be the reminder that rain will eventually stop and God will never again erase humanity from the face of the Earth. We can see then that the covenant between God and Noah establishes, on the one hand, that human beings will respect the life of other human beings and the right of an animal to a dignified death. And the Creator, on the other hand, commits Himself not to bring another flood, a universal cataclysm that would destroy humanity.

To summarize: the Divine formula to prevent future corruption of humanity and its own destruction is the establishment of Law and Order. These two basic laws are part of what is known as the seven universal laws.
Let’s clarify that according to Jewish tradition, God had already ordered Adam, the first man, six basic laws. In the times of Noah, God made from these Laws a covenant, adding the law that regulates the consumption of animal flesh and establishing the death penalty for murder. The Seven Laws of the Children of Noah (which also include: the prohibition of idolatry, blasphemy, theft, incest, and the commandment to set courts of justice) constitute the first Biblical code of the Divine Law that God conceived for humanity.

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Tomorrow morning, God willing, we will start rereading the Tora from the beginning: BERESHIT. Genesis.

After writing my first book, “Awesome Creation”, which deals with the first three verses of Genesis, which narrate the creation of our planet, I started my new book. What did God create on the Fifth Day? The name of my new book is: “Dinosaurs in the Bible”, which I have not yet published in English (see the Portuguese version here).

In the following lines, I will share with the readers of Halakha of the Day a text from the introduction of my new book. In this introduction, I briefly describe the process of creation, which is fully discernible to man and contemporary science. I chose to share some ideas about the Fourth Day of Creation because I think it is the least understood. In kindergarten, we are taught that God “created” the Sun, the Moon, and the stars on the Fourth Day. But this prevalent idea does not follow the opinion of the vast majority of Jewish Sages, especially those like Rashi, or Radaq, who specializes in the textual and grammatical part (peshat), that is, in the non-mystical interpretation of the Tora.

Besides, it would be a great intellectual challenge to suppose that the plants created on the Third Day could have existed without sunlight or that the Earth’s atmosphere created on the Second Day did not depend on the sun. Or even the day/night transition of the First Day did not occur through the sun. Today we know that the existence of a planet depends on the star around which it orbits and that all the planets we know exist, obviously, within a solar system.

This issue will be clarified in the following lines, Although I am sure that many readers will be surprised because it will be the first time they read this. I apologize that the text I will copy is a bit longer than usual. Still, I hope it will help you better understand the Creation text and appreciate that the more we know the science, the more we admire the exquisite precision of our Tora.

Genesis 1:14

And God said (on the Fourth Day): Let there be lights in the heavenly sky, and separate the day from the night; and let them be signs of the times, the days, and the years.

1. Jewish tradition holds that the luminaries—the sun, the Moon, and the planets of our solar system—were not “created” on the Fourth Day, but on the First Day of Creation. To be more precise, God created the sun, the Moon, and the universe during the first Act of Creation (Genesis 1:1). On the Fourth Day, then, God established the final positioning of the Sun and the Moon in their respective celestial orbits (requia’ hashamayim). This is not a minor detail. The temperature of our planet, which allows the existence of water in a liquid state, or the evaporation/precipitation cycle that produces fresh water, etc., depends on the fine-tuned distance between our planet and the sun. Our verse says: “Let there be luminaries in the expanse of the heavens”, but in reality, we should understand it in this way: “let the luminaries be positioned/ relocated in [their precise place in] the expanse of the heavens”. The Divine order does not refer to the creation of the luminaries but to their relocation “in the expanse of the heavens”, that is, in their definitive celestial orbit. This is the opinion of the majority of the rabbis of the Talmud. According to our Sages, Rashi (Gen. 1:14), this verse indicates what the final and definitive location of the luminaries will be. Rashi explicitly quotes the expression of the Sages: teliyat hameorot , “the suspension of the luminaries” in their respective orbits) and not their creation. To better appreciate that this verse does not refer to the “creation” of the luminaries, notice the absence of the verb bara, which is used in the Tora to describe an act of creation from nothing. In this verse, the Biblical text does not use the word “bara” but the Hebrew word “yehí”.
In the formation of the atmosphere (Genesis 1:6), for example, there was no act of creation from nothing, and the Tora uses the word “yehi”, not the expression “bara” to describe the establishment of a new mechanism, produced from something previously created.

2. Next, our text announces the mission of the luminaries. Once relocated in their final orbits, they will no longer be limited to the exclusive task of determining the transition between day and night, as they have been doing until now. From their new delicately calibrated orbits, the luminaries will also indicate other more complex time units, such as months, seasons, and years. However, the cycle of “the week” (Shabbat) is independent of any astronomical reference and will be established directly by the Creator.

Genesis 1:15

and that they act as luminaries from the celestial sky to illuminate the Earth. So it was.

From its new and carefully calculated distance from Earth, what modern scientists call “the galactic habitable zone,” sunlight will benefit future Earth dwellers, living things that need a very precise temperature. The Sun will have a special mission, explicitly mentioned in this verse: lehair ‘al haarets. That is: radiating the energy and heat necessary for life from a distance that does not cause too much or not enough heat/radiation. The Earth’s average temperature, 14 degrees Celsius, is incredibly stable and falls within a very narrow and privileged range. This delicately balanced temperature does not allow the oceans to freeze as they would if the Earth had the temperature of Mars or Jupiter, nor that they evaporate, as would happen in the case of Venus or Mercury. The water of the terrestrial oceans will be able to remain in a stable liquid state, and the climatic system will continue to produce rain as necessary, thanks to the temperature, exquisitely tuned by the Creator, which results from the ideal positioning of the Earth, the Sun and the Moon. This is the habitability zone necessary for the appearance on the Fifth Day of this phenomenon so delicate and fragile that we call: “life”.

Genesis 1:16

And God made the two great luminaries. The greater luminary to rule during the day, and the smaller luminary to rule during the night, and the stars.…the Moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun but 400 times closer to Earth than the Sun. The Moon is located at an exact distance from Earth, from which it exerts enough gravity to keep our planet aligned in the habitable zone. Maintaining the Earth’s axial tilt and elliptical orbit that produces the four seasons and the sea ​​tides are responsible for stable temperatures and life in the oceans.

Genesis 1:17

And God placed them in the celestial sky to illuminate the Earth.

Biblical commentators explained that the words: “leha-or ‘al ha-arets”, which literally means: “to illuminate the earth”, should be understood as: “for the benefit of the Earth”. In his commentary, Rashi analyzes the Biblical text and suggests understanding the word -arets, “earth”, as ‘olam “world”. In Hebrew and English, “earth” refers exclusively to our planet. In contrast, the expression “world” can also refer to the “inhabitants of the earth.” Sifté Chachamim, a commentary on Rashi’s commentary, explains that Rashi indicated that from the Fourth Day on, the luminaries were relocated for the benefit of the inhabitants of the world (‘olam), and not just for the benefit of the physical planet ( erets), which does not need such delicately balanced solar energy. This view is consistent with the idea that during the Second and Third Days of Creation, a more powerful sunlight was operated by the Creator to modify the surface of our planet. But from the Fourth Day, the Sun was relocated to its new orbit to support life, benefiting the animals and people living on Earth. This concept was beautifully developed by the biblical commentator Seforno (Italy, 1475-1550), in his explanation of the verse in Genesis 1:15: “Now [on the Fourth Day] light with a balanced temperature (or memuzag) will come from the luminaries in the proper measure for the inhabitants of the earth.”

To summarize: our text seemingly reports two actions that took place on the Fourth Day (Genesis 1:16 – 1:17). But based on the rabbis’ words, these two actions must be seen as one action. Genesis 1:16 and 1:17 should be understood as a continuum: (Gen. 1:16) «God made [=modified] the sun (Gen. 1:17), relocating it at reqia’ haShamayim, at the distance from which it will radiate a light fit for life and the inhabitants of the Earth.”

Genesis 1:18

…to rule over the day and the night and to separate the light from the dark

And God saw that it was good.

The steps from the creation of our planet to its adjustment to support life were masterfully illustrated by R. Menashe Ben Israel (1604-1657). The following text is based on his words. “The Creator is our world’s architect, builder, and interior designer. His project, Planet Earth, resembles the construction of a house. First, God creates the most basic materials: the skeleton of the house and its walls (Genesis 1:1-2). During the Second Day (Genesis 1:6-7), God builds the roof and the plumbing mechanism that guarantees a permanent drinking water supply to this house’s future inhabitants. On the Third Day (Genesis 1:9-14), the Creator builds the floor of the house and a sophisticated bio-engineering system to produce a constant supply of food and oxygen: the plants. On the Fourth Day (Genesis 1:16-19), once everything else is in place, the Creator sets up the house’s electrical system: lighting, air conditioning, and heating. The house is now habitable. The walls, ceiling, floor, and all essential systems are in place and working perfectly. And the food is prepared on the table, waiting for the guest of honor: humans”.

Genesis 1:19

AND IT WAS EVENING, AND IT WAS MORNING. FOURTH DAY

And on the Fifth Day, God created life.

GENESIS 1:1 . The first verse of the Tora describes the creation of the universe from nothing previous. Creation is a Divine work, not a quantum event like the Big Bang,. Something inexplicable in terms of the laws of physics that supposedly took place without the intervention of a Creator. As if it were a “miracle without God”.

GENESIS 1:2
והארץ הייתה תוהו ובוהו THE EARTH WAS CREATED WITH NO LIFE 

Once it concludes with the description of the first act of Creation, the Tora focuses exclusively in the affairs of our planet.

VEHAARETS HAYETA TOHU VABOHU

These words are usually translated as: “And the earth was without shape and form”. 
Some words of the Tora, especially within texts that are universally known, such as the Creation Narrative and the Ten Commandments, have undergone serious modifications as they were translated and in many cases they lost their original Hebrew meaning. The words “tohu vabohu” are one of the best examples I can present of this type of “textual contamination”. Virtually all translations I know interpret the words tohu vabohu as something associated with the idea of chaos: “formless,” “void” “wasted”. This is probably based on the fact that the Septuagint rendered these two words as “unsightly and unfurnished” (according to Jennifer Dines, the words for “unsightly and unfurnished” were chosen because in greek they rhyme, same as tohu vabohu in Hebrew).  The Septuagint is a translation that Jewish Sages were forced to do in the third century before the common era. Ordered by the Greek King Ptolemy, the Jewish Sages wrote it strictly for diplomatic purposes, adapting the rendition of the text to Greek culture. It is worth remembering that the Jews not just rejected the Septuagint as a valid Biblical translation: on the 10th of Tebet we fast, among other reasons, in commemoration of the tragic impact that the Septuagint brought to the Jewish people and to the Tora. See this

This ambiguous interpretation of tohu vabohu  as an “unsightly void” gave rise to the idea that the Hebrew bible describes the newly created world as in a state of chaos. 

WHATS WRONG WTH CHAOS? 

The concept of “chaos” is not a Jewish idea. And it is not a neutral idea either. In reality, the idea of ​​chaos expresses a fundamental notion of Platonic Greek philosophy. The Greeks did not believe in the creation of the universe. For Aristotle the World was not created, it was eternal, and always existed. For Plato, on the other hand, the universe always existed, but at first it existed in a state of “chaos” and “disorder.” Until, according to Plato, the Demiurge, a Greek mythological genius / divinity reorganized the raw material and formed the incredibly sophisticated universe we know. For Plato, “In the beginning there was a chaotic mass and the Demiurge converted this chaos into the universe.

Jews do not believe in “chaos” because we believe that God is omnisciente, omnipotent and omnipresent, thus, nothing escapes His control. Ironically this absolutely non-Jewish translation has been so impactful that to this day in modern Hebrew the expression tohu vabohu is used to indicate “a chaotic situation.”

Probably without knowing it, dozens of very interesting biblical “theories”, Jewish and non-Jewish, are based on the false premise of the “primitive chaos that prevailed in the world at the time of its creation.” There are countless theories about how God brought order from chaos (Jordan B. Peterson, for example, discusses this idea ad nauseam), or the supposed compatibility between the Biblical creation story and the element of entropy in the Big Bang theory, etc. 

WHAT DOES TOHU VABOHU REALLY MEAN?

When seeking for the meaning of any Hebrew word we should look in the official rabbinic translation of the Tora, known as Targum Onqelos, the Aramaic translation written at the beginning of the second century of the common era. This translation bears “the seal of approval of the great sages of Israel” (Targum Didan).
Following the Targum the words tohu vabohu mean something very simple and completely different from chaos.  tohu vabohu means that the earth being created “was desolate and uninhabited,” that is, without life.  The second most recognized rabbinic translation, attributed to Ribbi Yonatan ben Uziel, broadens our understanding of the Targum Onquelos and translates “the earth was desolate of animal life and uninhabited of human life.” Why the Tora begins the description of planet earth as lifeless is a question we will later explore. But in the meantime bear in mind that this first thing a modern scientist would observe when exploring a planet would be the existence of living beings on it.  tohu vabohu would be the words a scientist could use to affirm that there is no life on Mars.

OUR OWN CHAOS

How it happened that the translation of the Targum Unquelos was overlooked and a mythological pagan idea was somehow introduced in all Jewish translations of the Tora is a question that surpasses me….   I guess that, as it happened more than a few times, our complete ignorance of pagan ideas, sometimes ironically contributes to our adoption of these very ideas “disguised” as Judaism.