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We human beings tend not to see something that doesn’t fit our preconceived
notions, including when we read the Torah. A banner example occurs at the end of
this week’s portion:
Then it happened, as humans began to proliferate throughout the world, and
daughters were born to them, that divine beings saw the human girls, and
noticed that they were beautiful. They married them as wives—whichever ones
they chose. Then Hashem said, “The life-breath I bestow will not dwell in a
human forever, insofar as they, too, are flesh; a human’s time will be one
hundred and twenty years.” The fallen giants were on earth in those days, and
afterwards, too—when divine beings had relations with human women, who
bore their offspring. These giants were the might ones of old, men of fame.
(Gen. 6:1-4)
If we were reading polytheistic literature such as the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh
or Homer’s Iliad, we wouldn’t be surprised to hear this sort of story, in which gods
procreate with humans to produce a race of giants.
But what is a story like this doing in Genesis? The Torah is a monotheistic work.
Why, then, does it include this fragment of what sounds like a polytheistic tale? The
answer lies in the way that God reacts to this event. God decrees that mixing of this
sort should not occur, and that humans, including the offspring of these divinehuman unions, cannot live forever. The two opening parashiyot of Bereishit (Gen. 1–
11) hammer home the message that there is an essential difference between
humans and God. Humans are made in the image of God; they are called on to be
like God, and they are privileged to interact with God. But they are not divine—and a
core idea of biblical literature is that God is utterly unique. One way the Torah
emphasizes this idea is by reminding its audience of stories from the ancient world
that portray a mixing of divine and human realms, and then introducing a crucial
difference.
Polytheistic stories of the sort that Genesis 6 alludes to assumed that humans could,
sometimes, become divine and that immortal beings could also die; this points to a
fundamental similarity between humanity and divinity in these ancient texts. The
very core of polytheism is not simply that there are many gods, but that gods and
humans are made of the same stuff. Conversely, the Bible does not claim that God
is the only heavenly being; after all, there are angels. The core of biblical
monotheism, rather, is that God is unique. Even as scripture demands that human
beings attempt to imitate God, it also stresses they need to realize they will never
fully succeed in doing so.
When we stop to notice, we see that the relationship between monotheism and
polytheism in the Bible is much more complex than we initially assume. So is
humanity’s relationship with God. It was hard for ancient people to admit it, and it’s
even harder for moderns, but the Torah teaches that humanity has limits—and it’s
not our role to play God.
(1) Translation from Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford University Press,
1989), 51 (2) Translation from R.M. Frazer, The Poems of Hesiod (University of Oklahoma
Press, 1963), 87
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Parashat Bereishit 5775
‫פרשת בראשית תשע"ה‬
Minding Our Words
Dr. Anne Lapidus Lerner, Assistant Professor Emerita of Jewish Literature, JTS
Yesterday, on Simhat Torah, we completed reading the humash—all 79,796
Hebrew words of it—and when we had done so, what did we do? We rolled it up
to the very beginning and started to read it all over again. Words, words, words.
Devarim (Deuteronomy)—which, of course, means “words”—ends with Moses’s
death after the conclusion of his lengthy final oration; Bereishit opens with God
demonstrating the power of words by creating the world with them.
The majestic, eloquent opening of Bereishit, the daily report of Creation, is
chanted on Simhat Torah. But we conclude with Shabbat, the goal of creation
(Gen. 2:4). This week, we go back to the beginning again, and proceed from
that orderly first Creation story through the messiness of a different Creation
account that takes us through the narrative of the wickedness that eventually
prompts the Flood.
But words have power that extends well beyond the text itself. They have a
power in shaping our lives, our culture, our often-unarticulated assumptions.
Three such words in the two opening chapters of Genesis are tzela, ‘ezer, and
adam. Each of these words has a long and honorable history of translation, but,
for now, let’s keep it literal: rib, helpmeet, and human, respectively. Their impact
upon our individual and shared sense of self, on our relations with others, on our
way of being in the world, is hard to overestimate; yet they seem so innocuous.
Together, particularly when read through the lens of age-old religious traditions
of interpretation, they have shaped our vision of what it means to be a woman or
a man.
Asked to describe the biblical story of the creation of woman, most of us would
respond, almost unthinkingly, that she was created from Adam’s rib. After all,
the story is well known. God puts the human to sleep and removes one of its
ribs, building it into a woman.
‫ישן וַ יִ ַקח ַאחַ ת ִמצַ לְ עֹתָ יו וַ יִ ְסגֹר בָ ָשר‬
ָ ִ‫ָאדם וַ י‬
ָ ָ‫ה‬-‫ֹלהים ַת ְר ֵּדמָ ה עַ ל‬
ִ -‫וַ יַפֵּ ל ה' א‬
ָ‫ָאדם לְ ִא ָשה וַ יְ בִ אֶּ ה‬
ָ ָ‫ה‬-‫ל ַָקח ִמן‬-‫הַ צֵּ לָע אֲ ֶּשר‬-‫ֹלהים אֶּ ת‬
ִ -‫ וַ יִ בֶּ ן ה' א‬:‫ַת ְח ֶּתנָה‬
:‫ָאדם‬
ָ ָ‫ה‬-‫אֶּ ל‬
And Lord God caused a slumber to fall upon the adam, and it
slept and He took one of tzalotav [its sides, usually translated
as “ribs”] and closed the flesh in that place. And Lord God built
the tzela [side, rib] He had taken from the adam into an ishah
[woman] and brought her to the adam.(1) (Gen. 2:21–22)
Despite the brevity of the text—only 26 words in the Hebrew—we can picture
every step along the way: the scalpel, the blood, the stitches, the woman, the
man. While each of us may imagine some of the details differently, what seems
TORAH FROM JTS
incontrovertible is that the woman is a latecomer, an afterthought. The man is at
the pinnacle of creation; the woman is clearly depicted as inferior. He is whole;
she is made from secondhand materials—a mere part, almost an appendage.
A closer look at the Hebrew word tzela leads us to different conclusions. The
word appears 40 times in the Hebrew Bible. In 23 of those, it means a “side,”
not a “rib”; in 15, it means a “side room.” The only places that it is translated as
“rib” are the two occurrences here in the story of the creation of woman. That
makes “rib” an unlikely translation, and transforms our mental image of what
happened. Woman was part of the original adam, which had two sides. She was
incorporated into the divine plan for the creation of humanity from the very
beginning. As such she was not an afterthought, not secondary, but equal to its
other part, which became a man.
But, there is certainly room to object that the woman was designated as an
‘ezer, a helper, for the man. As such, whenever she was created, she was not
the primary actor; she was there to serve him. Again, a close look at the biblical
text opens other avenues of interpretation that are probably more accurate.
Let’s look again at the numbers. There are 21 occurrences of ‘ezer in the
Hebrew Bible, including the two here in Genesis 2. Sixteen of those clearly refer
to God. A memorable example is in Psalm 121:1–2: “I lift my eyes unto the hills,
where does my help [‘ezer] come from? My help comes from God, Creator of
heaven and earth.” Overwhelmingly ‘ezer comes from a source that is not
inferior, but superior. One could argue that, based on these texts, woman is
actually superior to man. I prefer to state simply that she is clearly not inferior.
Finally, let’s take a look at the word adam itself. God introduces it in Genesis
1:26: “God said: ‘Let us make an adam in our image, according to our likeness.’”
This creature, the last to be created before the first Shabbat, will partake of the
divine. At the same time the word itself seems to be a masculine equivalent of
the word adamah (earth), which had appeared at the end of the previous verse.
Ab initio this creature seems to incorporate different, even opposing, elements.
The text continues, “And God created the adam in His image, in the image of
God He created it, male and female He created them” (1:27). The adam that
God has created is both singular and plural, male and female. This is an
egalitarian description of the creation of human without gender hierarchy or
belatedness.
Seeing the creation of human as simultaneously incorporating male and female
is not a modern invention. In Genesis Rabbah, an early collection of rabbinic
expositions of Genesis, one finds this record of the attempt of a group of Rabbis
to understand these texts.
‫ בשעה שברא הקדוש ברוך הוא את אדם‬:‫אמר רבי ירמיה בן לעזר‬
.‫ זכר ונקבה בראם‬:‫ הדא הוא דכתיב‬,‫ אנדרוגינוס בראו‬,‫הראשון‬
‫ דיו‬.‫ בשעה שברא הקב"ה את אדם הראשון‬:‫אמר רבי שמואל בר נחמן‬
.‫ גב לכאן וגב לכאן‬,‫פרצופים בראו ונסרו ועשאו גביים‬
!?‫ויקח אחת מצלעותיו‬: ‫ והכתיב‬,‫איתיבון ליה‬
‫ (שמות כו) ולצלע‬:‫ היך מה דאת אמר‬,‫ מתרין סטרוהי‬:‫אמר להון‬
.'‫דמתרגמינן ולסטר משכנא וגו‬, ‫המשכן‬
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Rabbi Yirmeyah ben Leazar said: “At the time when the Holy
One, blessed be He, created the first adam, He created him
an androgyne, as is said, ‘Male and female He created them,’
etc. (Genesis 5:2).”
Rabbi Shemuel bar Nahman said: “At the time when the Holy
One, blessed be He, created the first adam, He created him
double-faced, then He sawed him apart and made him two
backs, a back on this side and a back on the other side.”
To this they object: “But it is written, ‘and He took one of
tzalotav [“its sides,” usually translated as “his ribs”]’ (Genesis
2:21)?” He responded to them: “[mitzalotov means] one of its
sides, as is written, ‘And for the other side wall [tzela] of the
Tabernacle,’ etc. (Exodus 26:20).” (Gen. R. par. 8:1)
Rabbi Shemuel bar Nahman’s persuasive argument did not hold sway. For
millennia, these texts have most often been read as creating gender hierarchy.
Now that many of us inhabit a world in which men and women are, perhaps too
slowly, reaching parity, we can revisit the issues and look at the meaning of the
words.
As it is with our understanding of the words of the biblical text; so it is with our
own words. Just a short time ago, we confessed our sins, many of them
committed through the misuse of words. As Proverbs 18:21 reminds us, “Death
and life are in the hands of the tongue.” Let us resolve to use the richness of our
languages, of our words, to bring life to our sacred texts and to enrich our lives
and those of others, women and men, with our careful usage.
Dr. Anne Lapidus Lerner, an emerita member of the faculty and a former vice
chancellor of JTS, is the author of Eternally Eve: Images of Eve in the Hebrew
Bible, Midrash, and Modern Jewish Poetry.
(1) All translations mine. When translating biblical and midrashic texts I have used masculine
pronouns for God to avoid misrepresenting the original understanding of the text.
The publication and distribution of the JTS Commentary are made possible by a generous
grant from Rita Dee and Harold (z”l) Hassenfeld.
‫ | דבר אחר‬A Different Perspective
Mortals and Immortals
Dr. Benjamin Sommer, Professor of Bible, JTS
“Gilgamesh was named from birth for fame. Two-thirds of him was divine, and onethird mortal.” (Epic of Gilgamesh) (1)
“Alkmene [a human woman] gave birth to the wonderful strength of Herakles, when
she and Zeus of the Storm Cloud had mingled together in love.” (Hesiod, The
Theogony) (2)
“Semele . . . having mingled in love with Zeus, bore him a shining son, Dionysos . . .
she, a mortal, producing a god; now both are immortals.” (Ibid. )