Simchat Torah has just passed, and as we restart the cycle of reading the Torah, its worth noting something about the way our primary Jewish text begins. “B’reishit bara elokim et hashamyim v’et haaretz.” In the beginning, G-d created the heavens (waters) and the earth. But How curious that Hebrew grammer places the word for created, ‘bara,’ second… A more direct translation in the correct order emphasizes the creation act: “In the beginning, created…”
The first thing in the most sacred text in the world is creativity. In the tzim tzum of the ‘beginning’ came the ideation, the notion of nations, of imagining everything from clouds to the human genome. We marvel at everything that came next, which is a fascinating study of form and technique. But the real breakthough was the creative act, and HaShem the artist.
There’s something irresistibly charming about Shakespeare’s works performed by miniature plastic figurines, an art form to which Dov Weinstein, Director of the Tiny Ninja Theater Company, is utterly dedicated. But when Weinstein was invited to perform at the London Limmud conference, his creativity ran even further amok. He somehow connected a phrase from the famed Balcony scene Romeo and Juliet, translated into Hebrew for the Acco Festival, with the opening phrase of the Babylonian Talmud, “M’Imatai.”
