Rashi reflects on the question by Rabbi Isaac, why does the Torah begin with creation and not in Exodus 12 when Israel received its first command as a nation? Rashi answers that by saying “All the earth (would know that it) belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it and gave it to whom He pleased” (Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 187).
In that same spirit, there is a problem we must contend with, and that is in the same way the entire world was created by the hand of a Universal God, so too was the whole of humankind. In therefore says in Genesis 1:27-28, “And God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness … And God created humankind in the divine image, creating it in the image of God — creating them male and female.” So when it says, בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ כִּדְמוּתֵ֑נוּ, in God’s image according to the Divine likeness humanity was fashioned, does that include Hamas and its militants who have done and continue to aspire to commit atrocities and evil against all Jewish people?
According to the Torah’s narrative when creation was completed by God we read in Genesis 2:1-3, “On the seventh day God finished the work that had been undertaken: [God] ceased on the seventh day from doing any of the work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy—having ceased on it from all the work of creation that God had done. Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created. When God made earth and heaven.” The biggest difference between the initial six days of creation and the Shabbat is at the end of each day God is to have said, “It is Good.” But with the Shabbat no such comment is made since God could be silent on a day that was "divinely" sanctified as holy, all were “naked and unafraid,” it was a day of total peace, a day that forecasted a future time where the “Lion and the Lamb” will exist in peace together.
But peace is in the hands of the very people whom God fashioned to maintain it. Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah coined the phrase “Harshut B’yado,” (הרשות בידו), which means “The authority is in his hand,” or what we call “Fee-will.” Yes, the people of Hamas and its militants are created in the Divine Image, yet they have chosen based on their free-will to stand up for evil, hate and despicable acts of savagery. They chose to be evil, but we must not give into our base animal nature to also hate and despise those, like the Palestinians, who are also victims to the evil of Hamas. We must never lose our humanity and our ability to cry over bloodshed; both for those who must die and those who die collaterally. This is a true test of our deepest human values.
The day of Shabbat will come where we too can be silent because we have finished our work, either because our years have been concluded in this world or world peace has been achieved. But until then we must not be silent, we must stand opposed to and be vocal about ways to eliminate acts of evil while not letting our humanity slip below the threshold of what is right and just, even when the choices are hard if not impossible. Every Jew must take ownership of what happened, the politics of creation remind us we must speak goodness in our world by not remaining silent to the evil we see around us, saying the words once more, "Never Again." Am Yisrael Chai!
Shabbat Shalom and Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan,
Rabbi Adam Ruditsky,
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