Our first Yom Kippur began in the garden and ended in the
outside world.
Over the course of that very long day, we ate and opened our
eyes and hid and forever left our childhood home.
My children, on Rosh Hashanah, Adam and I shared our story
of young love; today we recall our first tentative steps toward maturity—how we
struck out into uncharted territory, both knowingly and entirely without a
clue. It’s a tale of defiance and
destiny, mortality, fear and courage.
And of making one mistake after another.
In other words, our Yom Kippur story is about growing up—a task in which
we both failed and succeeded—just like you.
Tonight I’d like to reclaim and retell this tale because,
over the ages, many who purport to honor our legacy have warped it beyond recognition. They refer to our exile from Eden as the Fall, and portray our choices there
as the root of all subsequent sin and suffering. Mostly, awash in centuries of misogyny, they
blame me. So let me be clear from the
outset: Adam took the fruit of his own free will, and given the opportunity to
revisit that fateful day, both of us would eat it again, without a moment’s
hesitation. In the aftermath of our
decision, we failed badly. We panicked
and diminished ourselves. But we didn’t fall, or condemn our descendants to
repeat our failures. There is no one original
sin; everyone makes their own mistakes and must take responsibility for
them. We are all obliged to learn from
our own misdeeds.
Our critics also misconstrue the serpent’s role. They demonize him as a satanic tempter. But I
wasn’t seduced—I knew I’d eat from the Tree the moment I saw it, long before I
met him ambling through the grass. I didn’t need the snake to pique my hunger
for the Knowledge of Good and Evil. My
appetite was fueled by the innate yearnings Yah created in me. I learned that we humans are creatures of
desire, longing to shape the world through our own choices.
After the drama of our first day together, life soon grew dull
for Adam and me. In the beginning, the
garden seemed so immense—wild and alive, inexhaustible by day and by night,
terrifying. But now, nine days later, it
was starting to feel a little small. The
verdant lawns and orchards never changed; even the rivers’ flow, like the
always-perfect weather, remained remarkably, flatly constant. Our calling—to work and watch over the
place—became tame and tedious. We did
our duty—exploring the terrain, tending the plants, playing with the animals—but
with each passing day, the exercise rang more and more hollow. That time was like an all-expenses-paid
vacation, where you relax on a white-sand beach with exquisite food and drinks
and not a care in the world—until, after a week or two, you wake up and realize
you are eager to get back to work. For
while we all like to visit Paradise, you can’t really live there.
In the perpetual safety and security of garden life, I was
losing my sense of curiosity and wonder.
I surmised that if we didn’t do something soon, I might never again
experience the kind of freedom I desired so dearly. I was learning that a meaningful life
requires risk—that human liberty is impossible in a changeless world, and
change always entails living with loss. I wanted my freedom. I longed, above all, to grow up.
As young as I was that first Yom Kippur, I knew there must
be something more, beyond the gates of Eden, and the only way toward it was to
eat the fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil—even if that meant that one day we
would die. And though, like any child, I did not fully understand, I sensed
that to create that kind of meaningful life, I needed the dark hug of time.
So when the serpent came to me, under the shade of that
forbidden tree, I took comfort in his presence.
He truly was the most cunning of all of Yah’s creatures—more than that,
I realized, he was Yah’s special agent on the ground. His voice was Yah’s—expressing the wild, chaotic
side of Yah that did not obey the ostensible rules. As he spoke, it dawned on me that the whole
drama playing out before my eyes was a set up.
Yah wanted us to take the
fruit—that’s why it was sitting so prominently in the center of the
garden. For as every parent knows, if the
intention is to keep the kids out of the cookie jar, you hide it; you certainly
don’t put it in the middle of the room and point it out repeatedly before
leaving the house. Yah couldn’t wait for
us to disobey, knowing that was the only way we could launch our journey to
adulthood.
Indeed, I think that on that fateful morning, Yah was also
ready for a change.
They say that Yah created us, humankind, because Yah loves
stories. Well, in a world without good
and evil, devoid of both ethics and mortality, the plot quickly runs thin. How wearying it must have been for Yah those
first few days, watching for a show of chutzpah,
waiting for the one decisive act to set in motion the whole messy, tragic,
comic and endlessly interesting human future.
And so I reached for the fruit—for Yah and for us. I was not naïve. I—who had so adamantly resisted Adam’s naming
everything in the garden because it needlessly separated and divided one thing
from another—I willingly brought on the most irrevocable divide of all. My choice, duly considered and freely made,
imposed an unbreachable divide between childhood in Paradise and maturity in
the mortal world.
Yes, my children, I ate—as aware of the consequences as I
could be. It wasn’t an apple, as legend
would have it. Nor was it a grape or a
fig or a giant sheaf of wheat, as some of the Rabbis would later suggest. It was a fruit like no other, unique in the
world—at the same time sweet and bitter, delicious and disgusting, sickening
and healing, evil and good—which is to say it tasted like everything and like nothing
else—like life itself.
I held it out for Adam.
He hesitated, understandably afraid of losing everything he’d so
carefully considered and named. Contrary
to the rumors you may have heard, I did not tempt or cajole him. I respected his reticence. I simply placed the fruit in the palm of his
hand and affirmed that the choice was his.
He nodded his thanks. And then,
like me—with me—he made the complex,
difficult choice. He chose
adulthood. He raised the forbidden fruit
to his lips and bit off love and discord, exile and death and desire. Our eyes opened to freedom, with its dazzling
array of pitfalls and possibilities. We
smiled at one another and stood tall, side by side.
Then Yah knew that we had eaten. . . and saw that it was
good, lamenting and rejoicing at our disobedience. And so, my children, it has been in every
generation since. We disobey. We suffer loss. We diverge from our parents’ paths to seek
our own—and in so doing, recreate ourselves.
It’s heartbreaking and essential, this expulsion from childhood’s
garden. We don’t want to depart, but
know we must. We leave home. We weep.
We celebrate.
Yah leaves and weeps and celebrates with us.
Oh, my children, if only our Yom Kippur story ended there. .
. Up to that point, we’d done everything
this sacred day demands. We’d wrestled
with our consciences, weighed our choices, nurtured one another, listened for
Yah’s voice. We dared to be vulnerable
together, mustered the courage to confront and ultimately accept our
mortality. We embraced the terrible
beauty of time and love and loss. But
alas, before day’s end, we did one more very human thing that almost undermined
it all. My children, you know the
experience or you wouldn’t be here this Yom Kippur.
We surrendered to shame.
We cowered from ourselves and Yah.
We hid.
We blamed.
We spoke mistruths.
We failed—dismally.
Alas, it wouldn’t be the last time.
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