Parashat Lech Lecha: In a Dark Time

Abraham Sees Sodom in Flames - James Tissot

 ‘And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth and blew into his nostrils the breath of life.’ -Genesis 2:7

He was a mound of mud. Just another fold of earth indistinguishable from his surroundings. From the earth he was taken, and to earth he would return. But now he lay there, his back pressed against the soil. If this were the grave, his face would have been cold and ashen, his eyelids sealed forever. But here was a man awoken. Here was a beating heart. Here was a beginning not an end.

Adam opened his eyes: open, shut, open. Night faded. Morning drew away dawn’s breath. The mist departed. No longer was this a mound of mud, but a man alive. On his back, Adam gazed skyward. Imagine his first glimpse as the vault of heaven filled his eyes…. What a testament to human nature! Between the first kicks in the womb and the repose of the grave — the sky is the limit. Half beast half seraph, Adam lay there between sleeping and flying.

A favorite poet, Theodore Roethke once wrote: “What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?”[1] In all the Bible, there is perhaps no soul more noble than that of Abraham our father. His every action is at odds with circumstance, his very faith at odds with an entire world. Every friend became a doubter. ‘Where are you going Abraham? You leave your country, your birthplace, you dare abandon your father’s home! This is madness, Abraham. Who is this unheard-of-God that you claim to hear? What God says “go to some place which I will show you?” If He can make heaven and earth, why does this place not have a name?’ Where are you Abraham? Where?’

“A man goes far to find out what he is—,” wrote Roethke. In Abraham’s case, very far indeed. From the great plains of Mesopotamia, westward to Assyria, south to Canaan than down to Egypt and back again. “Traveling continually...,” the Torah records, but always “to the place that I will show thee.”

It was a dark world, few were kind to strangers. Not the Pharaoh of Egypt who kidnapped Sarah, or the Philistines on the coast, who did the same. His nephew Lot departs after a dispute over flocks and pasturage. An unspoken rebuke. Abraham abandoned family once, now family abandons him.

We have heard this story more than once. The people of Sodom were neither kind nor generous. Yet when a near fist of kings sacks their city taking property and people alike (including Lot), Abraham plots a rescue. His audacity is foolish. His courage military folly. 318 men against the might of four kings. But Abraham is successful. He wages war, his enemy retreats. When offered spoil, he takes not a ‘shoelace’ for himself. (14.23) People and property are returned to the king of Sodom. An altruistic war, fought purely on behalf of others. And think of these others, Sodom, who denied guest-right to guests, who later sought to humiliate Lot and his household for treating strangers with dignity and respect. The city’s evil rises up before the Lord, which God overturns in brimstone and fire. Yet Abraham’s compassion extends even to wrongdoers, enemies of the very way of life he holds dear. Was this nobility or madness?

Which I is I? Roethke asks. Even Abraham has doubts. He and Sarah are advanced in age, without natural heir. “Shall Eliezer of Damascus inherit me?” asks Abraham of God. How long can a man live in clouds which never rain?

“In a dark time the eye begins to see,” wrote Roethke. Out of the depths, a voice emerges. “Then the Lord’s word came to Abraham in a vision, ‘Be not afraid Abram…your reward is exceedingly great.’” ‘Come outside Abraham. “Pray look toward the heavens and count the stars, can you count them?”’ (Gen. 15.5)

Rabbi Judah opined in the Talmud that when Adam was first created his body stretched from one end of the earth to the other. (Sanhedrin 38b) No earthly power could contain him. It was only after his disobedience that man was shrunk to his present size. But in Abraham, God found something of the Adam He had first conceived; A man who saw the infinite in the imminent: “And Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar” (Gen. 22.4) Here stood a man who thought not of scaling the mountain, but of scaling the clouds above. (Rashi ibid) “Can you count the stars? So shall your seed be.” 

We know nothing till we try. Every heart has its doubts. We dream dreams but then tell ourselves: 'It is too much, it is too late.'  Another great poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, lamented: “Everything is far / and long gone by.” But there is still time. Rilke writes: I would like to step out of my heart / and go walking beneath the enormous sky [2] 

Such was Adam when he first gazed above. Such was Abraham, a noble madman, who one desert night stepped outside his heart and walked with God beneath the sky, who listened to the stars whisper and heard in them the voices of a nation that would number as the sand. 

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^[1] In a Dark Time by Theodore Roethke

[2] Lament –Rainer Maria Rilke. Translation Stephen Mitchell

Parashat Noah: Out of the Crooked Timber of Humanity

Noah's Drunkeness - James Tissot, 1896-1902 

Prior to the flood we are told that "the Lord saw the wickedness of man upon the earth, how every form of his heart's devising was for evil, only and always" (Gen. 6:5).  But then in its aftermath, after God promises never again to drown the earth, the Lord declares "for that which the human heart forms is evil from its youth"  (8:21). A strange literary envelope. Humanity slouched toward evil beforehand, and slouched toward evil forever afterward, though in the interim an entire world was unmade and remade anew.  One may be forgiven for asking to what end was all this destruction? For what purpose did God blot out countless living-creatures, be they human or beast?  When all is said and done: 'The human heart schemes evil from its youth.' What changed?

There is a great deal that is repetitious in Genesis, more than several recurring themes and plots. To share a few examples. A close inspection of the story of Cain and Abel reveals hues and colors borrowed heavily from the scenery of Eden. In both stories, sin is instigated by fruit: the fruit of knowledge of good and bad and the fruit of the ground that Cain offers to God in tribute. In the Garden, sin is likened to a snake in the grass poised to 'bite at Eve's heel' (3:15). Likewise God says to Cain , 'If you do well, bear it (e.g. the burden of doing good); and if you do not well, sin crouches [like a beast] at the door" --akin a coiled serpent poised to strike its prey (Gen. 4:7).

Misdeed and disobedience in each story is followed by a divine interrogation. "Where are you? Who told you that you were naked?" These questions unmask Adam's heart. Yet the saddest question in all of Torah is directed toward Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" We later read that the "earth is cursed" on account of Adam's sin, "...by the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread." So terrible is Cain's murder of his brother that God declares, "cursed be you from the earth...which will not henceforth give you its strength."

Adam and Eve are 'driven from the Garden' and settle somewhere to its East. (3.24) Fittingly, Cain complains "you drive me away this day from the face of the earth....later Cain settled in the land of Wandering (Nod), east of Eden" (4.12).

Adam began life in Paradise, eating fruit trees at his pleasure, and ends a farmer, with scythe and plough in hand. Cain begins a farmer and ends a scavenger, wandering the earth for wild fruit and berries. Cain has regressed to a life that is notably Eden-like for its apparent absence of responsibility, "my burden is too great to bear," he cries out (4.13). No spade or scythe are necessary for his new way of life. While all this is fascinating in detail, on a wider plane, what is the purpose of parallel language, why this literary return to Eden through the employment of recurring symbols and themes?

Another example. After Noah and his family disembark from their sunless cruise they settle down. "And Noah, a husbandman of the earth, began by planting a vineyard. He then drank from the wine and was drunk, and exposed himself in his tent" (9:20-21).  Here too the reds of Eden reappear. In Eden, there was a fruit and a tree, while with Noah we have grape and vine. Having imbibed of this fruit, Noah falls asleep in the nude, his grapes the cause of his nakedness. It falls upon Noah's sons, Shem and Yafeth to cover their somnolent father. Sound familiar? In the garden, the fruit of knowledge awakens Adam and Eve to their bare-skinned state. They sew themselves fig leaves in shame. Remarkably, both episodes end with damnations. As God cursed the earth for Adam's sins, Noah curses Ham (his son) and Canaan (his grandson) for having 'seen Noah's nakedness.'

The symmetry is striking. One one level, it conveys humanity's ever-terrible temptation of returning to an Eden-like way of life. Cain does not wish to be burdened with the human responsibility of doing good, e.g. sparing the brother who has caused him sorrow. "If you do well, carry the burden (se'et)." Cain further shirks responsibility for his crimes. "My iniquity is too great to bear." Noah, a survivor of apocalyptic destruction and death, imbibes to forget, to sleep, to return to that youthful -- less intellective -- state; a state embodied by the innocence of Eden, where man and woman ran about like unclothed children.

On a deeper level, the fact that the flood and exile do not change humanity's basic nature speak volumes about humanity's darkest crimes. Though our capacity to love and care is as deep as the sea, our penchant for evil is as wide as the ocean. There is no end to villains, terrorists, and despots. There is no accounting for the murders of one or the genocides of many. The flood in Noah's generation teaches a lesson that we have yet to internalize. Humanity is all-too deserving of destruction for its crimes.  In the words of the House of Shammai, "It would have been preferable for man to not have been created."

Yet God spares us each season, and each day of each year. "I will never again strike down all living-things, as I have done.... sowing and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall never again cease" (8:21-22). But having been spared, left alive like Adam, Eve and Cain, like Noah and his sons, what shall we do? Do we rise up and carry the responsibility of doing what is good and right? Just as importantly, when we do not well, how do we answer the questions, Where are you? Where is Abel your brother?  



 

Parashat Bereishit: Paradise Lost?

Long have there existed myths of eternal life. The Spanish explorer, Ponce de Leon, was said to have discovered a fountain of youth in the glades of Florida. Herodotus, the Greek historian, recounts the attributes of the Macrobians, a mythical people believed to reside on the horn of Africa, who possessed a restorative spring "with a scent like that of violets." Akin Israel, the religions of ancient Egypt and Persia also had their trees of life.

As an antidote to old age imbued with the promise of timeless youth, it is not difficult to understand the idea's popular appeal. But is the Tree of Life - real or allegorical - something to be sought out? Ought its absence from this world be counted a major loss to our quality of life?

When seeking out the cause for Adam and Eve's banishment from the Garden, our attention naturally drifts toward the 'tree of knowledge of good and bad.' John Milton sums up the matter: "Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit/Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste/Brought death into the world, and all our woe..." (Paradise Lost: The First Book)

True, eating of the tree of knowledge led to certain consequences, "in pain shall you rear children ....by the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread." But perhaps it is a mistake to hang all of the blame upon the branches of a single tree. With the chapter's conclusion we read: "And the Lord God said, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and bad, what if he should stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever! So the Lord God banished him from the garden of Eden... (3:23)" Expulsion, according to Genesis, was not punitive it was preventative: lest Adam and Eve gain life eternal.

This is undoubtedly puzzling. Regarding the tree of knowledge, it was sufficient for God to warn woman and man not to eat. But for the tree of life, so determined is God that humanity not partake of its fruit that no choice is offered. What could possibly be so dangerous about a life unfettered by death?

It is always worth pointing out how much the garden narrative is full of dichotomies. Adam and Eve begin naked, but before they are driven away, the Lord God "clothes them in garments." In their innocence, they unabashedly eat of the tree, afterwards we read how they hid amidst "the tree of the garden" embarrassed and ashamed. Our slippery serpent is introduced as being "more clever than all the beasts of the field (3.1)" till God declares that he slither on the ground "more cursed than all the animals and beasts of the field. (3.14)" And so it goes.

One wonders, if in a way, the tree of knowledge and tree of life represent opposing polarities as well. Each perhaps embodies a contrasting temptation. While penned in Eden, in full possession of eternal life, humanity thirsted for experience. Elsewhere in the Bible, the expression "knowing good and bad," implies knowledge of all things on the earth. As in Deuteronomy 1.39: "your little children, who on this day, know not good or bad" - nothing, as it were. (Similarly, see II Sam. 14.17)

But to attain knowledge, there must exist distinctions and choice. Obedience cannot be appreciated unless man has some taste of the bitter fruit of disobedience. The satisfaction that comes with harvesting bread, raising children, is built on hard work and sacrifice. It is not just the 'tree of good and bad,' it is the tree of joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, loss and gain, work and reward. Sensibly, woman and man needed to be cast out of the Garden lest they eat of the tree of life. It is only through an appreciation of mortality that one comes to value the miracle of a beating heart.

Nevertheless, just as humanity turns to its pursuit of knowledge, another temptation ripens enticingly to take its place. The tree of life embodies our appetite for Eden, a utopia that requires neither labor nor sacrifice, a paradise where all food grows on trees without human assistance. (2.9) Who among us has not harbored some secret desire to live a life absent hardship or pain? What human has never wished to bury the hollow despair that accompanies loss? Would not ignorance and bliss be preferable to the knowing shame that accompanies wrongdoing and error? In a culture that worships youth, who has not dreamed of some elixir that defies death, some balm that vanishes age?

If eating the tree of knowledge made us human, eating from the tree of life would rob us of our very nature. There is no life without death, no good without bad. To eat of the fruit of life, would mean no life at all. "And so [the Lord] drove man out, and stationed Cherubim to the east of the garden of Eden, and the bright blade of a revolving sword, to guard the way to the tree of life (3.24)."