Torah doesn’t begin with the commandments. It begins with Bereshit — “In the beginning.” Genesis is the blueprint of creation itself. It’s the story of how everything came to be, and right in the center of that story stands the Tree of Life.
The ancients understood this. From the earliest civilizations — the same Tree of Life symbols carved in stone long before Sinai — this blueprint was already being passed down. The Torah didn’t invent the Tree of Life; it revealed its true meaning. That tree wasn’t just in the Garden of Eden. It is the pattern of creation, the map of how words and choices shape reality. Every great ancient culture carried an echo of it, but only the Torah explains what it actually means to live inside that story.
This is why the Torah can only be truly understood by those who are willing to listen to the story. You can’t grasp Tazria-Metzora if you don’t first understand Genesis. You can’t understand the power of speech if you don’t see the Tree of Life standing in the middle of the Garden. The whole book is one continuous story, and we Jews are the ones tasked with telling it correctly.
That’s our job — to keep telling the true story of creation, of the covenant, of the family that comes from three fathers, and of the everlasting promise made to Abraham’s children. When we tell that story, we fulfill the very purpose of being Jewish.
The Bible Begins The Story of Adam
But the Torah is giving us something even deeper here. Rabbi Goldstein puts it in one clear sentence: “Our whole point of being Jewish is to tell a story.”
That’s why the Torah doesn’t open with laws. It opens with Bereshit — “In the beginning.” The very first word of the Torah is telling us: This is a story. Genesis is not background. It is the blueprint. And right in the center of that blueprint stands the Tree of Life.
Long before the Torah was given at Sinai, ancient civilizations were already carving the same Tree of Life into stone — from the shores of Lake Vaign to the earliest known cultures. They all saw it. They all carried the memory. But only the Torah explains what it actually means.
The Tree of Life is the pattern of creation itself. It shows how speech, choices, and words shape reality. And that same Tree sits at the center of the Garden, at the center of the Torah, and at the center of our lives.
This is why the Torah can only be truly understood by those willing to listen to the story. If you skip Genesis, you will never understand why evil speech brings tzara’at. If you don’t see the Tree of Life, you will never understand why your words literally create worlds.
We Jews were not chosen to be better than anyone else. We were chosen to keep telling the true story — the story that began in the Garden, that runs through Noah’s three sons, through Abraham’s family, and continues today in our DNA and in our covenant.
That is our mission. That is why we still exist. We are the keepers of the story.
Hazan Gavriel ben David