Genesis 1:1-2 / A Guidebook for the Creative Process

Big Idea: We should look to Genesis 1 and 2, not to learn how God created the world, but rather as a guide to our own creative process.

How many of us here this morning consider themselves to be an artist? [Show of hands.] What forms of art do you do? [People call them out one at a time.]

Since that was not everyone, let's ask the question another way. How many of us here this morning have engaged in some form of creative process? [Show of hands.] For those of you who did not respond to the "artist" question, what creative process have you done most recently? [People call them out one at a time.]

Now, how many of us here this morning consider themselves to be a Jewish artist or engage in a Jewish creative process? [Just a show of hands.]

Excellent! I love art. I love Jewish art and Jewish creativity. I spent a lot of time in Rabbinical School exploring art as an educational medium. I enjoy Jewish art exhibits, synagogue art, Jewish literature, prose and poetry, written and performed. Ancient and new.

But I do not know that I have ever seen any Jewish writing at all about the Jewish basis or the Torah-centered basis for Jewish creativity and art making. The only example that comes to mind is the making of the Mishkan, where a team of artisans come together to build our portable sanctuary, but that seems like a one and done instance.

An extreme example of this lack would be in the Israeli show Shtisel, where the main protagonist, Kiva, who lives in an ultra-orthodox community, struggles as an artist to be taken seriously by anyone in his community, and even in the larger secular Israeli society, where he is views more as an exact oddity rather than a serious artist. Not that every Jewish community fails to appreciate art and creativity, but where might we find a grounding for art and creativity in the Torah?

What if there actually is a passage in the Torah that is this basis for all creativity, let alone for creativity and art in a Jewish context?

This past Tuesday morning, we completed the Fifth Book of Moses, Devarim, and then promptly began the First Book of Moses, Breisheet.

The end of the Torah takes time to tell us about the death of Moses:

• that he died because it as his time at 120 years old and not because his body gave out
• that he saw the land promised to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Rachel and Lead, that God personally buried him in an undisclosed location
• that we wept and mourned Moses’ death for thirty days
• that Joshua smoothly took over leadership of the people
• and then ends with the declaration that there never was and never will be anyone like Moses for us ever again.

Perhaps another time it would be worthwhile to look at this text as a guide for how to confront one’s own mortality, but this is not that day.

On this day, I want to take a fresh look at Genesis 1. I was contemplating its familiar verses, with the well trodden ways that I read these two narratives.

• Two complimentary mythic Creation narratives that give us two distinct understandings of God, the world and humanity relationship to both of those.
• Understanding how our ancestors understood Creation in contrast to the surrounding cultures of the time.
• For some (myself not included), narratives that hint at the scientific understanding of Creation and Evolution.
• For some (myself not included), these are narratives meant to be read a how God literally created the world. And so on.

And then I did what many of my colleagues have been doing since the end of Simchat Torah, scrolled on Facebook. I came across a short post by an old acquaintance Adam Sher, who is now the development director at the Jewish Studio Project, which cultivates creativity as a Jewish practice for spiritual connection and social transformation.

Adam wrote:

• What if Genesis 1, this most ancient poem of humanity, is a guidebook for creating, rather than a mythic story of the creation of reality?
• What if this is actually a recipe for creativity today, rather than a trigger for traditionalist distortions?
• What if this is a prescription for creative process to be used today rather than a venerated artifact to be preserved?

Engaging in the creative process is one of the oldest human activities, and I mean to include all creative processes that we do, and beyond. So let’s look at Genesis, and how it might be a guidebook, recipe, or prescription for our creative processes.

First of all, I want to ground this entire concept in what is called in rabbinic terms "walking after God," and in latin terms "imtatio dei," imitating God, which puts verbs at the center of how we can relate to and connect with God.

This is one of the many aspects of being made in the Image of God. We are not like God in our substance or essence. We are not like God in what we are or who we are, but rather we are like God in what we do. And one thing that humans do is create.

To extend Rabbi Hama's teaching: "Just as God engages in the creative process, so, too, you should engage in the creative process."

We are going to explore some of the key words, especially verbs, to look for guidance on the creative process, beginning with the first word of Breisheet: Breisheet.

Breisheet - Beginning-ness

Prior to the creative process is the beginning of the creative process. This may be the hardest part of all. Making the decision to create. We are not privy to any of God's internal struggles when it comes to deciding to create. This is prior. Done. Decided. But there was a decision make to do so. When we sit down to the creative process, we need to be deliberate about it, to commit, to make the time and space for the process to take place, and to gather the materials we need.

There is also a rabbinic midrash that before God began to create, God looked into the Heavenly Torah, which pre-existed with God as God began to create. After the decision to create comes to vision of what is to be created.

In a short midrasnhic comment to the beginning of the Sinai Revelation, God tells us that all beginnings are difficult. This includes the process of shaping thousands of slaves into a holy people, and the decision to do so, to stand at Sinai and begin a sacred relationship with God took a mutual decision and then the vision was laid out before us. The same was true for God at the beginning of creation. It takes commitment and vision.

Bara - God Created

The next word: Bara / God creates. This is a verb that only ever applies to God. No other subject in the Tanakh does this verb.

What does it mean? Some say it means to make something out of nothing. In that sense, it could be understood to take an idea from imagination and conception into reality. To see what is not there and create it.

This is also within the human capacity to create. To see the world, not only as it is, but as it should be. To see the finished piece of art as it could be. You may be familiar with the famous quote from Michelangelo: “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”

Bara also has connotations of cutting, shaping, making something new. Simply put, the verb Bara comes to remind us that all creative processes share something with the Divine.

The verbs God uses in Genesis 1 are also evocative. They deserve a little attention at this point:

Speaking - Who is God's audience? Talking about creation makes it real. God’s speech creates directly. Our speech is not tied as directly to creation, but it moves us in that direction. Speech is thought expressed. Vision externalized into something real but just barely.

Seeing - It’s not just create, create, create. It’s done in stages, with an evaluation at each stage. God’s speak/creates, and then take a step back - sees the Goodness.

Separating - Perhaps this is seeing what was added and then balancing the elements in the piece in relationship to each other. In this case, a separation between the two. And we know from our liturgy that there is also blending that happens from one element into the next. This is the Hebrew word Erev. The blending of light into dark, day into night. The transition from one element into the next.

Calling/Naming - This is about power. Asserting mastery over the created material. In the Torah, to know the name of the other gives on power over it. It also creates a relationship between the Creator and the Created. It’s personal. It’s relational.

Pausing - Not rushing in to the next step right away. Taking a moment. A short pause. This is the end of a phase in the creative process. We ask, "Am I done?" Maybe. Maybe not. But it is necessary to take a beat. Mark the end of the phase. Phase 1 done. Good. What’s next? And at the end of the process, a full stop.

Tohu Va'vohu / The Raw Materials

God's Raw Materials

Tohu va’vohu / Unformed and void / Wild and Waste - In a word Chaos. This is how the Torah describes the earth at this state. And then there is Darkness, and the Deep. To create is to take raw materials and to see their potential. How they can be shaped. Changed. Extruded. Reformed. Separated.

To see what could be from the box of paints, the blank canvas, the clay, the stone, the blank page, the paper and blade, the block of wood - what potential is in there.

This is a daunting moment - to be ready to create, have the vision, and then to sit with the raw materials. How to get from the raw stuff to what it in the mind? Therein lies wisdom, skill, knowledge, and understanding. It all seem formless, chaotic, dark and beyond our ken.

Rashi offers another take on the phrase "tohu va'avohu," which is that it is about our astonishment and amazement about how empty everything looks. It may not be that we are overwhelmed with the raw materials, but at the the moment we look at our raw materials, our minds simply might go blank.

Sforno agrees that this tohu va'vohu is the entirely new raw material, which has potential to become something actual. But he breaks this term down even further. Tohu is all in the imagination, pure potential. Vohu is when what exists only in the imagination becomes reality. The first stroke of the pen, the first hammering of the chisel, the first clack of the keyboard, the needle in the thread. And that at the first stage, the raw materials being shaped by imagination are chameleonic, constantly changing from one form to another.

Ruach / Spirit

God’s wind/soul/spirit/energy. God's bring God's ruach to this process. We are not gods, but we have ruach. We bring to the act of creativity our ruach - our spirit, our soul, our energy, our wind, namely our breath. This is also God-like. We are not just physical beings making physical forms. All creativity is an act of the spirit, of the divine spark in us continuing the act of creation.

Richuf / Fluttering

Fluttering. God does not rush in to begin to create. God's ruach flutters. Such a fascinating word. It's rare, and its few occurrence, especially here, teach something quite beautiful. The verb means to hover like a bird over its nest, to move gently, to cherish, and to brood and fertilize.

God pauses, takes time to contemplate. This is after having made the decision to create, after the vision is clear, after seeing the raw materials and how they will take the potential into the real, and then - taking time to contemplate, to think, to flutter on the surface, to give time to reflect before the work begins. Rabbi Adina Allen also calls us to this much-overlooked "pause" that began God's creative process:

"In the beginning there was the cosmic womb of the world, unfathomable fathoms, untamable tempest, v’hoshekh al p’nai tehom, delicious darkness over the face of the deep and the breath of God hovering -- merachefet -- over the face of the waters. In the beginning the Divine spirit fluttered, like butterflies in our stomach, like a bird over its nest, anticipating, awaiting, protecting the process of the world’s becoming as it unfolded. In the beginning there was the buoyancy of breath in the bellows of creation, the constant motion of expansion and release."

We need this time. Goodness know that God did. How long? Who knows. But there is time here taken to pause before the first act of creating. It is a gentle moment. A time to cherish between everything that comes before creative process and the process itself. It is a fertile time when we move from potential to actual.

Sforno adds that this fluttering, hovering, is also a build up of energy. He comments that the waters themselves activate the space above them, which creates incandescence, friction, what he calls the Foundational Fire, that first fire of Creation, which remains cool on the water side, but a small distance off the surface of the water, the friction and light give off sparks.

I love reading Rabbi Allen and Sforno back to back. There is inhale of the spirit before we begin to create, but at some point, there is a build up of creative energy that begins to make heat, light, sparks and ultimately fire.

This Foundational Fire is the beginning of the Creative Process. This is none other than the Primordial Light of Creation itself.

At this point, we see God modeling for us:

• The Commitment to create
• The Vision of what could be
• The Confronting the Chaos of the raw material
• The bringing one's Spirit into the process
• The Fluttering Pregnant Pause before creating begins, all of which to leads to...
• The Foundational Fire

And there was light.

Shabbat Shalom