Blessing and Curse - Repairing the sin of Adam and Eve
There is a theme running through the entire Torah, if we look at it through the lenses of Blessing and Curse. We already know of the curses God smote upon mankind after the debacle in the Garden, at the beginning of Torah. Near it’s end, the Torah sums up Jewish history in short, along with a clarification as to what the whole story has been about.
Following is the entire chapter 30 of Deuteronomy. I know it’s a long quote, but I think it’s worth it as we seem to be living in the era the Torah is addressing:
(Translation from bible.ort.org.)
There shall come a time when you shall experience all the words of blessing and curse that I have presented to you. There, among the nations where God will have banished you, you will reflect on the situation.
You will then return to God your Lord, and you will obey Him, doing everything that I am commanding you today. You and your children [will repent] with all your heart and with all your soul.
God will then bring back your remnants and have mercy on you. God your Lord will once again gather you from among all the nations where He scattered you.
Even if your diaspora is at the ends of the heavens, God your Lord will gather you up from there and He will take you back.
God your Lord will then bring you to the land that your ancestors occupied, and you too will occupy it. God will be good to you and make you flourish even more than your ancestors.
God will remove the barriers from your hearts and from the hearts of your descendants, so that you will love God your Lord with all your heart and soul. Thus will you survive.
God will then direct all these curses against your enemies and against the foes who pursued you.
You will repent and obey God, keeping all His commandments, as I prescribe them to you today.
God will then grant you a good surplus in all the work of your hands, in the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your livestock, and the fruit of your land. God will once again rejoice in you for good, just as He rejoiced in your fathers.
All this will happen when you obey God your Lord, keeping all His commandments and decrees, as they are written in this book of the Torah, and when you return to God your Lord with all your heart and soul.
This mandate that I am prescribing to you today is not too mysterious or remote from you.
It is not in heaven, so [that you should] say, 'Who shall go up to heaven and bring it to us so that we can hear it and keep it?'
It is not over the sea so [that you should] say, 'Who will cross the sea and get if for us, so that we will be able to hear it and keep it?'
It is something that is very close to you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can keep it.
See! Today I have set before you [a free choice] between life and good [on one side], and death and evil [on the other].
I have commanded you today to love God your Lord, to walk in His paths, and to keep His commandments, decrees and laws. You will then survive and flourish, and God your Lord will bless you in the land that you are about to occupy.
But if your heart turns aside and you do not listen, you will be led astray to bow down to foreign gods and worship them.
I am warning you today, that [if you do that] you will be utterly exterminated. You will not last very long in the land which you are crossing the Jordan and coming to occupy.
I call heaven and earth as witnesses! Before you I have placed life and death, the blessing and the curse. You must choose life, so that you and your descendants will survive.
[You must thus make the choice] to love God your Lord, to obey Him, and to attach yourself to Him. This is your sole means of survival and long life when you dwell in the land that God swore to your fathers, Avraham, Isaac and Jacob, [promising] that He would give it to them.
God is very unequivocal about the need to keep mitzvos in order to survive in Israel. I’ve studied Torah with many non-religious Jews. This passage often elicits disbelief because they cannot imagine all Jews becoming “Orthodox.” In fact, one look at the hatred and distrust many secular and Orthodox Jews in Israel have of one another, and we think it’s “never gonna happen” that everyone suddenly becomes “Charedi” or “Ultra-Orthodox.” Well, first off, I never say never when it comes to God’s word, I mean really. But I also don’t think that it mentions anywhere in the above verses that our men have to start wearing furry hats on Shabbos or that all our women wear pill-box hats on top of their sheitelach. I think a glance at modern Israel shows the variety of cultural roots observance has, and I think how one is observant, or simply aware of their Jewishness is a highly individual choice within the framework of history. But more to the actual point of the cynic: I’m optimistic that people are a lot more tolerant that we might think. If you’re able, spend any friday night or Shabbos morning at the kotel and see for yourself.
But really the bottom line is that we cannot fully appreciate “everyone being Orthodox” because we are still in the process of its unfolding. Take a look a the verses as if they are descriptions of historic time, in other words similar to a time-line, describing a certain length of time. Then read along and ask yourself: Where are we today along this time-line? Whenever we are, I think we can but barely imagine what it will be like when world Jewry comes together on Pilgrimage holidays three times a year. I don’t want to be flip here but, I think a case can be made that it’s really the Torah that invented Woodstock, Burning Man and Big Day Out - only with the Torah’s version the love is real, and with respect for the sanctity of the human body and soul, because it’s not just loud music we hear, but the Almighty’s Presence in All things. Nothing in recent memory of any living Jew can prepare us for what the experience will be. I hope to see it. Everyone under Hillel’s banner:
What is hateful to you don’t do to others.
We do not know how beautiful every observance will become, from the waving of the lulav to the very Temple Service. Which brings up another question: Will we really go back to the animal sacrifices of the Temple? They seem so… well… barbaric?
People have been eating animals for a long time, and today we don’t even treat them like animals anymore but as non-sentient cogs in a meat machine. Entire species of animals bred into a stupefaction, just hamburgers and nuggets lowing in the pen and stuffed into wired cages.
Our relationship to animals reflects our relationship to our own animal soul, in other words, our bodies. The Temple taught us the sanctity of all animal and even plant life through it’s various services, and more specifically, how to use them to rectify issues with our own bodies and mortality. Through them, a person watching the offerings brought by the holy kohanim would be elevated in whichever way their offering was proscribed. People today who put down the Temple service usually speak from total ignorance of what the service actually was. The details are too much for this work, but all offerings are in order to elevate the sanctified animals or wheat, oil, wine and even water, as the case may be. The elevation of our use of Earth keeps us aware of the inherent sanctify of the animal in both beast and man. To ignore the sanctity of either animal or man, is to become something less than either.
Back to Chapter 30.
The entire point of the exile and redemption is for us to reoccupy the land of Israel, as God swore to our forefathers, and live according to the Torah. But what do we make out of God placing before us the choice of good over evil and life over death? Sounds a lot like the Tree 2.0 program. We ate it back then, so therefore now, after all this story, starting with Avraham, and ending with the ingathering of the Jewish exile, the question has come back full circle to us.
We wanted the power to choose between good and evil. So after all is said and done God asks:
What will you choose?
Will we choose life? Will we choose good? And what is good in the end anyway, after all this history? Only just to do as God would have said to do in the first place to Eve and Adam.
Remember that back in the Garden there was another Tree besides that of Stability and Instability. There was also the Tree of Life. Had Eve and Adam resisted the temptation of the No No Tree until after nightfall of that first Shabbos, I believe they would have eaten from the Tree of Life, connecting their consciousness utterly to God Almighty, and I further believe that at that point God would have permitted them the Tree of Knowing, as they would be able to handle it and not lose themselves into their bodies. So perhaps before Shabbos we could think of them almost as preemies, still needing the incubation of Shabbos to fully develop them into godlike creatures who could properly handle the powers of creation and destruction. But now too God puts the power to choose good and evil into our hands, giving us another chance to save our own lives, as He does.
So to me at least, the point of the Jewish adventure has been to deal with the aftermath of the curses of Adam and Eve. By keeping the Torah we’re doing what God says is good instead of man’s opinion of same. This submission to God’s is not self-obliterating but rather the exact opposite, it is simply admitting that you owe your existence to a source. O fine... a... Source. A SOURCE. A SOURCE!
Following is the entire chapter 30 of Deuteronomy. I know it’s a long quote, but I think it’s worth it as we seem to be living in the era the Torah is addressing:
(Translation from bible.ort.org.)
There shall come a time when you shall experience all the words of blessing and curse that I have presented to you. There, among the nations where God will have banished you, you will reflect on the situation.
You will then return to God your Lord, and you will obey Him, doing everything that I am commanding you today. You and your children [will repent] with all your heart and with all your soul.
God will then bring back your remnants and have mercy on you. God your Lord will once again gather you from among all the nations where He scattered you.
Even if your diaspora is at the ends of the heavens, God your Lord will gather you up from there and He will take you back.
God your Lord will then bring you to the land that your ancestors occupied, and you too will occupy it. God will be good to you and make you flourish even more than your ancestors.
God will remove the barriers from your hearts and from the hearts of your descendants, so that you will love God your Lord with all your heart and soul. Thus will you survive.
God will then direct all these curses against your enemies and against the foes who pursued you.
You will repent and obey God, keeping all His commandments, as I prescribe them to you today.
God will then grant you a good surplus in all the work of your hands, in the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your livestock, and the fruit of your land. God will once again rejoice in you for good, just as He rejoiced in your fathers.
All this will happen when you obey God your Lord, keeping all His commandments and decrees, as they are written in this book of the Torah, and when you return to God your Lord with all your heart and soul.
This mandate that I am prescribing to you today is not too mysterious or remote from you.
It is not in heaven, so [that you should] say, 'Who shall go up to heaven and bring it to us so that we can hear it and keep it?'
It is not over the sea so [that you should] say, 'Who will cross the sea and get if for us, so that we will be able to hear it and keep it?'
It is something that is very close to you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can keep it.
See! Today I have set before you [a free choice] between life and good [on one side], and death and evil [on the other].
I have commanded you today to love God your Lord, to walk in His paths, and to keep His commandments, decrees and laws. You will then survive and flourish, and God your Lord will bless you in the land that you are about to occupy.
But if your heart turns aside and you do not listen, you will be led astray to bow down to foreign gods and worship them.
I am warning you today, that [if you do that] you will be utterly exterminated. You will not last very long in the land which you are crossing the Jordan and coming to occupy.
I call heaven and earth as witnesses! Before you I have placed life and death, the blessing and the curse. You must choose life, so that you and your descendants will survive.
[You must thus make the choice] to love God your Lord, to obey Him, and to attach yourself to Him. This is your sole means of survival and long life when you dwell in the land that God swore to your fathers, Avraham, Isaac and Jacob, [promising] that He would give it to them.
God is very unequivocal about the need to keep mitzvos in order to survive in Israel. I’ve studied Torah with many non-religious Jews. This passage often elicits disbelief because they cannot imagine all Jews becoming “Orthodox.” In fact, one look at the hatred and distrust many secular and Orthodox Jews in Israel have of one another, and we think it’s “never gonna happen” that everyone suddenly becomes “Charedi” or “Ultra-Orthodox.” Well, first off, I never say never when it comes to God’s word, I mean really. But I also don’t think that it mentions anywhere in the above verses that our men have to start wearing furry hats on Shabbos or that all our women wear pill-box hats on top of their sheitelach. I think a glance at modern Israel shows the variety of cultural roots observance has, and I think how one is observant, or simply aware of their Jewishness is a highly individual choice within the framework of history. But more to the actual point of the cynic: I’m optimistic that people are a lot more tolerant that we might think. If you’re able, spend any friday night or Shabbos morning at the kotel and see for yourself.
But really the bottom line is that we cannot fully appreciate “everyone being Orthodox” because we are still in the process of its unfolding. Take a look a the verses as if they are descriptions of historic time, in other words similar to a time-line, describing a certain length of time. Then read along and ask yourself: Where are we today along this time-line? Whenever we are, I think we can but barely imagine what it will be like when world Jewry comes together on Pilgrimage holidays three times a year. I don’t want to be flip here but, I think a case can be made that it’s really the Torah that invented Woodstock, Burning Man and Big Day Out - only with the Torah’s version the love is real, and with respect for the sanctity of the human body and soul, because it’s not just loud music we hear, but the Almighty’s Presence in All things. Nothing in recent memory of any living Jew can prepare us for what the experience will be. I hope to see it. Everyone under Hillel’s banner:
What is hateful to you don’t do to others.
We do not know how beautiful every observance will become, from the waving of the lulav to the very Temple Service. Which brings up another question: Will we really go back to the animal sacrifices of the Temple? They seem so… well… barbaric?
People have been eating animals for a long time, and today we don’t even treat them like animals anymore but as non-sentient cogs in a meat machine. Entire species of animals bred into a stupefaction, just hamburgers and nuggets lowing in the pen and stuffed into wired cages.
Our relationship to animals reflects our relationship to our own animal soul, in other words, our bodies. The Temple taught us the sanctity of all animal and even plant life through it’s various services, and more specifically, how to use them to rectify issues with our own bodies and mortality. Through them, a person watching the offerings brought by the holy kohanim would be elevated in whichever way their offering was proscribed. People today who put down the Temple service usually speak from total ignorance of what the service actually was. The details are too much for this work, but all offerings are in order to elevate the sanctified animals or wheat, oil, wine and even water, as the case may be. The elevation of our use of Earth keeps us aware of the inherent sanctify of the animal in both beast and man. To ignore the sanctity of either animal or man, is to become something less than either.
Back to Chapter 30.
The entire point of the exile and redemption is for us to reoccupy the land of Israel, as God swore to our forefathers, and live according to the Torah. But what do we make out of God placing before us the choice of good over evil and life over death? Sounds a lot like the Tree 2.0 program. We ate it back then, so therefore now, after all this story, starting with Avraham, and ending with the ingathering of the Jewish exile, the question has come back full circle to us.
We wanted the power to choose between good and evil. So after all is said and done God asks:
What will you choose?
Will we choose life? Will we choose good? And what is good in the end anyway, after all this history? Only just to do as God would have said to do in the first place to Eve and Adam.
Remember that back in the Garden there was another Tree besides that of Stability and Instability. There was also the Tree of Life. Had Eve and Adam resisted the temptation of the No No Tree until after nightfall of that first Shabbos, I believe they would have eaten from the Tree of Life, connecting their consciousness utterly to God Almighty, and I further believe that at that point God would have permitted them the Tree of Knowing, as they would be able to handle it and not lose themselves into their bodies. So perhaps before Shabbos we could think of them almost as preemies, still needing the incubation of Shabbos to fully develop them into godlike creatures who could properly handle the powers of creation and destruction. But now too God puts the power to choose good and evil into our hands, giving us another chance to save our own lives, as He does.
So to me at least, the point of the Jewish adventure has been to deal with the aftermath of the curses of Adam and Eve. By keeping the Torah we’re doing what God says is good instead of man’s opinion of same. This submission to God’s is not self-obliterating but rather the exact opposite, it is simply admitting that you owe your existence to a source. O fine... a... Source. A SOURCE. A SOURCE!