Parshat Vayakhel: The Spirit of Industry

 James Tissot: Building the Ark 

[Yes Noah's.]

Parashat Vayakhel: The Spirit of Industry

Rabbi Yehuda Hausman

Has it just vanished in smoke: l’esprit du temps? Several thousand years is a vast patch of history, perhaps in the interim, the novelty of a desert Sanctuary has simply seeped away. All its glory and wondrous color faded and stonewashed like an old beach-towel; its imminence lost on us, far more, in fact, than last week’s paper left to yellow in the sun. The Sanctuary’s time is not our time or our great-grandparents’ time. What chance is there that this Sanctuary can stir our hearts as in days of old?  

Admittedly, the descriptions are pleasant enough:  A portable gilded ark, crowned with cherubs; embroidered winged-sphinxes sewn into expensive curtains made of fine goat hair, perhaps a variety of Mohair or Cashmere, if we think on it. There are silver loops and clasps connecting this and that; an indoor altar and an outdoor altar; a golden candelabrum, and a great deal more.

But no amount of familiarity with the text seems to alter its foreignness. Imagine having to describe a spirited summer in Paris to someone who has never sat in a Café, or seen the inside of an art gallery, or fallen in love. The Louvre is nothing but a U-shaped palace, the Seine just another river; the scope of l’Arc de triomphe never quite translates if one has never spent ten minutes walking around its wide roundabout. Thankfully, the Torah has a way of easing us into the unfamiliar, even when most paths are shut; there is always another point of entrée.

One of the stranger aspects of the Tabernacle is that transmission of its many details is twice juxtaposed with the law of Shabbat. The initial five and-a-half chapters of Tabernacle blueprints culminate in a reminder to ‘guard the Sabbath by refraining from prohibited labor—malacha’ (Ex. 25.1—31.12-17).   

Additionally, when the time comes for actual construction, this later section is introduced with yet another mention of Shabbat: ‘For six days shall labor be done, but on the seventh day, there shall be for you holiness, a Sabbath of solemn-rest to the Lord […] You shall kindle no fire throughout all your habitations on the Sabbath Day’ (Ex. 35.2-3).

               Our Sages find in the strange proximity of these two subjects a stern warning. ‘Despite God’s command, construction of the Sanctuary was to cease on the Sabbath.’ (Rashi, Sforno) Why, some might ask? Is it not all for God? Later in the Torah Portion, we read that the people have made and donated far more material than was necessary for the building of the Sanctuary. So much so that Moses announces: “‘Let neither man nor woman make any more work for the sanctuary.’ So the people were restrained from giving” (Ex. 36.6). The exuberance of ancient Israel captures humanity’s boundless desire to fashion and make. Creation never quite ends on its own, for things can always be made better…grander…different. Then there is the danger that mindful work evolves into mindless productivity. The philosopher Raoul Vaneigem had this to say, “In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.”  

Without Moses cry of ‘enough,’ what compels to pause from projects great and small alike, if not mandatory Sabbath? Strikingly, what is odd about the Sanctuary and the Sabbath is that they are both holy, yet they do no quite mix. Like two great magnets of the same polarity, holiness of rest and holiness of work, though infused with a sacred charge, nevertheless push one another away. The Sabbath prevents the Sanctuary from being refurbished each month, from being ever remodeled and expanded each year.

The old awe of the Sanctuary may not be felt as it ought to be, especially when the average home is a great deal bigger than the Tent of Meeting. But we know the satisfaction of successful human labor, whether it’s a simple well-made soup or seeing a skyscraper rise up and kiss the clouds. We can also appreciate the dangers of overwork, one-mindedness, Napoleonic obsession, where no palace is large enough, no monument tall enough.

It is something of interest that of the many labors needed to create the Tabernacle, only the making fire is explicitly mentioned in the beginning of Parashat Vayekhel: ‘You shall kindle no fire…on the Sabbath Day.’ Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno suggests that fire is so basic to human industry, that a great many other labors could not be performed without it. But I prefer to end with a line by the poet Theodore Roethke:

What lives again? Only a man of straw—

Yet straw can feed a fire to melt down stone.

Fire can forge temples and cities or usher in the Sabbath with its light, but if man’s industry is left to burn unchecked, it can turn a Tabernacle into a spectacle, the Sabbath into just another day of work, and even melt the stone Tablets that reside in the Ark of the Covenant.

Parashat Ki Tisa: The Covenant of the Calf

William de Brailes: The Israelites Worship the Golden Calf and Moses Breaks the Tablets (C. 1250)

The Covenant of the Calf

Parashat Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35)

By Rabbi Yehuda Hausman

If the word of God, in stone engraved, can crumble as easily as bread; if God’s voice, chiseled in rock, can shatter like a pitched dinner plate; if the children of Israel can cast off their heavenly covenant with a casualness not unlike the unclasping of an earring or a necklace; if it is all so easily dismissed, what chance is there for loyalty and faith, when weighed against the allure of a pot of gold, or the lustrous aura of a gilded calf?

The narrative of the molten calf is unique on account of its plethora of vivid images. Moses and God, high upon the mountain, are engaged in august discourse, while far below, the restless people, dance their way from anxiety to frivolity, from fear to wretched faithlessness. Somehow, Aaron becomes a harassed sort-of baby-sitter, longing for the sound of an engine in the driveway, his ear tilted in the hope of the sound of jingling keys outside the door, all while the children run amuck.  

First they want gods to lead them. Perhaps, Aaron wonders, they will settle for a single graven calf. The people desire sacrifices; perhaps the ‘construction of an altar’ will provide some delay.  They wish for merriment, so Aaron declares a night vigil, a final interlude for the people to reconsider or Moses to return and intercede: ‘Tomorrow, a feast to the Lord,” he says (Exodus 32:1-6).  We know what ensues.

However there is no image more vivid than Moses’ reaction as he spies his people making sport of all that he holds dear: “And it was when he neared the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned, he threw the tablets from his hands and smashed them beneath the mountain” (Exodus 32:19).

We have journeyed with Moses, our teacher, as he led Israel from slavery to freedom, from the dry-bed of the Red Sea to the sloping mount of Revelation. His defeat now is palpable. There is wrath in his eyes, rage on his face. It is as if he has found some stranger in bed with his spouse. What use are words when the pain is physical? The covenant has already been smashed to pieces.

But quite possibly, wittingly or otherwise, Moses conveyed in rage what could not be conveyed in thunder and lightening, in the great columns of smoke and flame that accompanied the giving of the Ten Commandments. Perhaps what was missing in the fireworks was an essential lesson about the meaning of loyalty. In the moment when Moses’ anger mirrored God’s anger, the children of Israel began to see the thunder anew. Partnerships, covenants, trust … they flow both ways. The voice of God could only be engraved on stone, but it is the image of Moses’ burning rage that gets chiseled in Israel’s heart.  

The verse that follows compounds the lesson: Moses took the calf that they had made, burned it with fire, ground it to fine-powder, scattered it over the water and made the Israelites drink it (Exodus 32:20).

Moses appears to want Israel to “taste” what it has done. His people must ingest the concoction and savor its distastefulness. In this way, they may come to appreciate the foulness of the whole affair. Many commentators wonder: From what source was this water drawn? Some, including Torah translator and interpreter Robert Alter, suggest this was the water that Moses “miraculously provided for the people, which would be a compounding of irony.”

In a different vein, the 12th Century rabbi, Abraham ibn Ezra, points to Deuteronomy 9:21 where Moses states that he took the grounded dust of the calf and flung it into “the stream that came down from the mountain.” This was hardly any old wadi, it was the very stream that swept down from Sinai and sustained the camp.

Faithfulness has little meaning without some awareness of the repercussions of faithlessness. How disloyalty dissolves the bond of trust, how it pollutes the waters of love — human and divine. Faith is no paltry thing, because the memory of broken faith endures forever. Stone tablets shatter, and God’s voice is lost in the wind; perhaps more than anything else, it was the Golden Calf that sealed the covenant.

Rabbi Yehuda Hausman is the spiritual leader of the The Shul on Duxbury, an independent Orthodox minyan. He is a teacher at the Academy for Jewish Religion, CA, and a lecturer at American Jewish University’s Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies. He writes about the weekly parasha on his blog, rabbihausman.com.

Parashat Bo: The Moment Before the Moment

James Tissot: Pharaoh and His Dead Son

Parashat Bo: The Moment Before the Moment

Rabbi Yehuda Hausman

 

“When was the last time you felt the power of God so strongly you floated upon the rising tide like Moses in his cradle?” (From the novel “Freddy and Fredericka” by Mark Helprin.)

There was a moment, just before the moment, when the tide of Jewish history finally surged.  God commanded Moses, “‘Take the staff which turned into a serpent, and go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he goes out to the River. Station yourself before him on the Nile’s bank…and say thus to him: ‘With this staff, I shall strike the water of the Nile, and it shall turn to blood’” (Ex. 7.14-17).

That was the moment before the change…. For after that morning, no longer would Israelite infants be cast into the River, no longer would the current wash away the blood of infanticide and cleanse the executioner’s hand in its muddy depths. Egypt would drink her sins, and drink more. “Ver trinken sie abends ver trinken sie nacht”

(Paul Celan, Deathfugue).

The first plague of blood abated and the second plague of frog passed, but a stench of rotting fish and frog remained, the rancor of guilt settled on the land. (Ex. 7.21; 8.10) With the odor came the plagues of lice and flies, latching to the flesh of human and beast, like the mark of Cain: ‘this was the finger of God’, said Egypt’s magicians (Ex. 8.15). Soon came the pestilence and then the boils. ‘Moses drew a handful of soot out of the furnaces [of oppression]’—where Israel had long fired mortar and baked bricks—and cast it windward, whereupon the ashes fell upon all those who struck with the mallet and attacked with the whip. (Ex.  9.8) Israel rose steadily, Egypt ebbed away.

But if we may return to that slice of frozen time before the commencement of judgment.… Moses stationed upon the River as his sister had once stationed herself upon the River. Miriam must have stood rigid with worry, while years later, Moses must have felt wonderment at his fate. Here, a certain royal princess cast forth her hand and rescued a slave-child with her embrace. Could this Pharaoh stretch forth his hand, to save his people, at the least?

In Pharaoh’s stubbornness, we forget that Moses’s heart could be no less stubborn. Five times he rebuts God by the burning bush. He is hardly one to voice ready agreement. “I am stiff of tongue and stiff of speech,” he states, “I am a man of uncircumcised lips.” Moses needs signs and wonders: a miraculous staff…an unconsumed bush. He wants to know God’s name.  Moses keeps insisting, ‘send another,’ “who am I to take Israel out of Egypt?”  Even in agreement, he sets out half-heartedly: Moses puts his family on a donkey, while he ambles afoot by their side.  (Ex. Chs. 3-4)

Pharaoh seems much the same. He wants to know the Lord’s name: “Who is this Hebrew God that I should listen to his voice?” (Ex 5.2). He is no less blunt: “Why should I send them forth?” Pharaoh asks for signs, but he is similarly unimpressed by wonders (7:9-13). After each of the first five plagues, we are told that Pharaoh “stiffened his heart.” Even when he relents in the aftermath of disaster, we know his acquiescence is less than whole-hearted.

It is of interest that Moses’ resistance finally wanes while en-route to Egypt. Along the way, a mysterious divine threat “seeks to kill him.” Just who exactly or why, the Torah does not say. But disaster is averted only when Tziporah, Moses’ quick-thinking wife, circumcises their firstborn son. “Tell Pharaoh Israel is my firstborn,” God instructs Moses before he sets out (4.22). It is as if God’s concern for a firstborn son must be mirrored by Moses’ anxiety for losing a child. “Circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and no longer be stubborn.” (Deut. 10.16) It is sympathy that loosens a stiff upper lip and warms a frigid heart. And though, after the Plague of the Firstborn Pharaoh and Egypt set Israel free; it is a broken will, not a broken heart, which cause the floodgates to open.

  

To sound a final note, there is an aspect of the plagues that is often neglected.  With remarkable consistency, almost every plague is preceded by an invitation. “Go to Pharaoh.” “Stand before Pharaoh.” “Come before Pharaoh, ” as this week’s portion begins. The invitation seems trivial compared to the plagues that follow. But the anticipation of what is to come is no less divine than the miracle itself. To end oppression one must first learn to personalize its horror, as Moses does on his journey back to Egypt, a lesson Pharaoh refuses to learn. To seek redemption, there must be first an inkling of what it means to be free.  The eating of the Paschal Lamb, the Sparing of the Hebrew Firstborn, these things precede the Splitting of the Sea and the Resurrection of a People. It is always the moment before the moment where we find God speaking to Moses and beckoning to us.  

We know Pharaoh’s daughter stretched forth her hand, but not before God lifted the tide.

Parashat Vayigash: Near and Far in Goshen

James Tissot - Joseph Presents his Brothers to Pharaoh

Vayiggash is perhaps best translated as to "come-closer." The verb is most often used in the Torah to depict a lessening of physical distance between one party and another. But it can have a psychic component as well, signaling imminent rapport and rapprochement, or its opposite - the possibility of failure - and thusly all the heightened tension that comes with drawing too near.

Our Torah portion begins with Judah's plea for Benjamin's freedom. His soliloquy attempts to bridge the vast misunderstanding between the brothers and the powerful viceroy of Egypt. "Now Judah came-closer to him and said..." (Genesis 45.18) We know Judah's words melt the iron mail around Joseph's heart, they pierce his shell of outer indifference till the dam finally cracks and tears flow forth. But what comes afterward? Even after Joseph reveals himself - "I am Joseph, is my father still alive?" - there remains a gulf: "They could not answer him, for they were confounded." Joseph pleads: "Pray come-close to me - Geshu Na." But Joseph still senses hesitation for he launches into a soliloquy of his own. "Do not be pained, do not be angry with yourselves for having sold me here...."

For some hurts, even the most earnest of apologies, even the most wholesome of pardons may not mend a fabric so severely torn. If we recall, for example, Jacob may have reconciled with Esau, but he could never live in harmony with him. 'Jacob bowed seven times until he came-close to Esau.... The maidservants and their children came-close.... Leah and her children came-close. Rachel and Joseph came-close." But once it was over there was separation. Esau and his camp journeyed southeast toward Seir, and Jacob traveled west to Canaan. (Genesis 33) Would the same hold true for Joseph and his brothers? Would they know reconciliation and civility but never anything more?

Perhaps the thought occurred to Joseph. Amidst his speech, he says to his brothers, "Hasten to my father and say to him: Thus says your son, Joseph: God has made me lord of all Egypt, come down to me...and you shall stay in the region of Goshen, which is near me." (45.10)

The region of Goshen is remarkable on several accounts. On the lower Nile, the northeastern delta provides good pasture for flocks. Moreover, it is geographically closer to Canaan than Upper Egypt, all around, a generally sensible move for a family of shepherds who would continue to think of Canaan as their homeland. But the invitation is also remarkable for what it is not. Quite strikingly, it is not a request that Jacob and his family come reside in Joseph's palace(s), be it in Heliopolis, Ramses, or anywhere else in the center of the country. Goshen was a significant part and parcel of Egypt, but it was also some distance away. "And Joseph made ready his chariot, and he went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen." (46.28-9)This was no quick walk up the street.

Yet perhaps in this there is a lesson. The expression 'to Goshen' in Hebrew is a contraction of Gesha Na - "Pray, come-close." More than anything Joseph wants his family near. "T'is my brothers, I seek," he once remarked to a total stranger. But often, to satisfy a desire for psychological closeness requires a measure of physical or even temporal distance. What Goshen then becomes is a needed stretch in space and time, a middle ground, if you will, not quite the culture of Canaan, and nothing like Egyptian aristocracy. Goshen becomes that place where Jacob and his sons will journey toward and sojourn in, and serves as a mecca where Joseph can make his visits. But in the time between these visits, and in the physical distance between palace and prairie, there remained for Joseph and his brothers a space to contemplate failure, fortune and forgiveness. To come any closer, it would seem, they needed a place both near and far.

Shabbat shalom.

Parashat Vayetze: Victory for the Vulnerable?

Dante's Vision of Rachel and Leah (on Right) - Dante G. Rossetti

“And Leah’s eyes were tender, but Rachel was fair in form and fair to look at, and Jacob loved Rachel” (Genesis 29:17).

There was something about Leah’s eyes. Some commentators thought them possessed of an elegant beauty, others a misty attractiveness, or most peculiarly, that they were easily given to tears. “She thought her fate was to marry Esau,” Rashi writes. Unmistakably, it was not waiting for her absent suitor, but the choice of suitor, that caused Leah to “weep.”

Sultry or sorrowful, beside a beauty like Rachel, the Torah’s description smacks of unkindness. “Rachel was gorgeous, but her sister Leah had nice eyes,” is hardly an appropriate introduction for a foremother of the Jewish people, or anyone really. Of all the things to say about a person, why even mention this detail?   

Oddly, the least generous translation reads the verse not as a depiction of Leah’s eyes but rather as a description of Leah’s power of sight. “And Leah’s eyes were weak (rachot),” is the literal meaning according to Rabbi Abraham Ibn-Ezra, as in “weak children” (yeladim rachim) or the “weak of heart” (rach leivav). It is not how Leah looked, but how she saw, that preoccupies the Torah. And now the story falls into place.

Jacob, who fooled his “dim-eyed” father Isaac — who in darkness could not discern one brother from the other — is now fooled in turn via the “dim-eyed” sister of Rachel. “In the evening, Lavan took Leah his daughter and brought her to him. … But in the morning, behold, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Lavan: ‘What is this that you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I labored with you? Why have you deceived me?’ ” (Genesis 29:23-25).

Admittedly, there is much tragedy in the story. In his love for Rachel, Jacob labored seven years for her hand, while Lavan, who cared only to exploit Jacob’s love, contrives on their wedding night a scheme to have Jacob work another seven years. For Leah, what may we say? What is it to be loved, finally and only, because your father has schemed his schemes, and your husband believes you to be another? The closer Leah looks at her thieving father, or her beautiful sister, or Rachel’s husband-to-be, the less she wants to see. “And Leah’s eyes were weak.”

Yet there is a remarkable moral in this story. In the usual run of things, the mighty are victors and the weak their victims. But here (for once) the opposite occurs. In the Midrash, Jacob scolds Leah: “‘Why did you deceive me, daughter of a deceiver? Did I not call Rachel in the night, and you answered me!’ …. Leah said, ‘Even a (bad) barber has his disciples. Did your father not cry out Esau, and you answered him!’ ”

In this, there is a small victory for the vulnerable, and a great lesson for those who take advantage of the weak: If you exploit those who may not be blessed with the best of sight or the best of health, if you abuse those with a less discerning mind or who lack the security of wealth, beware, lest one day, deprived of light, you too receive your due. Isaac’s eyes were dim and those of Leah weak, but “the eyes of the Lord God are upon the Land, always” (Deuteronomy 11:12).

Parashat Hayyei Sarah: When Love Slips Away

“And Sarah died at Kiryath Arba, that is Hebron, in the Land of Canaan. And Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.”
(Gen. 23.2)

To an attentive reader, it would appear that Sarah has died alone. In fact, the Torah records specifically that Abraham dwelt in a different a city, Beer-Sheba, on the outskirts of a different land, “the Land of the Philistines.” It is here in Beer-Sheba that Isaac was born and raised, it is to here—their family home—that Isaac and Abraham return after the ordeal of the Akedah. So how, just a few verses later, without segue or sequitur, does Sarah come to dwell and, ultimately, die in Hebron? How does she become separated from Abraham, so far away it would seem, that he must journey to her? “And Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.”

If physical distance is a metaphor for psychic distance, then at the end, Abraham and Sarah were miles apart. The Hizkuni (13^th century commentator, France) suggests that Abraham originally “sent her away so she would not sense the Akedah.” The brief comment provokes wonder. Does Abraham send Sarah away because he cannot face her, much less the prospect of returning to her without Isaac? Or in a more modern vein, does Sarah leave him, for how can she even look at her husband, this stranger, who would contemplate the murder of her one and only son?   

Either way there is a vast chasm between them. But one wonders if this distance, to some extent, existed all along. Consider Abraham’s public habit of claiming Sarah as a sister instead of a wife. “This is the kindness that you can do for me: in every place to which we come, say of me, you are my brother.” (20:13) If the act of marriage is a public declaration that affirms relationship, what would repeated public denials affirm—if not its absence?

One might add Abraham’s eventual preference for Hagar and Ishmael. After God’s promise to Abraham that Sarah (not Hagar), would would be the mother of his elected heir, Abraham retorts, “Would that Ishmael might live in your favor!” (Gen. 17.18) It is “God who remembers Sarah,” and Abraham who forgets.

Perhaps the best illustration of their emotional estrangement is again depicted in geographic terms. We read last week, at the start of Parashat Vayera, how on a sweltering day, three messengers appear at the entrance of Abraham’s tent. The Torah tells us twice that Abraham seats them and serves them outdoors ‘beneath the shade of a tree.’ But if the sun was so terribly strong, why not forgo the shade of a terebinth and move the repast to the much cooler tent?

Noticing something amiss, one guests inquires, ‘“Where is Sarah your wife?” Pointedly, the Hebrew word used for “where” –ayyeh— is the same interrogative used to question Adam in the Garden: Where are you? (ayeka); And the same used to question Cain: Where (ayyeh) is Abel your brother? This in not an innocuous, ‘Is your wife home?’ Instead it is a question for Abraham’s soul, ‘Where is Sarah in your life? Why is she not aside you? How long must she remain behind you, hidden from kings and messengers and, above all, hidden from you. “And Sarah was listening at the tent flap, which was behind him.” (Gen. 18.10)

This week we read the Torah Portion of Hayyei Sarah, literally translated, “The Lives of Sarah.” Naturally, Abraham must mourn the life that was lived, but there is too a mourning for a life that was not; a life with Sarah in one city and Abraham in another. Sarah could have died with a husband by her side, instead she died alone.    

Bereishit: Pieces of Meaning

Adam awoke on his back; his flesh, the tone and hue of the naked earth, his eyes though, they were filled to the brim with the blue of heaven. "And the Lord God fashioned this Man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." Head up, a newborn, fathoming the unfathomable, a waking dreamer. Is it any wonder that Eve chose to reach forth her hand and seize the Tree of Knowledge?

***
Said Adam: 'I am naked. The four-legged ones, have fur and hide. They rest in the sun, tremble in the breeze, seek shelter in the night. But we are naked. We have not fur or hide.'

Said Adam: 'Woman, what is good and bad? What is death? Why is this fruit different from all other fruits? Do you suppose Knowledge tastes like a lemon or a grape? Death must be where berries go after we eat them.'

Said Eve: 'Look at that four-legged creature with scales! Where is its fur or hide? Why Adam, It touched The Tree! It snatched a fruit! Adam, it--
Let me try first!'

***
They knew they were naked, then, they burnt in the sun and shivered at night. They knew fig-leaf coverings were good, they knew to wither and tremble was pain. They knew worry. They knew fear. They feared the Lord. 'What shall God think of man-made fur and hide? What shall God think of our disobedience?'  They hid from the voice that is in every wind and every windless day. They hid from the soundless sound and the furious sound that pursues Man as Ahab once pursued his whale, to the ends of earth and back, to the ends of time. Had they known of Jonah, they would have still tried. Is there a woman or man who has never hid from "the voice of the Lord God walking the garden in the evening breeze?"

***
We think of good and bad as virtue and vice, good deeds and misdeeds, kindness and injury, charity and harm. The serpent, which slivers unnoticed, that crouches at every door, which searches always to bring the mighty low and the low lower, which seeks always to sink its jaws into every heart, yes the serpent is temptation, it is our inclination to sin. But Good and Bad are more than moral terms (not merely good and evil), they are joy and sorrow, they are sacrifice and triumph, they are pleasure and pain, suffering and salvation. The consequences of eating the forbidden tree were powerfully physical because good and bad are not solely categories of the conscience. To reap in joy, one must sow in tears. The raising of children is hardship, but on account of the pain, we laugh and love them all the more. Marriage is no paradise, for any union to grow there must be some diminishment of the self. We are beholden to our love for the other, as Eve was to Adam, as every man must, who leaves home to cleave to his wife. What would love be without our ever knowing its absence? How would we come to love the few short days we walk this small rock if never once we felt that gaping chasm of mourning? The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Tree of Knowledge of Joy and Sorrow. Treasure the good fruit...may it always outweigh the bad.

***
Exile was never meant as a punishment, it was a precaution. "Now that the Man has become like one of us, knowing good and bad, what if he stretch forth his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever." We were not thrown out because we ate of one fruit, we were thrown out lest we be tempted to eat another. Eternal life, and its pursuit, was deemed more deadly than knowledge and her many fruits.
For to seek eternal youth is to tar the Tree of Knowledge with pitch and feather, to paper over evil and disappointment, to dismiss all that is painful and vanish every negative thing in a dissipating cloud of oblivion.
Life eternal is escapism. It is pure fantasy that our days will never come to an end, that there can be profit without labor, that satisfaction can be seized without sacrifice. It is an illusion of enduring power that all the love in the world can be had, that childhood beauty can be retained, that innocence can be clung to forever. "Let his days be a hundred and twenty years," says Scripture. The striving for the Tree of Life is vanity and empty wind.

Man is born face to the sky. His potential is near limitless. Reach for the fruit of one tree, beware the fruit of the other.