While varying Judaic texts can be found that emphasize sequence and the order of the Hebrew alphabet — for example the “Ashrei” psalm or the third chapter of the Scroll of Lamentations — one might think that the foundational letter, the first letter of the Torah itself would begin with none other than the letter “Aleph,” the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Granted, the above examples, the first letter of whose verses follow the sequence of the alphabet, are more poetic texts in nature. Still, why does the Torah, the book of Genesis, not begin with the genesis of the Hebrew alphabet itself, the letter Aleph? Instead, it begins with “Beresheit,” the second letter, “Bet.”
The mystics and the midrashim offer many insights. Some even consider the actual structural shape of the letter “Bet” to hold secret and symbolic meanings for it to have been crowned the first letter of the Torah.
During this past season of the Days of Awe, an internal journey of inner work has been undertaken by each of us. While the outer structure of the days and holidays is the same for us all, our individual stories vary.
We each bring our own story to this season of our lives, and we each stand at an open corridor of the year that lies ahead, ready to try and manifest so much of what we’ve worked on and toward.
We have shed and left a lot behind. Sometimes voluntarily. Other times, other losses — involuntarily.
No matter what came before, though, here we are, at Beresheit, ready to begin anew, to be in alignment with the Torah reading cycle that is poised to begin anew this coming Shabbat.
Perhaps there have been features in our lives that we have learned to carry with us, or some things we needed to learn to discard. Either way, they have been a link in the launch to our new year. Our new story. Our own Beresheit.
Yes, we each stand at a new beginning, but on some level is there ever really a detached, new beginning to each of our stories or creations? Does our story really begin at the beginning with a clean and clear “Aleph,” or does the symbolism of the letter Bet, the second letter that has already been preceded by another, represent the truth of our stories?
Often there may have been a messy prelude to our story, but if so that is not a reason to close a chapter or a book forever. This can simply be the way to finding the path to a new letter, a new story, just as the case is with G-d’s story of the creation of the world, beginning with a Bet.
Maybe that’s what forgiveness can be, restarting with a Bet. Perhaps we begin each year anew on this note of the letter Bet, acknowledging that there may have been Alephs that came before. But we in this season of the Days of Awe, we processed them. We laid them to rest. We moved forward to Beresheit.
That mystery or reality of what has preceded this point in time is part of our story too. It is the Aleph to our Bet, our Beresheit, our new beginnings.
The mystics say that prior to the physical world we inhabit, a world constituted of seven days a week, 24 hours a day, many other worlds were created and destroyed. Worlds we never knew. Yet, they were there, the Alephs that came before the Bet of the Beresheit, the world that we know.
How do we live with the Alephs, known and unknown, that preceded our Bets? Do new beginnings necessarily entail ordered, sequential beginnings?
Perhaps our stories are out of order. Perhaps sometimes our story might not begin with the expected, predicted, rational order we thought or expected or that seemed right to us. Perhaps our story is a bit more in flux, mirroring the genesis of the Torah. Perhaps there are stories yet to be written this year that do not begin with an Aleph, but with a symbolic Bet for: Beresheit. “In the beginning . . . ”
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