Once upon a time, before there was a universe, before there was even space in which to put a universe, there was nothing but a pure mathematical point. Who knows how long it took for the point to expand and become creation — just six days by biblical count, but according to the rabbis, world after world appeared before the divine word echoed through the primeval depths announcing “Bereshit,” “in the beginning.”

But the beginning of what? God was no clockmaker, winding up a universe to run down on its own, and then retiring to a rocking chair. So God cloaked the world in a spiritual presence, best likened to a breeze (a ruah), invisible but intuited behind the falling leaves of autumn and the sculpted drifts of snow that shape the winter landscape. This spiritual overlay descended when the universe was still just tohu vavohu, what Ibn Ezra calls “an empty howling waste.” Then a consoling word of God declared, “Ruah Elohim m’rahefet al p’nei hamayim,” “The spirit of God now hovers over the primeval waters.”

“Like a mother bird, protecting her nest from harm,” says Rashi, the Ruah Elohim incubated the elemental chaos for eons until there emerged at last the capstone of creation: human beings.

But still, the Ruah Elohim remained in place, a sacred presence not just in space now, but in time.

Off in the distance, God waited patiently, knowing that the initial stage of creation was ending, and only humans with advanced spiritual consciousness would manage to inaugurate the second one. They would have to see the Ruah Elohim not just as hovering inertly over space but as illuminating the interior landscape of the human soul. Finding the spirit of God within ourselves, we would become planners, like God — not of space, however, but of time, which henceforth would be known as history.

Imagine: not time but history! What a breakthrough.

Stage one, mere shapeless time, would reach an end (in Hebrew, ketz). The person who pioneers stage two by adding history to time would be called Yosef, Joseph, which means “He adds.” Since only dreamers make history, this Joseph would be a prominent interpreter of dreams; and because his dream interpretations end stage one, his story as a interpreter would unfold in a sedra called Miketz, “At the end.” It would be just the second time in Torah where the ruah Elohim is mentioned, the first being Bereshit, “In the beginning.” Bereshit promulgated time, with the ruah Elohim hovering far beyond the universe. Miketz inaugurated history, thrusting Joseph into power with the ruah Elohim at the very core of his being.

Accurately evaluating Joseph’s singularity as a reader of dreams that bear on history, Pharaoh exclaims, “Could there exist anyone else like that, someone who embodies ruah Elohim [the spirit of God]?”

The story continues next week, with a sedra that features Judah approaching Joseph to plead for the life of Benjamin, and, implicitly, for the future of Israel itself, since without his son Benjamin, Judah argues, Jacob (who is Israel) will die. When Joseph accedes to Judah’s request, Jacob is granted life, the life that we inherit as our (that is, Israel’s) destiny.

Ba’al Haturim understands the essence of this historic moment. Judah’s winning argument, he says, was Ani shaveh l’cha, “I am like you.” What Judah saw, and Joseph acknowledged, was that not just Joseph, but every Jew (a term derived from “Judah,” after all) would become an agent of history. Joseph dies, leaving his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh behind; tellingly, ever after, Jewish children receive a weekly blessing that begins, “May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh” — Joseph’s children, working in history.

A careful reader of Torah will recall Ibn Ezra’s understanding of Pharaoh’s outcry: “Could there exist anyone else like that, someone who embodies ruah Elohim?” “The [letter] nun” he says, “of ‘Could there exist’ [haNimtsa] denotes the person speaking.” Pharaoh is asking, “Can we find someone like that, among ourselves?” Pharaoh’s answer must be negative —– his courtiers depend on magic, not ruah Elohim. Joseph alone plots human history from the vantage point of ruah Elohim internalized within his soul. Through Ephraim and Manasseh, all of Israel inherits that role.

The Jewish commitment to history remains, even today, when dreams of history’s future may look like nightmares. Who can read the newspapers and not worry lest history return to the “empty howling waste” of tohu vavohu? So it is precisely in our darker moments, when even the dark of winter threatens to extinguish the light of promise, that Jews supplement the news with Miketz, a reminder that a trace of God is safe inside our souls, encouraging us to persevere, as Joseph did, in making history turn out for the better.