The day I learned how to make cow’s udder kosher was the day that I quit my Talmud class. I understand the challenge: can’t mix milk and meat, there’s both in the udder…. But I couldn’t take it. I just couldn’t spend time on such a question.
My attitude was: I don’t get it and I don’t like it.
What does this have to do with me? What does this have to do with life now? Why should I learn this? Where’s the connection?
But then I took this Torah class. And you might think that I’d find less connection with something even older and seemingly more removed. But I found more connection there. A lot more.
That semester we spent several months just studying the very first Torah portion: B’rayshit. That’s this week’s portion. There is SO much in there! The creation of…. everything! Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the snake! There’s so much to explore. We studied it for much more than a week.
It was in that class that I first learned what *really* happened with the forbidden fruit: Adam had been there while Eve was being talked into the fruit. I had never pictured him right there for that. I mean, after the fact he blames Eve — actually, he blames God and Eve — for his eating of the fruit. I thought he’d been tricked. No, he was there. It says so right in the Torah text, plain as day.
This opens up so many real-world, contemporary issues. Like accountability for your own actions. Like a tendency to blame others for your choices. (Okay… that’s kind of the same thing, but not completely.) Like how stories get told and remembered and passed on. By that I mean the not-exactly-what-God-said story that Adam presumably told Eve about the eating/not eating of the fruit, in addition to the story that we perpetuate about him having been duped, as well as the stories we tell about ourselves and others these days.
The first time I learned the Hebrew word ah-room (and ah-roomim, which is the plural) was when I was studying B’rayshit. It was another eye opener for me. The word comes up a few times in a row:
Just after Eve is created from Adam’s side: “And the two of them were ah-roomim, the man and his woman, and they weren’t ashamed.”
Very next verse: “Now the snake was the most ah-room of all the animals of the field that God had created…”
Right after they ate the fruit: “Their eyes were opened and they realized that they were ah-roomim….”
There are two more instances of ah-room/ah-roomim while still in the garden.
So why is this word translated as conniving when referring to the snake, but as naked when referring to Adam and Eve? It’s the same word. And by the way, next week we’ll read that Noah’s son uncovered his father’s nakedness after he (Noah) got drunk. The word there isn’t ah-room, it’s ervah. So…
What does this mean?
It’s too much to contain within just a few paragraphs. Not to mention the accountability question and all the other happenings in B’rayshit: creation of the world, of humans…. being banished from the Garden of Eden. Cain and Abel and Seth (remember Seth? Adam and Eve’s third son?)…. This Torah portion has so many things to explore!
I would love to explore those things with you!
If you’re interested in learning more about what’s in B’rayshit, I invite you to study it with me on line for one month. We’ll be examining the ah-room question and lots of other intriguing bits up close and in depth. Lots of conversation, lots of learning, lots of discovery.
Email me for details. I can’t wait to dive into this Torah portion together!