Two Minute Torah Podcast

Bo 5768 by Rabbi Daniel Nevins

Where should we begin? No, not this d’var Torah, but the Torah itself! What is the best starting place for the Torah. We all know that it begins, "In the beginning", bereshit barah Elohim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz. But why did the Torah have to go back that far?After all, everything before this is just prologue: stories about the patriarchs and matriarchs and their messy lives. This weekin Parshat Bo, the Torah reboots with the Exodus, birth of our nation, and with practical ideas like how to set the calendar, celebrate the holidays, raise our children and even wear tefillin. Why not start here?

In case you think this is a crazy question, I have it on good authority. None other than Rashi, the greatest Rabbinic commentator on the Torah, asked why the Torah began with Genesis 1 instead of Exodus 12. If the point of the Torah is to be a Sefer Mtzvot, then things don’t really get started until Exodus 12.

Rashi gives his answer—the Torah had to start with Genesis to prove to the world that God is the creator, and that God gave the Land of Canaan to the people Israel as an eternal inheritance.

Yet we can surely come up with many other reasons for the Torah to begin with Genesis. Our identity as a people is bound up with these stories of our ancestors, their struggles and their relationship with God. Without Genesis, it is hard to imagine the covenant that will eventually be spelled out in minute detail through the mitzvot.

Well, if that’s why the Torah began in Genesis, then what is the importance of Exodus 12 and beyond? Only when God begins to teach about the mitzvot—of telling time and marking it with festivals and prayer—only then can we begin to mature as a community.

This is true for each of us, especially during the college years when we have left home and started to live on our own schedule. We would not be who we are without the families that launched us on our journey. But now it is time for us to create our own schedules, our own rituals and to establish our personal goals. Parshat Bo is a time to reboot—to begin our lives anew, filling them with meaning and holiness. Shabbat shalom.