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Parashat Breishit - Genesis 1:1-6:8
(with Erica Burech and Joel Levy) God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden, to till it and tend it. God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die." (Genesis 2:15-17) ERICA: I think it's important to begin by asking ourselves: what was God thinking? Did God really believe that Adam and Eve would follow His instructions and eat everything in the garden except for the 'forbidden fruit'? No way. I think that God put the tree in the garden of Eden for a reason - He wanted Adam and Eve to know good and evil. He expected that they would break the only rule they'd been given. JOEL: I agree with you to a certain point. I think that the placement of the tree has something to do with raising questions of good and evil. It seems that even before Eve eats from the tree, she has already raised questions about good and evil in her mind. God told her that the tree was evil, and yet when she comes to look at the tree, she sees that it is good, and that it is good to eat. It's not that good and evil become apparent from the eating of the fruit. Instead, I think that good and evil come to exist in Eden by the simple presence of the tree itself. The very fact that the tree is there raises the question of the struggle between good and evil. ERICA: I don't know if she necessarily looks at the tree as if it were bad. She was told not to do it. But it doesn't seem to me that she knows that it's bad. I think that in some way, she fears death - the purported consequence of eating the fruit - even though she and Adam have no way of knowing what death is. And I suspect that God doesn't believe that the tree is bad. After all, God created the tree and everything that God created is good. I don't think God believes that their eating from the tree is a bad thing. JOEL: I definitely do. I think that there's a strange 'swapping over' in Eve's head. She's told not to eat the fruit, and she perceives it as being a bad thing, but when she comes to analyze for herself the qualities of the tree - and with the help of the snake who's pushing her to eat it - she thinks that the tree is good. She sees that the tree is good. She works out for herself that the tree is good. After talking to the snake, she wonders if God is perhaps trying to hold her and Adam back, as it were. Holding them back from what humanity could be. ERICA: But God doesn't hold them back. When God emphatically says, "Don't eat from the tree," God is subconsciously pushing them towards it. By creating the tree and the snake, God creates the temptation. JOEL: It's interesting that the rabbinic tradition doesn't treat this commandment as a normal commandment. Rather, they make it the source of the Noahide laws. [The Noahide laws, derived from different parts of Genesis 9, are the only commandments that classical Jewish tradition applies to all of humanity.] All of the Noahide regulations refer back to this verse - thanks to the midrashic process. In a powerful and positive way, by prohibiting Adam and Eve from eating of this one particular fruit, God reminds us that human beings need some form of regulation - guidelines for behavior. Ironically, the command is also the first crack in God's relationship to humanity, and also in the relationship between men and women. We are still, of course, left with the question: what on earth is the tree doing there? If God intends for the perfection of Eden to remain forever, why does He create the possibility that the whole thing could collapse? For me, the tree doesn't really have to be a special tree. It's merely the object attached to the Torah's very first prohibition. As soon as prohibition comes into the world, so does the possibility that humanity will crack the perfection that is Eden. ERICA: But again, I don't see at it as an imperfection. Yes, the command is definitely emphatic and very different from the earlier positive commandments. But there's a difference. The prohibition takes humanity to a different level, a better level. The prohibition operates on a spiritual level. If you eat the fruit, your eyes will be open. Think of it in terms of a parental relationship. As parents, we mourn when our innocent children discover what it means to be naked. That's part of the natural course of things, even if we don't want them to grow up. And just as parents know that it's normal for their kids to grow like this, so does God. JOEL: I think I read God as a more Machiavellian character. I see God here as being very insecure. God doesn't really want to give humanity the things that He has - knowledge and life. Remember that the Bible is just as much a story about the development of God, as it is the story of the development of humanity. ERICA: I don't see anything Machiavellian here. God is sad. Yes, there's definitely a development of God. But, here God is experiencing a sense of mourning. He knows that they are going to be hurt by all of the emotions that come with evil. This is the natural course of things. God put the tree there for a reason. And now is the time for history to move into the next phase. |