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In the Beginning There Is the Question
The bridge that enables the annual traversal from the ending of the Torah back to its beginning is the anticipation of new questions.
Published: October 21, 2016
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Last Updated: October 28, 2026
James L. Kugel, “Two Introductions to Midrash,” Prooftexts 3 (1983) pp. 131-155, at p.145.
See Ziony Zevit’s TABS essay, “Before the Beginning: Appreciating the Thought of an Ancient Cosmologist.”
According to Nahmanides the entire Torah can be read as a continuum of divine names allowing for readings and combinations of words that don’t follow the logical formations and sentence structure readily apparent to the reader. As he states in his introduction to his commentary on Genesis:
עוד יש בידינו קבלה של אמת כי כל התורה כולה שמותיו של הקדוש ברוך הוא שהתיבות מתחלקות לשמות בענין אחד כאילו תחשוב על דרך משל כי פסוק בראשית יתחלק לתיבות אחרות כגון בראש יתברא אלהים
See Guide of the Perplexed , trans., S. Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p.9.
Metaphysics, 928b10.
Guide of the Perplexed, I:2, p.26.
Esh Kodesh (Jerusalem, 1960), pp. 132–33, delivered in October of 1941.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, (trans.) David McDuff (London, 2003), p. 321.
Esh Kodesh, pp.193-194.
