This week we celebrated Simchat Torah together.  We enjoyed dancing and celebrating together. Jeremy Strauss finished our reading of the Torah and the book of Deuteronomy. Marc Fertik began reading from the beginning of Genesis.  

Our Torah begins with God creating the world.  What existed before God’s creating was an unformed mass, it wasn’t nothingness, it was everything. Everything in this world was mixed together in a chaotic state.  The Hebrew term for this chaos is תהו ובהו or “tohu v’vohu.”   

In our lives we too experience this kind of mixed up chaos, our own “tohu v’vohu.” So often when we find ourselves at the beginning of a big project, it can be difficult to figure out where to start.  Everything is mixed together and it is so difficult to see how the desired and organized end result can happen.

God’s first act of creation in done through speech.  God says, “let there be light”; and there was light.  The first piece of creation was adding light, God’s light.  It was from this start that God separated day from night, beginning our world.

In order to start any large project that seems insurmountable, we must add light, God’s light.  How do we even do that? We use our own, God given creative energies through that, we add in our own light.  We approach the project with positivity and acceptance. The end result may not be perfect. God’s world certainly is not.  This is why we have to continue to add God’s and our light to all we do.

Leonard Cohen writes:

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

Do what you can, it does not need to be perfect, but start, make a crack and let God’s light in.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Metz

Category : Rabbi Rabbi's Journal Simhat Torah Torah Teachings