When studying and seeking to understand the Torah, it is often instructive to investigate the historical background to the events described. While the message of the Torah is eternal, it was written against a certain background and explains historical and pre-historical events in reference to that background. This is especially true with in regards to the book of Genesis. If we look closely at the stories contained within this book we can discern a pattern. The people who are portrayed positively are generally shepherds, while those portrayed negatively are either farmers or city dwellers. This is the case with the story of Cain and Abel all the way through to Joseph brothers’, the shepherds, and the city dwelling Egyptians. This theme is not accidental but is set against the backdrop of the Neolithic revolution: the change from a society of nomadic hunter-gatherers to that of sedentary farmers and cities. The Torah clearly takes a view on this, and it is that city based civilisation is not necessarily a good thing. This bias, incidentally, can also be seen in later Torah legislation aiming to limit the move from the country to the cities by ensuring families keep their land. This being the case, how can this underlying theme help us explain the first story in the Torah, that of Adam and Eve? Specifically, what was the Tree of Knowledge and what was so bad about eating it? If we see this story against the backdrop of an agricultural and urban revolution the Torah was at the least ambivalent about, an interesting picture emerges. This revolution, like most in human history, was propelled by knowledge and technological change. G-d was not so sure He wanted humans to discover this potential, or at least not at such an early stage. By defining such technology as the knowledge of good and evil, the Torah warns us that technological change is not necessarily neutral and not necessarily good. It can bring benefits, but these benefits come at a cost, as the first humans discover. There are consequences to this knowledge revolution: a loss of innocence and the possibility of the exploitation of both humans and nature, both contained in the ’punishment’ of Adam and Eve. Their experience is meant as a lesson to us. Technological progress contains the potential of both good and evil and we can never be sure which of these will be its ultimate legacy.

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Sidra Statistics

Parshat Bereishit

·               is the  1st  in Genesis,  1st  in the Torah

·               5th longest in Genesis,  7th  longest  in the Torah  

·                has  1 positive mitzvah

PAST PARSHAH PUZZLE

Eleven times worse.

WEEKLY HALAKHA

One should celebrate Rosh Hodesh with nicer clothes and food than normal.