Drash: High Holidays through Bereshit

During the past 3 weeks we celebrated Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and then Sukkot. We listened to a number of sermons during this period, and I'd like to summarize some that impacted me. This is not an attempt to summarize what the darshan (person who gave the sermon) said, only how it impacted me upon reflection, and how I incorporated it into my understanding.

There are 3 ways to look at life: a) Life as an adventure, b) Life as a ladder, and c) Life as a string of pearls.

1. Life as an adventure:
Life is a series of adventures. We begin life and find the need to communicate with our environment so great that we copy and imitate those around us until, through some unexplained miracle; we learn to speak and communicate. This experience is repeated again and again, with our dates, with loves, with our wives and or husbands, with our jobs one after the other, always with a new goal, always striving to achieve it. This while a sufficient explanation of life, is not completely fulfilling. We are left, after each pursuit, save the last, with a feeling of "What Next?" Why hasn't happiness everlasting arrived? Why don't our stories end the way fairy tales do? A goal oriented life has the problem that goals are reached, and therefore it demands stages which at each end leave us dissatisfied.
2. Life as a Ladder:
This is very close to a life of adventure, except that it is more cerebral, and less agitated. Each step through life is a search for achievement, another level of understanding, another level of knowledge gained. Thus, the physics student learns about Newtonian physics, and comprehends how things in the macro world work. He then learns about Einstenian physics and learns and understands wave particles, the limited infinity of the speed of light, and the relationships between motion and time. He then learns about quantum theory, and comprehends the structure of the Atom, the randomness at the very tiny levels of our universe, and how they fit into our macro universe. Each step is another rung increasing his ability to internalize, to understand, and to apply, the realm he is involved in. He can do this with many topics, biology (understating DNA,) psychology (understanding the human brain,) etc. This too seems endless, but has no start/stop like a life as adventure has. It is a progression which often leads to the question "To what end?"
3. Life as a string of Pearls:
Lastly, "life as a string of pearls" offers and existential model. Life is a string of random moments which humans experience throughout their journey from birth to death. Embrace each, cherish each, and live as rich and involved a life as you can.

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Today's drash on "Bereshit" discuss the differences between the first and second creation stories.
1. The First Story
This is a scientific approach in which the world is shown to be an organized system that works in accordance with stable and coherent laws, where trees give rise to new trees of the same kind, and do not produce dryads, where lions don't mate with eagles to produce griffins, but where each species breeds for itself. A world ruled by a single God that does not meddle with the rules of nature or bend them willy-nilly because of caprice. Lastly, a world where humanity is the culmination of creation, and has God's permission to rule all of creation.
2. The Second Story
In this story we go from want to completion. The earth is infertile because as yet there is no rain, nor man to plant and reap. Rashi observes that until the sixth day the world stood still. It was created, it was blessed, but it was not set in motion. Only when man arrived and knew that his task was to work the earth and bring forth its fruits, did he pray for rain, and God, now as ruler of the world (Hashem rather than Elohim) grants his wish and sets the earth in motion. Ranban quotes Bereshit Raba to the same effect. The first story is orthogonal to our discussions of "Life As..," it is a description of a process, rather than a story. Both Rashi and Ranban believe the second Creation story is a real story, and commences the history of mankind. This story, the expulsion of Adam from the Garden of Eden, fits "Life as a string of Pearls" as long as they had not sinned, and remained in the garden. In the garden they enjoyed life, each other, and the earth's bounty while under the protection of God. They gathered their experiences and had no thought of future, or past. It was not an adventure, it was static, it was eternal, it was satisfying, but unchanging. Once tempted by the snake, however, they started interacting with one another. First Adam interacted with Eve by blaming her for the transgression. Then, after expulsion, they brought children into the world, and they committed the first fratricide! All because one of them was more favored by God than the other. Lastly, as the world became populated, more and more interactions occurred, and finally, just before the end of the Parasha, God thinks he has made a mistake and intimates he is going to start all over!. These stories, and their telling adds a new wrinkle to "Life As" the wrinkle of relationships. The relationships we have with each other, which creates the pearls which our lives strings together. These pearls can well be adventures or a ladder, but their significance is not only relative to their effect upon us, but because of the humans we interact with, and the basic humanity we absorb from these interactions. So we have essentially 4 types of life, 2 narrative ones, and two experiential once. We can have a string of adventures, we can ascend a ladder of achievements, and in either case we have the value of each adventure, or each run as an experience in our lives, and impact on our souls, and in either we have the broadening and the emotional entanglements of our interactions with other human beings.