B'reishet Perek Ephes (Purim 5777)

Chava is a Person

Consider Genesis 3:17, when God issues punishments for the incident of the Tree of Knowledge, Good and Bad:

בראשית ג:יז

"וּלְאָדָם אָמַר, כִּי-שָׁמַעְתָּ לְקוֹל אִשְׁתֶּךָ..."

3:17 “And to Adam (the Man or Mankind) [God] said: Because you listened to the voice of your wife…”

Why is the first thing God mentions listening to Adam’s wife? Why is listening to his wife singled out, seemingly as a thing bad unto itself?

To answer this, we must go back to an earlier verse:

בראשית ב:כג

וַיֹּאמֶר, הָאָדָם, זֹאת הַפַּעַם עֶצֶם מֵעֲצָמַי, וּבָשָׂר מִבְּשָׂרִי; לְזֹאת יִקָּרֵא אִשָּׁה, כִּי מֵאִישׁ לֻקְחָה-זֹּאת.

2:23: Said Adam “This time it is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh; therefore [her name is ] to be called Woman [‘man’ (ish) + suffix denoting ‘to’/’towards’/’of’ (ah)], for from man was taken this”.

              This gives us an answer: Initially, Adam does not see his wife as person. Rather, he sees her as from or of his flesh and bones, rather than as an equal aside from himself, like his flesh and bones (and tellingly excluding the just-stated distinguishing characteristic of humanity entirely a mind, a soul, like his own) – he sees her as an extension of himself, with no separate personhood. Adam does not even think of her as a being – he even calls her ‘it’, not ‘her’ ( זאתbut not היא). This is the ultimate cause of the incident with the Tree.

              Since Adam sees his wife as like his own hand or foot – having neither a mind nor a will, he does not even think to truly converse with her. He gives her a command as if he was thinking to himself “Hand – do not touch that!”. When she offers him the fruit of the Tree, he questions her as much as one would question the actions of one’s own leg – not at all. Thus, tragedy occurs.

              This is why God says “the voice of your wife” – you listened to her voice but not to her. God leads off with this as it was the ultimate cause of everything else.

              Finally, after this, we see that Adam learns from his error and mends his ways:

בראשית ג:כ

וַיִּקְרָא הָאָדָם שֵׁם אִשְׁתּוֹ, חַוָּה:  כִּי הִוא הָיְתָה, אֵם כָּל-חָי

Called Adam the name of his wife ‘Chava’, for she was the mother of all living.

              In the end, Adam recognizes her as person (uses pronoun ‘her’ rather than ‘it’), with her own:

·        Mind: Adam does not speak about her as if she is not there, instead we have the standard formula used throughout Tanach when someone is given a name of “Called [namer] [pronoun] name [name], because [reasons]).

·        Soul: Additional word “was” added, when the sentence could have been written without it, which would imply present-tense “is”, with the verse as a whole parsing as “Called Adam the name of his wife ‘Chava, For she is the mother of all living’”, with the present-tense being inside a quote of Adam’s words. Therefore, the additional switch to past tense comes to teach us that in addition to her being ‘mother of all living’ – the only thing Adam had seen her as originally – Chava, and all of us also has the ability to grow into so much more.

Symbolism of the Aron

What is the symbolism of the Aron HaKodesh?

What is the form of the Aron? It is a wooden box encased in pure gold on the inside and the outside, two keruvim statues (generally understood to be some kind of humaniform depiction of an 'angel') facing each other poised atop the cover. Inside it we placed the cubes of stone inscribed with the Ten Utterances, and beside it or on top of it was kept a Torah scroll written by Moshe, a jar of the manna from the desert journey, and the staff of Aharon.

What does the wood represent? The wood represents endless growth and change, just as a tree grows all its life. To stop growing is to die. To change is to live. So too, our relationship with God, our beliefs and our very beings, must always be growing and changing - to be changeless is to die.

What does the pure gold represent? Gold, a noble metal, represents changelessness and perfection, absolute axiomatic truth.

What does the gold coating the wood represent? That neither unconstrained change nor eternal stasis are acceptable. The change is guided by the coat of gold, and the gold, a soft and weak metal, bends and shapes itself to the ever-changing wood inside it.

What do  the keruvim represent? They represent the way past the keruvim that "guard the way to the Tree of Life" with "swords of fire" (Genesis 3:24). The Aron and its accompaniments are the devices by which we, humanity, reenter the Garden and gain eternal life, the keruvim sheathing their swords and forming an archway to bring us in.

Thus, only by changing, bounded by only the axioms of the Torah, can we live. Only by living within the axioms of the Torah are we preserved from decay and death, eternal oblivion.

Exactly when we abide by this - rejecting both the ossification of tradition and the rejection of our axioms, when we hold the covenants with God within us, His Words by our sides - then there is no limit on our potential, then can we claim the Tree of Life.