The First Word Again
- Uriel ben Avraham
- Oct 17, 2025
- 4 min read
Tuesday night, our shul finished reading the last words of the Torah. Moshe dies on Mount Nebo, looking out at a land he will never enter. The scroll reaches its wooden spindle. And then — without pause — we rolled it back to the first column and read the opening line of Genesis.
This was my first Simchat Torah as a Jew. Seven hakafot — seven circuits around the sanctuary, each one announced and then swallowed by the singing. Children on shoulders. A man in his eighties holding a scroll to his chest with both arms.
I carried a Torah twice, which is a thing you cannot prepare for: the weight of it against your ribs, the velvet warm from the last person's hands, a room full of people singing around you while you try not to trip.
The gabbai gave up trying to keep order around the fourth hakafa and mostly just sang and danced.
We unrolled an entire scroll — Bereshit to V'zot HaBracha — and stretched it in a wide circle held up by the congregation. Every column visible at once, the parchment translucent under the sanctuary lights, everyone gripping the edges with careful (and gloved) hands. A whole year of reading laid out in a single loop. Then we rolled it back, and started over.
Across the Jewish world this week, over 1,250 synagogues in more than thirty countries danced with Torah scrolls wearing matching mantles — white covers embroidered with the Israeli flag and a line from Kohelet: "A time to mourn, and a time to dance." Each mantle bore the name of someone killed on October 7 or in the war since. The Simchat Torah Project, launched by Mizrachi after the massacre, sent covers from Buenos Aires to Berlin, from small-town shuls in New Jersey to communities in Australia that had never heard of each other. Two years after the day that tore this holiday open, they danced.
Bereshit — the parsha we read this Shabbat — opens like this:
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃
When God began to create heaven and earth—
And then the very next verse:
וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃
the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—
Tohu vavohu. Unformed and void. The Torah doesn't begin with paradise. It begins with chaos.
Worth sitting with for a moment. The very first thing described after the announcement of creation is the mess. Darkness. Formlessness. A deep with no bottom and a wind with nowhere to land. The world's first condition is raw material — and a long way from good.
And then:
וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר׃
God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
Light first. Before the sun, before the stars, before anything with a name or a shape. Rashi records the midrashic tradition that this was not ordinary light — not the light of day four, when the luminaries appear — but an or haganuz, a hidden light set aside for the righteous in the world to come. The first light was not functional. It was a statement of intent.
From there, creation unfolds in a rhythm. God makes. God sees. God calls it good. Six times: tov. And on the sixth day, when everything is finished:
וַיַּ֤רְא אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־כׇּל־אֲשֶׁ֣ר עָשָׂ֔ה וְהִנֵּה־ט֖וֹב מְאֹ֑ד וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר י֥וֹם הַשִּׁשִּֽׁי׃ {פ}
And God saw all that had been made, and found it very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Tov me'od. Very good. Not perfect — the Torah never uses that word for creation. Good, as in: this is something, where before there was nothing. This has form, where before there was void.
Wednesday morning, the first morning after Simchat Torah, I woke up and things were quiet. No more hakafot. No more three-week sprint of holidays that started with Rosh Hashanah and ran through Sukkot without a break. The etrog on the counter is drying out. Ordinary time starts now — and that, strangely, is the point.
There's a tradition that Shabbat Bereshit sets the tone for the entire year. How you enter this first Shabbat shapes everything that follows.
You've just run through the Days of Awe, Yom Kippur, the intensity of Sukkot, the dancing of Simchat Torah. Now: Shabbat Bereshit.
The first regular Shabbat of the new cycle. The scroll unrolls from Bereshit and stretches forward through fifty-three portions into next fall. Everything starts from here.
This year, the starting carries weight. The October 7 anniversary fell during the holidays. The final living hostages came home. The memorial ceremony at Mount Herzl was Thursday. And through all of it — the grief, the dancing, the ceremonies, the news breaking across phone screens — the Torah kept rolling. Deuteronomy ended. Genesis began. The scroll doesn't wait for readiness.
Bereshit tells us that creation started with tohu vavohu and arrived, six days later, at tov me'od. The distance between chaos and very good is six days of separating — light from dark, water from sky, land from sea. Naming things. Placing things where they belong. And then:
וַיְבָ֤רֶךְ אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־י֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י וַיְקַדֵּ֖שׁ אֹת֑וֹ כִּ֣י ב֤וֹ שָׁבַת֙ מִכׇּל־מְלַאכְתּ֔וֹ אֲשֶׁר־בָּרָ֥א אֱלֹהִ֖ים לַעֲשֽׂוֹת׃ {פ}
And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy—having ceased on it from all the work of creation that God had done.
The first thing declared holy in the Torah is not a place. Not a person. Not the light, not the land, not the human being formed from dust and breath. It's a day. A rest. The sanctification of stopping.
After three weeks of holidays, after the anniversary, after the dancing — we arrive at Shabbat. The Torah's own first rest. The one built into the architecture of the world before there was a world to rest in.
Tuesday night I saw our congregation hold an entire Torah between us, every column visible, every word. Then we rolled it back to the beginning and someone started singing and we danced.
I don't know what this year holds. The scroll is long. The world is, on plenty of days, still tohu vavohu — formless, dark, a wind without anywhere to land. But the first act after the void is light. And the first thing declared holy is rest.
Friday evening. Candles. The first Shabbat of the new year.
Shabbat shalom.
— Uriel ben Avraham
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