Bereishit 5784
What is the truth of "yom echad"?
Reflection by Ariel Dominique Hendelman, the Or HaLev Team
"In her book, The Beginning of Desire, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg writes about the first story of the Torah, `For six days, the process of creation continues, seen from the viewpoint of God, who speaks, sees, and names His work in its increasing complexity. Essentially, the original binary reality of ‘heaven and earth’ is split into smaller contrasting units: darkness and light, the lower waters and the upper waters, seas and dry land, sun and moon. The act of havdalah, separation, is central.` Zornberg goes on to cite Rashi, who explains that this is the reason yom echad, or one day, is referred to differently than the other days (which are second day, third day, etc.). Why is it called `one day` and not `the first day`? Because in the beginning of the beginning of creation, there was no separation, there was only the Infinite One.
There is a Chassidic teaching that the entirety of the human task on earth is to realize this truth: `vayehi erev, vayehi boker, yom echad.`-`There was evening and there was morning, one day.`
We are here to surrender to the darkness and the light, the erev and the boker, and thereby to reunite them into one day again. When we welcome sorrow as an intrinsic part of joy, and all the other kaleidoscopic emotions as part of the wholeness of creation, we help to affirm the truth of One Day, One Name, One Creator.
We see this in our meditation practice. When we feel ecstatic, there is a part of us that is not in ecstasy. Likewise, when we feel despairing, there is a part of us that is not in despair. There is always a piece of us, that infinite soul slice, that is unmoving; that is loving awareness itself - yom echad, one day."