Should I contemplate what happened before creation?
Rabbi Jonah taught in the name of Rabbi Levi that the world was created with a letter bet(the first letter in Genesis 1:1, which begins בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, bereishit bara Elohim, “In the beginning God created”), because just as the letter bet is closed at the sides but open in front, so one is not permitted to investigate what is above and what is below, what is before and what is behind. Similarly, Bar Kappara reinterpreted the words of #Deuteronomy 4:32 to say, “ask not of the days past, which were before you, since the day that God created man upon the earth,” teaching that one may speculate from the day that days were created, but one should not speculate on what was before that.
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