(1) When God began to create heaven and earth— (In contrast to others “In the beginning God created.”) JPS Tanach, 2023

(2) בראשית ברא IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED — ...wherever the word ראשית occurs in Scripture, it is in the construct state. e.g., (Jeremiah 26:1) “In the beginning of (בראשית) the reign of Jehoiakim”; (Genesis 10:10) “The beginning of (ראשית) his kingdom”; (Deuteronomy 18:4) “The first fruit of (ראשית) thy corn.” Similarly here you must translate בראשית ברא אלהים as though it read בראשית ברוא, at the beginning of God’s creating. ...

(1) IN THE BEGINNING. ... Others say that the bet of bereshit is a preposition. They explain that Scripture intends to preclude the thought that heaven and earth were preexisting. Hence it states, In the beginning. I believe that bereshit is in the construct, as in In the beginning of (bereshit) the reign of Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 26:1). ....

According to Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and many modern commentators, this verse does not stand on its own, but is connected syntactically to what follows it.

One interpretation is: “At the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth, the earth was unformed and void.”

A second interpretation is: “At the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth, when the earth was unformed and void, etc., God said, ‘Let there be light,’ etc.”

According to Rashi, the verb בָּרָא (bara, “created”) functions as though it were an infinitive, בְּרוֹא (bero, “the creating of / when [God] created”), and this is in fact how the aforementioned modern commentators understand the vocalization syntactically.

All kinds of wondrous stories about the creation of the world were wide-spread throughout the lands of the East, and many of them assumed a literary form in epic poems or other compositions. In the course of our exposition we shall have repeated occasion to refer to a number of matters found in these sources and to translate several verses from their texts. Here it will suffice to indicate briefly their general character. They began, as a rule, with a theogony, that is, with the origin of the gods, the genealogy of the deities who preceded the birth of the world and mankind; and they told of the antagonism between this god and that god, of frictions that arose from these clashes of will, and of mighty wars that were waged by the gods. They connected the genesis of the world with the genesis of the gods and with the hostilities and wars between them; and they identified the different parts of the universe with given deities or with certain parts of their bodies. Even the elect few among the nations, the thinkers who for a time attained to loftier concepts than those normally held in their environment, men like Amenhotep IV—the Egyptian king who attributed the entire creation to one of the gods, the sun-god Aten—and his predecessors (the discoveries of recent years prove that he was not the first to hold this doctrine), even they pictured this god to themselves as but one of the gods, be he the very greatest, as a deity linked to nature and identifiable with one of its component parts.

Then came the Torah and soared aloft, as on eagles’ wings, above all these notions. Not many gods but One God; not theogony, for a god has no family tree; not wars nor strife, nor the clash of wills, but only One Will, which rules over everything, without the slightest let or hindrance; not a deity associated with nature and identified with it wholly or in part, but a God who stands absolutely above nature, and outside of it, and nature and all its constituent elements, even the sun and all the other entities, be they never so exalted, are only His creatures, made according to His will.

(1)The Order of Simchat Torah:
In places where they do two days of Yom Tov, Kiddush on the ninth night includes Shehecheyanu. The next day, we take out three Torah scrolls. From the first, we read "And this is the blessing" [Deuteronomy 33:1] until the end of the Torah. From the second, we read from "In the beginning" [Genesis 1:1] until "that God made" [2:3]. From the third, the maftir reads the same as the previous day. The haftarah is "After Moses died" [Joshua 1:1]. Rema: The last day of Yom Tov is called "Simchat Torah" because we rejoice on it, making a festive meal in honor of the finishing of the Torah. It is customary for the person who finishes the Torah and the one who starts Genesis to make a donation and invite everybody to a party (Tur). ...

(12) and for all the great might and awesome power that Moses displayed before all Israel.

(1) When God began to create heaven and earth—

Every individual Israelite has a unique mode of perception, through which he is able to see and apprehend something particular in the world that no one else can see. .... And to them was given an opening of the eye...

(10) Rabbi Yona said in the name of Rabbi Levi: Why was the world created with the letter beit? It is because just as the beit is closed on all [three of] its sides but open in its front, so, you do not have permission to ask: What is below, what is above, what was before, and what is after, but only from the day when the world created and onward. ...
Rabbi Elazar bar Ḥanina said in the name of Rabbi Aḥa: For twenty-six generations the alef complained before the throne of the Holy One blessed be He. It said before Him: ‘Master of the universe, I am the first of the letters, but You did not create Your world with me.’ The Holy One blessed be He said to it: ‘The world and all its contents were created only for the sake of the Torah, as it is stated: “The Lord founded the earth with wisdom…” (Proverbs 3:19). Tomorrow, I will be coming to give the Torah at Sinai, and I will open it at its beginning only with you, as it is stated: “I [anokhi] am the Lord your God”’ (Exodus 20:2). ...