Do you think of yourself as a creative person? We generally associate creativity with artists, with painting and music and writing. Yet in a fundamental sense, every one of us is a creator.

This week we begin the Torah again, with the parsha of Bereishit and its most radical statement about the human being: that we are created b'tzelem Elokim, in the image of God. The Rishonim understand this as our intellect and our moral freedom. Yet the very first thing the Torah reveals about God is that He creates. "In the beginning, God created heaven and earth." To be made in His image is to be a creator like Him.

Some of that creativity faces outward: medicine, architecture, technology, everything that makes the world a place where human beings can live. Looking at the parsha through the lens of Pirkei Avot, Chief Rabbi Goldstein helps us begin to understand another kind of creativity. One that is more personal and more foundational.

Key Questions

• If creativity belongs to artists, what is the rest of us doing every day?

• Why is the very first thing the Torah tells us about God that He creates?

• What could it mean for a person to give birth to themselves?

• If our nature, our parents and our circumstances are given to us, how much of who we become is still ours to make?

• Why would an act of kindness require creativity?

Three years after October 7, and at great sacrifice, Israel has, thank G-d, defeated its enemies on the battlefield. But they have not given up. Now they are using the blood libel of genocide in a relentless attempt to finish what Hamas started: the destruction of Israel.

This is a call to action for the Jewish world. Here is my speech delivered at the SAZF October 7 memorial service.

Our guest that evening was Chaya Hexter, who travelled from far to be with us, carrying the story of her son Yakir, of blessed memory, and his chavruta David, who fell for Am Yisrael.

Over these three years the Israeli people have shown a bravery that words cannot do justice to. A civilian army, serving on miluim for months on end. Tens of thousands of wounded whose lives will never be the same. Bereaved families who carry that ache and still continue. The Mishnah asks us to be gibor ka'ari, brave as a lion, and Israel has truly risen like a lion to defend itself. Its victories on seven fronts are a partnership between G-d and people.

This anniversary leaves no room for complacency. What our enemies could not achieve with missiles and knives, they are now trying to achieve politically, through the genocide libel. That changes who is being called on for courage.

Israel's soldiers rose like lions. The question now is whether Jewish communities around the world will do the same.

• "As members of the South African Jewish community, we can only bow in silent humility at the awesome courage of the Israeli people."

• "A true partnership between God and people."

• "What our enemies could not achieve on the battlefields with guns and missiles and bullets and knives and savagery, they are now trying to do politically."

• "Jewish communities around the world have to summon the courage to match the courage of our brothers and sisters in Israel, who fought like lions."

• "We have to rise up like lions and not be afraid, and not cower. We are fighting because we are one people, like one people with one heart."

Self-help is one of the most popular genres of books in the world. Walk into any bookstore and the shelves are weighed down with them. Self-development, personal growth, becoming your best self.

This series has been about self-development too. Pirkei Avot is the Torah of who a person can become, what we have been calling Torah bein adam l'atzmo. But the philosophy of self-development from a Torah perspective is very different from contemporary culture. The clue to understanding is in this week's parsha.

Ha'azinu holds 43 verses of poetry that carry the entire sweep of human history: creation, free will, the failures of the early generations, the emergence of Abraham and then of the Jewish people, our own drifting, and the long road to the end of history. It is called the Shirah, the song. The verse instructing us to write it down becomes the source for writing the whole Torah, which tells you that something at the heart of this parsha holds the essence of what Torah is.

It is also read every year in the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Rav Yisrael Salanter read the famous Gemara about the three books opened on Rosh Hashanah in an astounding way, and it answers a question the commentators have been asking for many centuries. How can the Gemara say the righteous are written immediately for life, when every one of us can name righteous people who died this year?

His answer reframes what the judgment of these days is asking of us. And it reveals a radically different way of understanding what self-development is actually for.

• Self-development is one of the biggest industries in the world. What does the Torah think it is actually for?

• How can working on yourself become the very thing that blocks your growth?

• In all the generations back to Sinai, not one let the chain break. What did that cost the people who carried it?

• The Gemara says the righteous are written immediately for life. What do we do with the righteous people who died this year?

• What changes if you are not the point of your own self-improvement?