This week’s Torah Study included a review of Genesis. Rabbi Randy read the first few sentences as we discussed them in detail, then he began reading the next sentence: “And God saw the light and said it was good… then it hit me. I asked him to reread the sentence in the original Hebrew and translate it from there so I was sure I wasn’t missing anything. When he did, I found that there was no mention of the dark being bad; just that the light was good. There it was! I had assumed, all these years, that the dark was bad because it was the opposite of light, which I knew to be good. Now it was saying that the light was good. Nowhere did it say that the dark was bad, and it shouldn't, because we need the dark as well as we need the light. And the dark is good too!
Yet here’s the real breakthrough for me. How many times throughout my life had I just assumed the opposite of something when it wasn’t stated? How often did I read one thing while adding assumptions of my own? The statement: “The boy and girl were standing in the hall. The boy was tall,” is a statement; the boy was tall. It doesn’t mean the girl was short. The girl could have been taller or the same height. But the fact that nothing was said of the girl’s height leaves me to assume that the girl was not the same height as the boy. It’s all assumption; and that’s just in one sentence alone. How often have I done this not only in my reading, but also in my conversation! I have a great need to listen for inserted assumptions and eliminate them from the unspoken conversations of my life, beginning now.