Rabbi Joey Haber shared his weekly parshah class at Tiferet Shaul on Wednesday, October 7. This inspiring class is also available on TorahAnytime.
He began by sharing that there was an event for Lev Medical this past week, an organization that helps Jewish people around the world. A man shared the story of his wife’s heart transplant, which took place six months ago, and thanked Lev Medical and Hashem. It was clear how much he appreciates his spouse, which raises the question: Does everyone appreciate his or her spouse the way this man does? Rabbi Haber noted that most of us probably do not appreciate anything close to the amount that we should. Why don’t we appreciate enough, he asked, and do we talk enough about how thankful we need to be?
Parshas B’reishis was this past weekend, and it is exciting to begin again. The parshah starts with Hashem’s creation of this incredible world, a beautiful world created through Hashem’s kindness.
Rabbi Haber shared, “My question is that the Torah uses Hashem’s name of judgment when it says He created the world. In the beginning, Hashem Elokim created the world. Why does it use His name Elokim, the name of judgment?”
We say in Birchos K’rias Sh’ma that Hashem creates light and darkness. By light, it uses the Hebrew word yotzeir, while by darkness, the pasuk says bara. Ramban says that yotzeir means to form or create something, while bara means empty. It comes from the word bor, which is something empty in the ground. When Hashem created light, He created and formed something new called light, while darkness was not created; it is simply a lack or emptiness.
The Mishnah in Pirkei Avos says that everything Hashem created in the world was only for the honor of Hashem, and the Mishnah uses the word bara. Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev taught that everything Hashem created has a little bit of emptiness or darkness glossing over it. Hashem took things that are light, clear, and fresh and glossed them over with darkness or emptiness.
On October 7, it became very clear who the terrorists were and who the victims were. We were celebrating the holiday in Israel when thousands of terrorists crossed the border and murdered people, making it a horrific day. At some point during that day, Rabbi Haber thought that at least now it was going to be clear to everyone who was evil.
Yet on the third anniversary, the mayor of New York posted about how suffering continues with the Israeli government’s presumed genocide in Gaza and how the world must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue. He took a story that seemed completely clear and flipped it on its head, seeing it as something entirely different.
How do you take a story that is so clearly one way and turn it into another? It is called cognitive dissonance: You have something in your mind that you believe, and then you see something that conflicts with it, so you change the story. It is like Holocaust deniers, and sadly, billions of people in the world believe as he does.
Hashem was bara the world so that within every bit of clarity, there is also emptiness and a way for darkness to exist. Olam is the word for world, while ne’elam means hidden. Everything in the world that you can see can also become something you cannot see, and everything that seems obvious can become unclear.
Hashem created a world where everything incredible is hidden behind a mask of emptiness. Rabbi Haber then shared two examples from the parshah.
Hashem created Man alone and then said He would give Man a gift: a wife. Man’s wife gave him a fruit, and he sinned. Hashem asked, “Could it be that you ate from the tree I told you not to eat from?”
Man responded, “The woman that You gave me, she gave me the fruit, and I ate.” Somehow, Adam turned the gift into the problem. This is because the world was created in such a way that everything is covered with a little darkness, and we cannot always see so clearly.
The story of the first set of brothers ends with Kayin murdering his brother. Hashem asks Kayin, “Where is your brother Hevel?” He wanted Kayin to acknowledge what he had done and say, “I killed him, and I sinned.” Instead, Kayin responded, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” How could Kayin think that it was not his fault?
This happens often. There are children who reinterpret something a parent did ten years earlier as terrible, or a therapist convinces them of that interpretation, and they stop speaking to their parents. We do it, too.
Rabbi Haber shared a personal story to illustrate how a person can have so many things to be thankful for yet focus entirely on the one thing that is missing.
Everything was created for Hashem’s honor, but if you have the wrong eyes, you will see only the emptiness. Adam’s answer to Hashem was wrong, as opposed to David HaMelech’s answer, which was correct: “I sinned.” When Hashem confronted David HaMelech, he admitted that he had sinned right away.
The Midrash teaches that Adam was supposed to live 1,000 years, but when he saw the future neshamos and saw that David would not live, he gave 70 years of his life to David. Adam gave life to the man who would ultimately correct his mistake. David could see the truth, and David could write T’hilim because it contains so much truth and recognition of reality.
Our biggest mistake is that we use this same mindset to avoid appreciating Hashem. We go through life complaining and becoming distracted, unable to see what is so clearly in front of us, even though we have so many blessings in our lives.
If we saw all those blessings clearly, we would never be able to sin or complain, be in a bad mood, get into a fight, be dishonest, yell and scream, daven without kavanah, or ignore an hour of learning. We would never be able to be off our game.
We owe Hashem everything, yet we find ways to complain, be nervous, and become distracted, all because we do not see the world clearly. When Hashem created Man, the Torah uses the word yotzeir. Hashem is telling Man: I put you in a world of bara, where you cannot always see clearly, and your job is to be yotzeir or, to create light. Your job is to uncover what is hidden, see it, and appreciate it.
We want to take things for granted because then we do not have to take responsibility. When we truly recognize all the good, however, we cannot sin.
By Susie Garber