Bereisheet: How Could We Resist?

We have once again returned to the beginning, literally the Genesis of it all, with the very first Torah portion of the Bible. With new beginnings come fresh starts and clean slates... and right away, the humans start committing sins! 

And not just some little tiny ones either, but THE Original Sin, at least according to Christian doctrine. So let's talk about that for a minute. What's the deal with our very first egregious sin, the Fall of Adam, the eating of the forbidden fruit, leading to the expulsion from Eden? Was it really so terrible? I'll give you one guess as to what my answer is going to be...

As the story goes, God tells Adam and Eve, the first two humans, that they can eat anything in the Garden of Eden except the fruit of the 

tree of knowledge of good and evil. How surprising, then, that they eventually eat it. Those of you who are parents know that if you tell a child, "I'm planting something very special, that looks really tasty, in an easily accessible spot in the MIDDLE of our garden... and I'm leaving for a bit - but don't eat it!!" they usually listen to you, don't they? Adam and Eve are SUCH disappointments...

I hope you realize I'm being sarcastic. How could they resist?!? And what was God's purpose here anyway? Why place the tree in the garden in the first place, and why was God trying to keep these human beings - who clearly had been singled out to be different from the animals - from becoming more

Godlike? I think one potential answer can be found in analyzing this tempting and 'dangerous' Tree of Good and Evil. What does its fruit REALLY allow us to do? I read a fascinating Torah commentary by a favorite professor of mine, Dr. Richard Kalmin, who writes about how the tree enables humans to deceive and be afraid (something they were previously incapable of doing), BUT it also allows them to be creative, to take initiative, and to question. Dr. Kalmin writes, "Before the snake enabled them to acquire the knowledge of good and evil, they just did what they were told; now they have something of God's creativity in them." So it truly is BOTH good and evil, it opens up to us a world of complex emotions and experiences, morals and consciences, that were previously non-existent. 

No offense to Christian theological doctrine, but I never understood why 'Applegate' constituted Original Sin. Dr. Kalmin points out that this 'sin' didn't make us fall away from God; it actually brought us much closer to the Divine. We gained the ability to love, fear, empathize, and innovate. These are essential drives that make us

human. Now, the tragic reality is that these urges have also allowed us to do terrible things throughout human history. Perhaps that is why God was trying to shelter us from them. But that is our greatest challenge as human beings - to rise above our animal instincts, to focus on what makes us Godly and holy, and to FORCE ourselves to be good and not evil. We shouldn't pretend that we are incapable of evil, we are! But thanks to Adam and Eve (with a little 'friendly' nudge from a wily serpent...), we are also capable of tremendous good, and beauty, and creation. Makes you wonder if that wasn't God's plan all along. It WAS a pretty strange place to put something so important, wasn't it? Strange...

Photos in this blog post:

 

1. CC image courtesy of NeoGaboX on Flickr.

2. CC image courtesy of Abode of Chaos on Flickr.

3. CC image courtesy of a-small-lab on Flickr. 

4. CC image courtesy of pasukaru76 on Flickr.