Eve, Adam, Serpent: Intuition for Consciousness

As we begin the Torah again: at B’reisheet – at the beginning, we have the treat of delving into the riches of this first Torah portion. Because it is written as a story, that is, in symbolic language, it is open to every possible interpretation, and all are valid. Someone once quoted to me from an unknown source, the wonderful line, if you love anything enough, it will give up its secrets. In reading this first portion over and over again with each Bat and Bar mitzvah student, I have had the great opportunity to encounter B’reisheet many times in a year and think about what it may mean. Tonight I would like to consider the expulsion from the Garden of Eden that we know so well. What is it really about? Is it about crime and punishment? Perhaps. Is it about the dawn of civilization? I personally think so (and those who attend the Wednesday night Torah study will hear more about this). Is it about receiving consciousness? Certainly. At one time we were like the animals, living in a metaphoric Garden of Eden. All our food was provided by God; and then we ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad. We became conscious. We had choices. We had to work for a living. A punitive interpretation calls this Original Sin. It says that eating from the Tree of Good and Bad was the wrong thing to do. But wait! God made us and God, in the story, made the metaphoric tree and put us in the very same place. In B’reisheet it says, God placed the tree “in the midst of the garden,” in the center, where we were meant to find it. We found it before we knew right from wrong, before we were conscious, perhaps in some fog of semi- consciousness, before we received the blessing, or the burden, of moral choice. In the story, the man had been told about the tree but it was the serpent who really knew about it. The serpent represents an additional source of knowledge outside our five senses. It is notable that the serpent spoke to the woman. This validates our own experience of reality; it is what we call a woman’s intuition. We know that men and women think differently, and that women’s special talent is an access to a feeling side that helps us and that is a potential source of knowledge and wisdom. Listening to the serpent is a tricky business, we are told in this story. We receive messages from our intuitive feelings. They may be only the urgings of our physical cravings, or they may be legitimate sources of information from the soul. The Torah says, in Rashi’s translation, “and the woman saw that the tree was good for eating and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable for comprehension.” This tells us that reason must be added to feelings to produce a correct result, which we know to be true. It also tells us that women are often the agents who bring intuitive wisdom to their husbands, which is also often validated by experience. But not always. We each, male and female, have our masculine and feminine sides that supply us with wisdom and enrich our total personalities.
And then Adam and Eve ate and became conscious. First the snake was punished. It was to go on its belly, eat dust, and be despised. And indeed, our intuition is often discounted. If we can’t see it, touch it, hear it, taste it, or smell it, in our empirically minded society, it doesn’t exist. But the snake is real. It is a legitimate source of wisdom when coupled with reason. The woman’s punishment was the possibility of fear and oppression: the fear of pain in childbirth, of knowing what may lie ahead in the future, and the potential to be unequal: in class, in wealth, in employment. Animals are all equal. Choice creates divisions. The man was sentenced to work for a living, to farm the soil instead of merely gathering food from the trees. The possibility of farming was a consequence of consciousness and was necessary for the efflorescence of civilization, of many people living together in cities. The story tells us that the receiving of consciousness was a great gift from God. In order to receive the gifts of consciousness: free will, self determination, great cognitive development, creativity, humor, spiritual attainment, we had to give up dependency, ignorance as bliss, the world of instant gratification; and the Torah tells us that that world was good. But this world is also good, better I think, or perhaps just different. Rabbi Gelberman says in his book, Spiritual Truths, change is the coin with which to purchase one experience for another. Was God angry with us for eating of the tree? I say no, God was not angry. God was just very smart. God got us to take responsibility for our choice to become conscious: to sign on for all its consequences: to be full partners in the dance of choice that we engage in with God. If God had been angry with us, would the Eternal One have called us over to clothe us? In effect, God said, “My children, you may be cold. Here I made you these beautiful warm clothes, and by the way, have a cookie before you go.”
This Torah portion tells us that life is not set up to be easy: it isn’t supposed to be; that consciousness brings change and challenge that may bring, as Rabbi Gelberman also says, blessings in disguise; that God’s wisdom set up a satisfying, interesting, life of growth for us in which we must go forward out of the Garden in order to have the feeling of being back in, close to the Eternal Presence. Meeting change with optimism, courage, and eagerness we may find our way back to God by freely choosing to leave. That is the legacy of Adam and Eve: they gave to us our ability to choose interesting, satisfying lives for ourselves, with God’s blessing. And the rest of the Torah tells us how to be conscious moral beings who can find our way back to union with God. May this year of Torah plant seeds of holiness in each of us, allowing us to see the beauty of our own spiritual paths and guiding us to choose with love and compassion.

Without Barriers

Tonight we are celebrating Shabbat Sukkot: a sukkah of peace and a sukkah of plenty. As Sukkot is the third of three pilgrimage holidays specified in the Torah, we have an opportunity to encounter the Eternal presence in gratitude a third time. At Pesach we thank God for our existence as a people, for our freedom, and for our liberation. On Shavuot we thank God for giving us the Torah and teaching us how we should live; and on Sukkot we thank God for sustaining us with the plentiful food the earth provides. But on Sukkot there is an important difference. We come to Sukkot after soul searching and repentance. We return to God in a more purified state: cleaner, lighter, and for a brief time, unburdened by our sins. The S’fat Emet distinguishes between two types of teshuvah or return: the first type is the forgiveness of our sins. The second type is a return with the intention to draw closer to God: to remove the barriers between us and God.
Rabbi Arthur Green points out that the Baal Shem Tov taught this too: that the problem with sin is that it is a hindrance. It comes between us and God, preventing us from doing the good that brings us close to holiness. It is a barrier of our own making: perhaps a barrier of guilt, a barrier of anger, a barrier of depression, or a barrier of disappointment that prevents us from serving God in joy. But at Sukkot, all barriers have been removed. The Torah reading on Shabbat Sukkot is the one that describes the attributes of God’s personality. The Eternal God, compassionate and gracious, long suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. These are the attributes in our own human personalities that help us to break down our barriers; that help us to keep ourselves from putting up walls in our souls. Dwelling in the sukkah after our repentance, we can come closer to feeling the quiet contentment of our spiritual center. The S’fat Emet tells us that in doing the work of self purification during the days of Awe, we have made ourselves fit vessels to receive the Divine blessings. When we dwell in the sukkah during Sukkot, in the open air, we can just be, as we are meant to just be on Shabbat; and have the opportunity to feel at one with ourselves and with all creation. Our sins have fallen away and with them, the pretenses that keep us away from aligning ourselves with goodness and peace. Sukkot is a precious time: a time to dwell closer to God simply out of our intention to do so; to dwell closer to our source, closer to what is real and valuable in human life. On this Sukkot may we experience the sukkah of peace and the sukkah of plenty: the peace that comes from joyous service to our own divinity and the divinity of others, and the plenty which is the flow of God’s blessing to each one of us.