Ben Adam V'Makom

When I was practicing aloud my lesson on the Amida blessing of Slicha – Forgiveness, my husband asked an interesting question: why the sins between man and G-d are called ben adam v’makom – why the term makom was used in this case?  To answer this question requires going back to the blessing of Kedusha – Holiness, and the explanation of the two key phrases in Kedusha:

1.       Kadosh,               kadosh,                kadosh,                Hashem               tzvaot

Holy,                     holy,                      holy                       is the Lord           of hosts:

M’lo                      kol                          ha-aretz               kvodo

Filled is                the whole             earth                     with His glory. 

2.       Baruch                  kevod                    Hashem               mi-m’komo

Blessed is            glory of                the Lord               from His place

 

The first verse is from Isaiah (6:3), when the prophet saw the Master of the Universe in the Temple when the priests performed the service and the Levites sang their song.  It was a time of blessing and success. Everyone could see the resting of Divine Presence, and angels called to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord … the whole world is filled with His glory”

The second verse where G-d is referred to as makom is found in the prophecy of Ezekiel.   The word of G-d came to Ezekiel in exile; he was in mourning, a prisoner of war.  Standing on the banks of the river Chebar, he saw a fierce wind come from the north, a great cloud, and a blazing fire.  Instead of priests and Levites, he beheld war and destruction. He does not declare that “the whole world is filled with His glory”, that every detail bears witness to the Holy One.  Rather, G-d is hidden in the seven firmaments, and Ezekiel hears a voice of a great rushing say: “Blessed be the glory of the Lord from His Place, mi m’komo” (Ezekiel 3:12).  This prophecy was at a time of hester panim, hiding of the divine face.

 Rabbeinu Yonah in Shaarei Teshuvah writes on the principle of shame (first gate), that when the person commits transgression “the Blessed One is far from his consciousness”.  We can compare it to the blessings of Kedusha.   A righteous person’s mind is filled with awareness of G-d’s presence “the whole world is filled with His Glory”.  But when a person is in such state of mind that wrong feels right, then the desire fills his or her world, and G-d’s presence is remote, in His place of a narrow window in the corner of the mind, mi m’komo, this is why ben adam v’makom. 

When you arrive in the Land

Numbers 15:2 Speak to the children of Israel and say to them: When you arrive in the Land of your dwelling place, which I am giving you… ki tavo el eretz…

The Torah portion Shelach is famous for the episode of the spies – the 12 delegates of every tribe of Israelites are sent by Moses to spy on the land of Israel. They see the land, they bring the fruit, and 10 of them complain that the land is impossible to conquer, it is inhabited by giants, “a land that consumes its inhabitants” (13:32). Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before the entire congregation, Joshua and Caleb tore their clothes (14:5-6), the entire congregation threatened to pelt them with stones (14:10), and the Lord appeared in all His magnificent glory and anger.  Moses pleaded before the Lord, invoking His attributes of Mercy, and Hashem relented “I have forgiven them in accordance with your word – salachti ki’dvarecha” (14:20).  However, the errant generation who perceived Divine glory and witnessed the miracles in Egypt is doomed to wander and die in the desert.

14:33 your children shall wander in the desert for forty years and bear your defection until the last of your corpses has fallen in the desert.

How then can we understand ki tavo el eretz – when you arrive in the Land, and all the laws of living in Eretz Israel?  Whom does G-d address – is He talking to the children who will arrive in the land, is he talking to Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who spoke well of the land and were allowed to enter it after 40 years of wandering, or is He addressing the entire nation, listing the whole set of agricultural laws that are only applicable in the land? The chapter starts with:

The Lord spoke to Moses saying: Speak to the children of Israel and say to them: When you arrive in the Land of your dwelling place, which I am giving you (Num. 15:1-2)

Depending on who is listening, this statement sounds either like a cruel sarcasm, or like a glimmer of hope – maybe He does not really mean it, maybe there is a chance to turn back the wheel…

Just as the curse of corpses dropping in the dessert is repeated twice in 14:29 and 14:32, so is the implied promise “When you arrive in the Land to which I am bringing you” is repeated in 15:2 and 15:18, and the second implication is even more generous than the first:

15:2-3 when you arrive in the Land of your dwelling place, which I am giving you, and you make a fire offering to the Lord…

15:18-19 when you arrive in the Land to which I am bringing you and you eat from the bread of the Land…

It is so easy to slip into an anguished despair: what do You mean “when you arrive”? You said that our corpses will drop in the desert, we are walking through this desert for so long already, and we will never reach the Promised Land!  That was the common thinking of many people, including the man who went to gather wood on Shabbat, snapping in disregard for everything sacred, giving up, not giving a damn, throwing a party, a drunken orgy, a Woodstock in the shadow of the nuclear Holocaust. 

But here we are, we still exist, we call ourselves Jews, for better or worse.  We are descendants of those who went through fire and water, who survived and preserved the identity, who did not convert into coercive religion backed by the power of tyrannical state, nor married foreign women to dissolve into the ocean of nations. We persevered, because those ancestors, doomed to die in exile, chose to cling to the glimmer of hope, to believe in the promise of prophecy, to hold on to the blue thread of techelet connecting a Jew to the source of holiness. 

Speak to the children of Israel and you shall say to them that they shall make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments, throughout their generations, and they shall affix a thread of sky blue [wool] on the fringe of each corner.  This shall be fringes for you, and when you see it, you will remember all the commandments of the Lord to perform them, and you shall not wander after your hearts and after your eyes after which you are going astray. So that you shall remember and perform all My commandments and you shall be holy to your G-d. (Num. 38-40)

In the darkest time when all hope is lost, when the deepest strongest desire is out of reach, we can still choose to retain our connection to G-d, because when everything else is lost, this is all we have. 

 

Gabe and Ellyn's Wedding

As we flew to Dominican Republic I was reading Rabbi David Fohrman's book The Beast that Crouches at the Door and in it I found a perfect passage for the dvar Torah to deliver at the wedding reception.  I wanted to say something special, but did not plan a speech in advance, and here it was right in front of me, flowing from the pages of the book.  The wedding ceremony was lovely.  The bride and groom put a great deal of effort to seal the bond of the Jewish marriage in a way that was meaningful to both of them.  I can only hope that my dvar Torah added blessing to this joyous event. 

What if Eve turned to G-d? What if she turned to man?

When the first man was created, G-d planted a garden of Eden and placed the man to work and to guard it.  Two trees did the Lord G-d plant in the garden of paradise: the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and also the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  

G-d created a woman out of man's side, to be his helper opposite of him, ezer k'negdo  (opposite of man, or opposite of G-d?).   A serpent, more cunning and smooth than all animals of the field, came to the garden and asked Eve: Even if G-d said do not eat of any tree of the garden? (Genesis 3:1)

We know the rest of the story - Eve ate from the tree, her eyes opened, she let the man try, man, woman and the snake were cursed and exiled from the garden, and the guardian angels with rotating flaming swords were placed at the garden gates to protect the tree of life, so that the man won't become immortal. 

When a man is presented with temptation there are two choices - to say Yes and succumb to it, or to say No and refuse - right?  What if there were a third choice - to turn away from the snake and to ask G-d - Why?  Why did You present me with this temptation? Why did You plant the tree of knowledge of good and eve in the garden? Why did You make it available to me and forbidden at the same time?  Why did You plant desire in my heart?  Why did You create me in such way that I am so confused - the desire that whispers with Your voice within me, which lights me with the fire of life, and Your words of explicit prohibition?  Why did You create the serpent and brought him on my path?  The list of questions can go on and on…  This is a dialog with G-d that keeps going for as long as man lives.  The majority of people, yours truly included, are neither righteous nor evil, but we are all engaged in the dialogue with G-d, whether consciously or not.   The whole history of human thought, of philosophy is this ongoing conversation - who am I, why am I like this, why am I struggling between the law and desire, why is not life easy and clear, why did You plant anguish in my heart? 

 

But here is what happens when a man consciously engages in this dialog and gets really into it - the dialog itself acquires a life of its own and becomes appealing to man to the point that he forgets about the temptation.  So the next time the snake comes around with his un-holy propositions, Eve may say - thanks for the offer, but I have something better going on here, I am talking to G-d!

 

What's in it for the Snake?

Excerpts from the book of Rabbi David Fohrman The Beast that Crouches at the Door

Notes from Chapter 5
What's in it for the Snake

 The story about the two trees begins in preceding chapter 2:9, 2:16-17. 

After the pasuk about the trees, G-d declares that 2:18 "it is not good for man to be alone" and sets about trying to find a mate for him.  2:19 And the Lord God formed from the earth every beast of the field and every fowl of the heavens, and He brought [it] to man to see what he would call it, and whatever the man called each living thing, that was its name.  Adam does not choose a mate from all the animals, G-d creates Eve out of his rib, and only then the story returns to the Forbidden Fruit.  The snake comes along and offers the fruit to Eve. 

Why does Adam's search for a mate interrupt the story about the Tree of Knowledge?

Adam's rejection of all beasts of the field is crucial to the story of the Forbidden Fruit. 

The snake was the smartest of all animals, but Adam did not choose him as his mate.

Midrash Bereishit Rabbah, quoted by Rashi, says that the snake hoped that Eve would pass the fruit to Adam before partaking it, because the snake wanted to assassinate Adam and marry Eve.  Midrash is allegorical, sages often convey deep truths through the mysterious, allegorical garb of Midrash.  

Because Adam rejected animals in favor of Eve, the animal world - with the snake as its smartest representative - leveled a challenge to the first humans: "What makes you so special? What makes you so different from us that you stand alone and require one another as mates? We can be your soul mates, too…"

The Tree and the Idea

3:6 And the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes (toava la-einaim), and the tree was desirable to make one wise (nehmad le-haskil); so she took of its fruit, and she ate, and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

What was so attractive in the tree?  Good for food is simple to understand, delight to the eyes, tantalizing - OK, people do get drawn to the shiny objects, only to forget about them later.  But what does it mean nehmad le-haskil, delight to the intellect, desirable to the mind - a tree is not a person that one can talk to, what's in a tree that makes it so desirable intellectually, what kinds of mysterious secrets did the tree hint at? 
I thinks it is the idea of unlimited power and freedom that eating from the tree symbolized, the idea expressed by the serpent earlier in 3:5 For God knows that on the day that you eat thereof, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like angels, knowing good and evil. 
The idea that one can eat from the tree, or do whatever he wants, that is nehmad le-haskil.  A juicy piece of ham, an attractive object, is a toava la-einaim, but the idea that you can walk into any restaurant and order any food you want, the cultural idea,  the meme, that you can do whatever you want in your personal life, that is nehmad le-haskil. The idea is promoted from Ayn Rand to Shakira and Beyonce, the latter not incidentally featured on the cover of Time magazine in the list of the most influential people of the year. Man dreams of power and freedom.  3:1 Even if G-d indeed said so …

Becoming a Living Soul

I started re-reading the first chapters of the book of Bereishit in preparation for the next week's women class on Knowledge, speaking about the knowledge of good and evil in light of Rav S. R. Hirsch's brilliant commentary on Chumash.  Predictably, the very first verses in Chapter 2 struck me with what seemed like a logical inconsistency.  It starts with the declaration that on the seventh day G-d completed all His work that He did. 

2:1 Now the heavens and the earth were completed and all their host

But then in verse 5 it says that there was no man to work the soil:

2:5  Now no tree of the field was yet on the earth, neither did any herb of the field yet grow, because the Lord God had not brought rain upon the earth, and there was no man to work the soil.

Was not the creation completed on the seventh day?  Was not the man already created on the sixth day? 

1:26-27 And G-d said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and they shall rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heaven and over the animals and over all the earth and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth."  And G-d created man in His image; in the image of G-d He created him; male and female He created them.

Is this a contradiction?  Here at the end of Chapter 1 the man was created in the image of G-d, on the sixth day, but then in the beginning of Chapter 2, after the seventh day, we read that "there was no man to work the soil." 

The original man, Adam 1.0, was created to "rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the sky and over all the beasts that tread upon the earth" - to rule, not to work the soil! 

In Chapter 2, after Hashem blessed the Shabbos day, He "formed man of dust from the ground, and He breathed into his nostrils the soul of life, and man became a living soul."  A living soul, capable of love and longing, suffering and pain, ridden with doubt and searching for truth, is the one who can work the soil, one whom Hashem "placed  in the Garden of Eden to work it and to guard it."

A man is born to rule and reborn to work.  The transition from an admired child to a responsible adult is painful, tragic, unclear, full of confusion and despair, triumph and fall, and many failures, but these are all growing pains on the path to greatness.  

One recurrent motive in Torah is a story of a matriarch as a barren woman, who waits and prays for many years to conceive a child.  Patriarchs and prophets were born to such women.  Why could not life go smoothly, according to a normal human timetable, for Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, Hannah? Things that come easy are often less appreciated.  Young parents get annoyed by little children, spouses get tired of each other, inherited fortunes get squandered, but what comes to a sensitive adult as a result of hard work, after much struggle and failure, is valued and rises to greatness. 
 

 י. לֹא בִגְבוּרַת הַסּוּס יֶחְפָּץ לֹא בְשׁוֹקֵי הָאִישׁ יִרְצֶה
 רוֹצֶה יְהֹוָה אֶת יְרֵאָיו אֶת הַמְיַחֲלִים לְחַסְדּוֹ: