Noach and Moses: Human beings in places where there are no human beings.

D'var Torah delivered at Temple Israel Congregational Service, 1 Nov 2008.

"These are the generations of Noach: Noach was a righteous man, blameless in his generation."(Gen. 6:9a)

So begins our Parsha, and there Midrash we are fond of which hangs on the phrase "in his generation." "O Ho!" we say, "it doesn't take much to surpass the virtue of the Generation of the flood." We are content to suppose that Noah did not smell like a rose, but was merely the least offensive item in a barrel of fish-guts. But there is more to the verse than this:

et ha'elohim hithalech noach.

"Noach was in the habit of walking with God."(Gen. 6:9b)

This tells us much, and all to Noach's credit. hithalech, is the verb halach, walk, in the hitpa'el form. This form is used for reflexive, repetitive or habitual actions, so from it we learn that Noach was in the habit of walking in the ways of the divine spark within himself. The generations up to the flood were by and large without commandments, so the person who can walk with God is one who has shown a remarkble initiative for doing the right thing without being told.

This is perhaps why R. Nehemiah defends Noach against the idea that he was merely the best of a bad crop, saying: "If he was righteous even in his generation, how much more so [had he lived] in the age of Moses."(BR 30:9) His point is that it is more difficult to be righteous when surrounded by lawlessness than when surrounded by people who have some basic laws.

He is not the first person of whom this is said, however, of Enoch it is written "vayithalech Chanoch et ha'elohim v'eyneino ki lakach oto elohim" - "And Enoch was in the habit of walking with God, and he was no more because God took him." That Enoch gets this special treatment in what is otherwise a typical genealogy passage is of special noteworthiness because he is Noah's great grandfather. When Enoch exhibited this "walking with God" thing it might have been that God thought it was a one-off, but with Noah, it begins to seem like a family trait. Thus, after Adonai decides to destroy all creation, "Noah finds grace in in the eyes of Adonai"(Gen. 6:8).

So, although we are not quite clear on the nature of Noah's virtue, it was sufficient to persuade God that there was something worth preserving, such that he commanded Noah to build the ark and to save his family, and breeding pairs of all the animals. Thus God can now unleash harsh judgement on the world, but does not have to start from scratch, but rather can repopulate the earth from the ark (tevah). Thus R. Shim'on notes in the Zohar:

"The blessed Holy One wanted to engender from him generations for the world, from out of the ark. Further, judgment could not overpower him because he was hidden away in the ark, concealed from sight. . . ."(Matt I:395-6)

Thus, the ark, which is associated with Shechinah in this passage of the Zohar, is used to protect Noah from the harsh judgement that is destroying the world. It is preserving a remnant of creation for redemption. The word used for the ark here, tevah, is used in only one other story in the Bible - it is a tevah into which young Moses is placed when he is set upon the Nile. As was the case with Noah, destruction was walking the earth, albeit at Pharaoh's behest, and Moses merited preservation. We find discussion of this protection attributed to R. Judah in the Zohar:

[Rabbi Judah said] "What does this mean: She took a papyrus basket for him? She covered him with Her signs, so that he would be protected from those fish who swim the waters of the great sea.(Matt, IV:55)

Bearing in mind that "She" in this passage refers also to Shechinah, we can observe that Noah and Moses both merit divine protection, and both receive it through the same aspect of the divine, through Shechinah. We have already discussed how Noah merited this - being th only righteous person in his generation played a key role there, but we should also note Moses' merits, the auspicious beginnings of what would be the most significant career in Torah. Ibn Ezra notes two early deeds that show Moses to be particularly righteous in his generation:

. . . Moses killed an Egyptian because the latter committed an act of violence and . . . saved the daughters of Midian from the shepherds because the [shepherds] were trying to water their flocks with the water the women had drawn (Ibn Ezra, 39).

What Noah and Moses have in common is that finding themselves in situations where the people around them are acting in ways unbecoming even to animals, they both pay attention to that divine spark within and behave in ways that live up to human potential. The importance of this is central to our philosophy as Jews, for it is written in Pirke Avot: "In a place where there are no no men, try to be a man" (Avot 2:5).

This then is our charge and our challenge: to treat each other and our neighbors with the compassion and humaneness due them as fellow creatures created in the image of God, to strive to be human and humane, even if no one else is, because only by preserving that divine spark of humanity within the tevot of our souls can we fulfill that aspiration.

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Works Cited

Blackman, Philip. Ethics of the Fathers. New York: Judaica Press, 1980.

Ibn Ezra, Abraham et.al. Ibn Ezra's Commentary on the Pentateuch: Genesis. New York: Menorah Pub, 1988.

Matt, Daniel. The Zohar 1: Pritzker Edition, Volume One. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Matt, Daniel. The Zohar 4: Pritzker Edition, Volume Four. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

Simon, Maurice. Midrash Rabbah. London: Soncino Press, 1983.

Dvar Tzav

Dvar, Parshat Tzav, 5768. Rich Furman

Permanence in Diaspora

No one knows a synagogue building better than a child on the verge of becoming bar or bat mitzvah. They explore the corridors, every nook and cranny. They know where to hide, where all the best bathrooms are, and sooner or later they inevitably discover that the Ner Tamid, which they have been told all their short lives means "Eternal Light," isn’t. This moment came for me as I was poking around a small alcove in the Rego Park Jewish Center, when I found a circuit breaker labeled very clearly "Ner Tamid." For some of this congregation's children I suppose that moment came when, a few years ago, there was a power outage, and the Ner Tamid went out but the Menorot over the exits remained on. It struck me at the time as poor stagecraft that the Ner Tamid was not on the emergency power system, but even in this, there are lessons to be learned.

One of the questions that always stayed with me since my own discovery is why the Ner Tamid, alone, had such a clearly labeled circuit breaker. Was it left like that so that we would discover it, wrestle with that discovery, and come to our own conclusions before we stood upon the Bimah as adults for the first time? Was this discovery a rite of passage, a stern reminder that human institutions, such as synagogues, were human institutions, and not divine? That whatever myths we had developed as children to rationalize a light that glowed eternally, despite the fact that we knew that bulbs burn out could not be carried into adulthood?

There are two commandments in the first reading of Parshat Tzav whose juxtaposition strikes me as being equivalent, somehow, to that moment of cognitive dissonance. The first is that a fire be kept burning constantly upon the altar - this is the source for the Ner Tamid. The second is that the meal-offering be consumed as matzot. The reason that these two commandments, side by side, trouble me is that the first speaks to permanence and rootedness but the second speaks to transience.

The first time we encounter Matzah is in Genesis. The angels arrive at Sodom, where they are greeted by Lot, who invites them for dinner. He serves them Matzah. The rabbis disparage Lot's hospitality, after all Abraham had spared no expense. What kind of awful host is Lot that he just fed them Matzah? But the angels are there to lead Lot and his family out of a city that God is about to destroy. Matzah is what we eat when we don't have leisure to knead, and proof and shape and proof again and bake. It is a bread baked by someone who knows he may have to flee at any moment. It makes sense that this is what Lot would have on hand given that he could be run out of town at any moment. He is in fact redeemed from from the towns immanent destruction. Lot's family's exodus for Sodom foreshadows the Israelite exodus from Egypt, where matzah once again figures as a symbol of hasty departure.

And so we find ourselves, in the first Aliyah of Parshat Tzav, in the Mishkan, itself a temporary structure, being told never to let the fire burning on the altar go out, but not being told how to preserve it when the encampment moves, and move it must, because despite the Midrash telling us that leaven cannot mix with the meal offering because of the meal offering's holiness, the symbolism of the priests eating matzah remains an indicator of our transience.

The problem of how they preserved that flame puzzled me, and I reflected on it, sought opinions on it and researched it. In my own reflections, I imagined an ember being carried, perhaps - in the manner of Prometheus - in a fennel stalk. One of my teachers at Melton, Rob Portnoe, imagined a torch being kindled and carried, and the flame carried that way. And my research turned up a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud which suggests that they covered the flame with a large pot when they traveled. (JT Yoma 4:6)

All of these ideas share one thing in common: that it is upon us to carry the flame wherever we travel, be it in the land of Israel or outside it, whether we are settled in a place or moving between places. It would be poetic, perhaps, to say that that light is our tradition and we must keep it burning in our hearts. But Judaism knows that abstractions like that are not sufficient to maintain continuity. It takes the reification of that idea, whether as a flame on the altar or a lamp over the the the ark or the lights we kindle on Shabbat and Festivals to make it real.

And as we move from place to place we carry two things with us, the matzah, that teaches us that we need to be alert for the moment that God says its time to move on, and the flame, which teaches us that wherever we set up camp God is with us. But just as the flame needed care and tending to remain burning, just as the bulb in the Ner Tamid above us now needs to be changed from time to time, so a relationship with God is something that requires tending and attention.

D'var Torah - Parashat Bireshit, '68

I delivered this d'var at our monthly participatory service in October.

Bireshit is a huge parsha, it begins with the creation of the world and ends on the edge of the flood. The amount of human time it spans is unknowable. In the passage that we just heard read, we see the world created, and it's important, I think, to watch the way it happens - we begin with heaven and earth - the creation of space - and then light and darkness, which are called day and night - the creation of time. And so it proceeds, things created in pairs, each thing both opposing its counterpart and, through that opposition helping its counterpart to do something neither could do alone - if Heaven and Earth were not separate from each other, there would be no space for anything. If night and day were not separate from each other, time would not pass and we could not say "וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר י֥וֹם אֶחָֽד" - "and there was evening, and there was morning: day one."

Moving to the creation of people, we find that this same tension between opposites is an essential aspect of the divine plan, as the Holy Blessed One resolves "it is not good for the man to be alone, I will make for him an עזר כנגדו."(Gen. 2:18)

This is a difficult phrase to render into English. An attempt to be literal might give us "a help as his opposite." The words themselves seem to contradict each other. Is this companion to help Adam, or to oppose Adam? Rashi, who frequently asserts he comes to explain the plain meaning of the text, cannot get out of this one without providing a midrash - "if he is worthy then [she is] a helpmate, if he is not worthy, then she is opposite him, to fight him"(Rashi, 27)1. This solution is elegant because because, rather than resolving the tension, it teaches us that that tension is there to instruct us. We are to learn that just because one possible meaning is true does not mean that the other is false.

Another approach to this problem comes from the lexicographers Brown, Driver and Briggs. If it is Rashi's purpose to teach us the plain meaning of the text, how much more so must it be for those preparing a dictionary, and yet a literal rendering is beyond them as well, as they offer us the following definition for עזר כנגדו: "a help corresponding to him i.e. equal and adequate to himself"(BDB 617). This rendering deviates from the other meanings they give for נגד, which tend to cluster around meanings like "opposite" or "in front of." However it is instructive, and appealing to our egalitarian sensibility, that Eve is created as Adam's equal. Carol Meyers, in her book Discovering Eve reinforces this idea, by noting the preposition "כּ־" meaning "like" or "as" and observing that "the prepositional phrase establishes a non-hierarchical relationship between the two"(85).

If this is indeed a non-hierarchical relationship, and if this relationship is, as Rashi suggests, about supporting the other when worthy, and opposing the other when not worthy, then we find that it is as incumbent on Adam to support Eve when she is worthy and oppose her when she is not, as it is for her to do the same for him. Indeed, I am going to suggest today that it is his failure in just this duty that facilitates the situation with the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad.

As a quick refresher, the story goes very much like this: The serpent approaches Eve, asks if it is really the case that she and Adam cannot eat from any tree in the garden, she counters that they may in fact it from every tree except the tree of kowledge of good and bad, which they may not touch, lest they die. The serpent parries that they will not die if the eat from it, but will become like God, knowing good from bad2. She takes the fruit, eats it and gives some to her husband with her. They realize they're naked, and hide when God next shows up in the garden.. God knows instantly what happened, and when he inquires about it, Adam blames Eve and God in a single breath, and Eve blames the snake. God then informs everyone of the consequences of their actions.

There are two important things to note in the story. The first is that although we are told "[the serpent] said to the woman . . ." he does not say "you," but rather "you-all" or "youns," that is, he is speaking in second person plural as if addressing both. Now it may be that he is using this because he is inquiring about both of them, or it may be that he is doing so because he knows Adam is present. The second is that "she took the fruit and she ate, and she gave also to her man with her, and he ate." The words "with her" seem to me to mean very plainly that Adam was there on the scene throughout. So, if we look only at the p'shat, the simple meaning, we must ask ourselves, "why didn't he act?"

God, informing everyone of the consequences of their actions, wonders the same thing; saying to the man "because you listened to the voice of your woman. . ."(Gen 3:17) although there is no accounting of Eve saying anything to Adam, only that she gave him the fruit. So then to what is God referring? The only utterances we have from Eve in the text thus far are her words with the serpent. If we stick to the simple meaning of the text before us, then it must be those words that God means. Adam's responsibility then is that rather than supporting her when she was arguing against the serpent and opposing her when she decided to take the fruit, he sat idly by and did nothing.

God meant for there to be tension between them. Not the contentious "I'm good and you're bad" kind of tension that rips the world asunder, but rather the tension between two trees leaning on each other such that neither falls. And it is because Adam avoided even that positive tension, refusing to be a true partner, that the labels of "good" and "bad" entered the world, and the strife associated with them.

Just as heaven and earth, light and darkness, and sea and land achieve great things by their balanced opposition, so it is the divine will that we and our partners should achieve great things balanced opposition - supporting each other's aspirations and correcting each other's foibles. It sometimes takes a suspension of one's own immediate needs and wants to support another, and it sometimes takes great courage to tell someone you love that they may be missing the mark, but this is what it means to have and be an עזר כנגד. May we all have the strength for it.

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The following material was not part of the d'var, but was made available as appendices to those curious.

Review of Traditional and Feminist responses to the situation of the tree.

A Summary of the Tradition

Midrash Hagadol asserts that the serpent wanted to get Eve alone thinking "any attempt to seduce Adam is certainly doomed to failure. Let me first approach the woman because women listen and are more easily persuaded"(3:1 cited by Weissman, 45). The implication here, that the woman would be the easy mark, is untenable not only because of its misogyny, but because the snake has no basis for such an inference. The best we can say here is that the woman may have seemed the better target because she received the law second hand, and not directly from God. But the question of how she would be alone is not answered by our text. Midrash Rabbah attempts to supply an answer:

Now where was Adam during this conversation? Abba Halfon b. Koriah said: He had engaged in his natural functions [sc. intercourse] and then fallen asleep. The Rabbis said: He [God] took him and led him all around the world, telling him 'Here is a place fit for planting [trees], here is a place fit for sowing cereals.'(Gen. R. XIX 1-3)

Whether the rabbis argue that Adam had fallen asleep after sex, or give him the ultimate alibi by claiming he was with God at the time, we cannot help but note that the purpose of these midrashic narratives is to remove Adam from the possibility of any direct participation, either by comission or omission, in the matter of eating the fruit. At most, they read God's statement to Adam that "Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree that I told you 'don't eat from it' the earth will be cursed on your account"(Gen. 3:17) to mean that his sin was not asking Eve about the fruit's provenance before eating it himself (Ohr Hachayim on Gen. 3:17, cited by Rosenberg, 58).

Two feminist readings, in brief.

Carol Meyers notes that "it is the woman, and not the man, who perceives the desirability of procuring wisdom. The woman, again not the man, is the articulate member of the first pair who engages in dialog even before the benefits of the wisdom tree have been procured"(91). Naomi Rosenblatt, who reads this tale as a "charming allegory of sexual awakening"3 understands "she gave also to her husband with her" to mean that "Eve reaches out to Adam, holding the fruit (the shape of which suggest fertility, the female breast). In contrast to the female [who deliberated out of concern for pregnancy], the male is immedately susceptible to any sexual invitation, is instantly responsive"(9).

Reflections

Just as the patriarchy faults Eve for being an easily seduced airhead, so the feminists fault Adam for being an easily seduced meathead. Both repeat the error of blaming the Other to absolve the Self that Adam commits in blaming God and Eve in a single breath. It didn't fly with God in the garden, and does not hold much creedence today.

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Works Cited

Brown, Francis et.al. Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996.

Davis, Avrohom. Metsudah Chumash/Rashi. New York: Ktav Pub Inc, 1999.

Maimonides, Moses. The Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Dover Publ, 1956.

Meyers, Carol. Discovering Eve. Cambridge: Oxford University Press, USA, 1991.

Rosenberg, A. Genesis: a New English Translation Volume I. New York: Judaica Press, 1993.

Rosenblatt, Naomi. After the Apple. New York: Miramax Books, 2005.

Simon, Maurice. Midrash Rabbah. London: Soncino Press, 1983.

Weissman, Moshe. The Midrash Says. Union City: Bnay Yakov, 1999.

Thoughts on Parashat Vayechi

Blessing Menasseh and Ephraim

Morgan suggests that this is done in order to legitimize them in the eyes of the rest of the family despite his mother's heritage. This seems likely.

Jacob says they will be like Reuben and Simeon to him. Does he mean in place of? He has few kind words for his eldest sons.

His blessing of the lads finds its way into the Bedtime Shema, as does the "Adonai, I long for your salvation."

The image of Judah being a lion, with his hand on his enemies' scruff, delights me.

Two deaths - Jacob and Joseph.

Midrash maintains that up until his reunion with Joseph in Egypt, his life sucked. Hence "Jacob LIVED 17 years in Egypt." This was also the age Joseph was when his brothers, er, sold him down the river.

Jacobs Funeral - Women, Children, and Flocks are left behind. Compare with later departure from Egypt.

Joseph - asks that his bones return to Canaan. He was in Egypt on account of his brothers. His brothers descendants, in particular the Levite Moses, takes him out. Why a levite?

Thoughts on Parashat Miketz/Vayigash

These two parhiyot are so tightly integrated that I wish to treat them together. This year, going through, the whole family saga thing has not much caught my interest. I think its noteworthy that Joseph comes from a place where he recounts a dream he had and is immediately taken to task for its meaning - His family all speak the language of dreams, but in Egypt this ability is not a given. Joseph must interpret dreams for the Eqyptians.

Returning to a theme I wrote on last year, Joseph's assertion that Pharaoh's dreams are one dream is presaged in the following verse


וַיְסַפֵּר פַּרְעֹה לָהֶם אֶת־חֲלֹמוֹ וְאֵין־פּוֹתֵר אוֹתָם לְפַרְעֹה
And Pharaoh recounted to them his dream and none and there was no interpretating them for Pharaoh.

This is easier to understand in Hebrew than it is to render, because the participial form of פתר can mean "interpreter," "interpretation," or "interpretating." I have chosen the last, which is good English only in Appalachia, because it is the only one that does not demand the interpolation of a preposition where there is none in the Hebrew. However, the participle does not concern me. More interesting in this verse is the use of the plural direct object pronoun אותם with the singular referent חלומו. This hints at the single meaning of the multiple dreams.

וַיֹּאמֶר יוֹסֵף אֶל־הָעָם הֵן קָנִיתִי אֶתְכֶם הַיּוֹם וְאֶת־אַדְמַתְכֶם לְפַרְעֹה הֵא־לָכֶם זֶרַע וּזְרַעְתֶּם אֶת־הָאֲדָמָה: וְהָיָה בַּתְּבוּאֹת וּנְתַתֶּם חֲמִישִׁית לְפַרְעֹה וְאַרְבַּע הַיָּדֹת יִהְיֶה לָכֶם לְזֶרַע הַשָּׂדֶה וּלְאָכְלְכֶם וְלַאֲשֶׁר בְּבָתֵּיכֶם וְלֶאֱכֹל לְטַפְּכֶם: וַיֹּאמְרוּ הֶחֱיִתָנוּ נִמְצָא־חֵן בְּעֵינֵי אֲדֹנִי וְהָיִינוּ עֲבָדִים לְפַרְעֹה: וַיָּשֶׂם אֹתָהּ יוֹסֵף לְחֹק עַד־הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה עַל־אַדְמַת מִצְרַיִם לְפַרְעֹה לַחֹמֶשׁ רַק אַדְמַת הַכֹּהֲנִים לְבַדָּם לֹא הָיְתָה לְפַרְעֹה

And Joseph said to the people, "look, today I have purchased you and your land for Pharaoh. Here is seed for you, you shall sow the earth. It shall be in the harvest that you will give 1/5th to Pharaoh and four parts will be for you to sow the field and to eat and satisfy your households and feed your children." And they said "you have caused us to live, we will find grace in your eyes my lord, and we will be slaves to Pharaoh." And Joseph established it as a law until today over the land of Egypt for Pharaoh only the land of the Priests alone was not Pharaoh's.

I find myself troubled by this passage, so this year I decided to wrestle it to the ground to see what blessings it might have to give. The problem I have is this: In Miketz the Egyptians are freeholders. Joseph imposes a 20% tax on them for the purpose of laying up stores against the famine. The famine arrives and Joseph does not disburse the grain to them that they grew, but rather sells it back to them. When they no longer have silver, he buys their means of production for grain, and when they later need food, he buys them, making them sharecroppers on the land. To a contemporary economic and social liberal this seems appalling. Indeed, even Torah itself seems appalled; the institution of sabbatical years and Jubilee seem designed very much as a safeguard against this sort of thing happening in Israel.

So why does this happen? Some sources (Sifrei, Midrash HaGadol - cited in Feinstein) suggest that this transfer of wealth from individuals to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh's absolute ownership of all wealth means that when the Israelites left Egypt with articles belonging to their neighbors, it is in fact Pharaoh, not their neighbors that are being deprived. To my mind this explanation does not satisfy. It seems more indicative of the Rabbi's ethnocentric focus that explicatory of why the enslavement happens at all. Personally, I have wondered if the Israelite slavery could be viewed as a נגד כנגד response to this action of Joseph's. But this too does not satisfy.

Morgan has argued that this is a "just so story;" a legend to explain how a status quo has come to pass. Her proof is "וַיָּשֶׂם אֹתָהּ יוֹסֵף לְחֹק עַד־הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה" with "היום הזה" indicating the biblical narrator's present at which time Pharaoh still holds all the land. The idea that a legend would be required to explain this suggests that, from the point of view of the speakers society, the notion of a king holding all the land seemed aberrant. The state from which they descended to slavery - that of the freeholder, seems viewed by the narrator as normative.

But why would Joseph behave thus? Another suggestion of Morgan's - given the situation at court, with Joseph being a stranger regardless of how well he has blended, and a former slave regardless of how high he has ascended, he really cannot act in ways that do not accrue to the direct benefit of Pharaoh. Joseph must be ever mindful of the caprice of court life; given the fates met by the Baker and the Cupbearer. One can be arbitrarily jailed, and arbitrarily redeemed or hung. Thus Joseph's treatment of the Egyptians at large can be viewed as a mechanism of self defense.

But there is something else too. The whole region is having a famine. And while one might cynically say that Joseph has helped Pharaoh make a killing in grain futures, the value of these futures depends on the fact that the need is there to be met. And it is a vital need. Joseph is selling not only to the Egyptians and to the Israelites, but to all the surrounding nations. His foresight has saved the region from starvation. Returning it measure for measure to the people who grew it, "giving the surplus back to the people," as it were, would not have allowed him to do this.

Parashat Bireshit - A few random thoughts.

This year I am attempting to read the Torah in Hebrew. It's quite a challenge, because my Hebrew's not quite there yet, so I'm definitely pushing the envelope. I have found William Holladay's Concise Hebrew & Aramic Lexicon of the Old Testament to be of inestimable help in this, as BDB is too cumbersome for just reading.

But anyway, I have rambled a bit. One thing that struck me, reading through, is that light is created, then plants, then the sun, moon and stars. There is a midrash that states that the light created by the utterance יהי אור, "let there be light" is supernal light, stored away for the righteous. But plants cannot flourish without light. So I wonder, were the plants first reared on supernal light, before the sun was made? No profound observation here, just a simple question. It seems to suggest that that supernal light could not have been stored away until the מארת were created.

Regarding the fall: Maimonides posits the idea that prior to consuming the fruit mankind knew right from wrong, in an ideal sense. But with the consumption of the fruit comes notions not of right and wrong, but of good and bad. (Guide I:i) This is an important distinction - good and bad aren't necessarily ethical values. This is rather about discernment. It is interesting to note that God does not say "I will curse the earth on your account," but rather "the earth is cursed on your account." This difference raises the possibility that God is not cursing the earth, but rather that it is Adam's actions that have this as their consequence. Consider the context: Adam now knows good from bad. He may have been just as thrilled by plantain and dandelion as by wheat before this, but now he will call plantain and dandelion "weeds" and wheat "food." Bad and good. And in order to extol the one above the other, he will have to break his back tilling, sowing, weeding, and harvesting. And indeed, when those dandelions show up in the midst of the soybeans he will curse, every gardener does. Hence "cursed is the earth on your account."

It also seems impossible to pass over the first word of Torah - בראשית without noting that there is a sheva, not a patach, under the bet, making it indefinite. Every translator wrestles with that one way or another. The notion that this world is not the first is a common interpretation, and set forth by Rashi. But the thought that occurs to me is that מעשה בראשית, the work of creation never ceases. Mankind is constantly being made from dust, as we eat fruit of the earth, bread brought forth from the earth, and even plant eating mammals, dust becomes us. But not only that but we become dust, not merely by dying, but even in the course of living as we slough hair and skin cells. Creation is not a one time act, the flipping of a cosmic light switch, but the ongoing process of transformation.