“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” 

So, why does the English translation of the Torah begin with the letter “I”?  This is to be understood in the light of a verse we read a few weeks ago in Nitzavim.  At the end of the third and last speech to the assembled children of Israel, God, through his prophet Moses tells them, conflating Deuteronomy 30:15 and 30:19 in the standard English translation, which I will criticize in due course,

 

See, I set before you this day, life and good, and death and evil. ... Choose life.

 

Commentators point out that in the Hebrew the address is to a singular “you,” to each individual in the assembly rather than to the collective assembly.  Applying this to the opening of Genesis we can say that the English translation of the Torah begins with the letter “I” in order to remind us that, although we are reading our annual cycle in a collective, the minyan, it has to speak to each of us as individuals if we are to have any revelations of new meanings during this latest year of readings.

 

And why doesn’t the English translation of the Torah begin with the letter “a,” the first letter of the alphabet?  This can serve to remind us of the great rabbinic dictum that there is no early or late in Torah, that all of the Torah is to be regarded as existing simultaneously, and therefore each fragment is potentially applicable to any other fragment. I have of course just done this by using a verse at the end of the Torah to explain a feature of the first verse of Genesis.  By this device the rabbis have taken a finite text and made it infinite. 

 

Now some may imagine that this approach to the interpretation of the Torah is an example of medieval logic, but in fact it is an approach that corresponds to the manner in which the memory system of the brain functions. Having just read, in Bereishis, about a tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and a tree of life and a bad choice and a subsequent expulsion into mortality, I can search my memory looking for a place in the Torah where there is the same grouping of ideas.  And without going through any of the intermediate material I can recall that there is a sentence at the end of the Torah in which all five of these elements, good and evil and life and death and choice, are brought together.  And the first Psalm, generally regarded as an introduction to the entire book of Psalms and its preoccupations, presents, as the great human life-choice, two ways of living, a way of life and blessing, and a way of evil and death.   

 

And so, at the beginning of the Torah as myth, and at the end of the Torah as commandment, and in the first Psalm as poetry, in these key places, we have the same constellation of elements.  These texts, then, must contain one of the great messages of the Hebrew Bible.

 

We can now try to understand this message by taking these texts personally, and reading one text in terms of the other, as though they existed in a world of simultaneity, as they do in our minds.  

 

We should, while doing this, make a note of an apparent contradiction: we have been prevented from eating the fruit of the tree of life but are commanded to choose life. 

 

 

II

 

I’ll start with the text at the end of the Torah and then come back to Bereishis. 

 

My translation of the message in Deuteronomy into English would take into account the succession of definite articles in the Hebrew:

 

et ha-hayyim, v'et ha-tov, v'et ha-mavet, v'et ha-ra

 

A literal translation would be, “     the life, and the good, and the death, and the evil.”  The definite articles are normally omitted from translations, and these translations are of course perfectly idiomatic.  Nor does traditional commentary or midrash make use of them.  But the difference between 'good' and the philosophical conception of 'the good' is large.  So is the difference between 'life and death' as the subject matter of a choice, and 'the life and the death.'  One is a choice of whether or not to commit suicide and the other is a choice of mode of existence during our lives.  The latter is meant, as is made clear in the first Psalm. And this is what we should expect as a summary statement at the culmination of the Torah: the choice of mode of existence is the type of problem that can be the basis of a vast system of belief.    

 

As to the injunction to 'choose life,' in the Hebrew there is a pointing which implies another definite article.     

 

So the great message at the end of Deuteronomy is:

 

I set before you today: the life and the good, and the death and the evil.  .... Choose the life.

 

The message is in two parts: a characterization of the context of the central human choice, and a commandment regarding the correct choice in this context.  I will comment on the message phrase by phrase in the traditional manner.

 

'I set before you'   The words 'set before you' imply that the great religious concern being characterized is not a purely subjective problem but is in some sense framed by what is out there in the world.  It confronts us.  In contrast, there are religious and, for that matter, secular viewpoints which emphasize what is set within us.  

 

'I set before you'  'You' is in the singular.  It is up to you personally to confront what is set before you.  The message, however, is not in the form of a still small voice within each isolated individual but of an address to an assembly of individuals.  In this setting, the web of social obligations, including other commandments, surrounds the individual but is background, not the focus.    

 

'I set before you today' The present moment. The concerns characterized must be grappled with in the unique situations in which they occur in each 'today' of our lives.  

             

'the life and the good and the death and the evil'  This conception of 'the life' is what is set before us today.  What is meant by this phrase?  Tradition tells us that when we die and appear before the Throne of Judgement we will not be asked, 'Why weren't you Albert Einstein?' but, in my case, 'Why weren't you David Curzon?'  Or, in other words, 'Why didn't you live the life?'  The life ordained for yourself, the fullest life appropriate to yourself which you could have lived in the circumstances granted to you.  At each living moment there is a calling which, if taken up, would become part of 'the life.'  [An orthodox interpretation of this phrase could be that living in conformity with the halacha is choosing “the life.”]

    

'the life, and the good'  Not 'the good' from some social perspective but from the perspective of choosing 'the life.'  'The good' is whatever contributes to 'the life' ordained for ourselves.  The recurrent task is to recognize 'the good' for our ordained life in the potentialities set before us each moment.  

     

'the life, and the good and the death'   Not physical extinction, which is death without the definite article, but 'the death,'  the living death of choosing wrongly among the potentialities, of not choosing the form of vivacity appropriate to each moment, of withholding appropriate engagement in our stream of existence, of refusing the moment's calling. 

 

'the life, and the good, and the death, and the evil'  Not evil from some social perspective but 'the evil' in relation to choosing 'the life.'

  

 

‘Choose the life:’  The succession of choices we make each today of our lives add up to our choice of mode of existence, the trace of what we have done with the vivacity placed in our custody. 

 

III

 

If that is the message containing these five elements at the culmination of the Torah, what is the message concerning these elements in Bereishis?  I’ll go over them in sequence.

 

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Two points: first, there are no definite articles in Genesis 2:17.    It is not a tree of the knowledge of the good and the evil but simply the knowledge of good and evil.  And, second, as Buber has emphasized (in his essay on “The Tree of Knowledge” in Good and Evil, Scribners, pages 74-75) the word “knowledge” should not be taken to mean conceptual knowledge.  It is not a capacity to formulate universal principles of good and evil but experiential knowledge, as in the phrase “carnal knowledge.”    It is the capacity to distinguish what appears to be good from what appears to be bad or evil when in a situation of choice.    This is what happens in Genesis 3:6: the woman, and a little later the man, saw that the fruit looked good to eat and so was enticing, and then, in this situation, made an impulsive choice.

 

The tree of life, however, has the definite article: it is aitz ha’hayyim, and so can be translated as the tree of the life.  

 

IV

 

So now we are in a position to read the beginning in terms of the end: in Bereishis we are told we have the capacity to distinguish good and evil in a situation of choice, not the good and the evil.  And we are also told that we have been prevented from acquiring the capacity to live “the life.”   Now in Genesis 3:22 we are told that the capacity associated with this tree is “hai l’olum” normally translated as “live forever.”  But the phrase appears in several places elsewhere in the Tenach (eg Exodus  in connection with a slave that wishes to remain with his master rather than leave; in the psalms where it refers to singing praises) and in these cases the phrase means a life-time until death not an eternal life.  The phrase means a full or complete existence in other contexts, and so this is what it can mean in Genesis too, at least for the purposes of midrash.. 

 

So what are we to make of all this?  What is the difference between “good” and “the good” in practice?  Since I have pledged to take all this personally, I have to search in my own spotless existence to see if I can find an example of the difference.

 

Over two decades ago, deep in last century, after my marriage ended, I began my second adolescence, an experience far more pleasant than my first adolescence.   After a week or so of the first little fling of my second adolescence I met an older colleague for lunch.  I regaled him with the events and activities of my week and when I paused for breath he said to me:  “David, there are two things you mentioned in passing that seem important to me.  First, you said that this wonderful young lady you met had been a drug addict not too long ago.”  “Yes,” I interrupted, “but she’s over it now.”  “And second,” my older colleague continued, “you mentioned she attempted suicide a little while before you met her.”  “Yes,” I said enthusiastically, “she booked herself into a suite at the Plaza hotel and enjoyed its luxury for a few hours and then took an overdose.  If you have to do yourself in then a suite in the Plaza is the place to do it.  She really has panache, a sense of class.  And of course the cleaning lady found her and she was rushed to hospital and her stomach was pumped and she woke up.  And as a result of this new lease on life she acquired a lust for life which included an insatiable appetite for the sort of activity that is the main preoccupation of people in their second adolescence.  And I came along a couple of weeks later and hit the jackpot!” 

 

My older colleague said to me, slowly and carefully, “David, I want to you to think about the question I am going to ask you.  You are having a fling, as you say, with a suicidal drug addict.  Here is the question, David: Do you discern any potential problem here?”    I didn’t.

 

But now, after two decades, I understand he was attempting to get me to see the difference between good and the good.  The perception of “good” without the definite article often has to do with the prospect dangling in front of our eyes of gratification in the very near future.  A juicy apple, for example.   On the other hand, “the good” has something to do with long-term well-being.  And moralists throughout human history have argued that seizing on a prospect of instant gratification is often a bad choice for long-term well-being.   The moralists have argued that if we find our mouths watering at some prospect then we should pause and reflect before grabbing.  But, as we all know, it is very difficult to be philosophical when you are enticed. And, in any case, the human capacity to predict the long-term consequences of a choice is shaky at best.  

 

Another example of the difference between good and the good, this time speculative:  The preferred mode of death on my mother’s side of the family is the heart attack.    So I assume that at some time in the unforeseeable future I’ll have a fatal heart attack and find myself in front of the Throne of Judgement.  The discussion will probably go something like this:

 

The Throne of Judgement:  “Curzon, David, born in Melbourne, Australia.  What is the matter with this computer?  Ah, here’s the file.  So, you were destined to become a physicist, I see.  What happened?”

 

DC:  “As you can see from the file, my first degree was in physics and mathematics.  But as you can also see, no doubt, I wasn’t all that good at it.”

 

TJ:  “You certainly weren’t destined to become another Einstein, if that’s what you mean. But if you had stuck at it, instead of dissipating yourself as you did, you were destined to make your own miniscule and short-lived contribution to the development of the field.”

 

To which I would say, “Who knew?  I was prevented from eating the fruit of the tree of the life. And the knowledge of good and evil I acquired from eating the fruit of the other tree was not a reliable guide to any long-term considerations.”

 

To which the Throne of Judgement might say, with a little irritation: “Enough of this sophistry.  You’re older relatives on your mother’s side all died from heart attacks.  You knew this and yet, whenever you went into a restaurant with crème brulee on the menu, you ordered it, and even told the waiter to put a dollop of whipped cream on top.  We at the Throne of Judgement are aware crème brulee tastes delicious, particularly with a dollop of whipped cream on top, but surely, even with your mouth watering, you were still capable of understanding that this was not contributing to your long-term well-being”

 

To which I would respond if the exchange happens in the near future: “Dr. Atkins, if I have understood him correctly, considered crème brulee to be a health food.”

 

To which the Throne of Judgement would say, and this would be the last word, which the Throne of Judgement always claims, “Dr. Atkins was destined to become a classical pianist.”

 

V

 

So, we can see the difficulties.  What are we to conclude about our two texts?

 

First of all, they are precise representations of reality.  We do not have the capacity to choose some ordained life.  I can’t even tell in retrospect whether I should have stuck to physics.   To know this would require the capacity to run out the consequences of all my choices and compare the lives I chose not live with those I did live, and only the Throne of Judgement has that type of computer.       And of course our spectacular ability to instantly tell in a situation of choice whether or not the thing being dangled in front of us looks as if it would gratify the senses is not always a good guide to “the good”.

 

So we don’t have the capacities needed to fulfil the commandment to “choose the life.”  And yet this commandment corresponds to a deep reality. Even a plant uses its very limited freedom to move its leaves toward the sun.  Every living thing has built into its being the impulse represented by this great commandment. 

 

If we read the verses at the end of the Torah without relating them to the material in Bereishis then we have no sense of how difficult the commandment to “choose life,” as we would read it in isolation, is. We’d have no sense of what the task is.  And if we read Bereishis without keeping the commandment at the end of the Torah in mind, then we are reading about trees in the garden without the context that gives them their full religious significance. 

 

But if we remember why the English translation of the Torah begins with the letter “I,” then this year’s cycle of readings will hold some personal revelations for each of us.

 

Shabbat shalom.