Bianca Pasternack's dvar Torah, delivered on the occasion of her bat mitzva, 29 Tishre 5763

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth…" Those are the first words of the Torah, and of my Torah portion. We start reading the Torah from the beginning. "IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH…" We've all heard that, and its meaning is clear. What's not so clear is why God created the Earth. Rabbi Saadia Gaon, who lived in Iraq in 882-942 CE, thought that God created us to be nice to us. If you can do something good for someone, you should do it. And God could, and did. But if God wanted to be nice to us, why did God stick us in a garden?

God originally created us to be simple, good people, and live in a garden and eat fruit all day long. We wouldn't have to make decisions, solve problems, or work. But God also gave us the brain capacity to know there was more we could do. We wanted to go out and explore the world, and make choices for ourselves. But we couldn't live that way in the garden, so we left the garden, and that is how we got to how we are today, the good and the bad.

Imagine if we hadn't left the garden…how un-lively life would be…As playwrite Neil Simon said, "I love living. I have some problems with my life, but living is the best thing they've come up with so far." A day in the life of a garden-dweller would be somewhat like as follows: Wake up, eat fruit, take a walk, talk to other people, take another walk, eat some more fruit, chat some more, and go to sleep. How exciting.

We wouldn't have any new ideas, learning, or technology. There would be no fun or adventure, we would always be the same, and everything would be predictable. Can you imagine a world without art or music? There would be no mistakes to learn from, no stress to handle, no problems to solve, no reason to live and grow.

If God gave us the potential to learn and create and explore, why did God stick us in a garden? Maybe it was so we would discover how to get out ourselves. Maybe we were never meant to stay. If God had just dropped us into the world, we wouldn't appreciate the variety or know what to do. Creation was like birth, the garden like childhood, and the world like adulthood. If we were born and left to fend for ourselves, how would we know what to do past instinct? We wouldn't. Animals are still in their garden. They can enjoy playing with a ball or laying in the sun, and can feel pain and sadness, but that's it. They can't play violin, explore rainforests, or discover penicillin.

Becoming a bat mitzvah is like coming out of the garden, because it requires one to be responsible, creative, and finally be independent.

But there was another problem when we came out of the garden…we didn't know how to treat the world, and the things (and people) in it. People would think the earth was made special for us, and we owned it, and it was a possession. People don't generally treat their STUFF all that well. I chew my pen caps, throw my stuffed animals and yell at my computer. Some people do think that the whole world is theirs, and they litter, and pollute excessively, and don't think about what they're doing

They don't understand what God meant to happen when, in the portion we just read, God set the humans in the garden, to work it and to watch it. To work it and to watch it means to care for it, not use it for their convenience.

There is another subjects in my portion I would like to talk about: If everyone believed we were all created in God's image, think how the world would be different. Yelling at someone or hurting them would be like yelling at God. How could anyone who believed in God, respected God and thought everything and everyone was created by God kill and abuse innocent people and animals? They can't. Like some terrorists. They say they are doing it for their religion, but it's really a just a made-up excuse to kill. If they really believed in the real God, or whatever name they choose, they would never think to do such a thing to their fellow human beings, who are all created in God's image. That's another reason this portion is so important, in the past, now, and in the future.

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