1.
The first book of the Bible opens with a brief account of the creation of the world, serving mainly as a prelude to the central story: the creation of a new nation. That story begins with Abraham, who listened to his inner voice, left his former world, and defied the religious, spiritual and cultural conventions of his time. He set out for an unknown land in order to establish a new nation that would change the course of human history.
How does a collection of individuals develop into a great people? How does a deep national consciousness form, akin to the bond within a family? Individuals who have multiplied are placed into an immense womb, so they can be reborn as a national collective, as a people.
2.
Genesis revolves around a central symbol: the womb and birth. The Garden of Eden is a cosmic womb; Noah's Ark is a man-made womb; the cave where Moab is born to Lot and his daughter; the Cave of Machpelah preserving the memory of the nation's patriarchs and matriarchs; Rebecca's womb with the twins struggling within it; the pit into which Joseph is thrown twice, only to be reborn from it as ruler of Egypt; and the long genealogical lists that fill the book. Finally, at the end of Genesis, there is the greatest womb of all: the Egyptian empire, into which Jacob's family enters in order to be reborn, after centuries, as a new people through painful birth pangs.
This is the double vision that Genesis trains us to adopt. On the surface are current events as they appear. Beneath them, in the depths of history, in the womb, more significant processes are unfolding. For now, they are hidden, but in time they will be revealed as the forces that propelled the events we thought we understood.
3.
How does one emerge from the Egyptian womb, or later in history, from the womb of the nations among whom we were exiled? The historiosophical key is already present at the beginning of the book. Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden, a kind of cosmic womb, with seed and egg, the embryo of humanity awaiting its birth, meaning expulsion and entry into history. Who triggers the longed-for labor pains and shatters the eternal calm of Eden? The serpent.
"And the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field" (Genesis 3:1). In the Bible, cunning signifies wisdom, intellect and knowledge. The serpent proposes eating from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the fruit of enlightenment. Everything is given to man in Eden except one thing: knowledge. And what would we be without knowledge and science? It is as if God says to man: I will give you everything, but the thing most essential to your existence, knowledge, you must take for yourself, through an act of transgressing the sacred. To form an independent personality, Adam must rebel against his God, a kind of symbolic patricide, severing the parental umbilical cord in order to consolidate the self. Separation for the sake of individuation.
4.
This is precisely why Eve is given to Adam, as a help opposite him. The serpent helps her decide, and she ultimately helps Adam decide. In Aramaic, serpent is hivya, echoing Eve and life. It is also Eros, the life force, a deeply charged symbol representing the woman herself. The serpent bites and triggers the labor pains that breach the walls of the cosmic womb and open the gates of Eden for the first human couple to go out into the world and begin history.
The Talmud alludes to this: "The doe's womb is narrow; when she crouches to give birth, I summon a dragon (serpent) that bites her at the womb, and she relaxes and gives birth." The Zohar expands: "When she (the doe) conceives, she becomes constricted. When the time comes for her to give birth, she cries out and lets out sounds... The Holy One, Blessed be He, hears her... Immediately, He brings forth a great serpent from the mountains of darkness, which travels between the mountains with its mouth licking the dust. It reaches this doe, comes and bites her in that place twice. The first time, blood comes out and he licks it; the second time, water comes out and all the beasts in the mountains drink, and she is opened and gives birth." At the moment of crisis, the serpent will arrive.
5.
The doe is also the hind of the dawn, a key symbol in the historical consciousness of our people, the star that rises at the end of the night. When darkness thickens to the point that reality seems to surrender to it, a faint light breaks through, signalling that the darkness is nearing its end. The Jerusalem Talmud relates: "Rabbi Hiyya the Great and Rabbi Shimon ben Halaphta were walking in the Valley of Arbel at dawn, and they saw the light of the hind of the dawn breaking forth. Rabbi Hiyya said: so is the redemption of Israel, at first little by little, and as it progresses, it grows and grows."
Thousands of years later, deep within the long exile, swallowed within the womb of nations, when we looked around and found no help or support, the serpent arrived. The historical revolution of our people also began with the serpent's bite and the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The Haskalah and Hasidic movements rebelled against the traditional rabbinic leadership and carried out, each in its own way, a symbolic patricide. The global womb in which we were absorbed and assimilated was shaken, and through a long and agonizing process we emerged in a brutal birth, returning to history. From a state of living death, we became once again a living, active people among the family of nations.
6.
On the surface, the serpent acts, biting and tormenting, breaking and destroying, killing and dismantling. But beneath the surface operates a greater force: the Dream. On the surface, the brothers sell Joseph and seemingly put an end to the Abrahamic dream. Openly, the house of Jacob descends into Egypt and is absorbed into the Egyptian national body. This is reality as it appears to ordinary perception. Yet redemption comes "when the mind is diverted," from an unexpected and unplanned place, from setting aside the lower, routine awareness to make room for higher knowledge, for a deeper gaze that contains the full experience accumulated over history. This gaze carries faith, teaches patience, and warns against forcing the end or imposing solutions that could lead to historical entanglements.
Creation could have taken place in a single moment, but it unfolded over days, stages and categories, until reaching the crown of creation at its end: man. Little by little. So taught Rabbi Hiyya the Great in praise of slowness, evolution rather than revolution. The return to Zion is a long process that began long ago, with the dream of the first Hebrew in the Covenant Between the Parts (Genesis 15), and was passed on to his descendants throughout the generations. He bequeathed to us the dream of redemption and the inheritance of the land. That dream moves families and tribes, peoples and nations, war and peace. It led us through the valley of the shadow of history's death and preserved us until our return home to Zion. "When the Lord returned the captives of Zion, we were like dreamers" (Psalms 126:1).
7.
Thus, the Book of Genesis concludes: "Joseph made the children of Israel swear, saying, 'God will surely remember you ("Pakod Yifkod"), and you shall carry up my bones from here.' And Joseph died … and he was placed in a coffin in Egypt" (Genesis 50:24–26). The final word, "in Egypt," points to the arena in which Abraham's covenantal vision will unfold. Everything awaits its realization. Even Joseph's coffin waits for the day when his descendants will carry him home.
The Egyptian exile became the prototype for all exiles of the Hebrew nation. Wherever we were scattered across the globe, through seventy exiles, in the valley of tears of the most horrific massacres, in the depths of the pits into which we were cast by savage men, even there we did not stop dreaming, we did not cease hoping and yearning for the voice of the redeemer: "I will surely remember you" (Genesis 50:24; Exodus 3:16). I remember you. Return home. It is time to leave the womb of the nations. "I will surely remember you" at the Exodus from Egypt; "I will surely remember you" in the return to Zion of the Second Temple; and "I will surely remember you" in the return to Zion of the Third Temple, the State of Israel.
