Bereshit

I've been spending time with the Hebrew text, and the very first word — Bereshit, meaning "in the beginning" — is extraordinary. It opens with the letter Bet, the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, not Aleph the first. The rabbis have long reflected on this: some things before creation are beyond human understanding, and the Torah begins with humility built into its first letter. There is also a tradition that Bereshit contains within it the word for house and hints of the word for son — as though the very first word of Scripture is already pointing toward a dwelling place and a firstborn heir. Whether or not one takes these readings literally, there is something profound about the density of meaning packed into this single word. The whole story feels present before it even begins.