Parashat Bereshit, 5766, Jenny Kirsch
Parashat Bereshit, 5766
Delivered on 29 October 2005 / 26 Tishrei 5766
Jenny Kirsch
B’reshit is perhaps the most awesome story in the Torah. Deciding which part to focus on was the hard part. The choices and ideas it contains are overwhelming in scope. As I read and re-read the parsha, mesmerized by the mystical story of creation, one question stood out for me. How does B’reshit teach us to coexist as humans together, male and female? As a girl, the answers I had been given about these questions were a large part of my alienation from Judaism. Why would I want to be involved in a religion where I did not count? I decided not become a Bat Mitzvah because my identity as a Feminist was stronger than my belief in Judaism.
In my return as an adult to Judaism, I was able to make peace with my old grievances when I learned about the tradition of Midrash, the continuous interpretation of the Torah. I finally did become a Bat Mitzvah just four years ago. I learned in my exploration of both traditional and modern Midrash that the themes of dominance and inequality I had thought were integral to Jewish practice were only one perspective. Actually, even some of the oldest Midrashim differ from the traditional view of valuing Men above Women. Now, it is hilarious and tragic to me that I accepted this exclusive interpretation for so long. There is much evidence to the contrary, directly in this parsha and in the extensive midrash about it. I would like to talk about how our creation story contains powerful lessons for coexistence that are much more egalitarian, maybe even harmonious.
During each of the six days when God began to create the world, each creation had a complement. Light is separated from dark, day from night, the waters above from the waters below, the dry land from the seas, the sun and the moon, the birds and the fish, the land animals and the humans, the male humans and the female humans. It seems to me that G-d is teaching us with the recurring pattern how the important these complementary pairings are. The act of separating them in equal pairings show us that one cannot exist without the other.
Now, let’s look closely at day six:
“Elohim said: let us make adam in Our image, after Our likeness.” (I like the translation of adam as earthling, derived from adamah, which means earth. The Eytz Haim says it is a general term for humankind, encompassing both man and woman.) “…And Elohim created adam in God’s image, in the image of Elohim God created it; male and female God created them.”
Male and female? Whoa, I didn’t hear this part as a little kid. The first woman I remember hearing about came from the rib of the man. So was adam created as a man only? No. In fact, both the Zohar and the first book of the Midrash, give explanations that this first human was one androgynous creature who was both male and female joined together. aIn her book, In the Image of God, Judith Antonelli says that this original mode of human existence shows not only the inherent equality of the sexes, but she also points out that this means the earth was given to humanity as a whole rather than just to Man.
Let’s take a step back for a moment and look at Chapter1: verse 26. What about this first person plural pronoun, “our?” “Let us make Adam in Our image, after Our likeness.” The most commonly accepted explanation for this suspiciously polytheistic sounding phrasing is that God consulted with the angels. But, I really liked how Rabbi Gershon Winkler cites the Zohar, in his book Magic of the Ordinary, that when it came time to create the human, the Creator addressed all that had been made until that moment with an invitation by saying “let us all join together in its creation. All of you join in making its body and I will join you in making its spirit.” He also cites the 17th Century Rabbi Moshe Cordovero who interpreted the Zohar to mean that in making adam, God incorporated all of the attributes of all of the animals and plants and minerals that had been created up to that point. Cordovero wrote: “In each of us then are all of the attributes and powers of the all the creatures of the earth.”
Okay, so now the first human, adam, was an androgynous creature related to all of the other living and non-living things in the world. When did men and women come about?
After end of the account of the first seven days, our story changes tone and some say there is a second creation story. Actually, I agree with the many commentators who say it is all one story which changes focus to explain the creation of Adam in more detail. So in chapter 2, verse 18-
“Adonai Elohim said: It is not good for the adam to be alone, I will make an ezer knegdo for it. Adonai Elohim then cast the adam into a deep sleep, and it slept, and God took one of its sides and closed the flesh under it. And Adonai Elohim built the tzela of the adam into a woman and brought her to Adam.”
Nachmanides wrote that God saw that it was good to have them (Adam) separated and to be able to join each other at will. This separation is another way to interpret the removal of the rib. “Tzela,” the word given for rib, can also mean side, as it is used in Exodus to describe the sides of the Tabernacle. So it is possible that the Torah really means Adam was split in half to create Chava. Or as Rabbi Steven Greenberg says: “Dividing the whole human into two sexes is to shape two totally new beings out of the material of one.”
If these two are really equal, why is the woman referred to as a “helpmate?” Nehama Leibowitz discusses the term which this is based on, ezer knegdo, with a more egalitarian conclusion. While ezer is ‘help,’ knegdo means opposite or against. Leibowitz explains God’s lesson in this term of creation by saying:
“The good effected by the introduction of woman and the “not good” dissipated by her separate creation is conditional on adam’s choice of good… If they (both halves of the original whole) do not show themselves worthy the result will be disharmony - a clash of opposites.”
So, we humans have been charged with this duty of working to be harmonious together since the time of our creation and separation into males and females.
What a big relief! Women were not just an afterthought created from some rib to be a lowly helper. We are one half of the original whole human, half of the team assigned to care for our world. This perspective reveals that women and men all have equal value and equal responsibility to coexist in a manner which respects all of creation. Just one more thing worries me: Chava, and all women after her, is held up as an example of evil and weakness for trying the fruit of the forbidden tree in Gan Eden. I know Chava was breaking God’s commandment. However, several other important Jews in the Torah questioned and challenged God, including Abraham and Moshe. Perhaps we should look at the result of her behavior. Isn’t lifelong learning one of the highest values of Jewish tradition? If Chava hadn’t been so curious, we might not have the depth of intellectually stimulating learning that is so central to our identity. I’d like to end by quoting one of my favorite authors is Marge Piercy. She wrote a poem about this idea called “Applesauce for Eve,” which begins:
“Those old daddies cursed you and us in you, damned for your curiosity: for your sin was wanting knowledge.”
And it ends:
“You are indeed the mother of invention, the first scientist. Your name means life: finite, dynamic, swimming against the current of time, tasting, testing, eating knowledge like any other nutrient. We are all the children of your bright hunger. We are all products of that first experiment, for if death was the worm in that apple, the seeds were freedom and the flowering of choice.”