A new cycle of Torah has begun, and this seems like the perfect opportunity to up my learning.

For the past year I’ve been participating in the "Perek Yomi" program where you read a chapter of the complete bible per day. I’m going to continue that program this year (it takes 3 years to complete the Bible), and I hope to write about that occasionally, but I’d like to do more than that. I’d like to study the weekly Torah portion and blog about that weekly, as well as about any other thoughts I have.

So this week, we start the Torah anew, with Parashat Bereshit – one of my favourite. There is so much in there; it’s hard to decide what to write about. In the past I have bloged about the scientific aspect of creation, and I could write about that all day, but this time, I want to talk about something different.

Everyone knows the story of Adam and Eve. They are told they can eat from anything in the Garden of Eden, except the fruit of the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil". So what do they eat? The one thing they are not supposed to.

Adam and Eve, the first people, created in the “image of God” and one of their first acts is to do something so stupid that it changes the course of human history – how could they do something like that?

To understand what’s going on, you need to look at this in a different light. We usually view Adam and Eve as being full grown adults when they do this, but really, this episode happens just a few verses after Eve’s creation – Adam and Eve were merely children! Ok, perhaps I’m taking some liberties here, perhaps they were created as fully formed adults, but their behaviour certainly is that of children. Looking at it in that light, with Adam and Eve being children and God being the parent, you’ll immediately be able to see what going on. As a parent of two young boys, I see this same thing every day.

God (the parent) lets Adam (his son) and Eve (a friend they invited over for a play date) play in Dad’s office and says “You can play with any thing in here, but don’t touch the vase, it’s very breakable.” God then leaves the room to let the kids play and hears a crash. He comes back in and sees the kids hiding behind the couch (of course, being kids their bums are sticking out). God knows exactly where they are and knows exactly what they did. But instead of yelling, he calmly asks “Kids, where are you”.

Adam and Eve sheepishly come out from behind the couch and say, nervously, “we’re right here, Daddy”.

God asks Adam (his son), “what happened here?” pointing to the broken vase.

Now the moment of truth, Adam can fess up and claim responsibility, and probably be forgiven for his mistake (imagine what the world would be like if he took that path - now there’s any idea of a paper). But what does he do instead, he blames Eve. He says “It was her, the person YOU invited over.” Not only does he fail to own up, he actually blames God!

God then turns to Eve and asks “Is this true” and Eve fesses up, but denies responsibility by saying “I was tricked into doing it.”

What a mess. Some honestly and simple apology would have probably cleared the whole thing up, but instead the relationship is irrevocably harmed, and the kids are banned from Dad’s office for life.

So, what’s the lesson? Well, I think we have two. The obvious one is to take responsibility for your actions and own up immediately when you do wrong. Such a simple lesson that, if everyone heeded would make the world a much better place.

But as a parent of a 4 year old and 2 year old, I see another lesson. If Dad would have just put the vase on the top shelf, we would not have gotten into that mess. Sometimes and with some kids, you need to trust your kids and let them play near breakable stuff, so they learn what they can and can not do. But other times, with other kids, you need to build their confidence by not put them in a situation where they can possible fail.

Just as the Rabbi’s build "fences around the Torah" to make sure we don’t accidentally transgress a commandment, perhaps a fence around the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" would have been in order.

Shabbat Shalom