Breishit: Why the Torah Starts Here

 Rashi cites Rabbi Yitzchak giving a reason for why the Torah doesn't start with the first mitzvah given to the Jewish People.  He says that the Torah starts where it does so that we can tell other nations who call us thieves that G-d created the world and gave them The Land.  He then took it from them and gave it to us. But this only explains the need for the start of the book. 

The Nesivos Shalom says that the reason for starting with the book of Breishit is because it is, as Chazal say, Sefer haYashar - the book that teaches us how to be refined in character.  He cites Rav Chaim Vital who says that our midot are the foundation of our Torah, and - in a way - are more important than the rest of the Torah.  

Rav Chaim Vital says that the midot are not in the Torah itself because they are the prerequisite to Torah.  The Nesivos Shaom teaches us that everything is in the Torah, and it must be that midot are in the Torah too.  How could it be that Hashem expects us to get midot, but the guidebook to life, the Torah, does not tell us how? The answer to his question, he suggests, is that this book is the part of the Torah that tells us what midot to avoid and what midot to have.  

Pirkei Avot says that there are three things that take us out of the (spiritual) world.  Each of these things is embodied by people in Breishit.  Kin'ah-Jealousy: Kayin, Taavah-Desire: The Generation of the Flood, Kavod-Honor: The Generation of the Tower of Babel.  Then come the stories about the Avot and the shevatim, and Moshe and Aharon, the majority of the Seven Shepherds.  These people modeled for us what good character traits to have. There are seven key midot, seven sephirot-spheres.  There are three others that we can't master till Mashiach time.  

These spheres are paralleled by the seven nations that we conquered to get Israel.  There are three nations we couldn't overtake.  So things circle back and it turns out the first Rashi does explain the reason for the whole book.  We deserve Israel when we master our character and overcome the traits that the other nations did not conquer. May we be blessed to always work on what we need to work on and to inherit all the good G-d has created to gift us with.