The holiday of Simchat Torah (rejoicing of the Torah). It is the festive end to the yearly reading of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Saturday, October 17 the yearly cycle begins again with reading the first six chapters of Genesis (1:1 – 6:8).

 The Genesis creation story is a powerful myth that impacts our entire world today. This mythic story resulted in our seven day week. Unlike the lunar monthly calendar or yearly solar calendar, the seven day week does not correspond to any astronomical event. The Genesis story represents the ideas of the ancient biblical authors. At the same time, this story and other biblical myths are powerful stories that maintain the cultural attributes of the Jewish people. Thousands of years later these mythic stories continue to guide our actions and provide inspiration.

 Briefly, here is the creation story. The first three days are devoted to creating domains: light and darkness, sky by separating the water above from the water below, then earth is created by separating water and dry land to allow the creation of plants. Created during the next three days are lights (sun, moon, and stars), fish and birds, then land animals and humans. The seventh day God rested from creating and called it a holy day.

 One of the most powerful ideas of this story is creating order from chaos. This is done in the story by creating time (day and night) and creating the means to track time (sun, moon, and stars). Another is the idea of rest. How does measuring time create order? Is rest another way of creating order out of chaos? The ancients used this story to create the weekly celebration of Shabbat. How might this story inform our lives today as Humanistic Jews?

 This will be the focus of our study group