G-d's Blueprint for Civilization

10/17/2025

This week we begin once again the annual cycle of reading the Torah. It is a beautiful opportunity to commit to reading the parsha each week, completing the entire Torah in one year. If you have never done it before, now is the perfect time to start. And if you have done it before, do it again, for every time you will reveal new depths and new lessons.

The Torah tells the story of the Jewish people — their birth, slavery, exodus, and journey through the desert, ending with Moses’ death just before entering the Promised Land.

But the story of the Jews does not actually begin until the third portion, Lech Lecha, when we meet the first Jew, Abraham. The first two portions, Bereishit and Noach, are not yet the story of the Jews; they are the story of humanity.

From this perspective, if the Torah is G-d’s vision for the Jewish people, these opening portions are his vision for civilization.

The Talmud teaches that there are two great covenants in the Torah: the Mosaic covenant — G-d’s covenant with the Jewish people, expressed through the 613 mitzvot — and the Noahide covenant — G-d’s covenant with all humanity, expressed through seven universal moral laws: the prohibitions against murder, theft, adultery, cruelty to animals, blasphemy, and idolatry, and the responsibility to create a just society.

But the Noahide covenant appears only next week, in Noach, after the Flood, when G-d renews his relationship with humanity. Bereishit, then, one might say, is even more foundational. It is not yet about covenants, but about creation itself.

What is G-d’s vision for civilization and for creation itself?

As G-d creates Adam and Eve, he gives them three instructions. Perhaps these are his blueprint for humanity:

“He placed him in the Garden of Eden, to work it and to guard it.” (Genesis 2:15)

The first principle the Torah teaches about humanity is that we are here to work — to create, to build, to make an impact.

If we only benefit from the world that G-d created, we remain mere creations. But when we build, create, and work, we become G-d-like — finishing and completing the creation he began. We become, as the Talmud writes, “G-d’s partner in creation.” 

Work, then, is not only a way to make a living, but a way to connect to and emulate G-d. As the Midrash teaches: “Just as G-d builds worlds, so too must you build worlds." That is why even in the Garden of Eden, where food was abundant, Adam was still tasked “to work the land.”

“It is not good for man to be alone, I shall make for him a partner.” (Genesis 2:18)

The second lesson G-d teaches us is that man and woman should marry. The Torah describes how Eve was taken from Adam’s rib, and G-d commanded them to unite as one.

But why was Eve created from Adam's rib? Why didn't G-d create her at the same time he created Adam and then instruct them to marry?

The Midrash explains that in this week’s parsha, G-d is not only telling us to marry, he is also telling us how to marry.

The Torah is teaching that in marriage, we must view and treat our spouse as part of our very being. Without them, we are incomplete. We must love and honor them as a “bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.”

“Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and conquer it.” (Genesis 1:28)

The third and final instruction for civilization is that we should have children, to bring life into the world.

G-d created a vast and beautiful world, but it is up to human beings to fill it with meaning, to reveal the divinity within it.

In order for G-d’s world to have purpose, he needs us to have children, who will fill the world with the goodness of mitzvot and the light of Torah, extending G-d’s presence into every corner of the earth.