Since learning to read Hebrew and chanting the Torah (using a simple, Syrian trop adopted as part of the Barkai Method used by her school), Peach has been working her way through Parshat Bereshit (the first chapters of Genesis). As I would listen to her read, she would pause now and then to ask a question, and we would have a discussion.
This has always been my favorite parashah, especially the story of Adam and Chava in the Garden of Eden. So much happens here: human beings are created, they interact with one another, animals, and God. Their poor marital communication leads to a really big screw-up and they end up being evicted from the Garden, and all of their descendants after them.
(I’m not going to try to argue that there’s anything literal about the text; that doesn’t interest me much. But it’s a powerful story, and I love stories. That’s generally my approach, at least to this part of the Torah.)
When Adam and Chava are created, their world is simple. They have everything they want: good food, good weather, and no laundry. Humankind is in its infancy, with all of its needs provided for, and nothing much to do or think about. (Presumably not much weeding or pruning, even.)
And yet, there is something deceptive about this scenario. The one fruit they’re not allowed to eat is that which will give them knowledge of good and evil. Is this meant to imply that there is no good or evil in the world? But there is evil, right from the beginning.
Within hours of Adam and Chava’s taking up residence, Evil (in the form of envy, dishonesty, and mistrust) is introduced. But like all good tragedy, it’s effected by an ensemble rather than a single individual through a single deed. Each player—the serpent, Chava, and Adam—has his or her own motivation. Adam is told by God not to eat the fruit, but just to be safe (because Chava is younger, more naïve, flighty, not to be trusted, or just plain female), Adam adds a chumra (stringency) when he tells Chava not even to touch the tree or she will die. The serpent, according to one interpretation, desires Chava and hopes to erase Adam from the picture so he can get the girl for himself. Sowing the seeds of mistrust between the newlyweds is the most expedient method, so the serpent questions Chava about the tree. When he hears her tell Adam’s version (no touching) of the tree rule (no eating), he pushes Chava into the tree. When she discovers that touching the tree does not make her die, she concludes that Adam made the whole thing up as a game, a joke, or an insult, and proceeds to eat the fruit. The rest, of course, is history.
Besides being a classic example of poor marital communication (not to mention male chauvinism), what does this story mean? Here some of my many thoughts about it:
1) To my psychologically-inclined mind, the Garden represents humankind’s infancy, the warm receiving blanket and secure carseat of our history, our soft landing into the world. Yes, it was over pretty quickly, but perhaps that was all we needed before we were ready to develop the skills and assume the responsibilities commensurate with adulthood. (By the way, I don’t necessarily equate the resumption of life in the Land of Nod with adulthood; I think we were still teenagers in the desert after the Exodus. But that’s another parashah.)
2) The pshat (basic, surface interpretation) is that this is how humankind was introduced to the knowledge of Good and Evil. Without that knowledge, we would have remained dolls in a dollhouse, God’s puppets. We weren’t meant to be dolls; we’re people. And if, as we believe, we were given free will, then we were meant to have to make decisions based on our knowledge of Good and Evil.
3) If God doesn’t make mistakes, then the fact that God placed such a tree in the Garden of Eden was not to trap us; I think we were meant to discover it. Humans were made imperfect and curious, and it was only a matter of time before their inquisitiveness and manipulative treatment of one another led them to do the One Thing they were told not to do.
4) We were not meant to live in the lap of luxury our whole lives. To have remained in the Garden would have meant no exercise of muscle, no use of our intellect, and no contribution to the world which we (Jews at least) believe we were meant to inhabit and perfect. (Laura Ingalls Wilder fans may remember the chapter “The Day of Games” in which the family took an entire day and just played, without working at all. They nearly died of boredom.)
5) Some questions arise for me when reading this story. If humans were meant to work, to have problems, and to exercise free will, why didn’t God set us up in the Land of Nod to begin with? Why did we start out in the lap of luxury and then almost immediately have to leave it? Why did God put a fruit tree in the Garden from which we davka couldn’t eat? Why did we have to break the one rule God made for us to gain the essential knowledge of Good and Evil? Why did this transgression, with such devastating consequences, have to happen?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I have some guesses. As a parent, I know it’s not wise to put my children in situations in which they are certain to fail. On the other hand, they do have hard lessons to learn, without which they will never grow or mature. If we were meant to learn about Good and Evil, I suppose it was just as well that we found it on our own rather than having it programmed into us. And if we were meant to have a life of toil and sweat and tzarot, then it’s better that we understand that we ourselves helped to bring about this way of life, rather than snarling at God for dealing us short when He created us. Rabbi Saul Berman uses this story as a warning against adding chumrot to the Torah, citing Adam’s mis-reporting of the One Rule to Chava as an example. And I suppose a final interpretation could be that “All good things must come to an end.”
One of the last pages of Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men has this paragraph:
The creation of man whom God in His foreknowledge knew doomed to sin was the awful index of God’s omnipotence. For it would have been a thing of trifling and contemptible ease for Perfection to create mere perfection. To do so would, to speak truth, be not creation but extension. Separateness is identity and the only way for God to create, truly create, man was to make him separate from God Himself, and to be separate from God is to be sinful. The creation of evil is therefore the index of God’s glory and His power. That had to be so that the creation of good might be the index of man’s glory and power. But by God’s help. By His help and in His wisdom.
Looking at this from a Jewish perspective, I tend to interpret the word “sinful” as “imperfect.” But once that’s done, I very much like this way of thinking.
What are your thoughts about the story?
Shimshonit 
“I love stories” – I cannot help but read this like a certain Simpsons dialogue:
> Dad, does this story have a point?
> Homer: I like stories.
Rabbi Yehuda Herzl Henkin’s book Equality Lost includes an essay called “Equality Lost”, about how male disregard for women caused the expulsion from Eden.
Your reading sounds like Rambam’s explanation. Rambam, if I remember correctly, actually reads G-d as wanting Adam and Eve to eat from the tree. Rambam assumes that G-d wanted us to eat the fruit; after all, is not man’s purpose – especially from an Aristotelian perspective – to perfect his intellect?
The difficulty, however, is that in the text, G-d apparently did not want us to eat from the tree, and He punished us for doing so. How can this be?
Moreover, if G-d commanded Adam and Eve not to eat, does this not presuppose free will? Apparently, the tree of knowledge did NOT give them actual knowledge of good and evil. If so, then what did it proffer?
Rabbi Hirsch, after elaborating at some length on these points, offers the following solution:
1) Following the Midrash, it is not the Tree that GIVES knowledge of good and evil, but rather, the Tree by which to MEASURE or TEST good and evil. That is, it is the tree by which one’s knowledge of good and evil will be tested. Nechama Leibowitz gives the same explanation.
2) Their knowledge of nakedness was not objectively gained knowledge, but rather, knowledge of shame. By violating G-d’s command, they gained knowledge of shame, embarrassment, sin, etc., and they attempted childishly to hide from G-d. Clothing themselves was a psychological response. (Similarly, women after being raped will wash themselves until their skin is raw.)
But I agree with what you say in (1) and (4), or rather, I agree so long as you let me disconnect this teaching from the story of Eden. I agree with most of what you say, as long as I’m not required to attach it to the text. Indeed, Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits defined midrash as any teaching, attached to a text, which is true independently of the text to which it is attached. Similarly, Rabbi David bar Hayim, teaching Rav Kook’s distinction (Hakdamah to Ein Ayah) between perush – p’shat interpretation of the author’s own intent – and biur – expository drash beyond the author’s intent – says that biur is fine as long as one admits it is not a perush.
But your interpretation that G-d wanted us to slip and fall in a controlled environment, as a parent desires for their children, is an interesting reading, one that makes the whole scenario more tenable. I’m still not convinced it fits in the text, but your reading is better than the Adam=Prometheus and G-d= petty jealous Greek god reading.
I write about the meaning of G-d’s fatherhood and our being His children, learning responsibility, at http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol26/v26n121.shtml#15, responding to http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol26/v26n120.shtml#15
I just remembered that at that URL I just gave, I also discuss the distinction between perush and biur. What are the odds?
Rabbi Dr. J. H. Hertz, in the Hertz Pentateuch, offers a very interesting reading.
He notes that “knowledge of good and evil” in the Tanakh simply means “knowledge of all things”.
He says therefore that the tree gives not moral knowledge, but technical knowledge. When man’s technical knowledge outstrips his moral knowledge, we get guns, grenades, and nuclear bombs.
Of course, “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it” implies we are supposed to create technology. If so, how could G-d seek to deny this knowledge to us?
So I’ll take Rabbi Hirsch’s reading. The straightforward text implies a Prometheus reading, but this is theologically untenable. Rambam has already taught us that when reason contradicts Scripture, Scripture must yield, no matter what Scripture appears to say.
Michael: Thanks for all the stuff. I provide the airy thoughts, and you provide the textual discussion (i.e. the hard work). A very satisfying symbiosis, if I may say.
I have my own theory: that the first sin was lashon hara.
Why?
Because if they didn’t know the difference between good and evil BEFORE they ate the fruit, then they were not really guilty of eating it because they didn’t know it was wrong (yet.)
Once they ate it, they retrospectively knew that what they had done was wrong.
I don’t see the snake as hasatan, but as a metaphor for the woman’s internal dialogue.
Jennifer: I like your theory. Seeing the snake as hasatan feels too Christian to me. I don’t believe that tempting people on earth is the job of hasatan, and I don’t think it was placed in the garden to undermine Adam and Chava’s existence there. The midrash that sees it as desiring Chava sees it as a free agent, like the humans themselves. But I also like your idea that it is “a metaphor for the woman’s internal dialogue.” Very well said.
I had missed this somehow, despite the RSS feed. Great job.
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