GENESIS
The Beginning of Desire
AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG

GENESIS
The Beginning of Desire
AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG,
The Jewish Publication Society
Philadelphia Jerusalem 5755/1995

Copyright © 1995 by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
First edition All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, except for brief passages in connection with a critical review, without permission in writing from the publisher:

The Jewish Publication Society,
1930 Chestnut Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19103.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb.
Genesis : the beginning of desire / Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg. — 1st ed. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8276-0521-8

1. Bible. O.T. Genesis —Commentaries. I. Title.
   BS1235.3.Z67 1995
   222M107-dc20 94-40776
   CIP
   IV

“… .not to have is the beginning of desire.”
WALLACE STEVENS
from “Notes toward a Supreme Fiction”

1. GENESIS 1 & The Beginning of Desire
   1. BERESHIT - The Pivoting Point
      1. The mystery of creation
      2. Primal disintegrations
      3. Nature comes into being
      4. The belfry daydream
      5. The vertical and the horizontal
      6. Greatness and procreativeness
      7. The problem of man
      8. The hands of God
      9. Ambiguities of independence
      10. Standing upright
      11. The suspension of being
      12. The world decomposed and recomposed
      13. The experiment in form
   2. NOAH
      1. Kindness and Ecstasy
      2. The collapse of God’s project
   3. Definitions
      Contents
      Acknowledgments ix
      Introduction xi
      BERESHIT: The Pivoting Point 3
      NOAH: Kindness and Ecstasy 37
      LEKH LEKHA: Travails of Faith 72
      VA-YERA: Language and Silence 97
      HAYYEI SARAH: Vertigo - The Residue of the Akedah 12 3
      TOLEDOT: Sincerity and Authenticity 144
      VA-YETZE: Dispersions 180
      VA-YISHLAH: The Quest for Wholeness 216
      VA-YESHEV: Re-membering the Dismembered 243
      MI-KETZ: The Absence of the Imagination 284
      VA-YIGGASH: The Pit and the Rope 314
      VA-YEHI: The Beginning of Desire 352
      Notes 382
      Glossary 422
      Bibliography 427
      Index 431

Acknowledgments

The genesis of this book was in the loving teaching of my parents, Rabbi Dr. and Mrs. Wolf Gottlieb, whose Torah of life animates me to this day. Many teachers have opened up for me the depths of Torah, among them, Rabbi Shmuel Sperber z7, Rabbi Chaim Brovender, and Rabbi Daniel Epstein, whose scholarship and imagination inspired me to explore my own resources in learning Torah. Friends and students have been a source of insight and of warm support. I especially thank David Shulman, who responded to the manuscript with extraordinary understanding, grace, and enthusiasm. Susan Handelman, Baruch Hochman, Micha Odenheimer, Susan Shapiro, Debbie Weissman, and Linda Zisquit read some chapters and made illuminating comments. Other people helped in other ways, among them Julie Greenblatt, Diane Levenberg, Paul Mandel, Tessa Manoim, and Eva Weiss. I am grateful to Tamar Ross for many stimulating conversations, not directly on Genesis, and for encouraging me to begin a career in Torah teaching; to my late uncle, Rabbi Moshe Rosen z"l, for his constant interest and wisdom; to Freema Gottlieb, my sister and friend; to Judy Goldstein, for her cheerful readiness to help in computer crises; to Fern Seckbach for indexing; to the staff of JPS, especially Diane W. Zuckerman. Ellen Frankel has been an ideal editor, scholarly and sympathetic and unfailingly enthusiastic.

“I have learned from all my teachers, and from my students most of all” (Ethics of the Fathers). I am deeply grateful to the many students who have responded with passion and insight, in class and after class, to my teaching. I wish to thank the Littauer Foundation for its financial support. My book is dedicated to my husband, Eric, whose love and encouragement created space for thinking and writing. It is also dedicated to our children, Bracha, Moshe, and Avraham; their life and growth have brought us much joy.

Translations from the Tanakh are reprinted by permission of The Jewish Publication Society. All other translations from Hebrew texts are my own work.

Excerpts from Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino, copyright © 1983 by Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino; English translation copyright © 1985 by Harcourt Brace & Company. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company. Copyright © by Palomar S.r.l., reprinted with the permission of Wylie, Aitken & Stone, Inc.

Excerpts from Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens, copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf Inc. and Faber and Faber Ltd.

Lines from "Sailing to Byzantium, are from The Poems of W.B. Yeats: A New Edition, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright © 1928 by Macmillan Publishing Company, renewed 1956 by Georgie Yeats. Reprinted with permission of Macmillan Publishing Company.

Lines from The Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke, copyright © 1985, translated by Stephen Mitchell. Reprinted by permission of the translator.