Precept upon precept, line by line reading. Week 1 Torah Portion - Bere’shiyth (Beginnings) Genesis 1:1-6:8. Translation: את Cepher

Bere'shiyth – Hebrew for “in the beginning,” the first word in the parashat is the first weekly Torah portion in the annual cycle of Torah reading. The portion covers Genesis 1:1–6:8. YHVH creates the world, and Adam and Eve. They eat fruit that Yah had forbidden them, and Yah expels them from the Garden of Eden. One of their sons, Cain, becomes the first murderer, killing his brother Abel out of jealousy. Adam and Eve, are cast out of paradise to East of Eden. Adam and Eve have other children, whose descendants populate the Earth, but each generation becomes more and more degenerate until Yah, despairing, decides to destroy humanity. Only one man, Noah, finds Yah's favor.

Precept upon precept, line by line reading. Week 2 Torah Portion - Noach (Rest) Genesis 6:9-11:32. Translation: את Cepher

יהוה instructs Noah—the only righteous man in a world consumed by violence and corruption—to build a large wooden teivah (“ark”), coated within and without with pitch. Yahuah, will wipe out all life from the face of the earth; but the ark will float upon the water, sheltering Noah and his family, and two members (male and female) of each animal species.

Rain falls for 40 days and nights, and the waters churn for 150 days more before calming and beginning to recede. The ark settles on Mount Ararat, and from its window Noah dispatches a raven, and then a series of doves, “to see if the waters were abated from the face of the earth.” When the ground dries completely—exactly one solar year after the onset of the Flood—Y commands Noah to exit the teivah and repopulate the earth.

Noah builds an altar and offers sacrifices to יהוה. Yahuah swears never again to destroy all of mankind because of their deeds, and sets the rainbow as a testimony of His new covenant with man. יהוה also commands Noah regarding the sacredness of life: murder is deemed a capital offense, and while man is permitted to eat the meat of animals, he is forbidden to eat flesh or blood taken from a living animal.

Noah plants a vineyard and becomes drunk on its produce. Two of Noah’s sons, Shem and Japheth, are blessed for covering up their father’s nakedness, while his third son, Ham, is punished for taking advantage of his debasement.

The descendants of Noah remain a single people, with a single language and culture, for ten generations. Then they defy their Creator by building a great tower to symbolize their own invincibility; יהוה confuses their language so that “one does not comprehend the tongue of the other,” causing them to abandon their project and disperse across the face of the earth, splitting into seventy nations.

This portion of Noach concludes with a chronology of the ten generations from Noah to Abram (later Abraham), and the latter’s journey from his birthplace of Ur Casdim to Charan, on the way to the land of Canaan.

Precept upon precept, line by line reading. Week 3 Torah Portion - Lech Lecha (Go Out) Genesis 12:1-17:27. Translation: את Cepher

Yahuah speaks to Abram, commanding him, “Go from your land, from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you.” There, יהוה says, he will be made into a great nation. יהוה shows his great love and devotion to his bride Israel still in Abram’s loins saying, "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Abram and his wife, Sarai, accompanied by his nephew Lot, journey to the land of Canaan, where Abram builds an altar and continues to spread the message of a one יהוה.

A famine forces the first Hebrew to depart for Egypt, where beautiful Sarai is taken to Pharaoh’s palace; Abram escapes death because they present themselves as brother and sister. A plague prevents the Egyptian king from touching her, and convinces him to return her to Abram and to compensate the brother-revealed-as-husband with gold, silver and cattle.

Back in the land of Canaan, Lot separates from Abram and settles in the evil city of Sodom, where he falls captive when the mighty armies of Chedorlaomer (pronounced Kedar-laomer) and his three allies conquer the five cities of the Sodom Valley. Abram sets out with a small band to rescue his nephew, defeats the four kings, and is blessed by Malki-Zedek (Shem) the king of Salem (Jerusalem).

Yahuah seals the Covenant Between the Parts with Abram, in which the exile and persecution (galut) of the people of Israel is foretold, and the Holy Land is bequeathed to them as their eternal heritage.

Still childless ten years after their arrival in the Land, Sarai tells Abram to marry her maidservant Hagar. Hagar conceives, becomes insolent toward her mistress, and then flees when Sarai treats her harshly; an angel convinces her to return, and tells her that her son will father a populous nation. Ishmael is born in Abram’s eighty-sixth year.

Thirteen years later, יהוה changes Abram’s name to Abraham (“father of multitudes”), and Sarai’s to Sarah (“princess”), and promises that a son will be born to them; from this child, whom they should call Isaac (“will laugh”), will stem the great nation with which יהוה will establish His special bond. Abraham is commanded to circumcise himself and his descendants as a “sign of the covenant between Me and you.” Abraham immediately complies, circumcising himself and all the males of his household.