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we respect and recognize the uniqueness of
another person are we capable of respect-
ing and recognizing the uniqueness of God
Himself.
CREATION ITSELF
Now let us return to the two creation
accounts, this time not looking at what
they tell us about humanity (as in
Soloveitchik’s The Lonely Man of Faith), but
simply at what they tell us about creation.
In Genesis 1, God creates things —
chemical elements, stars, planets, life-
forms, biological species. In Genesis 2-3,
He creates people. In the first chapter, He
creates systems. In the second chapter, He
creates relationships. It is fundamental to
the Torah’s view of reality that these things
belong to different worlds, distinct narra-
tives, separate stories, alternative ways of
seeing reality.
There are differences in tone as well.
In the first, creation involves no effort on
the part of God. He simply speaks. He
says, “Let there be,
” and there was. In the
second, He is actively engaged. When it
comes to the creation of the first human,
He does not merely say, “Let us make Man
in our image according to our likeness.
”
He performs the creation Himself, like
sculptor fashioning an image out of clay:
“Then the Lord God formed the man from
the dust of the ground and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life, and the man
became a living being.
”
In Genesis 1, God effortlessly summons
the universe into being. In Genesis 2, He
becomes a gardener: “Now the Lord God
planted a garden …
” We wonder why on
earth God, who has just created the entire
universe, should become a gardener. The
Torah gives us the answer, and it is very
moving: “The Lord God took the man and
put him in the Garden of Eden to work
it and take care of it.
” God wanted to give
man the dignity of work, of being a creator,
not just a creation. And in case the man
should view such labor as undignified, God
became a gardener Himself to show that
this work, too, is Divine, and in performing
it, man becomes God’s partner in the work
of creation.
IMPORTANCE OF RELATIONSHIPS
Then comes the extraordinarily poignant
verse, “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good
for the man to be alone. I will make a
helper suitable for him.
” God feels for the
existential isolation of the first man. There
was no such moment in the previous
chapter. There, God simply creates. Here,
God empathizes. He enters into the human
mind. He feels what we feel. There is no
such moment in any other ancient religious
literature. What is radical about biblical
monotheism is not just that there is only
one God, not just that He is the source of
all that exists, but that God is closer to us
than we are to ourselves. God knew the
loneliness of the first man before the first
man knew it of himself.
That is what the second creation account
is telling us. Creation of things is relatively
easy; creation of relationships is hard. Look
at the tender concern God shows for the
first human beings in Genesis 2-3. He wants
man to have the dignity of work. He wants
man to know that work itself is Divine. He
gives man the capacity to name the ani-
mals. He cares when He senses the onset of
loneliness. He creates the first woman. He
watches, in exasperation, as the first human
couple commit this first sin. Finally, when
the man gives his wife a proper name,
recognizing for the first time that she is dif-
ferent from him and that she can do some-
thing he will never do, He clothes them
both so that they will not go naked into
the world. That is the God, not of creation
(Elokim) but of love (Hashem).
That is what makes the dual account of
the naming of the first woman so signifi-
cant a parallel to the dual account of God’s
creation of the universe. We have to create
relationships before we encounter the God
of relationship. We have to make space for
the otherness of the human other to be
able to make space for the otherness of the
Divine other. We have to give love before
we can receive love.
In Genesis 1, God creates the universe.
Nothing vaster can be imagined, and we
keep discovering that the universe is bigger
than we thought. In 2016, a study based
on three-dimensional modelling of images
produced by the Hubble space telescope
concluded that there were between 10 and
20 times as many galaxies as astronomers
had previously thought. There are more
than a hundred stars for every grain of
sand on earth.
And yet, almost in the same breath
as it speaks of the panoply of creation,
the Torah tells us that God took time to
breathe the breath of life into the first
human, give him dignified work, enter his
loneliness, make him a wife, and robe them
both with garments of light when the time
came for them to leave Eden and make
their way in the world.
The Torah is telling us something very
powerful. Never think of people as things.
Never think of people as types: They are
individuals. Never be content with cre-
ating systems: Care also about relation-
ships.
I believe that relationships are where our
humanity is born and grows, flowers and
flourishes. It is by loving people that we
learn to love God and feel the fullness of
His love for us.
The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as the
chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the
Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teachings have been
made available to all at rabbisacks.org. This essay was
written in 2019.
POINTS FOR DISCUSSION
• Why do you think there are
two separate and contrasting
descriptions of how God
created humankind?
• What is the danger represented
by the first name (Isha) that
Adam gave to his wife?
• How can we learn to love
God from loving the people
in our life?