Weekly Devar Torah from Rabbi Nourollah

בראשית — Seeing the Whole Page

One of the first great lessons of the Torah is not only about sin. It is about הכרת הטוב — recognizing the good that we receive.

Before Hashem created Chava, the Torah tells us:

״לֹא טוֹב הֱיוֹת הָאָדָם לְבַדּוֹ״

“It is not good for man to be alone.”

Adam was missing something. Hashem gave him a wife, a companion, an עֵזֶר כְּנֶגְדּוֹ. She was a tremendous gift.

Yet after the sin, when Hashem asked Adam what happened, Adam answered:

״הָאִשָּׁה אֲשֶׁר נָתַתָּה עִמָּדִי, הִוא נָתְנָה לִּי מִן הָעֵץ וָאֹכֵל.״

Rashi tells us: ״כאן כפר בטובה״ — here Adam denied the good. Chazal actually describe Adam HaRishon as כפוי טובה because of this response.

Think about it. Adam did not necessarily say something factually untrue. Chava did give him the fruit.

So where was his mistake?

His mistake was what he chose to focus on.

Hashem had given him this enormous gift called a wife. Someone to share his life with. Someone because of whom he was no longer alone. But suddenly, because of one failure, all Adam could see was:

״האשה אשר נתתה עמדי״ — Look what the woman You gave me did to me!

Yesterday she was the greatest blessing of his life. Today, because something went wrong, the entire gift disappeared from his vision.

That is כפיות טובה.

The black dot

Imagine I hold up a large, beautiful white sheet of paper.

In the middle I put one small black dot.

Then I ask everyone, “What do you see?”

Almost everybody answers:

“A black dot.”

But why?

The black dot may be less than one percent of the page.

Ninety-nine percent is white!

Why didn’t anybody say, “I see a beautiful white page”?

Because this is human nature.

Our eyes are attracted to what is wrong.

A person can do a hundred favors for us. He can be there for us for ten years. He can help us, support us, respect us and care for us.

Then one day he says the wrong thing.

Suddenly—

That’s all we see.

The hundred good things become the white paper, and the one mistake becomes the black dot.

A husband can forget twenty years of devotion because of one argument.

A wife can forget a hundred acts of kindness because of one insensitive comment.

A child can forget everything his parents sacrificed because of one thing they refused him.

A community member can receive Torah, tefillah, meals, classes, friendship and support for years—and then one time something doesn’t go exactly his way, and suddenly all he sees is the black dot.

This was the danger revealed already with אדם הראשון.

יוצר אור ובורא חושך

Every morning we say:

״יוֹצֵר אוֹר וּבוֹרֵא חֹשֶׁךְ״

Hashem forms light and creates darkness. The words originate in Yeshayahu 45:7

Why do we mention חושך while thanking Hashem for the new morning?

Perhaps there is a powerful message here.

We naturally recognize Hashem when there is אור—when business is good, the family is healthy, the children are doing well, the shidduch happens, the prayer is answered.

But what happens when there is a little חושך?

Suddenly we forget all the אור.

Therefore, every morning a Jew declares:

יוצר אור ובורא חושך.

Ribbono Shel Olam, I recognize You not only in the light. Even when I see darkness, I know it is not outside of You. ״אני ה׳ עושה כל אלה״ — everything ultimately comes from You.

And perhaps that is the deeper avodah of הכרת הטוב:

To train our eyes to see אור.

Not because there is no darkness.

Not because people never disappoint us.

Not because life has no black dots.

But because the black dot is not the whole page.

Sometimes we become almost spiritually blind. The אור is all around us, but we don’t see it because our eyes are fixed on the one dark spot.

And this is important: אור does not literally derive linguistically from בור. But as a derash, we can say that even when a person feels he is in a בור, a pit, he must search for the אור that Hashem has placed within his situation. Yosef can be in a בור today and become the ruler of Egypt tomorrow. What appears to us as darkness may be one chapter of a much larger story.

The lesson of Bereshit

Maybe that is why the Torah teaches us this lesson immediately at the beginning of humanity.

Before we learn how to build the world, we must learn how to look at the world.

Don’t become a person who remembers every insult and forgets every favor.

Don’t remember the one time your spouse disappointed you and forget the thousand times they stood beside you.

Don’t remember the one thing your parents didn’t give you and forget everything they sacrificed.

And above all, don’t look at Hashem’s world and see only what you are missing.

Every morning, look again.

יוצר אור ובורא חושך.

There may be some חושך.

But there is so much אור.

הכרת הטוב means recognizing the whole white page, not spending our life staring at the black dot.

And perhaps that should be our first kabbalah after the Yamim Nora’im, as we begin the Torah again with בראשית:

ריבונו של עולם, תן לנו עיניים לראות את הטוב.
תן לנו לב להכיר טובה.
שלא נהיה כפויי טובה, אלא מכירי טובה.
שנראה את האור שבמשפחה שלנו, את האור שבחברים שלנו, את האור שבקהילה שלנו, ואת האור שאתה משפיע עלינו בכל יום.

And when we learn to see that אור, we will realize:

The white part of the page was always much greater than the black dot.

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