A New World after Destruction
The Torah begins with words we all know:
“בראשית ברא אלקים את השמים ואת הארץ” — “In the beginning, Hashem created the heavens and the earth.”
(Bereishit 1:1)
But there is a small word in the opening chapter that deserves our attention: ויהי — vayehi.
On the first day, the Torah says:
“ויאמר אלקים יהי אור ויהי אור” — “Hashem said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”
And then:
“ויהי ערב ויהי בקר, יום אחד” — “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”
(Bereishit 1:3, 5)
The word vayehi means “and there was” or “and it came to be.” But why “and”? An “and” connects what is happening now with something that came before. Yet this is the beginning of Creation. What came before?
Chazal noticed this very point. In Bereishit Rabbah (3:9), Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon observes that the Torah does not say “yehi erev” — “let there be evening” — but “vayehi erev” — “and there was evening.” Rabbi Abahu then gives a remarkable teaching:
“מלמד שהיה בורא עולמות ומחריבן עד שברא את אלו” — Hashem was creating worlds and destroying them until He created these.
The Midrash gives us a profound way of understanding that small word vayehi. Before the world as we know it, there were other worlds. They came and went. And then Hashem created this world.
A world can come to an end, and yet creation can begin again.
That is a lesson not only about Creation. It is also a lesson about life.
The Torah tells us:
“כי שבע יפול צדיק וקם” — “For a righteous person falls seven times and rises.”
(Mishlei 24:16)
The greatness of a person is not that he never falls. It is that he rises again.
Our people have learned this lesson through terrible suffering.
Since October 7, 2023 (Simchat Torah), when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, murdered more than a thousand people and abducted approximately 250 people to Gaza, our people have endured enormous loss and suffering.
And the war did not remain confined to Gaza. Since that Simchat Torah, Israel has faced attacks and fighting on multiple fronts — from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as well as direct attacks from Iran. Israel has been forced to defend itself against threats coming from many directions.
Lives have been lost. Families have been shattered. Communities have been uprooted. Countless people continue to carry wounds that will not easily heal.
We must mourn those who were murdered. We must remember those who gave their lives. We must stand beside their families and never minimize their suffering.
But mourning cannot be the end of our story.
Bereishit teaches us that destruction does not have to be the final word.
The world can be rebuilt.
The new world does not erase the old one. We carry its memories with us. We carry the names of those we lost.
We carry the lessons of what happened.
But we must also build.
We must build an Israel that is stronger, more united, more responsible for one another, and more deeply rooted in the Torah and values that have sustained our people throughout the generations.
This is not a call to forget the past. It is precisely because we remember that we have a responsibility to the future.
There is another remarkable connection in the Torah itself.
The Torah ends with “לעיני כל ישראל” — “before the eyes of all Israel.” These are the final words of the Torah, after everything that Israel has experienced: the Exodus from Egypt, the journey through the wilderness, the giving of the Torah, the struggles, the failures, the victories and the losses.
The Torah’s story reaches its conclusion — and yet it does not really end.
Immediately, we return to the beginning:
“בראשית ברא אלקים את השמים ואת הארץ.”
The Torah ends — and begins again.
There is a profound message in this. Even after everything that has happened, there is always a בראשית — a new beginning.
The story of Israel does not end with what has already happened. It continues with what we do next.
Perhaps that is the message we need most today.
We cannot change what happened. We cannot bring back those we lost. But we can help determine what comes next.
And this is particularly important as we approach elections in Israel.
We are standing after a period of enormous destruction and suffering. Whatever our views and whatever choices we make, we are now faced with one central responsibility: to ask how we can best build a better future for Israel.
The past has already happened. We cannot undo it. We cannot rebuild the world that existed before the destruction. Whatever we build now will necessarily be built upon the ruins and the lessons of what came before.
That is the nature of a new beginning.
Our task is not to remain focused on what has been, but to look ahead and ask what kind of future we want to build, and what will best enable us to build it.
The lesson of vayehi is that what comes after destruction need not be merely a return to what was. A new beginning is possible.
We cannot undo the destruction we have experienced. But we can determine what comes next.
We can remember the past without being imprisoned by it.
We can mourn what was lost while taking responsibility for what will be.
And after all that has happened to us, we must continue to believe that a better future can be created — and do our part to build it.
