Guest Columnists
5770 Years Ago

So I'm working on selling ads for our yearly calendar, and I approach a local store owner with a form and a copy of last year's edition. I show her the beautiful full-color layout and all the Jewish pictures and art spread throughout the pages. When she finishes flipping through it, she stops and asks, "What is the number 5769 on the front?"

I responded quite simply, "The amount of years since creation."

There was silence.

"You're not serious?" she asks.

She wasn't sure if I still lived in the dark ages or was in complete denial – and I was asking her to trust me with her money?

There's no 30-second sound bite that would be able to answer a millennium-old question. I went home, put my thoughts on paper, and dropped it off at her business.

Because, really! Have you ever heard of carbon dating? Aren't there stars a millions light-years away? Have you ever heard the word "dinosaurs"?

It is kind of hard to believe in the Torah when you get stuck on the validity of the first chapter – no, the first sentence.

Well, I ask you to clear your mind and give me a second to present my case.

Let us take things at the face value. G‑d created the world in six days. Adam and Eve are standing around in the Garden of Eden. Now what does that garden look like? Remember, the world is only six days old and grass was created on the third day…

Was it a garden? A field with seeds? Small little buds looking like a nursery? Doesn't seem too exotic or paradise-like!

On that train of thought, when they ate from the tree – how was there fruit if it was only a three-day-old tree? How many rings were in that tree? And wait – how did Adam and Eve reach to get it, or, for that sake, even walk, if they were two hours old? And that snake…he was two days old…boy, did they grow up quick.

We must be missing something.

When you sit down and start reading your favorite novel, the first chapter starts off with John, a young 32-year-old stock broker, and his wife Amy, an interior designer with a degree from Princeton, walking up their driveway into their two-story colonial in downtown Boston. The book continues for another 244 pages and occurs over a five month period.

But when you get to the bottom of page one – how old is the story line?

It depends. The author thinks that, for the sake of this story, it is a few seconds old. But in truth, both John and Amy have a few decades behind them. The fact that they were born, and grew up, and went to school, and met each other, and then married, and bought a house are all relevant parts of the story, but those details are placed throughout the following pages as the author deems necessary for the narrative. Sometimes you get those details and understand how they tie into the story, and sometimes they remain a mystery.

But although the characters are 32 years old, the story is only a few seconds old at this point!

These two characters have a long and detailed history, but the book doesn't actually begin until the author chooses to lift the curtain as they walk up their driveway.

So, too, when G‑d created the world, he slowly lifted the curtain over six days to reveal a rich and complete world with a long history and much planning that went into every detail.

And in that story line there were dinosaurs, and trees with rings, and animals maturing, and continents shifting, and people growing up, and light traveling great distances across the galaxies. And at the right moment – exactly 5770 years ago – He opened the book to page one.