Letters to Auntie Fori The 5000-Year History of the Jewish People and Their Faith

Chapter 1 No. 1 Dearest Auntie Fori, So you are now ninety-one years old, a great and wonderful age. And the Jewish people, of whom you are a part, are more than five and a half thousand years old. According to the Jewish calendarthe oldest calendar in the worldthis present year is the year 5759. The Five Books of Moses, the core of the Jewish Bible, begin with the story of Creation, which, based on the Biblical narrative, is calculated by Orthodox Jews as having taken place 5759 years ago. That narrative begins in the most precise way, which any historian could envy: (I will use in these letters the seventeenth-century King James version, on which all schoolchildren, myself included, were brought up in England half a century ago): 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' The Bible goes on to say that the Creation took God six days, during which time he created day and night, land and water, grass and trees, sun and moon, 'great whales, and every living creature'including cattleand man. 'God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female created he them.' He then blessed the man and the woman and told them: 'Be fruitful, and multiply.' Thisas recorded in the Book of Genesis, chapter 1, verse 28was thus God's first command to man and woman. He then told them to 'replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.' Next he gave them all the herbs and the fruit of every tree, to be their food. 'And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.' Six days had passed since the start of creation. On the seventh day God rested 'from all his work'. His day of rest is the origin of the Sabbath, which Moses was to institute during the exodus from Egypt in around 1250 BC. Every week of the year, every year of their lives, Jewsstarting at sunset on Friday and going on until sunset on Saturdayare told to rest also. Practising Jews do no work that day, do not drive cars or carry money or transact business or turn on lights, or cook, because all these activities constitute work. The story of God having created man and woman during the six days of creation is how the Bible beginsin verses 26-27 of chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis. The Bible continues, however, with a different version of the story. According to this second version, in the aftermath of creation, and following his day of rest, plants and herbs were in the earth but had not yet grown, because it had not rained. God, we are told, 'had not caused it to rain upon the earth because there was not a man to till the ground'. It was only then-according to verse 7 of chapter 2 of Genesisthat he formed man 'of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul'. Following the creation of manbut not yet of woman, according to this second Biblical versionGod brought rain in the form of 'a mist from the earth', and then planted a garden, the Garden of Edenin Hebrew the word eden means fruitful or delightful. God then put the man he had created into the garden. 'And out of the ground made the Lord to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.' God told the first manwhose name was Adamthat he could eat the fruit of all the trees, but that he must not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The reason which God gave was that 'in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die'. God then formed 'every beast of the field and every fowl of the air', after which Adam gave them allGilbert, Martin is the author of 'Letters to Auntie Fori The 5000-Year History of the Jewish People and Their Faith', published 2002 under ISBN 9780805241884 and ISBN 0805241884.