Junctures of Light - Bereishit

This is the first of a series of sonnets based on the weekly Torah portion and the corresponding chapter of Tanya.

The Tanya, written by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad, is sometimes called the "written Torah" of Chabad. The main part of the Tanya consists of 53 chapters, corresponding to the number of Torah portions that are read weekly throughout the year. In this sequence, each sonnet looks at the Torah portion for the week in the light of the corresponding chapter of Tanya.

The first portion of Bereishit (Genesis) describes the creation of the world, which begins with the creation of light and the division of light from darkness. The first chapter of the Tanya begins to discuss the division between good and evil in the human soul.

Upon a world of darkness and of waste
G‑d spoke the word of light, and light blazed forth.
Then between light and dark, and heaven and earth,
He set up boundaries not to be effaced.
But when to humankind His thought gave birth,
When he set His likeness as a seal
On us, that all things He had made might feel
Our sway, and we ourselves might know our worth,
Then in earth’s clay heaven’s breath He did instill,
Two souls He fashioned for us, one divine,
One beastly. Good and less-good thus combine
In us. But we are summoned to reveal
G‑d’s presence, as our evil we refine,
And on a world of darkness flash light’s sign.