Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5769

Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman
Congregation Shaarei Shamayim
Rosh Hashanah Day 1

September 30, 2008

The serpent was more clever than all the wild animals that God had created. The serpent asked the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must never eat the fruit of any tree in the garden’?” The woman replied to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit from any tree in the garden except the tree in the middle of the garden for God said, ‘You must never eat it or touch it. If you do, you will die!’”  “You are not going to die!” the serpent told the woman. “God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened. You will be like divine beings who know good and bad.” When the woman saw that the tree was good for eating and a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable as a source of wisdom, she took some of the fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, and he ate it. Then their eyes were opened, and they realized that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together and made clothes for themselves.

In the cool of the evening, the man and his wife heard God moving about in the garden. So they hid from God among the trees in the garden. God called out to the man and asked him, “Where are you?”  He answered, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”  Then God asked, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat of the tree from which I had forbidden you to eat?”  The man answered, “That woman, the one you gave me, gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”  Then God asked the woman, “What have you done?” The woman replied, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:1-13)

And then, as the story goes, the serpent, the woman, and the man are each held accountable for their actions. The serpent will be cursed, the woman will have severe pains in childbearing, and the man will have to toil the land by the sweat of his brow. God tells them that they are mortal, and they are banished from the Garden.

It is a story that gets told over and over again, and it is a story that is especially fitting for Rosh Hashanah, for according to Jewish tradition today is the day of the world’s birth. As the midrash tells us, God began to create the world on the 25 th of Elul – six days before Rosh Hashanah. The sixth and final day of creation, then, falls on Rosh Hashanah, the day that God created human beings, the day that Adam and Eve came into this world, ate the forbidden fruit, and were exiled from the Garden.

This story, on its surface, is a tale about obedience and the consequences of disobedience. The serpent tempts Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, she is not strong-willed enough to resist, she cunningly feeds it to Adam, and together they violate the one rule that God gives them – not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, God punishes them. Humans are forever forbidden to live in the paradise of the Garden of Eden.

We could stop here with a moralistic tale, but these stories are never so simple. For generations, Eve has been blamed for her disobedience that led to what has been called the “fall of man.” In Christianity, this is Original Sin. In Judaism, while many texts throughout the centuries have also blamed Eve for her disobedience, sin is construed very differently. Instead of Original Sin, human beings have the yetzer ha-ra, the evil inclination, and the yetzer ha-tov, the good inclination. Humans are neither good nor bad – we simply have these forces within us that lead us to choose between right and wrong. As Moses Maimonides asks, “If God had decreed that a person should be either righteous or wicked, or if there were some force inherent in the person’s nature which irresistibly drew the person to a particular course,…what room would there be for the whole of the Torah? (Rambam Hilchot Teshuvah Chapter 5) In Eve’s case, her yetzer ha-ra won out and she made the decision to eat the fruit.

But to complicate matters, this “evil inclination” is not all bad, for within it are instincts that prompt creativity and achievement. We should not try to eradicate our yetzer ha-ra, reason the rabbis, for without it we would not engage in business, build homes, marry, or have children (Gen. Rab. 9:7). While the yetzer ha-ra certainly can lead to human destruction, it is also the source of passion that is indispensable for civilization. We need self-restraint so that we treat others well, make amends, and do what is right. But we cannot simply reject the natural impulses of the yetzer ha-ra, for these impulses are integral to our humanity. While these impulses can be the source of great wrongdoing, they are also holy. We should try to be aware of them and control them, and learn from their power, but we should not try to rid ourselves of them.

Eve’s yetzer ha-ra causes her to yearn for more. She craved the tree’s knowledge, or perhaps wisdom, so that she could broaden her perspective, be confronted with new and challenging ideas, and flourish in a way that the garden, beautiful as it was, had not allowed her to do. The garden may have been paradise, but it was limited and constricting. As the poet Sandy Supowit writes, “…[I]n a perfect garden there is order, but in wild places there is growth…” (“Things Eve Learned from the Serpent”)

Like Eve, we too are imbued with a sense of curiosity. We want to explore the world around us, try on new identities, take risks, and sometimes break the rules. We want to venture to the wild places so that we can grow, so that we can expand our emotional capacities, broaden our spiritual connections, and increase our intellectual capabilities.

This desire is holy. This desire is what gave birth to culture and civilization. When Adam and Eve left the garden they entered into a vast and beautiful world, a world of mountains, deserts, forests, and rivers. But it was also a world in which they had to work endlessly to stay alive, in which each and every day was a struggle. Indeed, the choice to eat the fruit – to defy the rules and follow that desire – carried with it difficult and painful consequences. Adam and Eve left the idyllic garden for a world that was harsh and unforgiving. Soon after they leave the garden Eve gives birth to two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain becomes a farmer and Abel a shepherd, and both bring offerings to God. We are not sure why, but God rejects Cain’s offering and accepts Abel’s. Back in the field Cain attacks and kills his brother, Abel.

Eve could have never imagined when she ate the fruit that she would have to bear the tremendous pain that would ensue when one of her sons murders the other. As much as we may try to take calculated risks and evaluate ahead of time what the consequences of our actions may be, we can never really know. We do not have the opportunity to go back in time, knowing what the consequences will be, and make different choices. We also do not know what the consequences will be if we make the opposite choice. Maybe something just as terrible would not have happened had Eve not eaten the fruit?

We are often faced with difficult choices rooted in multiple and conflicting perspectives of right and wrong, and we do not always know what the best decision may be. Decision-making can be filled with uncertainty, ambivalence, and anxiety precisely because we do not live in a world of absolutes. Sometimes decisions are so painful that we retreat from the complexity and pretend that there is a clear right and wrong. The problem is that for many decisions, that is simply not the case, and avoiding the complexity only limits our ability to make the best decision and live fully in our reality.

We try to do the best that we can. When we are at our best we carefully weigh our choices and look at the possibilities from various angles, but even then we will sometimes make bad decisions and we will have to live with those consequences. And when we give in to our yetzer hara and we make decisions from a place of arrogance and selfishness, we must recognize and acknowledge what we have done wrong, make amends , and choose to act differently in the future.

On Rosh Hashanah we both celebrate our creation and reflect on the importance of teshuvah, of turning back to our best selves. The Rabbis taught: “Great is teshuvah for it preceded the creation of the world.” (Pes. 54a) Why, in the Rabbis’ minds, would God create teshuvah even before God creates the world? Perhaps because they believed that God knowingly created imperfect human beings, people who would not always live up to their best selves. They reasoned that there had to be a way to deal with human imperfection and hold out possibility for renewal. So God creates teshuvah and we are therefore obligated to be responsible for our actions.

After Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit and evening comes, God calls out to Adam and says, Ayeka? Where are you?” God, who is all-knowing, certainly knows where Adam is. God’s question then is really an opportunity for Adam to admit what he has done. Unfortunately, Adam answers, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” Adam does not have the courage to talk to God directly, so he tries to avoid the situation. God then gives him another chance to confess by asking him who told him that he was naked and whether he had eaten from the forbidden tree. Unfortunately, Adam still does not take responsibility for his actions. Instead he says, “That woman, the one you gave me, gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”  Adam indirectly blames God for giving him the woman, and he directly blames Eve for giving him the fruit to eat. God then asks Eve what she has done, and she blames the serpent for deceiving her.

We live with complexity, we are imperfect, and we are required to be accountable for our actions. And when we make a decision that hurts another person, we must make amends – by owning up to what we have done, fully and directly, by apologizing wholeheartedly, by committing not to engage in the same behavior again – and then by really living up to that promise.

Ayeka – Where are you? This is the question that we ask ourselves on Rosh Hashanah. We ask ourselves whether we are truly present, whether we are really here, not just in body, but here with our whole selves. We ask ourselves whether we are ready to do teshuvah, to make amends, and to hold ourselves accountable to our loved ones, to our colleagues, to the people sitting around us here in this room. We ask ourselves what it would take to change our behavior in the new year. Yes, decisions are complicated and it is not always clear what the right thing is. But when we know that we have done wrong, it is incumbent upon us to be humble and courageous and to hold ourselves responsible for what we have done. Then when God asks us, “Ayeka” – “Where are you?” we can answer, “Hineni” – “Here I am.”

L’shanah tovah, Wishing you a happy and healthy new year.