This is a complex and controversial verse because divine Transcendence appears to announce the creation of humanity using a plural form. A rabbinic midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 8:5) poetically suggests that this plural refers to the ranks of divine emissaries, who, upon hearing the announcement of humanity’s imminent creation, divided into two factions. One group proclaimed, “Let it be created!” while the other opposed, exclaiming, “Let it not be created!” The divine response interrupted the heated debate: “Why do you continue arguing? It is already created.”

The debate between the two groups revolves around a fundamental paradox: does it make sense to create a being endowed with extraordinary potential while structuring it in such a way that fulfilling that potential is almost impossible? In this reading, humanity emerges not despite the clash between “Let it be created!” and “Let it not be created!” but because of it and through it. In other words, the human being is, at once, worthy and unworthy of existence and carries within itself the indelible marks of this contradiction.

The creation of the human being—traditionally said to have taken place in this very season—forms the foundation of the festivals that open the Jewish year: Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. These moments are marked by Teshuvah, which means “return”—as if each individual is called to return to that moment of birth when humanity first emerged from the tension between its dignity and unworthiness.

This leads to a second meaning of Teshuvah, that is «response». For every human being, by his life choices, constitutes a living reaction and response to the two opposing declarations: “Let it be created!” and “Let it not be created!” It will be this response that justifies or does not justify his existence and thus the existence of all humanity thus enabling the continuation of a constant process of creation of the human, a creation that is thus not located in the past, but something that unfolds in the realm of what is yet to come.

What will our response be?