September 29 • 3:00
P M
PRESENTATION
A German Life:
Against All Odds,
Change is Possible
Parshat Bereshit: Genesis 1:1-6:8;
Isaiah 42:5-43:10.
p
art of the beauty of the first
chapter of Genesis is the
sense of order found within
creation. Day-by-day, piece-by-piece,
God speaks and creates.
Some of creation is
molded into shape while
other parts smoothly
emerge through the separa-
tion of one element from
the other such as the dry
land emerging as God
gathers all of the waters
into seas. Genesis makes it
quite clear that God is the
creator and that creation
happens through God's
simple command.
There are no barriers
to God's desires. As one of our daily
prayers begins, "Praised is the One
who speaks and the world comes to
be:'
But other parts of the Tanach
(Hebrew Bible) seem to be at odds
with the creation narrative of Genesis.
Instead of a clearly ordered and calm
creation, we see descriptions of a
struggle to create the world.
Professor Jon Levenson, in his book
Creation and the Persistence of Evil,
highlights elements of the Book of Job
as a counterpoint to Genesis' creation:
Who closed the sea behind doors,
When it gushed forth out of the
womb;
When I clothed it in clouds,
Swaddled it in dense clouds;
When I made breakers My limit
for it,
And set up its bars and doors,
And said, 'You may come so far
and no farther;
Here your surging waves will
stop?'
— Job 38:8-11
As you hear these verses from Job,
you can't help but picture the sea
shore, the waves running up onto the
beach. The sense of the sea trying to
overcome the land is palpable. You
can feel a dynamic new sense of God's
presence in these verses, different from
the Book of Genesis.
In Genesis, God speaks and cre-
ates, and the world comes to be. But
the verses from Job, coupled with our
personal experiences of the power of
the ocean, infuse us with a sense of
God's continuing presence
in the world — a presence
that encourages order but
does not always succeed in
achieving it.
While much of Jewish
theology focuses on God as
All-Powerful (and the open-
ing chapter of Genesis con-
firms this), parts of the Bible
describe God as less than
All-Powerful.
As Rabbi Bradley Shavit
Artson has written, power is
relational. Without other beings with
some degree of power, what would
it even mean to be All-Powerful? An
All-Powerful God would reign over a
completely powerless universe.
But the universe God created, (the
one the Book of Job speaks of) is full
of entities which seem to push back
against God's power, just as the sea
climbs up the shore. And don't for-
get that part of what it means to be
human is to have the power to choose
our actions.
These choices are not always in
keeping with Genesis' sense of order.
Human beings, like the sea, insert pos-
sibility (and even chaos) into God's
universe.
We know the chaos that can emerge
from the natural world in the form
of earthquakes, hurricanes and other
elements of nature. Perhaps the knowl-
edge that there is chaos under the
surface of God's creation can serve to
remind us that the Book of Genesis is
not a description of the complete real-
ity of our universe, but rather a call
for us to assist God in creating a world
that is orderly in all the ways that
human beings can achieve.
The fact that we can make that a
reality through our own actions is a
powerful role for humanity indeed. ❑
„ „,
4r4r-'
/6ykmA
'-r-the inspiring story of a man whose journey of discovery
ultimately led to a crisis of faith, family and religion.
Growing up, Bernd Wollschlaeger was the son of a Nazi war
hero who received the Iron Cross (Germany's highest military honor)
from Adolf Hitler himself. His search for meaning and truth led him to
Israel, where he converted to Judaism, served with distinction in the Israel
Defense Forces, confronted his family's past, and built a new life.
Program sponsored
in memory of
HARRY
GRABEL
by A. Scott Grabel
and Associates
■ Admission $8 non-members / Free for HMC members
■ Dr. Wollschlaeger will be available to sign copies of
his book, A German Life: Against All Odds, Change
is Possible. Books will be available for purchase
EM OR/4
for $19 each (tax included).
■ Refreshments will be served.
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September 26 • 2013
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