Rav Soloveitchik on Wisdom and Creation

The Targum translates Bereishis ba’ra as Be’chokhma be’ra God created with wisdom… (Targum Yerushalmi on Bereishis 1:1)
Why the switch from: In the Beginning… to …with Wisdom?
What does it mean that the world was created with Wisdom?

The Rekanati, in his commentary on the Torah, also identifies reishis with chokhma, based on the pesukim:
Be’chokhma yo’sad a’retz
Hashem, by wisdom has founded the earth (Mishlei 4:19)
Kulam be’chokhma ‘a’si’sa
In wisdom You have made them all (Tehillim 104:24)

Rav Soloveitchik discusses this Targum in one of his dersahos. Chokhma is intuitive feeling, in contradistinction, to contemplative thinking. Contemplative thinking is careful analysis, concentrated in depth study and philosophical analysis.

The first step is chokhma, intuition, getting the fundamental axioms, the yesodos that appear at first. The axioms for which there is no proof, but, nonetheless, true. They are intuitively true, and yet, not logically proven.

If Man were not blessed by the Creator with Chokhma; If Man was not given the ability to envision the power of bereishis to feel and see the truth; to see the light rising in the distant horizon – it would be impossible to teach this to Man.

On a practical level, when Man wants to achieve something or complete a major project, he must do it with Chokhma. He must be inspired with that Bereishis feeling. He has to feel, intuitively, that his vision is not just an empty dream. If Man lacks intuition he cannot successfully undertake communal or private endeavors. For example, a successful entrepenuer is not someone who is good at keeping the books – for that he can get professional help: bookkeepers, accountants etc. Rather, a successful entrepreneur is someone who has a vision, intuition and instinct to discover a fortune. In short, Bereishis i.e. Chokhma, is something with which God created the world and gave to Man as a gift. (Dr. Hillel Seidman in Die Sedra fun Der Vokh (I, pp. 23 – 25)

Shnayim mikra v’echad targum: Why Mikra Twice?

R. Huna b. Judah says in the name of R. Ammi: A man should always complete his Parashiyos together with the congregation, [reading] twice the Hebrew text and once the [Aramaic] Targum, (Berakhos 8a)

Why do we read the Hebrew text twice and the Targum once?

Prof. Steven Fraade notes that the formulation, parashiyyot, his weekly readings, makes it clear that a person’s private reading, reviewing and translation of the reading is intended. By geonic times, however, there developed the custom in some places of fulfilling this requirement communally by reading the section twice in Hebrew and once in Aramaic in shul on Shabbos morning before kri’yas ha-Torah. (See ‘Otzar ha-Geonim, p. 19, responsa to Berakhos 8b.)

Many of the ancient targumim from Eretz Yisrael published from the Cairo Geniza contain not a continuous targum, as we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but each pasuk appears first in Hebrew, in its entirety, and then in Aramaic. Other Geniza texts, and later manuscripts of the other Targums, usually have simply the first word or words of the pasuk before the Aramaic translation. But they still suggest that, unlike the continuous Aramaic translations from Qumran, these were to be keyed to the reading or studying of the Torah text and not to substitute for it.
--“Rabbinic Views on the Practice of Targum”, in The Galilee in Late Antiquity, edited by Lee I. Levine, pp. 264-265.

Chazal could not see the study of Targum without the study of the Torah text, mikra.

The Taj, Kesser Torah or crown, of the ‘edot ha-mizrach contains the Torah text once, Targum Onkelos and Rav Sa’adia Gaon’s Arabic translation, in that order, for each pasuk.

The reason for repeating the Torah text twice is still not clear and requires further research.