Following the devastating Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma and the deadliest mass-shooting in US history, Jews gathered in synagogues, as they do every year, to celebrate the completion of the reading of the Torah. And as always, right after we completed the five book of Moses year-long reading, we started all over again, with the book of Genesis. One more year has gone by, with its catastrophes, pain and suffering and then again, we hear God’s first world-creation statement: “Let There Be Light” and indeed “And There Was Light” (Genesis 1-3).
Why does world creation start with Light? Light after all is a life enabler, so why did God create Light on the First Day, before Adam’s creation on the sixth Day, before the fifth Day’s creation of the animal-world and even before the third Day’s creation of the world’s vegetation? Having Light on before it is needed, sounds like a huge waste of energy.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe enlightened us that the creation of Light isn’t just a matter of energy and not even just the first of ten world-creation statements, but it is the definition of God’s world-creation purpose. We all spend most of our time on the “how” and not enough time on the “why”. The “why” being the purpose of our projects and initiatives and the purpose of our life itself. It was God’s will to first state his purpose: the world should be Light and that’s what happened, after the initial state of “confusion and emptiness” (Genesis 1-2), the world became Light, only Light, an infinite Light!
“And God saw the light, and that it was good” (Genesis 1-4).
Our world is fundamentally good as it was originally created as Light, as a perfect unity before the creation of a multitude of species. This fundamental unity enables diversity. However, the Talmud indicates that the world couldn’t sustain this Light so “God hid the Light and reserved it for the righteous in the world to come” (Hagiga 12a). That’s what we read right after “and God divided the light from the darkness”. Darkness was back because God hid the Light. If the world would have maintained its initial state of perfection and unity, there would be no room for humankind, there would be no need for love and progress. So, God defined the world’s purpose by creating Light and then defined humankind’s purpose by hiding it. God contracted his Light to make room for us, human beings.
Our purpose, like the world’s purpose, is to become ourselves sources of light, to lighten the world around us with acts of love and kindness, to conduct fair business and to raise children which will continue to unveil the hidden light which God has reserved for the righteous. So indeed, it has been a lot of darkness, but we should stay focused on our purpose: Let there be light!