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    In the beginning… So begins our Torah anew, or at least according to most English translations. I assumed everyone present knows at least the basics of our Creation story. There was a primordial void, and God spoke the Universe into being. God made people and set them over the Earth to be stewards of God’s creation, and human fallibility immediately ensues. There are details in between there, and lots of room to discuss the specifics as we understand them via the two potentially conflicting first narratives of Parashat Bereshit, but that’s the overview that fits with both chapters. 

    It got me thinking about origin stories generally speaking. All ancient cultures have Creation myths. Many involve shape forming out of the primordial ooze, either in a “something from nothing” sort of way or a “shaping out of formless something” sort of way. Ours is something in between these. Other Creation stories tell of a Divine Birth to the world, where a god or pair of Gods split off parts of themselves to create, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to see the influence of such mythologies may have something to do with the difference between Genesis 1 and 2, and the resulting midrash suggesting that the Adam, or human, in the first version contained both male and female identifiers and was split into two beings identified as Adam and Eve in the second version. 

    While the origin story fervor in popular culture seems to have settled slightly for the time being (I haven’t seen or heard of more Wicked or Maleficent style movies and books in a while), it seems that production companies know they can still make a good buck off a prequel. Orphan: First Kill was terrible and it didn’t do great in the box office, but they at least made back the money spent. Because people like me want to know about the origins of stories we enjoyed, even if we know the entertainment factor is decreased by over-explanations. Our natural world and the Universe God has created for us is unknowable, but that doesn’t stop us from wanting to know as much about it as we can, and filling in the blanks for that which we can’t. Even in the science community, which may seek to prove the natural origins of life, the universe, and everything, disproving our sacred myths in its process, has to continue to sharpen its tools, refine its narrative, and speculate often. 

    I’d like to encourage you now to think about your own origin story. While there are obviously some hard facts: when and where you were born, who your parents were, your level of education, and so on, just like our sacred myths and our fairy tales or superheroes stories and our ever-evolving understanding of sciences, your personal origin story will still require some speculation and added details to make the narrative cohesive to an outside observer. For example, I was born on March 1st, 1988 in New Haven, CT. I was raised by two parents in a shoreline suburb of New Haven, where I lived in the same house my mother had grown up in until I reached the age of 18. Then I went on to college in Western Massachusetts, rabbinical school in New York, and finally settled down here into my adulthood to start my career and family. Those are the basics, the facts. My Bereshit Aleph, if you will. Some of my go-to origin stories to explain my relationship with Tikkun Olam and my rabbinate include the time I received a mailer for a Feed The Children type charity around age 12. I knew I was privileged beyond the wildest dreams of the children this organization sought to help, but at the same time I had no money of my own and didn’t know how to help. I wept and felt totally helpless. When I went to the URJ Kutz Camp (z”l), I found other young people who felt this way too, who cared about child slavery and ethical consumerism, and who agreed that our relationship with the disenfranchised was one of responsibility toward equality and justice and that this responsibility was commanded by our Jewish values and God. These are my Bereshit Bet, the more nuanced unfolding from the events of the first steps of creation. 

    In the book The Five Books of Miriam: A Woman’s Commentary on the Torah, a midrash is offered in the name of “Esther the Hidden One”: During the first hour of the first day of creation, before anything else was created, Shekhinah created all human souls and placed them in the highest heaven. When a baby is conceived, Laylah, the Angel of the NIght, brings it before God to learn its fate. At that moment it is written: where it will live and when it will die, its gender, wealth, strength, beauty, wisdom. Only one decision is left unwritten: whether it will be righteous or wicked. Then the Angel of Souls ascends to the highest heaven to bring back a soul destined for this particular child. It enters the child and nestles quietly beneath the mother’s breast. And then a different angel teaches the soul all that it will learn during its days on earth. And when it comes time for the child to be born, the angel strikes the newboard under its nose, leaving a cleft there. Instantly the soul forgets everything and emerges into the world, crying and afraid. Every soul spends the rest of its life relearning all it once knew. 

    According to this midrash, maybe our origin stories don’t matter. Or maybe they matter, but it’s just that they are pre-ordained. Maybe some of the facts are pre-ordained, but our responses to them are still important and we have the power to choose certain paths in life. In any case, our origins and how we see ourselves are strongly intertwined. Our histories define who we become, and the people we are today determine how we view our histories, both personally and culturally. This Shabbat Bereshit, think about your own beginnings, and take some pride in how far you have come in your life. Afterall, we are all merely clay from the earth, stardust matter rematerialized, overthinking monkeys with opposable thumbs. How grand is it that we are able to make community, pray, sing, love, enjoy leisure and find driving passions?! May we thank the Creator and the universe that has given us shape, and honor the blessings in our lives by remembering to rest our overthinking thumbs, let the clay of our bodies soften, and our starlight shine.  Amen and Shabbat Shalom.