Posted on October 1, 2026 in Big Ideas from the Torah
People argue about the Torah for the wrong reasons.
I’ve heard it my whole career. The creation story can’t be literally true. The timeline doesn’t match science. Did the flood really happen? Did the Exodus? People bring the Torah to court and demand it answer charges it was never trying to defend.
Here’s what nobody told them: the Torah isn’t interested in those questions. It never was.
Rashi, the greatest Torah commentator who ever lived, opens his entire commentary with a provocation from Rabbi Isaac: Why doesn’t the Torah begin with Exodus 12, the first commandment given to the Jewish people? If Torah is a law book, shouldn’t it start with the first law?
Rabbi Isaac is asking something radical: What is this book actually for?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l spent a lifetime answering that question. Torah, he writes, is not a book of history, even though it includes history. It is not a book of science. It is, first and last, a book about how to live. Everything in it, every narrative, every law, every repetition that drives modern readers crazy, is there for one purpose: ethical and spiritual instruction.
The Torah never deviates from its central obsession: What shall I do? How shall I live? What kind of person am I trying to become?
Before God could tell us how to act, He had to tell us who we are.
Genesis is the answer to that prior question. We are beings created in the image of a free, creative, morally serious God. We are not animals driven by instinct or pawns of fate. We are the one creature capable of asking whether what we are about to do is right, and then choosing differently. That capacity is what it means to bear God’s image.
The story of Cain isn’t about sibling rivalry. It’s about the question God asks before the first murder ever happens: “Why are you angry? If you do right, will you not be accepted?” God is not asking for information. He is telling Cain, and every reader since, that the next moment is still open. You can still choose.
That is the Torah’s most radical and most merciful insistence. In a culture that tells us we are shaped by our trauma, our biology, our circumstances, the Torah insists on something else entirely. We are free.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Amy
About Rabbi Rader
Rabbi Amy Rader is the Founder and Executive Director of the Neshamah Institute in Boca Raton, a vibrant Jewish community offering meaningful Jewish education for kids, Bar and Bat Mitzvah preparation, High Holiday services, and inspiring Jewish events. Ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Rader brings over 25 years of experience helping families connect deeply with Judaism in modern, authentic ways.