Parshas Bereishis

Shlomo Wolbe walks through Bereishis from the first day of creation to the eve of the Flood. Hashem creates the world with the Torah as the blueprint: light and darkness, the split of the waters, land and vegetation, sun, moon, and stars, fish and birds, animals, and finally the human being, the reason the whole project exists. Day seven is rest. Adam is formed from earth, a soul is breathed into him, and he is placed in Gan Eden with one rule: eat from anything except the Tree of Knowledge.

From there the episode follows the story inside the garden. Adam names the animals (including the old family reading of kelev as kol lev, all heart). Chava is built from his side. The nachash talks her into the fruit, she shares it with Adam, and shame, hiding, and punishment follow: the snake loses its legs, childbirth becomes painful, and the ground no longer gives food for free. Hashem still clothes them before sending them out. Kayin the gardener and Hevel the shepherd bring offerings. Hevel’s is accepted, Kayin’s is not, and the first murder follows, along with Kayin’s curse and the mark that protects him. Ten generations later the world has gone bad enough that Hashem regrets creating it, except that Noach finds favor. The ark, and what happens next, waits for next week.

What is Parshally Understood?

A weekly Parsha podcast by Shlomo Wolbe

Alrighty, welcome to the first ever episode of the Parshally Understood podcast by your host, Shlomo Wolbe. I hope you understand the name. It's quite clever. I came up with it myself.
Partially understood. It's brilliant. Anyway, the reason I'm doing this is mainly for myself, honestly. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't be learning the Parsha nearly as well, if at all.
So now I have a reason to do that. So thank you for listening because otherwise I wouldn't be doing this and Also for y'all because I'm just a really good guy and I care about you So now you don't even need a little partial just kidding learn it inside. It's very important Anyway, so let's dive right in. So this week's part is very just the first in the entire
And yeah, so we start off with the creation of the world. It's just Hashem and the Torah. Obviously, we know that the Torah was made before the universe even existed. And Hashem used that to create the world based on the Torah.
So on the first day, Hashem's like, yo, time to make some slight changes. First of all, we're going to have heaven and earth separated. It's going to be two separate things. And then we're also going to have light and dark for why not.
no things causing the light. But that's besides the point. Anyway, the second day, there was water already, by the way. There was water pre-existing in a sphere, as we know as Earth.
And Hashem separated the water, so there's water down below, and now there's clouds. And it's beautiful. On the third day, He's like, you know, let's put some Earth. And so He makes land, calls it Earth, takes the water that's around Earth, and calls it the sea, the ocean.
And yeah, a thought this is all just to have things ready for us humans because we're really important then um he also makes the vegetation he makes trees everything that's on earth that's not Yeah, everything that's on earth was made that day basically then day four constellations. We have sun moon stars Planets galaxies everything you want to do in your nerdy little brain You could figure out what it was and we got the names day and night the fifth day This is when it gets interesting.
God's like, you know what? Let's make some living things. So we got fish. We got birds.
We got those kinds of things. And they're just told, yo, have babies. Let's make this world great again. Or just make it great.
And that's that. Day six comes along. And this is where it gets really interesting. God's like, you know what?
Let's finish this off nice and strong. We're going to put some animals, real life animals. And we're going to put some insects. And we're going to put like everything.
Everything's going to be finished today. Let's just. Full send. And then the
masterpiece, the reason for all this, God makes human beings. And he's told, yo, Adam. That's obviously the first man ever.
Adam, go, and you're going to rule over those animals. Everything's for you. I got you, bro. And that's the conclusion of day six.
Day seven comes along. And God finished. He did everything he needs to do, so he rests, as they say. And then, obviously, there's not a contradiction to resting.
God made rain and grow fruits and everything, because until then, there's nothing. Apparently. Then man is officially formed through just a clump of earth. And he just gets just God's God just blows just a soul right into his nostrils.
And there we have man and mankind is thriving now ruling over the animals. And it's just really amazing. So that's the creation of the world. Now we're going to go into the actual lore of the Parsha.
So. Hashem puts Adam into Gan Eden and he's told, yo, listen, you can eat from anything you want. Just do me one favor. Do not eat from the Itzadas.
You're going to die. It's not worth it, bro. Don't do it. And then Hashem decides it's not good for man to be alone.
So he brings all the animals to him and he's like, okay, Adam. Name all these animals. Do it according to their nature. Do it however you see fit, and that's going to be the name forever.
And there's like a couple examples where you give one. My father always says this one, so I'm going to use it too. The dog. In Hebrew, it's kelev, which could be spelled as kol, lev.
And we know like they, humans, for instance, you yell at them. They go away all sad, and they don't want to talk to you five minutes later. You yell at a dog. He's back five minutes later wagging his tail.
He's looking to get pet because he's all emotional. He's all heart.
Now, God's also like, you know what? There should probably be a woman too, because that's a bit awkward. So, he puts Adam to sleep. Adam's sleeping, God rips out a rib, and builds female.
The female existence is now... existing. And there is a concept that they were both naked and they did not feel any embarrassment. They were not ashamed because they didn't have the proper knowledge yet.
And anyway, Nachash, the snake, comes over to Chava and he's like, yo, I have an idea. Touch that tree. Go eat an apple.
It's going to be funny. And she's like, no, I can't touch it. If I touch the tree, I'm going to die. And we know that wasn't the
borderline the thing that's gonna Caused her to die. It's only eating it touching it totally permitted so since she thought you can't touch it It was like I'm a clever dude and he forces her to touch it and he's like you see you ain't gonna die It's
just a scare tactic not that deep so just go ahead and eat an apple She eats an apple gives one to Adam and we know this as humankind's first mistake ever is Listening to a woman so keep that in mind for future times anyway now when they when they eat that apple from the tree. They're instilled with some kind of knowledge, the wisdom. And like, whoa, we are totally naked. That's so embarrassing.
And they run, take some fig leaves and make that into clothes. And then they hear just rustling. They hear stuff. And they realize it's God.
And they realize they're in trouble. So they run and hide. God's like, yo, where are y'all at? I'm just trying to have a good conversation with y'all.
Where are y'all at? They're like, oh, we're right here. Sorry about that. Shem's like, why you hiding, dude?
And they're like, um, because we're naked. He's like, how? Naked? Please. How do you know that?
And then he's like, wait a second. Did you eat from the tree? It's not cool, man. And... You're going to get punished actually.
So what are the punishments that they got? So the snake obviously gets punished for being so mean to us. So he originally had legs. He was able to do all cool stuff.
Now he's cursed. He's going to slither. He's going to eat the dust. He's going to be trampled by humans for the rest of his days.
Woman, what's their punishment? They're going to have to go through child labor. It's going to be nine months.
It's going to be extremely painful. Yada, yada, yada. Whatever women complain about. And then lastly,
Hashem turns to man and he's like, dude, really not cool. Don't ever do that again. And you know what? You're going to have to actually work the fields.
You're going to have to actually plow and plant and do all those fun stuff that are very difficult. Because otherwise, they would have gone to the tree. They would have eaten the bark of the tree and it would have been delicious. I would have been ready to go.
Apples all day, every day. Now we actually have to work for it. That kind of sucks.
Chava didn't actually have a name. This lady. So Hashem's like, you know what? Or Adam, I'm not positive which one is which.
That's why it's partially understood because we don't always know everything. So one of them, either Hashem or Adam names Chava because the charge of that name is the one who gives life. That's that. And Hashem goes on and is like, you know what?
I actually do care about you guys here. I'm going to make you guys clothing. This is actually proper clothing, and not only that, he actually puts it on them to show extra love and that he cares about them. But at the same time, they get booted from Gan Eden because they were sinners.
So that's that. Now, we know they have two sons together. There was Kain, and there was Hell. Now, Kain's the older brother.
He was like, you know what? I'm going to be a top-tier gardener. And Hevo was like, I'm going to be a shepherd because who wants to be a gardener? And then Kai has an amazing idea.
He's like, you know, I'm just going to get some nice vegetables. I'm sure there was some strawberries in there. I'm sure there was a watermelon. Possibly some oranges or mangoes.
I honestly assume it's mango. But he goes and he's like, God, I have some mangoes for you. Please take the sacrifice. And...
Nothing happens. Absolutely nothing. Nothing happens. There's no fire that comes down from heaven.
Nothing. It's just mango sitting in his hands or wherever it was. So Heavon's like, you know what? I'm going to try. I'm going to get the best of the best from my flocks, and I'm going to sacrifice that to Hashem and see what happens.
He does that, and guess what? This time it happened. Heavenly fires just come down in pillars from heaven, and they take his offering. Kind of like, yo, what the heck, dude?
And proceeds to kill his younger brother, Heavon.
Again, Hashem's like, yo, where's Hevo? And the guy's like, why would I know where Hevo is? Am I supposed to just be watching my brother all day long? That's not my job.
And so they were like, okay, okay. You want to play that game? I'll play that game. You're cursed now.
You're cursed. and what was kind curse that he was actually i'm gonna have to check back at that i'm not positive what his curse was but he had a curse it was a really really bad one i think it was like a cursed nation on the lands and whatever and That was a problem, because kind of like, dude, if I'm cursed like that, people are going to want to kill me. They're going to kill all my ancestors.
That's not cool. That's like putting a target on my forehead. So, Hashem's like, okay, for seven generations, whoever kills you or your generations, they're going to also be cursed. And that's that.
And Cain's all chilling now. He's like, yeah, fine. Thank you. And that's basically the end of the Parsha.
Then it goes into the details of just the future generations that come. There's all of them had more sons and daughters. They had kids. They had kids.
They had kids and so on for 10 generations until we get to the one and only Noah, the one with the ark, the one with the big old boat with three layers. But we're not going to get into that right now. Anyway, Hashem's like, yo, this is a terrible, terrible generation. Bunch of sinners.
It's not cool. I think I actually currently am regretting creating this world. So I'm going to destroy everything. Everything I made.
Everything from the seven days and these ten generations wiped out no more. And Noah was like, can we please not do that? I'm going to find favor in your eyes. And sure enough, he found favor in Hashem's eyes.
And guess what happened? You're going to have to wait for next week to figure that out.