Adam and Eve - Wherein we discuss the necessary symbiosis that allows for a fruitful relationship
Genesis 1:27
God [thus] created man with His image. In the image of God, He created him, male and female He created them.
Hebrew has different verb forms for masculine and feminine words. Thus a “table” is a feminine word and the plural of shulchan is shulchanot. Whereas the plural of the masculine sefer (books) is sefarim, a masculine ending. If there is a group of items which contain both masculine and feminine individuals, then the plural form will be masculine.
So in the above verse, the Torah must “go out of it’s way” to explain that the female was indeed half of what it means for humanity to be created “in God’s image.” Because it is precisely in how we relate to our mate that formulates our reflection of God in this world. Because Godliness requires us to know another “different” from us and give to them, according to their needs from us, as much as we see is right, as much as we can, in any given situation. This only works with an equal partner. It cannot work with a subordinate, for the simple reason that there are many situations a subordinate will not be able to say to their “mate.” Such as “you’re being a knucklehead!” Whereas a partner can say that. It is for this reason that Adam listened to Eve, but it was his mistake to follow when he should have led. But that woman should be equal to and able to influence man is the reason that it was “not good” that Adam be alone. Let’s see the story:
And God said: ‘It is not good that Adam is alone, I will make him a help-meet corresponding to him.’ And Lord God formed from the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the heavens and brought them to the Adam1 to see what he would call each one, and whatever the Adam called each living creature, that remained its name. And the Adam assigned names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field, but as for Adam, he did not find a helper corresponding to him.
So Lord God cast a deep sleep upon the Adam and he slept; and He took one of his sides and filled in flesh in its place. Then Lord God built the side that He had taken from the Adam into a woman, and He brought her to the Adam. And the Adam said, “This time it is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. This shall be called woman, for from man she was taken.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and bond with his wife, and they shall become one flesh.2
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God seems to make Eve to relieve Adam’s loneliness. But before God makes her, He brings each type of animal to Adam “to see what he would call it.” Isn’t this a strange interruption in the story? What does naming the animals have to do with the need to create Eve? Did God think that if Adam had a pet he would be happy? Or even more odd, did God expect Adam to mate with a beast? And on a more basic level, why would God create Adam alone to begin with, and not male and female like the animals?
The Talmud deduces something about the Adam’s relationship with the animals from how he describes Eve upon first seeing her. What the Talmud says may seem bizarre at first glance, and is certainly not meant to be taken literally:
’This time it is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh’ this teaches that Adam was intimate with every cattle and beast, but his mind was not calmed until he was with Eve.3
As noted, like many Midrashim this is meant metaphorically, not literally. When God brought the animals to Adam to see what he would name them, there was a type of intimacy involved. That intimacy left Adam unsatisfied. Once Eve came along and Adam realised that she was “bone of my bone,” i.e. the same form and matter as he, Adam was calmed. We must understand why Adam was naming the animals in the first place, and why naming and finding a mate are interrelated.
As we’ve already learned, primordial Adam was some combination of all the elements of earth, water, wind and fire. His higher consciousness from God, and his animate being somehow representative of the world at large.
Thus when Adam was naming the animals he was getting to know the partners God provided him throughout the Kingdom. He would not be training the animals - but they would be as “familiars” to humanity. We were able to communicate with animals, at that time, if we take the verses in the Torah literally. Why should we take them literally? I say - as that part of the story speaks before the sin of the Tree, which utterly changed all we know of human consciousness, why should we assume the verse is not literal? Is there anything in the story or the sentence structure which indicates that it is meant metaphorically? I don’t see it. So we find Adam touring his Kingdom seeking workmates, but finding none he could partner with as an equal.
Now let us deal with the name of the woman. She was not given the name Eve when she was created, but only later, after the sin of eating from the Tree. Upon her creation she is called “Isha” I.e. Woman as opposed to Man. She is named this because she is:
“flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone - this I will call Isha for from Ish this was taken.”
What is Adam saying?
He is describing what they are, giving them names much as he did to the animals, not as individual names like “spot” or “fluffy” but rather the name of the species, what it is.
Adam and Eve as personal names only came about after the sin, which gave birth to the “id” and therefore the ego as we know it, as an identity of “self” which matures from birth to death.
After the sin they do get personal names, his being Adam and hers being Eve. His name is a pithy reminder of the earth which is cursed on his behalf, and the toil he will suffer to provide food. While her name Eve, meaning Mother of all life, is given to her symbolising the suffering womankind would now experience having to bring children into the world, and then having to raise them.
But these “curses” I.e. that the man must till the soil and the mother nurse the babe are not punishments in the sense of a ruler across the knuckles. As we know when they (the land or the womb) are fruitful it is our greatest pleasure. And when man and woman work as partners to make both fruitful, they repair the sin, somehow. But before there was man and woman, Adam was something more than either.
Genesis 5:2
Male and female He created them, and He blessed them and called their name Adam on the day He created them.4
We are conditioned to think of Eve as having been created from Adam’s rib. I think this is because most English Bibles follow the King James translation of the Hebrew phrase achat mitzalotav to mean “one of his ribs.” However, it may also be translated as “one of his sides” i.e. one half of Adam.5
This significance of whether we translate the Hebrew tzele as rib or side is that the former implies that the feminine psyche per se did not exist prior to woman being assembled from a part of Adam. Whereas if we understand that God made Eve by dividing Adam into two parts, the feminine psyche of Eve always existed together with her masculine counterpart in the original Adam. This idea of Adam having both masculine and feminine sides is found in the Talmud6 and Midrash,7 and quoted by both Rashi8 and Ramban.9 One expression the Rabbis use is that primordial Adam had du partsufim, meaning two faces, one male and one female.
And God created the Adam in His image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.
Rashi’s commentary there:10
‘male and female’: Later it says ‘And He took one of his sides…’ Midrash Aggadah (resolves the apparent contradiction) that he was created with two faces in the first creation, and afterwards separated.’
The verse from chapter one implies that Adam was originally created male and female, while the story from chapter two describes woman as having been created from Adam. The resolution of du partsufim suggests that both are true. The Adam of the “image of God” was when male and female were united as one body. In the words of the Talmud, the two faces of Adam were in different directions, one facing forward and the other backwards. This is described by the Psalm:11
Back and front You have formed me.
Adam before the division of woman was the universal consciousness. That the two faces of male and female faced back and front is symbolic of this consciousness, as Adam sees in all directions. This description of front and back requires further investigation however, for how do we describe a being which faces two directions as having a back at all? The answer to this requires us to rethink our understanding of back. When the female is taken from man, she is taken from his side, but which side? We can divide sides into top and bottom, right and left, of course front and back, but we can also divide the inside from the outside. Perhaps the feminine half of Adam was the inwardly focused while the masculine was the outward. This would make sense when we consider the physical differences of our reproductive organs.
But still we wonder, why if he is the “outside” is that called “front,” and she who is “inside” called “back?” Is this going to be a joke about women drivers?
No. Front is proactive, back is reflexive. This is also true about our reproductive systems. The male provides a proactive potential, which the woman absorbs and acts upon. This is known in Hebrew as chochma (wisdom) and bina (understanding). So the verse from Psalms quoted above means, forward thinking and reflexively thinking you have created me. Because a human being is made of both the forward leaps of imagination as well as the contemplation of known things, which develops ideas into actualities. These two powers, the “right” and “left” parts of the brain, so to speak, were originally united in the universal Adam. “Male” and “Female” are psychic states. When the masculine and feminine sides were joined in primordial Adam, spiritual reality was seen perfectly within the material, external world.
It was exactly by having two opposing perspectives of the feminine and masculine that Adam identified the godliness of the world outside. When God declares the intention to create woman as a help-meet, the Hebrew for help (ezer) is qualified by kenegdo, which is variously translated as corresponding to; opposing;12 or against, which teaches that the help she provides is precisely in the form of being equal to him. The only reason we don’t like being in the “back” is a result of our lack of appreciation of the contemplative, inner world. Anyone who assumes Torah is “anti-woman” perhaps forgets that the Torah only says a man has any more authority than a woman because of the Tree. As one of her curses Eve hears “your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.” In our ideal state, this is not how we are meant to be. As we’ll see, it was not so with Avraham and Sarah. Which means it should not be so for anyone wanting to emulate them.
Back to primordial Adam. The verse says: “It is not good that Adam be alone….” If the original Adam had such perfect universal consciousness, what was “not good?” We have already learned that good means keeping form with God’s intent in creation. So perfect Adam of the universal mind was in fact imperfect…why?
Ramban explains:
The Holy One saw that it was good that the help be someone who would stand opposite him (Adam), whom he could see and choose to connect to or be separate from... this was the cause of “not good.”13
The word “choose” here is the point. Primordial Adam was not lonely in the sense of needing a mate. However universal Adam was not the final form of humanity because we could not choose to either love and connect, or refrain from doing so. Once Adam was two separate beings in need of each other, they would bond when each of them could internally (psychically/emotionally) make room for the other. They would make this room by drawing the focus of their attention (knowing) away from self to the other, and thus cleave together.
It is not co-incidental that these two concepts, i.e. freedom of choice and love of an equal partner are co-joined imperatives in the process of Adam becoming “tov.” Our free-will choices flow from our sense of self. What “I” believe, need, want, desire… all stem from how I conceive of who “I” am. Loving another as an equal is the act of expanding the “I” to include someone outside of yourself - to bring their inner world into your own, co-joined.
This idea is poetically captured in the beautiful verse “I am to my beloved as my beloved is to me….14 Choice is essential to love, as the Ramban wrote, because when we choose to love another we can give of ourselves without losing our sense of self. The relationship a child has with its parents is also essential to its sense of self. But unlike the love of equals, a child’s love is not a function of choice, but more like the original human state of du partsifum, as a child cannot help but see his or her parents as an extension of itself. From it’s earliest memories they were the gods of his or her little universe. As the child matures from infancy, it seeks independence of identity, until at some point its sense of self is firm enough that it is capable of leaving home. Again, this is the conclusion of the story of woman’s creation:
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and bond with his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
When a person’s ego is independent, they are ready to choose to give up their independence and love another without losing the integrity of who they are. When we are happy with who we are it is very easy to love another. When we do not like who we are it is impossible to really love another. Loving is giving. We can only give if we feel that what we give is valuable. If we don’t love who we are, then we believe everything we do is crap. Who wants to give people crap?
To sum up: We are created with differences so that we may give to each and receive in turn, and it is this dynamic of love between equal partners which completes the Divine image that breaths in each of us.
1 Although it may feel awkward to translate HaAdam as “the Adam” as opposed to the “the man” as is more common, it is however the literal translation, and a more accurate one too, as we shall see.
2 Genesis 2:18-24)
3 Talmud Bavli, Yevamot 63a; quoted by Rashi, Genesis 2:23
4 Genesis 5:2
5 Although I’ve attributed the common assumption of Eve coming from Adam’s rib to the King James Version of the Bible, it also has an authoritative Rabbinic source in the classic Aramaic translation of Onkelos (circa 1st century C.E.) The truth is there are a number of opinions in the Talmud as the original creation of Adam/Eve.
6 Tractate Brachos 61a; and Yevamos 63a.
7 Midrash Breishis Rabba 8:1
8 Rashi = Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, 1040-1105 C.E.
9 Ramban is an acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman Gerondi (1194 -1270 C.E.); also known as Nachmanidies. See his commentary to Genesis 2:18
10 Even though Rashi here gives a secondary explanation that doesn’t rely on the Midrash, he again reiterates the Midrashic opinion in his commentary to verse 2:21
11 Psalms 139:5 My translation follows the intent of the Rabbi’s drosho, which understands the Hebrew word tzartani in this context to mean “formed” as opposed to “beset” or “constrained.” This is also the understanding of the Midrash Breishis Rabba 8:1 quoted above and Rashi to Brachos 61a. The Talmud however in Chagiga 12a and Sanhedrin 38b seems to use the word in its simple form, implying that the “back and front” formation was in itself an act of God constraining Adam. See Rashi to Sanhedrin there. The subtleties of this are beyond the scope of my article, however.
12 Rashi’s comment here is instructive: “If he is meritorious, she helps him. But if not, she’ll fight against him!”
13 Ramban, ibid. 2:18
14 Song of Songs 6:3