Bereshit: How to Read the Beginning

Everyone knows how it begins. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. It is one of the most famous opening lines ever written, recited and painted and set to music for thousands of years. And yet most of us have read it the way we read a road sign — once, fast, on the way to somewhere else. Almost no one has been shown how to actually read it.

This guide is the first in a series walking through the books of the Hebrew Bible. So it does two things at once: it begins at the beginning, with the very first word of the Torah, and it uses that word to teach something larger — how the Jewish tradition reads its own scripture. The short answer is this: the tradition reads the Torah slowly and on several levels at once, treating every word as deliberate and expecting a verse to hold more than one true meaning at the same time.

That single habit changes everything. Once you have it, the first line stops being a road sign and becomes a doorway.

What does “Bereshit” mean?

Bereshit (בְּרֵאשִׁית) is the first word of the Torah, and it is usually translated “In the beginning.” It is built on the Hebrew root reshit, which means “beginning” or “first.” In Jewish tradition a book takes its name from its opening word, so this same word is also the name of the entire first book — the book English calls Genesis. When a Jewish reader says “Bereshit,” they may mean the word, the first verse, the weekly portion, or the whole book.

Already there is something worth slowing down for. The Torah does not begin with a date or a name or a law. It begins with time itself starting. That choice is not an accident, and noticing it is the first move in learning to read.

How does the Jewish tradition read the Torah?

Here is the heart of it. In this tradition, scripture is not read the way you read a newspaper, skimming for the facts and moving on. It is read on the assumption that every word was chosen on purpose — that a repeated phrase, an odd spelling, even a single extra letter might be there to teach something. So the reading is slow, attentive, and unhurried, and it expects depth rather than a single flat meaning.

The classic name for this layered approach is PaRDeS, and it is the most useful tool you can carry into any verse.

What are the four levels of reading (PaRDeS)?

PaRDeS is a traditional way of describing four levels on which a verse can be read. The word itself is an acronym formed from the first letter of each level — and, pleasingly, pardes is also a Hebrew word for “orchard” or “garden,” the picture of a place you wander through and keep discovering. The four levels are Pshat, Remez, Drash, and Sod, and the tradition holds that they can all be true at once.

Let’s take them one at a time, using the very first verse as the example.

Pshat — the plain meaning

Pshat (פְּשָׁט) is the plain, straightforward, surface meaning — what the words actually say in their context. It is the foundation, and it always comes first. You cannot build the higher floors without it.

The pshat of the opening verse is simply this: God created the heavens and the earth at the beginning. That is the ground you stand on. A reading that contradicts the plain sense without good reason has usually wandered off, so even the most soaring interpretation is meant to keep its feet on the pshat.

Remez — the hint

Remez (רֶמֶז) means “hint.” This is the level where the text points beyond its surface — through a pattern, an allusion, a connection to another verse, a number, or a quiet echo. A remez says: there is more here than the plain words let on; follow the thread.

A gentle example: the very first letter of the Torah is the Hebrew letter bet (בּ), the second letter of the alphabet, not the first. One classic observation treats that as a hint worth noticing — why not begin at the very beginning, with aleph? Readers have drawn lessons from it for centuries. The point for now is not the answer but the move: a small oddity is treated as a signpost.

Drash — the interpretive reading

Drash (דְּרַשׁ) is the homiletic or interpretive level — the reading that draws out a teaching, a moral, a story that fills a gap. This is the home of Midrash (מִדְרָשׁ), the vast body of classical Jewish interpretation that expands on the text, asks what it leaves unsaid, and answers with insight and imagination. Drash is where the tradition does much of its teaching.

A drash on the beginning might ask: why did God create the world at all, or what it means that a human being arrives last in the sequence, after everything else is ready. These are not questions the plain text answers — and drash steps in to explore them. (When I retell a midrash here, I am paraphrasing its spirit in my own words, not quoting a line.)

Sod — the secret

Sod (סוֹד) means “secret.” This is the mystical, innermost level — the layer explored by Kabbalah (קַבָּלָה), the inner dimension of the Torah. Sod reads the text as a window onto the deepest questions of existence: how the infinite relates to the finite, what the letters and their shapes conceal, what is really happening beneath the surface of the world.

Traditionally this level was approached last and with great care, by students well grounded in the others first — not as gatekeeping, but the way you learn arithmetic before calculus. We name it here so you know the orchard has a far end, even if most of our walking happens nearer the gate.

Why does the Torah begin with creation?

This is one of the most famous questions in all of Jewish commentary, and it comes from Rashi — Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, the eleventh-century French scholar whose commentary sits beside the text in nearly every traditional edition. Rashi opens his entire commentary on the Torah by asking, in effect: why does the Torah begin with the creation of the world at all? If the Torah is fundamentally a book of teaching and commandment for the people of Israel, it could have started much later, with the first law given to them.

One classic reading of Rashi’s answer runs like this: by opening with creation, the Torah establishes that the whole world belongs to God, its Maker — and so God is free to give any land to whichever people He chooses. It heads off, at the very first verse, an accusation that Israel had no right to its land. (This is the traditional summary; the original is Rashi’s, paraphrased here.)

But notice the deeper lesson hiding inside the question, and this is why we begin a Torah series with it: Rashi is teaching you that the opening is making a claim, not merely reporting history. The very fact that the Torah chose to start here, rather than there, is information. To read well is to keep asking why this, why now, why in this order — exactly the slow, every-word-counts attention we began with.

The Torah as the world’s blueprint

There is one more classic image worth carrying with you, and it reframes what you are even reading. The Midrash offers a striking picture — I’m paraphrasing its spirit — in which God “looked into the Torah and created the world,” the way an architect looks into a plan and then builds the house.

Sit with how strange and beautiful that is. It means the tradition does not treat the Torah as a history of the world, a record written down afterwards about things that happened. It treats it as something closer to the world’s blueprint — the design the world was built from. On this reading, the Torah is not describing reality from the outside; it is the deep pattern reality is woven on. (This is one classic, much-loved reading, not a plain statement of the text — hold it as an image to think with.)

You do not have to settle whether you believe that literally to feel what it does. It tells you why the tradition reads so slowly. If these words are the blueprint of everything, then no word is wasted, and every line rewards a second look.

How to start reading for yourself

You do not need Hebrew, a degree, or a teacher in the room to begin — though a teacher will take you further when you’re ready. Here is a sane way in.

1. Read it out loud, slowly. Take just the first few verses of Genesis. Read them aloud, once for the sound and once for the sense. Speed is the enemy of this kind of reading; slowness is the whole skill.
2. Find the pshat first. Before any clever interpretation, ask plainly: what do these words actually say? Get the plain meaning solid. Everything else is built on it.
3. Notice what’s odd, and ask why. A repeated word, a strange order, a gap in the story, a detail that seems unnecessary. Don’t rush to answer — just collect the questions. Half of reading well is learning what to notice.
4. Bring in a guide for the deeper levels. For remez, drash, and sod you’ll want help. A good study edition with Rashi and selected midrash, or a trustworthy class, opens doors you can’t find alone. The tradition was always meant to be learned in conversation.
5. Let one verse be enough. You are not trying to finish. Sitting with three verses for twenty minutes will teach you more than racing through three chapters. Depth, not distance.

Where this series is going

This is the first step of a long, good walk. The Hebrew Bible — the Tanach (תַּנַ”ךְ), itself an acronym for its three parts: Torah (the Five Books), Nevi’im (the Prophets), and Ketuvim (the Writings) — is vast, and we mean to wander through it slowly, the way it asks to be read.

We write here as learners in the tradition, not as authorities — fellow travellers a few steps in, trying to share the path honestly. If the first verse can hold this much, imagine the rest. Take the habit you’ve picked up here — read slowly, expect more than one true thing, ask why this and why now — and bring it with you. The orchard is large, and the gate is open. Keep reading.