In Parshat B’reishit, the Torah describes the creation of the world.
Creation is meant to be a revelation that makes the Master of the Universe known to us. Yet in reality, the world often acts as a screen that hides the Divine from our conscious perception. Our world is created in such a way that allows us to entertain the thought that the Creator doesn’t exist. This problem demands a solution.
B’reishit informs us that everything is good. Of everything the Creator created, the Torah says: “And G‑d saw that it was good.”
On the sixth day, when everything was complete, it says: “And G‑d saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (B’reishit 1:31).
Clearly, if the Creator declares His creation good, He means it. How then can there be people in the world that the Kadosh Barukh Hu created who believe that everything is bad, who say that nothing has value and that hope doesn’t exist? Where did the possibility of thinking this way come from? Some hint of it must be in Parshat B’reishit.
In fact, a later verse states explicitly: “And HaShem G‑d said: It is not good…” (B’reishit 2:18). So it’s possible to say of everything that has been made, that it is not good. When? “That the man should be alone” (ibid).
That is, when man is alone, or because man is alone, he has room to think that the whole world is absurd and meaningless and that everything is bad.
How can man be alone? According to our sages (B’reishit Rabbah 8:1), man was never without woman.
“Male and female He created them.” (B’reishit 5:2)
Adam was created with two faces, man and woman together. “Alone” actually means without HaShem. It is a shocking thought: that the Creator has left us in a closed, sealed world that screens Him from us, and doesn’t speak to us. A world in which man has no dialogue with HaShem is a bad world. To break through this screen, then, humanity must open the gates of heaven and enter into dialogue with the Master of the Universe. But this is not always possible, as many screens separate us from the Creator.
What did the Kadosh Barukh Hu do? He divided man’s consciousness into two.
“I will make him a helper corresponding to him.” (B’reishit 2:18)
First, man will meet himself and hold a dialogue between the two parts of his identity, between man and woman, and between a person and his fellow. In this way, he opens the gates that will ultimately bring him to direct dialogue, face to face, with the Creator.
“Love your neighbor as yourself. I am HaShem.” (Vayikra 19:18)
If you love your neighbor as yourself, in the end you will know who I am.
This is exactly what we see in Parshat B’reishit.
“I will make him a helper corresponding to him.”
Man is divided into two parts so that he can look at himself from the outside. As long as a person is attached only to himself, he cannot know even himself. This is the meaning of the word levado (alone), which shares its root with lavud (joined together).
Once human consciousness was divided into two, man on one side and woman on the other, man gained the ability to know himself and, through this, ultimately to know his Creator.
As Rabbi Eliyahu de Vidas writes in Reishit Ḥokhma (Shaar HaAhava), one who has not known the love of a woman has not known the love of HaShem.
True deep love of another, which reaches its highest expression in a man’s love for his wife, ultimately leads to love of the Creator and to knowledge of Him. It gives meaning to human life.
