Bereshit

Simon Seligman, October 5th, 2002

In this weeks parsha, Bereshit, a serpent tricked Eve by telling her that if she ate from the tree of knowledge, of good and bad she wouldn't die, and Adam wouldn't either. So Eve ate from the fruit of that tree and gave some of the fruit to Adam. Then God asked them why they ate from the tree. Neither Adam nor Eve would take responsibility for it. For this reason, they were punished for not following God's commands. The serpent's punishment was that he had to crawl and eat dirt. Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

I'm going to talk about two aspect of what Adam and Eve did. The first is about how Adam added to God's words.

Both Eve and Adam disobeyed God's command. Adam disobeyed by saying to Eve that if she ate or even touched the fruit from the tree of knowledge she would die. But we know that God hadn't said anything about touching the tree. God had said they would die from eating the fruit. In the Book of Proverbs it says don't add to God's words or you will be known as a liar.

In this story we see that Adam's small misunderstanding of God's words led to their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

How did Eve disobey? Eve not only ate the forbidden fruit herself, she also gave Adam some of the fruit from the tree without Adam knowing that it was from the tree of knowledge.

Rashi believed that the serpent took advantage of Eve's misrepresentation of God's order to Adam. He speculated that, when Eve told the serpent that God had said: "You shall not eat or touch it or else you will die," the serpent pushed her until she touched the tree. Then the serpent said to her " You see, you have not died after touching it. Nothing has happened to you. And you will not die after you eat this fruit."

Rashi's theory is that the serpent was very clever, using Eve's misrepresentation of what God had said to Adam as a way of tricking her into eating the fruit.

Was Adam's sin really that bad? Sure, he added to God's words but maybe he only did it to scare Eve, to make sure she stayed away from the tree. It is a little bit like the rules at my school. One of the rules is that you are not allowed to skateboard on school property. Now lets say the rule changed. Now the rule is that your not allowed even to bring your skateboard to school let alone ride it. The only reason they would do that is to make sure that no body gets hurt on the school grounds. Another example is if one of my parents want me to be in bed around 10:30 even though I usually fall asleep around 11:30. Again they would do that to make sure I was in bed when I fell asleep.

Now I am going to talk about how nobody in the story took responsibility for what had happened.

Eve and Adam made things worse for themselves by blaming each other. Adam blamed God for making Eve and Eve blamed the serpent for tricking her into eating the fruit. Everyone attempted to award responsibility for what had happen. There have been times were I didn't take responsibility for things. Like when I have to be home at a certain time and I come home late. Then I make an excuse for why I was late like Adam and Eve did in the story. There have also been times when I have taken responsibility, especially when I really believe and accept that what I did was wrong.

Neither Adam nor Eve took responsibility for their actions and they each blamed the other. That I think is the worst thing out of everything they did. The reason I think it is, is because the thing I have to do for my bar mitzvah is be more responsible for my actions and Adam and Eve weren't being responsible at all.

Now that I am Bar Mitzvah, I'm going to have to start thinking more about the rules of Judaism and how I'm going to follow them. From now on I'm going to have responsibility for my own Jewish actions, and I hope to do a better job at it than Adam and Eve did.