To soul the world – B’reshit
What did God do when He had finished creating?
The Torah says vayinafash, which is connected with nefesh, a soul. Pinhas Peli says in one of his essays on the Bible that what God did was that He souled the world, He gave the world a soul.
There are three possibilities when it comes to interpreting the Creation story: one, it is a scientific study of origins; two, it is a set of fairy tales; three, it was neither scientific or magical but spiritual.
Because of the word vayinafash, we are not dealing with inanimate wood and stones, nor with poetical Dreamtime hymns, but with spiritual principle. Because the world now had a soul it began to function, move and pulsate.
A simple analogy: when man turns on the switch, the machinery begins to operate. Because God instilled a soul into His world, it became a living thing.
