This week's Torah portion starts back at the beginning. The very beginning.
In the beginning, God created heaven and earth, and the earth was unformed and void and darkness was on the surface of the deep and the spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water.
Judaism has many New Years, and this one is the New Year of the Torah. Every year on Simchat Torah (which was Wednesday here, Tuesday in Israel), we read the end and then scroll all the way back to the beginning and start again, but just barely. Tomorrow, we read the full parasha.
There's an interesting symbolism in this ritual that harks back to the essence of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement that we observed just a few weeks ago. How nice it would be to be able to scroll back to points in our past where we made mistakes and start our own story over from there. The healing power of true repentance, it's said, can allow us to do just that, if only on a spiritual level. But that's a good start.
Shabbat Shalom.
