Parshas Bereishis: A Fresh Rise
We just packed away the sukkah walls. The last crumbs of honey cake are brushed off the counter. Three straight weeks of Yomim Tovim — Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkos, Simchas Torah — are behind us.
Now comes the long stretch. Kids heading back to school. Work schedules settling in. No holidays for months. Life resumes its weekday rhythm.
But we don’t just go “back” to life as it was. The Torah begins again. With Bereishis.
In honor of this blog’s name, Lechem (לחם), let me introduce a “cousin” from the middle of the parsha: Lemech (למך). In English, their names look like they could sit right next to each other at a family meal. In Hebrew, though, the letters don’t quite match. But hey, every family has that relative who doesn’t quite seem like the rest, right?
The difference is, bread rises warm and nourishing. Cousin Lemech’s story… it’s got a lot more meat on its bones.
Chazal tell us that Lemech was blind. When he went out to hunt, his son Tuval-Cain would guide him, pointing out where to aim the bow. One day, Tuval-Cain thought he saw an animal. Lemech pulled back the string and let the arrow fly. But it wasn’t an animal he killed. It was his Elter-Elter-Elter-Elter-Zaide, Kayin, the first child ever born, the man who, centuries earlier, had killed his younger brother Hevel.
Seven generations had passed since that crime, and Hashem had promised Kayin those years of protection. Now the time was up. Blind and unknowing, Lemech became the messenger who closed Kayin’s story.
When Lemech realized what he had done, he clapped his hands together in grief. In that instant, he accidentally struck and killed his own son Tuval-Cain. One moment. Three generations: the ancient past, the broken present, the lost future.
This isn’t the story of a villain. Lemech didn’t set out to kill his great-grandfather, nor his own son. It’s a story of blindness; literal and figurative. Lemech couldn’t see with his eyes, but he also couldn’t see how past sins still lived in the present, or how grief could spill over into new harm. That’s the deeper message: we’re often blind to the way yesterday’s choices echo into today, and how our own unhealed pain can ripple into tomorrow.
For me that’s the deeper “cousin” connection. Every family has its stories, and every story has its characters. Each of us carries different memories of our siblings, our parents, our grandparents. We even have whole chapters of stories tied up with aunts, uncles, and cousins. (Bli ayin hara, I have over a hundred first cousins — no, I don’t know them all (yet) — and that’s before counting their spouses and future generations.) The important thing is that all of those stories are connected. Just like Lemech and Tuval-Cain were bound up with Kayin’s fate, so too every detail of our lives — whether we notice it right away or only seven generations later — is woven by Hashem. We don’t choose our family, immediate or extended. But we can trust that everyone He places in our lives is there for a reason.
Sourdough works the same way. Every new loaf carries yesterday’s starter, sometimes passed down for generations. Yet no two loaves are identical. The old ferment becomes part of the new rise. So too with Bereishis. Each year we circle back to the beginning, not to erase what came before, but to fold it into a fresh start.
I don’t remember where I first heard it, but the idea stuck with me: when the Torah starts over from Bereishis each year, it’s not just a repeat. It’s an invitation to begin again on a new level. To pick up a new sefer, explore a new meforash, or learn with a new teacher or class, and see familiar words through fresh eyes.
That’s why the Torah doesn’t wait, it gives us the story of Lemech right in the very first parsha. Hashem places it here to remind us that even our deepest blindness, our heaviest family stories, are part of His plan, and that each year He invites us to begin again.
As we step out of the holiday season and into the long stretch of ordinary days, we begin with this reminder: we inherit the past, we shape the future, and even in moments of blindness Hashem lets us begin again. Bereishis isn’t just the start of the Torah. It’s the start of our story: this year, this week, right now.
Vayehi erev, vayehi boker… Today.
If something in Bereishis (or in your own story) spoke to you this week, I’d love to hear it. Feel free to share. I always enjoy learning what resonates with others.
Wishing you a year of new beginnings, of seeing familiar words and familiar faces with fresh eyes. May the stories of your family and your past become the starter for a beautiful rise ahead, and may each new chapter feel like a fresh loaf of bread.
🩵 Berke