Parasha B'Reshit - Part 2

B'Reshit is one of my favourite parahas of the Torah. All of creation is described in 31 verses; it takes science hundreds of thousands of books to describe it. The text is so rich and full of deep levels of meaning that you can spend a lifetime studying it and never fully comprehend all its intricacies. King David wrote "A word well spoken is like a dish of silver filled with apples of gold." King David could have been talking about parasha B'Reshit when he wrote that.

What did King David mean? Take a silver dish and fill it with gold apples. From a distance all you see is the silver dish - as beautiful and valuable as it is. It's not until you get in close for a full inspection do you discover the even more valuable apples of gold inside. So is the case with "a word well spoken". A superficial reading of the text reveals much value, but closer inspection is where you find the "apples of gold".

But enough about creation for now... I'm sure I'll write more about that some other day (since I'm learning about it all the time). The other major part of B'Reshit is the story of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from Gan Edan (the Garden of Eden). There is, of course, just as much insight tat can be taken from that text, I'll relate my favourite bit here.

Their problems all started when then ate from the "Tree of Knowledge". Of course, that's not quite right. They had knowledge all along, the tree was called the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad". But surely they had this knowledge before they ate the fruit? After all, they knew that they were not suppose to eat from the tree. The classic philosophical question to ask is "What was the difference between Adam and Eve before they ate from the tree and after?" Here's the best answer I've heard.

Before eating from the tree everything was judged as "True or False", not "Good or Bad". "True and False" are objective. One plus one equals two is true. One plus one equals three is false. No one can argue with these. "Good and "Bad" are subjective. Anything which one person says is good, another person can argue that it's really bad.

That's why good and bad are not used to describe scientific truths. It does not matter if one plus one equals two is good or bad, it's just true. Only in the world of ethical issues is good and bad relevant.

Before eating from the tree, Adam and Eve were free from subjectivity. They could just as easily address ethical issues as they could scientific ones. Kindness is not good, it's true. Killing is not bad, it's false. That's why G-d didn't want his children to eat from the tree. Doing so would alter their perception from moral certitude to relativism. Eating from the tree introduced moral relativism into the world.

Now many people would say that's not a bad thing. After all how can we pass judgement until we walked a mile in that persons shoes. That's the very reason why 2/3 of university philosophy students refused to classify the 9/11 terrorists as being bad. Eating from the tree is why people today consider being anti-gay to be bad but being anti-America to be good. Before eating from the tree, both of these would have been false.

Much of the mess that the world is in today stems directly from this sin. How do we recover from this sin? As Rabbi Benjamin Belch wrote "We must be willing to differentiate between the acceptable and the abhorrent. In an age that has for far too long glorified relativism, we've got to learn to get rid of our excessive neutrality and nonjudgmental behavior. Some things are simply evil -- and no amount of rationalization can alter that truth."

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Tonight I go to the Discovery Seminar. I'll give you the run down next time.