So tell me, where does the Torah begin? Or better yet, where should it begin? Obviously the Torah begins, “in the beginning,” with Bereshit. This seems like an obvious question and a simplistic answer, but it isn’t. The question of how we view the Torah is really a much bigger question of how we view our identity. What is it that makes us who we are?

Rashi, the foremost medieval commentator on the Torah, asks this very question on the opening verse in Genesis. “Why start here,” he wonders? The very first statement in his commentary is a quote from one Rabbi Yitzhak who tells us that the Torah could have begun with chapter twelve of Exodus, in today’s Torah portion – Hahodesh hazeh lachem – “This month shall be to you the beginning of the months.” According to Rabbi Yitzhak everything before this – the entire book of Genesis, the birth of Moses, the enslavement of the Israelites and the opening chapters of Exodus are superfluous. Judaism really begins with the first commandment which God gives to Israel. Chapter twelve of Exodus describes how the Pesach offering was to be prepared and sacrificed and how Passover would be observed in later generations. There are no less than 16 mitzvot, commandments, relating to the celebration of Passover in this chapter. For Rabbi Yitzhak, then, the Torah is first and foremost a book of rules.

At first glance Rabbi Yitzhak’s comment may seem strange. Chapter twelve of Exodus is prosaic at best; it is a strange way to introduce a way of life that’s supposed to uplift and inspire us. And it is certainly more appropriate to start off with “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” and “in the image of God He created them.” These statements contain a transcendent, powerful and universal message that anyone can relate to – and they’re a lot more inspiring then, “Set aside a lamb on the tenth day,” “place its blood on the door posts of your house with hyssop,” or “eat the lamb before sunrise.”

Chapter twelve of Exodus reads more like a cook book than a book of spiritual insights. Yet these were the first acts which the Jewish people were supposed to perform as they asserted their freedom from Egypt. By suggesting that we should begin with chapter twelve of Exodus, Rabbi Yitzhak was really trying to tell us that Judaism is defined by mitzvot, by commandments and actions. It is at this moment that the Israelites become a people because they shared in the common performance of God’s instructions.

So why, then, do we begin with Bereshit and not Hahodesh hazeh lechem? Rashi quotes a verse from the book of Psalms (111:6) to answer this question: “God reveals to His people His powerful works in giving them the heritage of nations.” The commentator goes on to explain that the Torah begins with Bereshit for political reasons. There would come a time, he suggests, when other nations would accuse the Jewish people of being thieves and stealing the land of Israel from the seven nations who originally lived there. The Torah begins with the story of creation and Abraham’s covenant in order to make it clear that just as God created the earth, God has a right to give the land to whomever God sees fit.

Without getting into the political implications of Rashi’s comment and whether or not God gave us the land of Israel, I think we find an important distinction here. There are really two ways of defining our identity. One is mitzvah and the other is memory.

What is it that makes us who we are? Sociologists proclaim that human beings are a product of their environment. Biologists claim that we are a product of our genetic material. Judaism, on the other hand, says that human beings are a product of their actions. It is what we do that makes us who we are. And that is really what Rashi is trying to tell us here. By suggesting that we could begin reading the Torah from chapter twelve of Exodus, Rashi is telling us that first and foremost the Torah is not history, or memory but a book that instructs us in how to live and serve God. It is actions that define us as members of the covenant.

Of course, one can’t ignore history either. The question of how we arrived here is directly related to the question of who we are. But in the end memory only defines where we come from and not necessarily where we are going. Our future is defined by our actions. A person who feels Jewish in his heart but never acts on those feelings is not really much of a Jew. Jewish life cannot survive on cardiac Judaism. A convert to Judaism, on the other hand, who does not share all our communal identity, can still become a faithful member of the Jewish people. What defines the convert is not memory but mitzvah. This person can still say that he believes in the god of our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob because he chooses to live by the covenant of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.

It is not what we feel or think that ultimately defines our character. It’s what a person does. You may remember that during the 1976 presidential campaign then-Governor Jimmy Carter made a comment in which he admitted that he had “committed adultery in his heart many times.” At the time Carter’s comment caused quite a stir. Of course in light of our more recent presidential history Carter’s comments seem almost quaint. But Jimmy Carter believed that attitude is just as important as action. I couldn’t disagree with him more. Of course having a good attitude is a good thing. But in the end, however, I am not concerned by what a person feels in his or her heart; I am concerned that they do the right thing. That is all we can judge and all we can know.

And in the end it is what we do that influences who we become. Sefer Hahinuch, a fourteenth century work which explains each of the 613 commandments in the Torah offers the following advice: “You should know that a person is influenced in accordance with his actions. His heart and all his thoughts are always drawn after the deeds in which he is occupied, whether they are good or bad. Thus even a person who is thoroughly wicked in his heart….if he will arouse his spirit and set his striving and his occupation toward the performance of Torah and mitzvot, even if he doesn’t do them for the right reasons, he will eventually veer off toward the good because after one’s actions is the heart drawn.”

So we begin reading the essence of the Torah this morning. Chapter twelve begins, “This month is the beginning of months for you.” There’s a midrashic legend which claims that the Israelites had ceased serving the Egyptians months before the original Passover. The Egyptians were so preoccupied with the plagues that they failed to force the Israelites to go out to work each day. The Israelites, however, were not yet free even though they weren’t being oppressed and weren’t forced to serve Pharaoh. They only became a people when they acted in a way that asserted their independence and separate identity. The people of Israel only became a nation when they were prepared to take a leap of action. It wasn’t enough to believe in God or to feel that they didn’t have to go to work – they had to be prepared to trust God and act on their trust.

In Pirke Avot, in the Ethics of the Fathers, we learn: Lo hamidrash Ha’ikar eleh hama’aseh, “It is not teachings that are essential but deeds.” In the end we are judged by the small daily deeds we perform and the actions to which we commit ourselves. Our nature, our character, our disposition, our temperament, and our attitude are formed by our day to day activities.

What does it take to be a Jew or to be a mensch? To paraphrase the old NIKE motto: “Just do it!” We are what we do.

Shabbat Shalom