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Thought for the Day: Striving to Be Whole

G-d was talking with Eve one day in the Garden of Eden.  "I'm lonely.", she said.  "Well... I have an idea for a companion for you; a man."  "What's a man?", Eve asked.  "Well... he's a little bigger and stronger than you, so perfect for hunting up food and building you a place to live.  He's not so bright, so he he won't give you any real problems.  Mostly he's just a big baby, but he will take care of your creature comforts."  "That's sounds great!  Thank you!"  "Oh," said G-d, "one more little thing.  To get him to work he needs a pretty big ego.  We will need to let him think he was created first."

What's wrong with that picture?  Besides the obvious, I mean.  The real problem is that it completely misses an essential detail in the creation of the human being.  To whit, neither man nor woman came first.  Chava didn't come from Adam; both Adam and Chava came from the first (and only, in fact) human being.  Hold on, now, we need to take a bit of a deep dive.  You need to know that Adam and Chava originally were in such as refined state  that we would not have been able to see them.  Their concept of physicality (ie, the lowest level of spirituality) was something like our concept of spirituality.  Eating from the tree plunged them into a foreign and hostile environment that required a protective suit; namely, a physical body.  Something like the pressure suit that an astronaut must wearin space or on the moon.  Not pretty, very bulky and clumsy, but allows him to live and function in that environment.

So Adam and Chava were created as one being, then separated, then given the task of putting themselves back together.  All the King's cherubim and all the King's s'raphim couldn't put Adam back together again; only Adam and Chava on their own can re-unite to become one again.  Even after their mistake; just now they have to work together wearing pressure suits.  That is a huge task; and scary.  It means depending on one another so completely that her success is his success, and vice versa.  Of course, it also means that her failure is his failure.  They become one together or die apart.  The stakes are very high; literally all or nothing.

So who is this Lilith creature?  Lilith is separate.  She tells Adam that she is equal to him in all dimensions.  She wants to compete with Adam.  What's his attraction to her?  Men love competition.  Having a good competitor means sometimes winning and sometimes losing.  So Lilith offers basically lots of fun, plenty of excitement, and no commitment; a dream come true.  Well, a dream anyway, because she doesn't offer anything real.  Finite fun, infinite suffering.  Not a great option, actually.

Baruch HaShem, Adam chose reality.  Lots of work; not a dream at all.  Rather, reality and the opportunity to forever experience the greatest and most perfect good -- a relationship with the Creator of reality Himself.


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