Said to Myself

I love rereading Parshat Bereshit, this week’s Torah portion, anew every year. My one issue is that it really needs months to really get through all of the issues and themes brought up. But alas I wanted to share one thought of many. Here we read:

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying: ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it; for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.’ (Genesis 2:16-17)

In the Garden of Eden, the man had no limits, except for not eating from the  tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It seems that our nature to strive to be  limitless, but it is this very innate drive that brings death.

The definition of our  humanity is our being limited by our mortality. What are the implications of  for our morality? How do limits, both mortal and moral, help us create meaning in our lives?

Similar to what Shalom Orzach and I did when we created  Möbius Torah: The Media and Message of Torah and Teshuva we were inspired by McLuhan’s  “The medium is the message“ of the Möbius medium and the advent of the Book of Genesis.  This inspired our creation of Limitless: Möbius Torah 2.0 which explores some ideas in the Divine infinitude and our human limits.

To make a Möbius Torah please:

1. Print this page our on Ledger (11×17) sized paper. This will ensure it is big enough to read.
2. Cut out the table on the sheet.
3. Fold along the dotted line with the writing facing outwards.
4. Bend Paper  into a circular shaped cuff.
5. Tape the ends to create a möbius strip as in this picture.
6. As you learn it turn it and turn it again because there is no beginning and no end to learning Torah.
7. Alternatively you can just learn the text without the arts and crafts project, but that would not be as much fun.

With Möbius Torah we hope to create a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message the Torah is perceived. Please print this out and enjoy. It has been a pleasure playing with Shalom in the bringing you this Torah. As always I would love your input and ideas for other ways to make revelation relevant, engaging,  and more accessible. So please do be in touch.