OCTOBER 15 • 2020 | 27

Spirit
torah portion

T

he story of Adam, Eve 
and the forbidden fruit 
is commonly studied as 
a story about disobedience. 
God gave Adam and Eve a 
single (negative) command-
ment: Do not eat from the 
fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. 
From this story, Jewish 
Torah commentators 
constructed one of the 
pillars of Jewish belief: 
the requirement to 
observe Divine com-
mandments or reap the 
consequence. 
Yet, observance 
of commandments, 
importance notwith-
standing, is not the only 
message that this story 
conveys. Between the 
moment of disobedience when 
Adam and Eve eat the for-
bidden fruit and the moment 
when God inflicts punishment 
on them, there is a crucial step 
that we sometimes overlook: 
Adam and Eve, offered by God 
a chance to accept responsi-
bility, choose to pass the buck 
instead. Adam, in response 
to the question, “Did you eat 
of the tree from which I have 
forbidden you to eat?” shifts 
blame from himself to Eve and 
even to God: “The woman 
you put beside me gave me 
of the fruit and I ate.
” Eve, in 
response to, “What have you 
done?” blames the serpent. 
That’
s when God imposes pun-
ishment. 
The sequence of actions sug-
gests that God is not angered 
by the choice to disobey, per se; 
but rather their failure to accept 
responsibility incurred Divine 
wrath and elicited God’
s harsh 
punishments. Adam and Eve 

made not one but two unwise 
choices: eating the forbidden 
fruit and then failing to accept 
responsibility, but are driven 
out of paradise by the second 
poor choice. In other words, 
this is a story about choice and 
responsibility and understand-
ing consequences. The 
human ability to choose 
wisely or poorly drives 
this story. 
In a world where Adam 
and Eve have everything 
and know nothing else, 
their inability to under-
stand that choices have 
consequences and even 
that consequences exist 
should not surprise us. 
This also explains the 
meaning of their Divine 
punishments. Life will now 
have challenges and difficul-
ties that will build character, 
including the ability to under-
stand that actions and choices 
have consequences. 
This is the first of many sto-
ries in which biblical figures are 
given a choice and, depending 
on whether they choose wisely, 
they’
re rewarded or punished, 
beginning later in this week’
s 
Torah portion with Cain. 
This is the first step toward 
constructing a paradigm 
that Jews have lived by ever 
since. The ability to choose 
is a Divine gift that must be 
handled with care, among 
other ways by recognizing and 
accepting responsibility for the 
choices we make. 

Dr. Howard N. Lupovitch is an asso-

ciate professor of history at Wayne 

State University and director of 

WSU’
s Cohn-Haddow Center for 

Judaic Studies.

Parshat 

Bereshit: 

Genesis 1:1-

6:8; I Samuel 

20:18-42.

Howard 
Lupovitch

Choosing The
Right Path

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