Musar untuk Mazmur 111:6

This should awaken a person to watch over his children carefully and to teach them Torah and guide them in awe of Hashem because a son can bring his father merit. By the same token, one whose father or mother has passed away must be scrupulous in reciting the Kaddish and responding, Amein, yehei shemeih raba, with all his might. For through this he elevates his father’s soul to the upper Gan Eden. Let him not emulate those who take the Kaddish lightly, treating it as a kind of joke and actually making sport of its recital. They do not realize that Heaven and earth depend on the Kaddish. The response, Amein, yehei shemeih raba, contains twenty-eight letters, corresponding to the twenty-eight letters in the first verse of the Torah, “In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth” (Bereishis 1:1). This is an allusion to what is stated in Tehillim, “The power of His deeds He has declared to His people” (111:6). For the numerical value of the word “power” — koach — is twenty-eight. The first verse of the Ten Commandments also contains twenty-eight letters: “And God spoke all these things, saying” (Shemos 20:1). Therefore our teacher Rabbi Yehudah Chassid used to instruct the congregation to recite the first verse of Bereishis, followed by the one from the Ten Commandments and afterwards, Amein, yehei shemeih raba. The esoteric meaning of this custom is explained in Megaleh Amukos (Ofen 212).

Let us turn our attention to the statement of Rabbi Yitzchak quoted by Rashi in his first commentary on the first verse. Rabbi Yitzchak says that the Torah did not really have to commence prior to the twelfth chapter of Exodus when the commandment to sanctify the New Moon is given to the people of Israel. He goes on: "ומה טעם פתח בבראשית, משום כח מעשיו הגיד לעמו, לתת להם נחלת גוים, "what is the reason that G–d commenced the written Torah with the story of Bereshit?, It is to tell us that G–d revealed to His people His powerful works, in giving them the heritage of nations." (Psalms 111,6) The commentator elaborates that if the nations of the world would challenge Israel's right to the land of Israel accusing Israel as having illegally dispossessed its seven Canaanite nations, Israel could reply that since the earth belongs to G–d seeing He has created it, He is free to give any part of it to anyone He chooses. Since Israel found favor in His eyes, G–d gave that land to Israel. This premise raises a major question, as do the repeated words "when He wanted to, He gave it to them, and when He wanted to, He gave it to us." What kind of justice is it to give someone a gift only to revoke the gift at a later stage, especially when such gift has become a נחלה, an inheritance, i.e. something inviolable?