how to begin a story; how to learn; how to grow

THE FORMLESS VOID (Mendelsohn, chapter 2)

...the issue that Friedman is interested in having his readers understand is, in essence, a writer's issue: How do you begin a story? For Friedman, the opening of Bereishit brings to mind a technique we all know from the movies: "Like some films that begin with a sweeping shot that then narrows," he writes, "so the first chapter of Genesis moves gradually from a picture of the skies and earth down to the first man and woman. The story's focus will continue to narrow: from the universe to the earth to humankind to specific lands and people's to a single family." And yet, he reminds his readers, the wider, cosmic concerns of the world-historical story that the Torah tells will remain in the back of our minds as we read on, providing the rich substratum of meaning that gives such depth to that family's story.

Friedman's observation implies, as is certainly true, that often it is the small things, rather than the big picture, that the mind can comfortably grasp: that, for instance, it is naturally more appealing to readers to absorb the meaning of a vast historical event through the story of a single family.

CREATION (Mendelsohn, chapter 1)

To my mind, this progress from ruin to correction is intimately connected to the nature of knowledge itself, which is, at best, a process: from ignorance to awareness, from intellectual "ruin" to its "correction," from indistinct chaos to orderly scholarship. Knowledge, therefore encompasses at once the starting point, which is empty, harmful, painful, and the end point, which is pleasure. To my mind it is this quality of process, of development, which can only take place over time, that answers, finally, the question of why Knowledge must come from a tree. For a tree is a thing that grows; and growth, like learning, can only happen over and through time itself. Indeed, outside the medium of time, words like "grow" and "learn" cannot have any meaning at all.

tree of knowledge