Earthy-Boy, Breathy/Life-y Girl and Beginnings: Breishit
I feel like I should have something really profound to say. After all, we’ve completed an entire cycle and we are starting the reading of the Torah from the beginning again! And we’re reading about beginnings.
Also, we’re heading into a profoundly important period in American history. Unprecedented, in fact. It’s a beginning of sorts in itself. We are in the process of creating what will be our future as a nation. What will election week bring? And how many chances do we have to get it right? Is this “the end” if we don’t get it this time?
How many chances.
It’s an interesting question because, according to the Torah, there are at least two ways that human beings came about--two Creation Stories.
In the first story, we get all the details of the beginning of the world and the universe: the heavens and the earth, the skies and the waters, the animals and the birds--and earthlings. We are presented with--let’s call him Earthy-Boy (I know it’s cute, and I can’t take credit for it), as the Torah does: “adam,” meaning “earth.” God is super-organized and orderly. God has it all planned out, day by day.
Except for one detail: the creation of--let’s call her Breathy/Lifey-Girl, Chava/Eve, who is Earthy-Boy’s woman or “wife”. In this story, Breathy/Lifey-Girl only comes about when God realizes that Earthy-Boy shouldn’t be alone, and no other creature can meet his needs as a partner.
In other words, The Omnipotent God we all know and love (or not) didn’t predict this! (I mean! How did God think Earthy/Breathy-Babies (I did make this one up) would come about??)
Anyway, together, between Earthy-Boy and Breathy/Lifey-Girl, things happen. They’re in a beautiful garden, there’s a cool tree that offers wisdom and everlasting life, God lies and tells the couple that they will die if they eat of its fruit, but there’s a serpent that knows otherwise and tells Breathy-Girl the truth. The serpent wants to get these humans in trouble (we don’t know why), and figures it can do it best through Breathy-Girl, and Serpent is right.
Curiosity causes the couple to go against God’s rules, they eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, their eyes are opened by eating said fruit, they become aware of their nakedness and experience shame for the first time, they hide, God kindly dresses them, but they’re banished from the garden forever, which is now guarded by fiery cherubim (interesting beings that also later guard the Temple), and they are cursed.
They have children, the famous Cain and Abel, and jealousy and competition rear their ugly heads between them, leading to murder, followed by fear and emotional pain, and banishment and disconnection from God’s Presence and the land forevermore--at least for Cain, the murderous brother.
A lot of emotions are identified in the story.
Then there’s a second story, one with much less detail: Earthy-Boy and Wife or Woman (not named here) are created simultaneously. There is no Cain or Abel mentioned here, only Baby-Seth. Is there even a garden? There’s no mention of it, or a tree or a serpent. Adam goes on to have other children after 800 years (with Breathy-Girl?) and we learn of all the generations until finally God is fed up with his creation and wants to start over again by destroying everything and everyone (which he doesn’t in the end---remember Noah?).
The question is, which story is the “true” story? And why have we as a culture focused on the first story more and basically ignored the second? Who is responsible for our thinking that there was only one way of thinking of the creation of humans even though there are two stories here, and that that way was a girl named Eve coming from the body of a guy named Adam, with him being given dominion over her, rather than the two of them being created together, as equals? Whose purpose did it serve for us to believe this?
Not only that; if there are two stories, God had at least two chances. In fact, all through the Torah, as we see going through the year, God keeps wanting to destroy everything and everyone and start all over again.
For us today, it definitely feels like we are on the brink of destruction--and extinction--at this moment.
Maybe we also feel banished from God’s Presence. Maybe we feel exposed and naked and vulnerable. Maybe we feel jealous and competitive and ashamed of ourselves and afraid and disconnected from the earth. Maybe we want to hide or deny that we are our brothers’ keepers because sometimes it’s just so overwhelming. Maybe we feel cursed with thorns and thistles sprouting before us daily the way God curses the earth. Maybe we feel lied to and unnoticed and ignored. Maybe we need our eyes opened.
There is a moment of intimacy between God and Cain. Cain has tried again and again to get God’s attention with his grain offering, but only his brother Abel’s offering is noticed; thus the jealousy. Cain’s face “falls”. God wants to know why. He cares. And he reminds Cain that his actions count no matter what, whether God takes note or not: doing good counts and matters. God tells Cain that he is the master of his emotions and any tendency he might have to do bad; he has “free will”.
To master our emotions is a tall order for us earthlings. Whatever we are feeling seems true in the moment. Our emotions often create our stories, as we know. It also matters which story we focus our attention on; one might be a useless distraction—or even a deliberate one. And our actions really do matter.
Luckily, like God, we get more than one chance to create our story. I like the idea of using curiosity, the first emotion in the bible, as opposed to competition and anger and fear, as an approach to the creation of our story going forward and its outcome. And we can use the '‘free will” God gave us to choose where to place our attention.
Whatever the results in November, this story is not over.
