Unity in Two

The Midrash (Braishis Rabah 1:14) says the letter aleph complained to Hashem that it should have been the first letter in the Torah because it is the first letter of the Aleph Beis. Hashem replied that He would give Aleph a much more important place and that was the first letter of the Aseres Hadibros.

Why was this a more important place and why indeed did Hashem start the Torah with a Beis?

Why does Torah start with Beis?

Breishis is about creation of the universe. The gematria of the letter beis is two. The universe was created and exists on opposites; heaven and earth, light and dark, day and night, hot and cold etc.

All growth and change in the physical world only takes place through the binary battle of opposites, positive and negative, hot and cold, male and female. These opposites are the catalysts of all physical growth and life.

Why are the Aseres Hadibros a more important place?

The purpose of the world is beyond the physical. It is the spiritual and the spiritual world is unity.

Hashem is the Root Cause. One is Hashem on the heaven and the earth because He is the Cause of everything. He is constant, no change.

Therefore one is the basis of all calculations (Even Ezra Shmos 20:21) and one multiplied or divided by itself is one and multiplied or divided by any other number is the number itself.

The purpose of the creation of the world is to attain spirituality through physicality. The Aseres Hadibros are category headings of all the Mitzvos (Ibid) and therefore of all spirituality in this world.

Therefore the Aseres Hadibros are more important than even the creation, since they are the purpose of creation. The Aseres Hadibros therefore start with Aleph which has a gematria of one.

Torah begins with Beis as the building block of the physical world and ends with Yisrael, the model of unity in the physical world through keeping of Torah and mitzvos.

In marriage, the ultimate enactment of unity in physicality, a man and woman come together to form 1 soul; i.e. two opposite physical bodies unite spiritually to form one.

This enactment can only be achieved by a male and female. Thus the supreme importance attributed to marriage in Torah and the reason that the overwhelmingly vast majority of Torah practitioners and leaders have been married.

This also underlies the emphasis that the Torah places on the home as the citadel of holiness.