As we again start reading from the beginning of the Torah, the first question that greets us is one that Rashi quotes from the midrash in the name of Rebbi Yitzhak: Why didn’t the Torah begin with the sanctification of the new moon, which is the giving of the first mitzvah?

In other words, Rebbi Yitzhak wants to steer us away from an improper assumption: Don’t think that the Torah is only a book of laws. To put it in terms we can understand today, Hashem did not give us a Shulcan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) on Mt Sinai. The stories—even those void of halachic content-- in the Book of Genesis are an essential aspect of the Torah. The question is why?

Rebbi Yitzhak gives an important answer, but I’d like to present a different approach, that of Rav Naftali Tvzi Yehuda Berlin, known as the Netziv, the great and last head of the Volozhin Yeshiva.

In his introduction to Genesis, he explains why this first book of the Torah is known as Sefer HaYashar, or the Book of the Upright. Its name comes from the forefathers Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov, who not only were pious and rigorous in their service of God, but were also men of tremendous character.

They lived amongst immoral people and idol worshipers; still they interacted with their neighbors and cared for their well-being. Avraham, known for his trait of loving-kindness, despised the lifestyle in Sodom, yet he repeatedly argued on behalf of the Sodomites before God.

This is a valuable lesson that we learn from the stories of our forefathers. Beyond piety and awe of God, one’s compassionate relationship with the world around him, especially the non-Jewish world, is the type of righteousness that God desires. It is this behavior that maintains the world, consistent with the theme in the creation story that all humanity is made in God’s image.