By Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel in Chula Vista, California
There is an old rabbinic pun—perhaps the only one truly sanctioned by the crisp autumn air—that the Creator of the universe must be an ardent baseball fan. After all, how does sacred history open? Not quietly, not passively, but: “In the BIG INNING…”
Every year, like clockwork, Shabbat Bereshit arrives right alongside the crack of the bat in the October postseason. We have descended from the austere summits of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, danced ourselves dizzy on Simchat Torah, and now, breathless and renewed, we find ourselves back at the beginning.
A pristine scroll. A blank lineup card. An empty diamond waiting under the autumn lights.
Our sages in the Midrash famously ask an odd, lingering question about this opening: Why does the Torah begin with the letter Bet—the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet—in the word Bereshit? Why not inaugurate the sacred text with Aleph, the undisputed Number One?
The standard midrashic answer is that Aleph hints at arur (curse), while Bet signifies berachah (blessing). Yet on its face, that explanation is hard to swallow. Aren’t there plenty of wretched words that begin with Bet—like ba’ar (brute), bor (ignorance), or bliya’al (lawlessness)? And aren’t the most exalted concepts crowned with an Aleph—Adir (majesty), Emet (truth), Emunah (faith), and the supreme oneness of the Divine, Echad?
The genuine secret of the letter Bet lies in its radical arithmetic: Two.
Aleph represents the solitary ego—the stubborn illusion of absolute self-sufficiency. It is the tragic isolation of Cain, who believed he could stand unchallenged as Number One, only to discover that radical loneliness is the truest curse.
Bet, however, is the architecture of synergy—where one plus one yields an energy exponentially greater than its parts. In systems theory, synergy means the whole transcends the sum of its elements; in Jewish theology, we call this dynamic Covenant (Brit).
Notice the subtle movement of Genesis 1. At every phase of creation, God surveys the emerging universe and declares it Tov—”good.” But it is only after the emergence of humanity—when a conscious partner arrives who can reflect, respond, and co-labor—that the Torah declares the canvas Tov Me’od, “very good.”
Why? Because “good” is raw potential; “very good” is an actualized relationship.
God deliberately withheld final perfection from the universe. An omnipotent Creator could easily have spoken a finished cosmos into being—flawless, sterile, and complete. Instead, God stepped back, making room for human agency. God planted the seeds, but tasked humanity with tilling the soil. He laid down the baseline rules, but invited us to play the game. Creation was never designed as a divine monologue; it is an eternal, cooperative covenant between Heaven and Earth. Without our hands, God’s world remains an unfinished masterpiece. Without the Bet, creation stays stuck at “good”—it never reaches “very good.”
And if the universe is an arena of covenantal synergy, then baseball is our most vivid cultural midrash on how that sacred partnership works.
Consider what baseball teaches about the synergy of the Bet:
The game lives in the assist. A fielder who fields a blistering grounder doesn’t record the out alone; he fires the throw to first base. The official scorer awards an assist. When Hall of Fame pitcher Lefty Gomez was asked the secret of his dazzling success on the mound, he quipped: “Clean living and a fast outfield.” You can throw heat all afternoon, but without eight other sets of eyes and legs covering the gaps behind you, you are instantly exposed. Pitcher and outfield, batter and base runner—one cannot succeed without the other. That is the synergy of the infield: distinct talents weaving into a single defensive fabric.
The sacrifice bunt is sacred. In what other sport is a player cheered for giving up their own turn at bat, absorbing a statistical out, simply to advance their teammate ninety feet closer to home? That is covenant in action: recognizing that collective purpose eclipses personal ambition. Individual stardom produces box-score glory; shared sacrifice wins the pennant.
Errors are healed by the team, not the isolated self. Over 162 games, everyone boots a grounder or overthrows the cutoff man. In Hebrew, the word for sin—chet—comes from ancient marksmanship: it means to miss the mark. An error is an inevitable reality of human limitation. But on a covenantal team, a dropped ball is not followed by despair; the infield tightens its defense, turns a double play on the next pitch, and covers the slip. We do not redeem ourselves in a vacuum; our comebacks are made possible by teammates who refuse to abandon us when we stumble.
The basics demand relentless communication. Yogi Berra once tried to refocus a dispirited clubhouse by holding up raw equipment: “This is a ball. This is a bat.” Reserve catcher Jesse Gonder famously shouted from the back: “Slow down, Yogi, you’re going too fast!” In our rush toward complex philosophies, we forget the covenantal basics: calling for the fly ball, backing up the throw, encouraging the dugout, remembering that nothing moves forward unless two people communicate with patience and clarity.
Yet the deepest metaphor of the sport sits at the heart of the diamond itself.
Every other modern game is built on territorial invasion—marching across a hostile gridiron or breaching enemy lines to plant a flag.
Baseball is the only game where the entire objective is simply to journey out into the world, touch every base of responsibility, and bring each other safely Home.
You cannot sprint from the batter’s box straight across to third. You must run the dusty circuit of existence. You have to honor each base, heed the base coach at the corner, watch the signals, and rely on the runners ahead of you to open the path. It takes an entire lineup working in seamless synergy to escort a single runner across that final plate.
That is the covenant of the Bet.
God provided the field, the daylight, and the breath within our lungs; our task is to take up the bat, stand side by side with our fellow human beings, and turn what is merely “good” into something “very good.”
This Shabbat, the count resets to 0-0. The slate is wiped clean. The Grand Umpire of the cosmos sweeps off home plate, nods toward the diamond, and calls us to our positions.
May we take the field this year not as solitary competitors chasing private numbers, but as faithful partners in the cosmic covenant—lifting one another up, executing the assists, and bringing forth the profound berachah that only unfolds when two work as one to bring the entire world Home.
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Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel is the spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista, California.