The Lessons of Faith From Parshas Bereishis

The Lessons of Faith From Parshas Bereishis

Welcome to our weekly Mitzvah Shabbos program.

Today we read the Sedra, the beginning of the Torah — Bereishis. This Sedra is not only an introduction to Bereishis, but the Sedra is an introduction to the entire Torah. Bereishis means teaching, means instruction — that the first thing is a lesson, and I'll bring a proof soon that it is a lesson in how every Yid should live in his everyday life.

So there are a few things here we should know. The first thing is: have faith, have emunah, that Hashem created the world. This is the beginning. So it's an introduction on how a Yid should, in his lifetime, every minute, every day, have emunah — that's the beginning of everything. That's why the Torah begins with creation.

And when a person knows that Hashem created the world and everything is by divine providence, then the person will be happy, and he'll have — and he'll have — knowing that Hashem is behind everything — this is the beginning of everything. He'll be humble, and it's impossible to be jealous of another person, because he knows this is the first lesson: "Bereishis bara Elokim" — in the beginning G-d created.

Another thing is: the first thing a person should be is healthy. When a person is healthy, he won't be angry, he won't be jealous. And that brings him to know — and the Rebbe said that just as Hashem said the word and that's how it came to be, so it is with a person as well.

So we start with — Bereishis is a lesson for the entire Torah, that's one lesson. Another lesson we can learn from Bereishis is why the Torah begins with a Beis and not with an Aleph. Bereishis — Aleph, Beis, Gimmel — Aleph is first, Beis is second. Why do we start with a Beis?

So [the Medrash] says that the Aleph complained to Hashem, and the Aleph said, "I'm first — why do You start the Torah with my neighbor, with Beis?" So Hashem told the Aleph that when it comes to giving the Aseres Hadibros, "I will start with an Aleph, with you." That was the answer. And there are many reasons why the Torah begins with a Beis, not with an Aleph.

Beis, the number two, is that a person should learn Torah — but a person has to know there is something that comes before that: emunah has to come first, before learning. That's before Beis — that's why the Torah begins with a... And as a matter of fact, if you open up a Gemara, every Gemara starts with daf Beis — what happened [to daf Aleph]?

It should be that Aleph is first, but Beis is — they're both — and [emunah] has to be first, then [Torah learning] will follow. Rashi says: why does it start with Bereishis, with creation? And this is also very important for nowadays — that if we would tell the goyim the first thing — and that's why the first thing the Torah begins with is not, I mean, not with a mitzvah — it begins with that the land belongs to Hashem, and He took it away from the goyim and gave it to the Yidden, and no one has a right to take it.

And the Rebbe said many times, if we today would say this all the time — that Eretz Yisrael belongs to the Yidden because the Aibeshter said so, and bring a proof — they wouldn't have any problems. But unfortunately we don't say that. This is what we have to say — that the first thing is that Hashem created the world, and the Aibeshter gave it to [the Yidden].

Now, another thing — why Beis, not Aleph? Why does it begin with the Beis? I think I mentioned this a couple of years ago, I can mention it again: the number nine is a very special number, because nine is [the gematria of] Emes — truth. Aleph is one. Mem is 40, drop the zero [= 4]. Tof is 400, drop the zero [= 4]. So it's one, four, and four — that's nine. So nine is Emes. So Emes is a special number. Therefore, every number you multiply by nine, the answer always comes back to nine.

9 times 1 is 9. 9 times 2 is 18 — 8 and 1 is 9. 9 times 3 is 27 — 7 and 2 is 9 — all the way to the millions, because since nine is Emes, it always has to come back to nine. Now, when you write 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 — every number looks different; a 2 doesn't look like a 3, a 4 doesn't look like a 6. The only two numbers that look the same are a 9 and a 6 — you take the 9, put it upside down, it becomes a 6.

Why? Because nine is Emes, six is Sheker — the opposite of Emes. Shin is 300, drop the zero [= 3]. Kuf is 100, drop the zero [= 1]. Reish is 200, drop the zero [= 2]. So that's why — Sheker, six, is the opposite of Emes, nine. Where is the head of a nine? On top. Where is the head of a six? On the bottom. When you see a Yid, he has his head on top [unclear]. [unclear — reference to a person who "never picked up the head," "never saw the sky," said to always have his mind "in Kashmir."]

Now, going back to the Beis — you know, when things happen three times, or you count things in groups of three, in many, many things — now three is [significant]. Let's start counting the Aleph-Beis by three.

If you start with an Aleph: Aleph, Beis, Gimmel — one, two, and three — that's six. Six is Sheker, six is false. What comes after — Gimmel, [Daled], [and] six is 15, five and one is six. [unclear — further detail of the letter count].

So the whole Aleph-Beis, if you count by three, if you start with an Aleph, it always ends up at Sheker, at six. That's why the Torah begins with a Beis. Start counting from Beis: Beis, Gimmel, Daled — two, three and four — is nine. After [continuing further in the alphabet] it is again 18 — one and eight is nine — all the way to the end of the Aleph-Beis. That's why the Torah begins with a Beis — to show that it always comes out Emes.

So here we see the importance — that everything in the Torah is for a reason. The Torah is not a history book, it's not a science book. It tells us how we should live every day.

Now, the two Sedras, Bereishis and Noach, span a period of almost 2,000 years. Two Sedras, almost 2,000 years. How is that? So we see from here that the Torah is not a history book. There are many more things that happened in those 2,000 years, but the Torah doesn't tell us, because it's not important — there's no lesson that we can learn from them. We're only told the highlights of Bereishis, which is the creation, the birth of Adam, and his children — Kayin and Hevel — and from these two things we can learn [lessons]. That's all. Or Noach — we learn about the Mabul, about Noach — he got drunk — and the Tower, the Tower of Bavel — that's it. That's all.

More things happened in that time, but the Torah is not a storybook that tells you stories — it's a lesson. So the only thing that we can learn, how we should be, is from what the Torah tells us. So that happened over a period of almost 2,000 years.

Now look — starting from Avraham: he was born in the year 1948, 1,948 years after the creation of the world. So from [Parshas] Lech Lecha until the end of Vayechi, when [Yaakov] passed away, happened within a period of 500 years. 500 years — that's all — because the Torah tells us more details that we can learn from Avraham, from Yaakov, from Yaakov's family, the story of when they were in Egypt, the Midbar, the laws — and whatever happened — because there's more [to learn there], because that's the general pattern.

Now, even within Bereishis itself, we also see that we learn not from Avraham so much, but more from Yaakov, because we are called Yisrael — we come from Yaakov. [unclear — "a son... had a son of"]. So we learn out from Yaakov much more. That's why the Torah spends much more [time] on Yaakov than on Avraham — because there's more that we can learn from him.

We see — [the Torah] speaks about [Avraham] when he was 75, [until] he lived to 175. So three Parshas span a period of 100 years. [Yitzchak] was 40 years old [when he married], he lived to 180 — so that's 140 years. [Yaakov's story], six Parshas, happened within a period of 60 to 70 years. That's it — because there's more detail, there's more that we can learn from him than from anybody else.

So [Yaakov] is the hero, and this is the lesson that we learn from him. Number one, we have to know that Bereishis shows that Hashem created the world — that's the emunah we have to have — that's number one.

Now, to end off — we're going into [Cheshvan]. It's very strange — we have the seventh month, you have everything, so many [festivals], and now we're going into a month which is [Mar Cheshvan — "bitter," with no festivals]. But the descent is in order to ascend. That's — we go into the world and we take from this month and put it into our everyday life. And that's why, before we read about [unclear], after a whole month of standing before Hashem all day, [the Torah] is giving us that — it reminds us that a good time should have been in the morning, but it tells you: you are holy, and you have [something] else that is good. But in a short while you're going out into the world. In a short while you're going out — you have to know what's going on outside. So it reminds you to take whatever you gained and bring it into the world.

So [Mar Cheshvan] is about bringing [Tishrei] into the world. We should all have — it's already time for Moshiach to come this year.

Next week we will continue our weekly program. Thank you.