It is so exciting to read about the process of creation unfolding. What is most exciting is the fact that there was a world before the sun and moon existed, before grass and trees, before light, even. How we have become
so attached - and we should - to a world governed by astral bodies, to a world where the beach ends and the water begins, to a world disected by time, a world witha purpose... but there was a world before that. And I don't know what it looked like or felt like, but I can suddenly see this entire existence, our lives, our purposes and dreams and goals, our successes, our failures, as being rather encapsulated, being only one possible strand in G-d's infinite imagination. And what were all the other worlds, the ones that didn't make it? What went wrong? But more importantly, G-d chose this one, this set of moons and suns, this pile of dirt, as the perfect environment for Life. This was a choice by G-d, not a necessity.
The gemara in Hagigah 11b warns against pondering what was before creation. But the gemara purposely stops short of prohibiting us from pondering the seven days of creation. so, stopping short of wondering what creation was all about for Hashem, we can at least, for a moment, know that there was a something before creation, into which creation was placed...
And here we are, in it but somehow preceding it, as Midrash rabbah says Hashem consulted with the souls of the righteous before creating, in a sense we are beyond this and we need it at the same time, because we couldn't handle being beyond, so we have to learn to be responsible, and here's a world. and it's the best one, and yet it's not enough, nothing is enough to hold the relationship of a human soul to its source, to its role in the very creation...
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |