| When G-d first created the heavens and the earth, | Bereishit bara e-lokim et hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz, | בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ׃ |
Torah Thoughts
The story of creation, though seemingly simple and straightforward, is anything but that. From the first sentence, commentators have debated over its meaning (see translation above). My Chumash with commentary has 4 pages of commentary over the very first sentence.
But even at its simplest, the stories of creation (it is told twice) are interesting. As with all good literature, the older you get the more you see in it, even more so when one reads from a holy book.
As an adult, I see the beauty in the way we were given what is essentially a description of the Big Bang, long before we were able to grasp the concept from a scientific standpoint. Note: the Big Bang theory was originally conceived by Jacob Tamarkin, whose father was Jewish, and whose lifelong close friend (and collaborator? I am sure they bounced ideas off one another) Vladimir Smirnov was a Jew; coincidence? Surely, whether or not they were aware of it, the concept of the big bang may have been inspired by the Torah…