Bereshit is an oft-questioned and commented on parasha. Why are
there two creation stories? Who is the snake? Was Eve, as some bumper stickers
may have led you to believe, framed? Do we live in a patriarchal society all
thanks to this text, or is it only possible to read this text as patriarchal
through tired eyes wearied by centuries of oppressive medieval misogyny?
Up until very recently, I thought it
was the latter. I tend to think of the images of “The Fall” and Eve as the “mother
of all sin” as very Christian concepts, and assumed it was due to some
pervasive Christian ideology that we continue to frame our Genesis story this
way, even occasionally as Jews. But I’m not so sure anymore. This week, for a
Parashat HaShavua class, I had to read Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg’s analyses on
Bereshit. In one of her books, The Murmuring Deep, Zornberg discusses
the language of seduction in our Torah. When God “took” Adam and put him into
the Garden of Eden, Rashi says “took” is more like “lured with beautiful words.”
Then, of course, we have the serpent luring Eve to eat the fruit, and Eve
handing the fruit over to Adam to eat. Zornberg sums up this chain of enticing thus:
“Eve
stands, then, at the hub of the narrative of seduction; she is both object and
subject of this treacherous activity. She has gone down in cultural memory as
both feeble and slyly powerful; incapable of resisting seduction, she is
nevertheless irresistibly seductive. The weak link between the serpent and
Adam, she has borne the brunt of responsibility for events read, quite simply,
as a Fall.” Zornberg also later points out that the serpent’s awareness of
Eve’s weakness and strength in the arts of seduction was what so easily allowed
him to manipulate her and Adam to transgress, validating the lasting view of
Eve, “and through her, of all women,” as “sinister and serpentine.”
And this is where
my reading is forever changed. This is where I become certain that it is not
the fault of pervasive medieval Christianity informing an uncomfortable
understanding of this text. This is the basis of patriarchy and a culture in
which victim blaming, objectification, violence against women, and a denial of
women’s voices are still pervasive even to this day and in the progressive
Western world. This is the crux of our double standards and “she was asking for
it” attitude. From the beginning of time we have read and believed that a woman
is simultaneously too weak to resist a male’s instruction or her own base
instincts and is too seductive to expect a man to resist. It is her own fault
she allows herself to be manipulated, but it’s also her fault that Adam allows
himself to be manipulated by her. She finds herself unable to say no, but to
say yes leads her into trouble and a birth to victim blaming.
Although we may be
fighting thousands upon thousands of years of this mentality, I think we are up
to the challenge. It is past time to change our attitude toward women, our view
of autonomy for men and women, our victim blaming. The parasha also contains a
verse in which Adam proclaims Eve the “mother of all life,” and Zornberg points
out that what we categorize as a “Fall” is really an outward motion: the
expulsion from Eden into a new world. The new reality Eve has borne to us is
harder, for sure, but also richer and fuller. It is only through obtaining the knowledge
of good and evil did we really become fully human, in relationship with God.
Instead of stigmatizing this event, we should celebrate it. Instead of giving
Eve all of the blame and credit, we should recognize that there are at least
three “people” (though not human, the serpent is undoubtedly a person) with
full agency participating in this text (possibly four; God’s role in causing
this narrative to play out is a little more vague). I think it is absolutely
time for us to promote a new, and just as legitimate, reading of this story and
it is up to you, a new generation, to do it. I don’t know how often you
participate in Bible study or conversations about Genesis, but next time you
find yourself in such a situation, I hope you will hold your head up high and
say, “There are three equal actors in this narrative, each with their own valid
agency, and a resulting chain of events. There is no crime and punishment, and
no one person to blame. Eve is not the cause of Original Sin and Eve does not
represent the entire lineage of womankind.”
Maybe if we start at the source, we really can re-frame our cultural
shortcomings to become a truly equal society for everyone.
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