Why does the Torah not begin with the greatest prophet of the Jewish people, the one who revealed the Torah at Sinai – Moshe Rabbeinu? If the essence of Jewish life is the fulfillment of Hashem’s commandments – and it is – then the Torah might have been expected to open with revelation, law, and mitzvot.
If Judaism were like other religions, it would indeed begin there – with a prophet and with revelation.
But it does not. The Torah begins instead with Bereishit – with creation, the first human generations, and ultimately with the story of one family.
If the giving of the Torah is the crux of Jewish life, why is so much scriptural text devoted to what comes before it? A full 70 chapters - the entire book of Genesis and half of Exodus!
This is foundational, reflecting a critical truth about the nature of Judaism itself. Judaism is not merely a religion. At its core lies a transformative idea: before we were a religion, we were a people – and before we were a people, we were a family.
The Torah is teaching us something essential: the covenant at Sinai was not given to isolated individuals or to an association of believers. It was given to a people already formed through shared experience, memory, and destiny.
As the narrative of our time in Egypt unfolds – from the confrontation with Pharaoh to the plagues, from the Exodus to the splitting of the sea – we witness the emergence of a nation. The Israelites are not first defined by revelation; they are defined by a shared story. Only after this process of national formation do they arrive at Mount Sinai. Only then are they given the Torah.
'The covenant of destiny'
The sequence is deliberate: First, a people with a collective fate – what Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik termed “the covenant of fate.” Then, receiving the Torah, which he termed “the covenant of destiny.”
Our peoplehood is not abstract – it is deeply rooted in a specific land.
From the very beginning of the Jewish story, the Land of Israel is central. The first command given to Avraham – Lech Lecha – is not a theological directive but a journey to a land: “Go forth from your land... to the Land that I will show you.” Here, peoplehood and land are intertwined from the outset. The Jewish mission is not meant to unfold in a vacuum; it is meant to take place within a defined geographical and historical context.
This feature distinguishes Judaism from other major faith traditions. Religions such as Christianity and Islam are not inherently tied to a specific people or land; they are defined primarily by belief and practice. Judaism, by contrast, is inseparable from the story of a particular people connected to a particular place.
This makes Jewish life unique and difficult to define. Taken together, Judaism is more than a religion or a nation. The best description perhaps is a civilization – one that encompasses nationhood, culture, language, land, religious practice, and spiritual purpose.
This broader understanding of Judaism is articulated with remarkable depth by Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook.
In modern Western thought, religion is typically understood as a private domain – a system of beliefs and rituals that exists alongside, but separate from, national and civic life. Rabbi Kook argues that this definition is foreign to Judaism.
Judaism is not a compartment of life; it is the totality of life. The Jewish people are not merely adherents of a faith; they are a nation whose very existence is shaped by a divine calling. The Torah is not simply a collection of religious doctrines; it is the constitution of a living people. It speaks to every dimension of human existence – ethical, social, economic, political, and spiritual. To reduce Judaism to “religion” is therefore to fragment something that is inherently whole.
Rabbi Kook explains that the perception of Judaism as a religion emerged during the long centuries of exile. Stripped of land, sovereignty, and national institutions, the Jewish people were forced to sustain their identity in dispersed community structures built around accentuated religious practice.
With the beginning of the modern-day collective return to the Land, Rabbi Kook saw the making of a profound transformation. The revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, the renewal of agriculture and national life in our ancient homeland, the eventual reestablishment of political sovereignty – all these signaled the reemergence of Judaism’s full character.
Judaism was expanding once again, from religion and the fragmentations of peoplehood into a renewed civilization.
This process, in Rabbi Kook’s view, was not merely political. It was spiritual – a manifestation of divine providence unfolding through history, restoring the Jewish people to the fullness of their identity.
And yet, even peoplehood does not reach the deepest layer of Jewish identity. Before we became a nation, we were already a family.
Uniqueness of Jewish nationhood
Jewish nationhood is not built solely on shared religious ideology or national fervor. It is rooted in kinship – in the bonds of family that begin with a single household.
This is a remarkable departure from the way other nations understand their origins. The American people begin with remarkable founding fathers – figures such as Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson – individuals who are the political architects of a nation, but not biological ancestors. Their wives and children, though, are not the story of the American people.
In contrast, the Jewish narrative begins with a biological father and mother – Avraham Avinu and Sarah Imeinu. This family continues through Yitzchak and Rivka, and then through Ya’akov – renamed Yisrael – and his wives, Rachel and Leah, and their maidservants, who together have twelve sons: the Children of Israel.
That family becomes an extended family, each child becoming the head of a tribe and all part of a people through descent, struggle, and shared destiny in Egypt. That people receive the Torah at Sinai, where they receive their spiritual and divine mission.
Each stage is essential, and each builds upon the previous one. Without family, there are no people. Without people, there is no Torah.
This idea carries profound implications for us today.
To see another Jew as a family member is both comforting and demanding. It offers a sense of belonging, but it also imposes responsibility. It requires us to maintain connection even in the face of disagreement, to resist the temptation to fracture into separate camps.
When we succeed in doing so, we affirm the deepest truth of Jewish existence: before we were a religion, we were a people – and before that, a family. And families, for all their imperfections, represent the most enduring form of human belonging.
This is why the Torah begins not with Sinai or Egypt, but with home and family – a spiritual odyssey of Avraham and Sarah, undertaken together toward a homeland, as the founding father and mother of the Jewish people.
As I shared in my eulogy for our beloved son at his second funeral: “We may be the smallest people, but we are the largest family.”
Rabbi Doron Perez is president of the World Zionist Organization and Chair of World Mizrachi.