beginning

Distinctions

reishis (ראשית) and rishon (ראשון)

The classical lexicographers take ר-א-ש as the root, giving rosh, rishon and reishis together. Rosh is the head anatomically and the head of a nation, tribe or unit; it also marks the opening of an expected series, Rosh Chodesh (Bamidbar 10:10, 28:11) and Rosh HaShanah (Yechezkel 40:1). Menachem Ibn Saruk (Machberes Menachem): rosh can also mean a count or tally, especially of people (Shemos 30:12; Bamidbar 31:49; Tehillim 139:17; Iyov 22:12). Rav Hirsch (to Shemos 30:12) reads that differently: rosh there is not the individuals counted but the final total, since as the head unites the body's parts, the number gathers all the units under one head. Rosh also means poison (Devarim 29:17, 32:32-33; Iyov 20:16; Eichah 3:19, and more); Rav Hirsch (to Devarim 29:17) has it drawn from both the plant and the animal kingdom, some read it as snake venom from the snake's rosh (Targum and Rashi to Yirmiyahu 8:14), and others take it as a poisonous plant, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim explaining that the plant in question has a round top that looks like a head.

Rabbi Klein offers his own account, doubly hedged, of how these senses hang together: the anatomical head is likely the central sense, the head controls the body and so lends its name to anything in a controlling position, such positions usually go to prominent people and so rosh comes to mean important, and since the head normally emerges first at birth rosh also comes to mean first. The two then converge, since what is important tends to be listed or done first.

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim treats the middle aleph as extraneous and takes the root as the biliteral reish-shin, pointing to rishon spelled with a yud (Iyov 8:8) and reishis spelled with neither aleph nor yud (Devarim 11:12), and to Aramaic reish (thirteen times in the Aramaic of Daniel; reish galusa, reish mesivta, Reish Lakish), where Biblical Aramaic still spells it with an aleph like the Hebrew rosh and later Aramaic replaces that aleph with a yud. Under that biliteral he gathers yerushah (the heir becomes the head of the estate), tirosh (new wine, foremost in quality and at the start of its existence), rishayon/reshus (authority), reshes (a net, by which a hunter gains mastery over an animal), rosheh (weak, easily subjugated), and rash (destitute, so browbeaten that anything rules him).

Reishis carries importance, not only order. The Netziv (Meromei Sadeh to Chullin 136b) uses this to resolve the Tosafists' difficulty. Terumah is called reishis (Bamidbar 15:20-21; Devarim 18:4) and the Gemara derives that one may not consecrate his whole crop, since a remnant must stay ordinary; yet reishis hagez (Devarim 18:4) carries no such requirement. The Netziv: in terumah, reishis means importance, so the tithe is taken from the choicest produce of the field, and importance is relative, so something must be left unimportant beside it; in the shearing, reishis means only first in succession, so the mitzvah falls on the first batch of wool with no bar to giving all of it. Rabbi Klein adds, as his own point, that saying a thing comes first does not require that something come after it, and finds it in "I am rishon and I am last, and besides Me there is no god" (Yeshayahu 44:6): being first does not posit a second. Rashi (to Bereishis 1:1) reads b'reishis for that valued sense, expounding it of the Torah and of Klal Yisrael, each called reishis elsewhere (Mishlei 8:22; Yirmiyahu 2:3, where Klal Yisrael has terumah-like status and whoever "eats" of them bears the guilt). Targum Yerushalmi renders b'reishis as created with wisdom. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim adds that rishon can be spatial as well as temporal: Yaakov set the maidservants and their children rishonah, in front, and Leah and Rachel behind (Bereishis 33:2).

techilah (תחילה)

Thirteen appearances in Tanach counting its inflections, by Even-Shoshan's concordance, the opening act of a sequence: "the techilas of Hashem's speaking to Hoshea" (Hoshea 1:2). In the very comment to Bereishis 1:1 that asks why the Torah opens with creation rather than with the first mitzvos, Rashi's own verb for beginning the Torah is lehaschil, a cognate. Root: ח-ל-ל triliterally (Ibn Janach, Radak) or the biliteral ח-ל (Menachem Ibn Saruk). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, on the biliteral, reads that root as circularity and encirclement, so techilah is the moment a process enters its natural cycle and begins to run. The halachic lechatchilah belongs here: lamed plus kaf plus techilah, the ideal way to perform a mitzvah from the outset, before any bedieved circumstance arises.

reishis against techilah

Both render "the beginning," and one pair of pesukim states the same idea with each: "the reishis of wisdom is fear of Hashem" (Tehillim 111:10) against "the techilas of wisdom is fear of Hashem" (Mishlei 9:10).

• Maharal (Nesivos Olam, Nesiv Yiras Hashem ch. 1): Shlomo HaMelech's techilah makes yiras Hashem and wisdom inseparable, one continuum, as the Mishnah has it, no yirah without wisdom and no wisdom without yirah (Avos 3:17); this serves his agenda in Mishlei of elevating wisdom. David HaMelech's reishis instead marks yiras Hashem as the important element and the goal of wisdom, without which wisdom has no worth.
• Rabbi Zev Hoberman, on the Vilna Gaon to Mishlei 9:10: reishis is strictly what is chronologically first, while techilah can name what comes later in time but was the intended goal from the outset. David HaMelech, who worked all his life for wisdom, taught that one must pursue yirah first; Shlomo HaMelech, given wisdom as a gift, taught not that yirah must precede it in time but that it must be the aim from the start.
• Malbim (Sefer HaCarmel): rishon is the opening position in a countable sequence, defined against the items after it; reishis is an absolute or primal beginning, not part of a sequence, important in itself and encompassing all that follows, which is why creation is b'reishis; techilah negates a prior time without implying any tie to what follows. Malbim adds that creation is called reishis rather than techilah because it marks the origin of time itself; Rabbi Klein reports this and then adds that he is not quite sure how it adds up.
• The Vilna Gaon (to Yeshayahu 1:26), on "I will restore your judges as at the rishonah and your counselors as at the techilah": a reishis-word for the judges because David and Shlomo were not the first judges, only the foremost of a series; a techilah-word for the counselors because Moshe and Aharon were the absolute first the nation ever had. The Midrash as we have it (Yalkut Shimoni to Yeshayahu 391) reads the two the other way round, judges as Moshe and Aharon and counselors as David and Shlomo.

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim's Yerios Shlomo opens with thirteen pages on this distinction; anyone settling a hard case should go there.

kedem (קדם)

Targum Onkelos renders b'reishis as b'kadmin. Kodem is "before" in time, with the family mukdam (early), kadmon and kadmoniyos (ancient, antiquities), hakdamah (introduction), k'dam (the English prefix "pre-"), kidomes (prefix), takdim (precedent, an occurrence the like of which has happened before), mikdamah (advance payment), and in Modern Hebrew kidum (advancement, progress). The term, Rabbi Klein writes, denotes the future becoming the present. Spatially, kedem and kadimah are east, the direction the sun rises from and therefore what comes first. The Aramaic kaman, l'kaman and kamma (as in Bava Kamma) come from the same root with the dalet dropped, the loss marked by the dagesh in the mem; Rabbi Shaul Goldman notes that this dropping seemingly happened in the post-Tannaitic period, since it is absent from Biblical Aramaic, Targum Onkelos and Targum Yonasan and present in Amoraic works (Pesikta, Yerushalmi, Bavli). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim suggests that ק-ד-ם derives from the biliteral kuf-dalet, reading kedem with kodkod, head or skull; Rabbi Klein observes that this parallels rosh meaning both head and beginning.

Rendering guidance

• ראשית: "the beginning," but where the source is leaning on its worth, "the foremost" or "the first and finest." In reishis chochmah keep "the beginning of wisdom" and carry the importance in the commentary.
• ראשון: "first." תחילה: "at the outset," "at first," "the onset." לכתחילה stays lechatchilah.
• קדם temporal: "before," "of old," "antiquity." Spatial: "east."
• Trap: English "first" and "beginning" between them absorb reishis, rishon and techilah. Where two of them stand in one pasuk (Yeshayahu 1:26, rishonah and techilah in consecutive clauses), you must split them, or the Vilna Gaon's whole reading disappears: "as at first" for the one and "as at the very outset" for the other.
• Second trap: ראש is head, chief, tally, poison, and a personal name (a son of Binyamin, Bereishis 46:21). Check which before reaching for "head."
• Where reishis is a tithe term (terumah, reishis hagez, challah), it is the portion itself, "the first of," not "the beginning."

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Bereishis: In the Beginning...", What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 24 Tishrei 5785 (2024-10-26), https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/bereishis-in-the-beginning; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11562-bereishis-in-the-beginning.md. Primary loci cited: Bereishis 1:1, 33:2, 46:21; Bamidbar 10:10, 15:20-21, 28:11, 31:49; Devarim 11:12, 18:4, 29:17, 32:32-33; Yeshayahu 1:26, 44:6; Yirmiyahu 2:3, 8:14; Yechezkel 40:1; Hoshea 1:2; Tehillim 111:10, 139:17; Mishlei 8:22, 9:10; Iyov 8:8, 20:16, 22:12; Eichah 3:19; Shemos 30:12; Chullin 136b; Avos 3:17; Yalkut Shimoni to Yeshayahu 391; Machberes Menachem; Yerios Shlomo; Meromei Sadeh; Nesivos Olam, Nesiv Yiras Hashem ch. 1; Sefer HaCarmel. The count of thirteen for techilah is the article's, taken there from Even-Shoshan's concordance, and is not independently checked here.