I am excited to launch this project where each week we will examine the parasha through the lens of Midrash. I am grateful to all who read and welcome your thoughts and questions.
The nature of adam, the human created in Bereshit, compels because we read into this character for clues about ourselves. The reading of this parasha becomes an act of self-discovery when we seek to understand the first human being in part because we are trying to understand ourselves and our place in the world. The parasha gives us beautiful images of Adam, making his way through a newly created world, giving the animals names and seeking companionship. But if the text is abundant in the what of humans, it leaves much to be desired in the who and why. This is where Midrash enters (specifically Bereshit/Genesis Rabbah, a compilation that focusses on the first book of the Torah), a trend that we will see time and time again. The literary artistry of the Torah invites the philosophical and emotional imaginations of the rabbis to flesh out the details. Through this act, they aim to better understand the text itself and perhaps to better understand who humans are.
The Midrashic texts that we will look at pick up on a textual peculiarity: in Genesis 1:26, God speaks in the plural:
And God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.”
The plural is striking. After all, wasn’t Judaism supposed to have introduced Monotheism to the world? During the Shema, don’t we affirm the fundamental oneness of God? And yet, in this first chapter of the Torah, we find additional characters involved in the act of creation.
The Rabbis, in their own literary and philosophical pursuits, engaged in an equally important project: to demonstrate that every word in the Torah serves a purpose and that nothing is self-contradictory. So, if the Rabbis know that God’s oneness is a fundamental aspect of Judaism, they need to square the circle: the “us” must be explainable in a way that does not suggest any other God.
In three different midrashim, we can see three different frameworks of partnership: where God reigns supreme but does not create alone. But out of that partnership emerges a fractured human being.
Heavens and Earth
Rabbi Yehoshua offers our first vision: that God acts in consort with the heavens and earth to create humanity. God thrusts humanity into an eternal dialectic between the heavens and the earth; we find a multi-faceted vision of the human being of heavenly attributes alongside earthly ones. With one foot in each realm, our identity is unstable. The “higher” impulses guide us, but the “lower” ones act as well. Rabbi Yehoshua has carefully noted that the plural only comes when speaking of the creation of the human. Animals lack this duality. But which creative force wins out? What determines the fate of humanity?
Angels and Animals
Rabbi Yehoshua Bar Nechemyah, who we know less about than the other Rabbi Yehoshua, spells out the different attributes that constitute man. The heavens and the earth are not 50/50 partners in creation, but rather each force contributes uniquely. From the angels, we gain the gift of knowledge and speech; from the animals, we gain corporeal attributes. If Rabbi Yehoshua gave us a dialectic, Rabbi Yehoshua Bar Nechama gives us multitudes. I doubt that Walt Whitman read Bereshit Rabbah, but he echoed its portrayal of humanity as a collection of contradictory actions and impulses:
But within the multitudes of humanity that Whitman celebrated, I detect a shade of sadness in these two texts. Both texts suggest a fundamental division in our nature and an irreparable rupture that we are condemned to negotiate as we try to make our way in the world. Are we eternally pulled in divergent directions by our different impulses and will never be at peace?
God and the Angels
When the moment came for the Holy Blessed One to create the first human, God consulted with the ministering angels, and said to them (Genesis 1:26): Let us create humankind in our image, after our likeness. The angels said: What will be his nature? And God responded: Righteous people will descend from him, as it is written (Psalms 1:6): For Adonai knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked is lost. Adonai knows the way of the righteous--because Adonai made known the possibility of righteousness to the angels; but the way of the wicked is lost--it was lost from them, for God revealed to the angels that righteous people would descend from adam, but did not reveal that evil people could also descend from adam, for if God had revealed the possibility of evil descending from this first human, the midat hadin would not have allowed for its creation. (Rabbi Sari Laufer’s translation)
The two previous texts suggest a vision of humanity that emerges in partnership between God, the heavens/angels and the earth/animals. But what would happen if one of the parties disagreed with the work? God, here, avoids this by taking the form of the trickster: God deludes the angels into signing off on the project of humanity’s creation. Again, we see the idea of humanity’s multifaceted nature but with a critical distinction: righteous ones and evildoers will descend from this first human. If the other two texts suggest a humanity bifurcated by competing impulses, this text makes it clear that in some, the evil impulses will win out. After all, we know that in one generation, Cain will slaughter Abel in a fit of jealousy and introduce violence to the world. For this text, humanity is a gamble: God acknowledges the bad that will inevitably emerge from divided human beings.
What are we to make of all this pessimism? How can we expect our Biblical characters, and moreover ourselves, to be good when our nature represents a fundamental division? Rabbi Hoshaya engages in a debate with a philosopher and offers a solution that can assist us. The philosopher wants to know why if circumcision is so beloved, why did God not create Adam circumcised. Rabbi Hoshaya offers some rhetorical questions and ends with this beautiful piece:
Here we see that the flaws built into the heart of humanity are endemic to all of creation. What affects humanity does not affect us alone— the whole world needs repair, just as humans do. The tragedy still remains: are humans at best divided and at worst broken?
But Rabbi Hoshaya flips humanity’s passivity and makes it active: everything needs repair, and we have the capacity to do that.
I sense a hopeful sentiment: no matter what constitutes us, we have a chance to improve. We are angels and animals— some of us will inevitably err towards righteousness and others toward wickedness. But we are not predetermined— as long as we begin the unglamorous work of trying to repair ourselves and the world.
The Rabbis help us understand that the creation of humanity was not a solo project—but rather one God embarked on through partnership. The next stage is of continuous partnership: we are the raw materials, and we must forge ourselves into something better. The creation story is our preface, the next steps are in our hands. What will we create?
Love this! Yeshar koach!