As a child I had a Cabbage Patch doll named Helena Zena. Helena Zena and I went everywhere together, including family vacations. On one such vacation I was holding Helena Zena by the ankle, dragging her on the very bumpy rocks on the shore of one of the Great Lakes. My parents asked me to stop and I responded, “But she likes it!” But of course the truth was that I was the one who liked it.
As children we learn what we like and don’t like very quickly. Children are able to engage in a world of discovery and pleasure. When they discover what they like, they prefer to continue to do it over and over again, generally without regard for safety or other children. Children under a certain age lack the cognitive ability to understand self control. While pleasure and pain are two basic instincts, understanding how our actions effect others requires a developed conscience and an understanding of the world that only happens at an older age.
Parshat Bereshit, the first parshah in the Torah, reminds us of the blissful nature of ignorance and the consequences we learn as we grow. The parshah begins with the narrative of creation when God brings order to a chaotic entity, creating the world in which we live. Then comes the narrative of Adam and Eve, the first human inhabitants of this world. As the first human beings, their first moments in the Torah are euphoric. They are placed in a luscious garden with plenty to eat, animals to watch and each other to keep company. While they might be fully grown human beings, they are still new to the world and therefore in the mindset of a small child. We can picture them roaming from place to place in Gan Eden taking in every new experience. The only rules were to refrain from eating from the “tree of knowledge of good and bad.” But, every child likes to test boundaries, and that is exactly what they did.
With a little prodding, Eve eats from the tree and convinces Adam to do the same. At this moment, neither Adam nor Eve has been introduced to the concept of consequences. They are living in a world without conscience, and judging from God’s strong, negative reaction to their act, it appears as though God had intended for human beings to be created to live in a world of pleasure, to understand boundaries and not cross them or question them. Anyone who’s ever spent time with a three-year-old knows that boundary testing is a given.
After the rule is broken, Adam and Eve receive their consequences. For Eve, the punishment is pain in childbearing, attraction to her partner and male dominance. For Adam, he is to work the ground; no longer will food come easily. He will be forever tied to the dirt of the earth. After God hands down these consequences, He states in chapter 3, verse 22: “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and bad…” The text implies that up until this moment, God was the source of moral awareness and the only being that could understand good and evil. Now, human beings have gained the capacity to make that distinction, and God becomes concerned with the outcome.
Through one simple act, Adam and Eve and all human beings gained a conscience. From this moment on, they could no longer eat or live instinctively; their minds were now open to the rights and wrongs of the world. The innocence of childhood, of learning pleasure and pain, is short lived. But once we’ve acquired our conscience, we have the ability and responsibility to do good in the world. The punishments of Adam and Eve teach us that knowledge requires action. Each of them is expected to work in order for their world to make sense. And so each of us is in turn asked to listen to that internal voice, to be guided by our innate knowledge of pleasure and pain and instead of continuing the cycle of evil, we are to act in a godly fashion, to become like God in righting the wrong in our world. It is when each of us accepts this responsibility that we will have taken steps towards the order that God set to the world in creation.
ללמוד To Learn: ללמד To Teach: Judaism is a beautiful religion in that we are trained to continue finding meaning in a text we’ve read over and over again. Rabbi Ben Bag Bag in perkei avot, ethics of the fathers teaches that we are responsible for looking over the Torah text again and again because there is always something new in it. Make this year the year that you read the parshaheach week and learn from it. Some great, English commentaries are: The Bedside Torah by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, The Women’s Torah Commentary, published by Jewish Lights, The Torah Portion by Portion by Seymour Rossel. Feel free to ask me for more suggestions.
לשמור To Keep: לעשות To Do: Parshat Bereshit reminds us that 6 days of our week are meant to be spent creating, engaging physically with the world, but that on the 7th day, God ceased creating. There’s no time like a new beginning to try refraining from creating. On Friday night as Shabbat begins, talk about what each of you has created in this past week, how have your words, deeds and activities led to creation? Then, stop creating, challenge your family to spend 25 hours enjoying what already is, not creating something new.
Rabbi Eve Posen 