Well, of course, not. What we need to do is to "unpack" Rashi. As the question popularized by the late Nehama Leibowitz would put it, "Mah kasheh le Rashi?" Literally, this question asks "what is difficult for Rashi?" but a more expansive way of understanding it is, "what is the difficulty that Rashi perceives to be at play in the biblical text, and that prompts his comment?"

 

In the case of Genesis 1:1, the difficulty lies in the way the first two words of the Torah (b'reishit and bara) interact: if, as seems likely, the word b'reishit means not "in the beginning" but "in the beginning of " (construct case, or semikhut, for all you lovers of Hebrew grammar out there in TV land), then it seems strange that it comes right before the second word, bara, which seems to mean "(He) created" (i.e., a conjugated verb in the past tense). This would yield a literal translation of "In the beginning of . . . (He) created, God (did)"-hardly sounding like the classic we all think it is! In fact, were we to have written a high-school essay in this way, our teacher would likely have circled the whole thing in red ink and made us rewrite it!

 

So, Rashi says, as it were, "since I see this apparently unsolvable grammatical problem, I am going to use the tools of midrash to help explain it for me" (his words "This text says nothing other than 'explain me'!" employ the Hebrew expression darsheni, in which one can see the same root as midrash). First, the (relatively) easy part: look at the letter bet at the beginning of the word b'reishit. Usually, this letter means in or with something; however, here, Rashi claims (with some justification) that it should be understood according to one of its lesser-known meanings, for the sake of something. Perfectly legitimate, and now let us move on to the harder part. As we continue to "unpack" Rashi, he sends us to Proverbs 8:22, where the word reishit refers to something God created "at the beginning of His way." In Proverbs, this generally is taken to be the concept of hokhmah, or "wisdom": God created wisdom at the beginning of God's own way. However, for the Rabbis, ain hokhmah elah Torah, "Wisdom means nothing other than Torah." Thus, in a rabbinic tautology (it is one, because they taught it!) (ouch),

 

"Reishit=wisdom=Torah." Since the methodology of midrash permits him to do so, Rashi then takes this last value, and "plugs" it back into the Creation narrative: b'reishit, "for the sake of reishit," that is, "for the sake of the Torah, God created the heavens and the earth." Now, that is a translation that you are never likely to see in an English translation of the Torah, but it is, in fact, Rashi's "first" resolution of the grammatical problem. Creative, no? I won't go into as much detail in explaining Rashi's second midrashic solution, but suffice it to say that Rashi sends us to the word reishit in Jeremiah 2:3, and derives from its use there that is is midrashically equivalent to the word "Israel"; Rashi then plugs this interpretation back into Genesis, and it yields the translation: "for the sake of Israel, God created the heavens and the earth."

 

Thus, Rashi has given us two (similar) ways of resolving the grammatical problem of which we have been made aware: the word b'reishit means neither "In the beginning" nor "In the beginning of" but rather "for the sake of Torah/Israel, (God created the heavens and the earth)"-and what a brilliant and morale-building rabbinic lesson that is!

 

But this exercise is, after all, an occasion for creative midrash; it is pointedly not the process that we normally associate with what we call reading (in fact, Rashi's commentaries were one of the most important components in developing that thing we call reading, but, well, more on that another time!).....

 

So, Rashi says, when we wish to read the Torah contextually, we should acknowledge that the word b'reishit should be considered as in construct relationship with the following word, bara-or more simply put, the two words together do mean "in the beginning of God's creating . . ." Of course, that is not a sentence, it is just the beginning (sorry!) of a sentence. The "real" first sentence of the Torah does not occur until one reaches verse 3: "God said, 'Let there be light'"-everything that comes before this (Genesis 1:1-2) is a series of subordinate clauses (dare I say it? Santa's little helpers!). Now, that sentence would definitely be one to which our high-school English teachers would object. But that is, in fact, how the New Jewish Publication Society translation of the Bible renders it, as a long, run-on sentence:

 

When God began to create heaven and earth-the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water-God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

 

Go pick up a copy of Etz Hayyim, the Torah most of our congregations use for services-this is precisely how we now are led to understand the passage.

 

But what are the implications of what we have just learned? They are, I believe, profound. The main point is this: because of the grammatical problem identified by Rashi (and others), we can see that the Torah essentially begins with a sentence that is ambiguous. Or put differently, the Torah begins with a text that requires our involvement and intervention in order to achieve some meaning. And we can only achieve some meaning by controlling the text through some active participation (in Rashi's case, he did so either by "changing" the word b'reishit (by substituting new values) or the verb bara (by rereading it as a gerund or infinitive). God's Torah requires human involvement in order to achieve its meaning - it is incomplete without the participation of humankind.