Rabbi Solomon Eiger, a great Eastern European rabbi traveled to Kotzk to learn a word of Torah from Rabbi Menachem Mendel. When Rabbi Eiger returned home, his students asked him what he learned. He said: "Breishit bara adoshem . . .," the first three words of the Torah. "You had to travel to Kotzk to learn the first three words of the Torah?" they asked. "Yes, he said. I had always read those words wrong. The Kotzker taught me to read them so: 'In God creates beginnings.'" The rest of the story is for us to write, the rest of the idea is for us to complete. God permits us to see the problems, but expects us to solve the problems. God challenges us and we must respond to His challenge.
In a world where people complain because God does not provide them with every blessing, where children complain because there parents do not give them the world, the Kotzker teaches that we should expect nothing save the beginning. Man's challenge is to live out whatever develops from the beginning.
Too often we moderns believe that with life comes all the benefits of living. Every person deserves a house, a car, the finest food, the most beautiful wardrobe, and the best schools for his or her children. We have a right to perfect health and wealth and even happiness. The Kotzker, who lived in far more difficult times, was more realistic. He did not wait for God's promise, but rather accepted with thanks God's gift, and that gift was and is nothing more than a beginning from which we can make blessing or curse, from which we can make life worthwhile or worth little.
God gives us 'beginnings,' we create the rest of the story. The endings are ours alone.