Let me explain what I am saying.  If people who are very limited in ability can,  (using the speaking method of metaphor), re-create themselves,  how much more can God, who is unlimited in ability, give Himself a beginning?  The language in which we can speak of God is always metaphorical in nature.  We cannot use the kind of language used in physics and attempt to say that empirically God made Himself to have a beginning.  An attempt to think or speak in an empirical way like this about God would be foolish. It would only produce nonsense.  We cannot see God or know his nature like we can know things in an empirical way in the physical universe.  God does, however, make Himself known to us in a personal way. In doing this, He draws some analogies between Himself and us.  He wants us to know Him.  As we are in one fundamental way defined by having a beginning, in order that this might not be a fundamental hindrance to our knowing Him, God also creates for Himself an attribute of beginning.  This is the beginning of God being God to a creature, to creation....

I will come back to this point directly.  But let me first talk about this in terms of "when" God gave Himself the attribute of beginning.

In the Sefaria.org translation on Genesis 1:1 we find the following:

Sefaria.org בראשית

"When god began to create heaven and earth —"

"When" becomes the fundamental existential word, the absolute origin word. But it is most likely that the translation does not ask us to think in that direction.  While the Tikkunei Zohar records 70 deep and extensive mystical teachings on the word, Bereshith, "In (the) beginning", the translation of the word here as "when" seems to avoid all the mystery and inner questions entirely.

An attempt is being made, it seems, to give the word, "when," a definition here in Genesis 1:1 only from the place in time after this time "when" God created the heavens and the earth.  In other words, we are, apparently, supposed to read, "(Looking back to) when..." God created the heaven and the earth.  If this is the intention in this translation and if this is for the sake of faith, then this is good: ("Looking back in faith to when God created the heaven and the earth, the earth was without form and void...etc.").  However, as the Tikkunei Zohar shows, while faith can be simple, there are also existential heights and depths to faith which are potentially present in that simplicity, and all of them are pointed to in the word, Bereshith.   At the same time, if we use the word, "when" to cover, in English, the word Bereshith, it can, in fact, point us to the commentary of Rashi on this verse.  And from Rashi's commentary here we can discover many things for the building up of our faith.

Rashi

We could summarize Rashi's question in his commentary on this verse by asking, Why did God begin the Torah by talking about when he created the heavens and the earth?

Rashi says that the Torah could have begun with Exodus 12:2, ("This month will be to you the beginning of months"), which is the first commandment that God commanded Israel.  How factually does Rashi mean to say this, that the Torah could have begun with Exodus 12:2?  Of course he does not mean to tell God what He could have done — how He might have written His Torah.

Rather, Rashi is saying that only at Exodus 12:2 is God addressing Israel absolutely alone with His Torah.  Before this, He is also speaking in His Torah to the Goyim, (the nations), through speaking to Israel about creation.

For example, Rashi says, God is anticipating the argument coming form the Goyim that Israel stole the Land of Israel.  That God told the story of the history of the world leading up to His giving Israel the Land of Israel refutes this argment coming from the Goyim.  How does it refute that argument?

Ramban

Ramban helps to answer this question by pointing out that Rashi's comments might be misleading to some.  Ramban states that, of course, the Torah's beginning with God's account of creation is essential — for it is essential to faith itself.  It is the first root of faith.  The rational argument introduced by Rashi is that the whole earth  belongs to the Creator and He can give any portion of it to anyone He want to.  Therefore, Rashi suggests, God provides the creation story up front to Israel in order to equip them with this rational argument against the slander of the Goyim.

Ramban suggests that this rational statement as provided by Rashi is not enough. In order for this very argument to be accepted there must first be acceptance and faith that the God who gives Israel the Land of Israel is the Creator.  The very argument coming from the Goyim that Israel stole the Land is a challenge to the root of faith, according to Ramban. It is not primarily a challenge to Israel but a challenge to God.  It is the challenge to the truth that the God of Israel is the Creator.

Therefore, Ramban concludes, providing the rational argument that God is sovereign and can give any land to whomever He wills, which seems to presume universal belief that the God of Israel is the Creator, should not be taken, on face value, as being  the reason for God starting the Torah with the account of creation. But Ramban's purpose is to clarify Rashi's comments, not to contradict them. Instead of this commentary given by Rashi being taken on face value, Ramban suggests, it needs to be taken as a signpost that says that Genesis 1:1 and Exodus 12:2 must be read together as one, as two verses which God wrote as commentary upon one another.    Let's see how that is.

The Whole Rashi/Ramban Discussion on This Verse

This whole discussion, then, started by Rashi and taken up by Ramban, leads us to the place we need to go in asking why the Torah begins as it does at Genesis 1:1.  We can begin to recognize that, indeed, as the Torah narrative does lead from Genesis 1:1 to Exodus 12:2, there is, as Rashi suggests, a real sense in which from its very first verse the Torah anticipates Humanity's disbelief in God. Because the Torah is all one narrative composed by God, and because Exodus 12:2 shows most pointedly that it is all a narrative of redemption, we can conclude that Genesis 1:1 was written with the purpose of being the first statement pointing the way to the story of redemption.  It becomes clear that this was Rashi's actual point, and Ramban guided us to this clear understanding.

The implications of reading Genesis 1:1ff. as God purposefully addressing not only the believer but the unbeliever also — through the believer — are tremendous. There are many levels of understanding that open up through this opened door.  Intitially, we may respond by saying that this is self-evident to anyone who is a believer in Scripture.  The believer reads Gensis 1:1 and is nurished from the root of faith.  They then are able to testify of their faith to a non-believer who reads these words.  However, Rashi's and Ramban's point is much deeper and much broader.

Rashi's and Ramban's point goes all the way to pointing to there being a stone of redemption in Israel, at the very foundation of creation! This stone is the thought in the mind of God for how He would ultimately overcome all human unbelief in Him, through the goodness of His Torah and the goodness of His grace.

It is a stone of truth about how, when God creates, all the sparks of light will fall and will then be gathered up with mercy, the mercy He shows to Israel for the sake of all creation.  In this foundation stone of redemption that was laid when God created the heavens and the earth is the gift of understanding, given with the fellowship of wisdom.

We can now see that right from the outset of the Torah, from Genesis 1:1, even from before the outset, God is thinking of Mashiach, the redeemer of Israel, and as the redeemer of Israel, God is speaking of Mashiach as the foundation stone of creation. For we see that, in creating, God knew that Humanity would fall short of complete belief in Him.  But in this very thought of God, the thought to begin as a Creator, was the thought of Mashiach, the heart of His foundation stone, which would be redeemed Israel.  And this thought was the thought of the soul of Israel, Jerusalem and the soul of Jerusalem, the Temple of Y-H-V-H.  And God was pleased to begin with this thought, for with it He knew that all the earth would come to know Him, as the waters fill the seas, to know that Y-H-V-H is God.

Rashi, in saying that the Torah could have begun with Exodus 12:2  certainly was also aware of the direct bearing of the content of this verse on Genesis 1:1.  For in Genesis 1:1 there is the beginning of the creation of the day.  And from this the year is derived. For, "a day to Adonai is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day".

But the relation of years and months is left by nature as a mystery.  Only to Israel does God address the secret of this mystery, saying, "This month (Nisan) shall be to you the beginning of months.  And why shall it be the beginning of months to Israel?  Because it is the month of redemption, the month of Pesach.  In this month the foundation stone of redemption was laid. God gave Himself a beginning with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, His word of promise, His covenant, His promise of Mashiach. Upon this stone the heavens and the earth would forever rest.  This is the stone that was rejected by the builders, but all of God's Torah and grace rests upon it.  Through it the sun and the moon and all the heavens and the earth will be brought into perfect eternal alignment.  For the presence and light of the Spirit of God shall be the time for all creation.