Adam & Eve, a new twist to an old story…

Before they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, they were completely holy, totally innocent, completely G-dly, the world was pure, innocent, and evil existed because G-d created night and day, so G-d created darkness and evil, but the evil was in the snake. So the snake was the personification of evil, and Adam & Eve were the personification of G-dliness; and that’s the way it would have remained.That there would be evil in the world and there would be goodness in the world, but they would be separate realities, separate entities, and the human being in their righteousness would avoid the snake, reject the snake, kill the snake. So there would be this battle between good and evil, but the good guys would be the good guys, and the bad guys would be the bad guys.

So G-d says to Adam & Eve –this is the story now– you are the good guys, the snake is evil, you are not going to listen to the snake. That part was clear, that part was easy. But then G-d said: there is also a tree, whose fruits you can not eat. How they understand this? The tree is not the snake, it’s not evil, but you can’t eat it; why not? So G-d says: because the tree is a tree of knowledge of good and evil, it’s a mixture, it’s not quite evil and it’s not quite good, it’s a mixture of good and evil. And the day that you eat from that tree, you will die.

Which, by the way, Adam & Eve heard that as a hint to eat from the tree and die; otherwise, why would G-d have to say that? Why would G-d have to tell to perfectly innocent G-dly beings that if you violate my commandment you will die? They were not about to violate any commandments.

When you raise your children, when you tell them right from wrong, you don’t do that. You don’t say: I don’t ever want to see you do this, and if you do, I’ll punish you. Why would you want to put negative thoughts in their mind? What do you mean, if they do? They won’t! They can’t! They mustn’t!

So as soon as you say: and the day you do this you will die; it’s almost like saying: and there will come a day when you will do it. They understood subtleties, and they got the message that there is a possibility that they should do it, and die.

So they understood it this way: there are two possibilities in this world, one is that the holy remains holy, the evil remains evil. And by avoiding the evil the holy gained credit and virtue in that they rejected the evil. But basically, the people would be צדיקים (tzadikim), saints, always, and when you are a צדיק (tzadik) you live forever because death comes from unholiness. In holiness there is no interruption, there’s no death. So they would be צדיקים (tzadikim), they would be perfectly righteous, and they would live forever in a G-dly state, in a G-dly universe called The Garden of Eden.

Where exactly is this Garden of Eden? The whole world was a Garden of Eden. Once they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, the whole world became what it is now. So when it says they were thrown from the Garden of Eden it doesn’t mean any one particular place, they were thrown out of a universe, out of an Earth that was completely G-dly and holy into a world that was a mess.

That was one of the options that Adam & Chava heard, they could remain perfectly righteous, don’t touch that tree, leave the evil and the snake, avoid the snake, and you are a צדיק (tzadik)! And you will live forever, and everything will always be holy, and it will just be wonderful.
The other option they heard was: you eat from the tree, you come in contact with evil, at least with a mixture of good and evil, you die, you’re not immortal anymore, and you don’t live in a perfectly holy condition called The Garden of Eden.

Those were the options.
What point is there to sinning and dying and not living in the Garden of Eden? That you do תשובה (teshuva). So you eat from the tree and it diminishes you, but then you do תשובה (teshuva) and you bounce back. So, in simple words, Adam & Chava had a choice: either to be a צדיק (tzadik) or to be a בעל תשובה‎‎ (ba’al teshuvah).

Those were the options.
And those are still the options. Only with Adam & Chava it wasn’t a personal thing, they didn’t exist for themselves, they existed as the prototypes of human beings. So whatever decision they made, or were going to make, was a decision for the human race, not for themselves. So, to them the question was: do they want their children and grandchildren forevermore to be צדיקים (tzadikim), or do they want to have children who will be בעל תשובה‎‎ (ba’al teshuvah)? That was the challenge handed to them.

So they went through the following reasoning, they thought to themselves like this: this is G-d’s world, which He created just today, and in this world where there’s no corruption, because nobody lived yet to corrupt the world, in this perfect creation that G-d had just recently said it is very good, into this Garden of Eden G-d places a tree from which you may not eat. Why? What is unholiness doing in the Garden of Eden?

Having been told that they are responsible for this Garden of Eden this question became more than just a philosophical or theological question, it became a very personal question. G-d said: you are responsible for this garden. Well, the first glaring need that this garden had was to get rid of this unholy tree, because the rest of the garden was wonderful. There was just this one tree that just didn’t belong. It’s a tree you can’t eat from. Why? Because it’s not G-dly, it’s not good. Then what’s it doing in G-d’s garden and what were they supposed to do about it?

Adam basically said: don’t touch it, leave it alone. Leave it alone! This is G-d’s garden, and if he put a tree in it that isn’t כָּשֵׁר (kosher), He’ll fix it. Leave it alone! Because if we try to fix it we’ll diminish ourselves. He knew exactly what it would cost to eat from the tree. They wouldn’t be immortal, they would have to work hard, they would become slaves of this world rather than its masters, and so on. He said: don’t do it, leave it alone!

Chava said: but what’s it gonna be? Can’t just have one unholy tree in G-d’s garden, we need to do something about it. And if it hurts… well, sometimes in carrying out your responsibilities you pay a price. To clean up a messy situation you’ve got to get yourself dirty, or get at least your hands dirty. So let’s get our hands dirty, but let’s clean this up.

That was their debate: let evil take care of itself, or let G-d take care of the evil, and Chava was saying: we’ve got to clean this up, and whatever price, whatever cost, we’ve got to do it, we can not allow unholiness to grow in G-d’s garden.

Part of the instruction that G-d had given them was that this prohibition against eating from the Tree of Knowledge would only last until שַׁבָּת (Shabbos). On שַׁבָּת (Shabbos) they would be allowed to eat from the tree. Which only makes the story more difficult to understand, they could have waited a couple of hours, and then eaten from the tree legally, because all of this happened on Friday afternoon, a few hours before שַׁבָּת (Shabbos).

In fact, one commentary says that Adam was so פֿרום (frum, Yiddish adjective meaning “devout” or “pious”), he was so religious that he had to eat from the tree because there is a מנהג (minhag), there is a custom that before שַׁבָּת (Shabbos) you are supposed to taste from the foods that you are going to eat on שַׁבָּת (Shabbos). Hey, a tradition! So he was following the tradition and he tasted the tree because he was going to eat it on שַׁבָּת (Shabbos).

So it only makes the story harder to understand, but here’s what their reasoning was: why is it that the tree is not כָּשֵׁר (kosher), you are not allowed to eat from it, if you do you’ll change the entire nature of human beings forevermore, but on שַׁבָּת (Shabbos) yeah, you can eat it… in a couple of hours… now, if you eat it you’ll die, but in a couple of hours, yeah, you can eat it.

Once שַׁבָּת (Shabbos) would come, the holiness of שַׁבָּת (Shabbos) would envelope even this tree, and even this tree would become a little holier as a result of שַׁבָּת (Shabbos), the influence of שַׁבָּת (Shabbos). So Adam said: we don’t have to eat it and die, let’s wait until שַׁבָּת (Shabbos), then we’ll eat it because it will be holier, it will be כָּשֵׁר (kosher) then, and once we eat from that tree it won’t be evil anymore, it will be part of us. So we will have elevated that tree to a level of G-dliness, and we will have fixed the whole problem.

Chava said: no, we can’t wait! Why? Because if we eat from the tree when it’s שַׁבָּת (Shabbos) then we really haven’t fixed the tree. שַׁבָּת (Shabbos) came along and added its holiness to the tree, but the unholiness of the tree we never dealt with. So we never really cleaned up that unholiness, we simply coated it with the holiness of שַׁבָּת (Shabbos); so you’re just painting over the problem or you’re sweeping it under the rug, you’re not really fixing it.

When the Jews came out of Egypt it was a whitewash, Egypt hadn’t changed, the world hadn’t gotten better. We escaped from Egypt, but that didn’t fix Egypt, and that’s why for the rest of history Egypt has always been a problem, not our best friends, ever.

When מָשִׁיחַ (Moshiach) comes we won’t leave unholiness and go to a place of holiness, because then we’ll only slip back again. With the coming of מָשִׁיחַ (Moshiach) it’s not that we’ll abandon the unholy in favor of the holy, when מָשִׁיחַ (Moshiach) comes there won’t be any unholy, it will all have gotten fixed because we got our hands dirty. We went to all the countries, lived in all those countries, did our מִצְווֹת (mitzvos) in all those countries, until even those countries have become Holy Lands.

So, if we go to Israel with מָשִׁיחַ (Moshiach) it’s not to escape the unholiness, because there won’t be any unholiness.

That’s the difference between what Adam was suggesting and what Chava was arguing. Adam was saying: let שַׁבָּת (Shabbos) coat the tree with its holiness and then it will be כָּשֵׁר (kosher) enough to eat… and Chava was saying: yeah, but it will always keep hunting us, it will keep coming back because inherently, internally, you haven’t changed the tree, you’ve just colored it nice.

So if you don’t deal with the unholiness of the tree but you bring holiness to it from Heaven, that’s not fixing, that’s a shortcut. We have to eat from it! We have to deal with it! We have to get our hands dirty and pay the price. Only then it will be fixed for keeps, for real.
And so she ate from it, and convinced him to do the same. And again, this was for the benefit of their children, not so much for their own benefit. So basically what they had decided to do by eating from the tree, they have decided that they prefer to have children who will be בעל תשובה‎‎ (ba’al teshuvah), and not צדיקים (tzadikim). Because the צדיק (tzadik) avoids evil but he doesn’t fix it.