Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel’s Thought – Bereshit – Lesson 12

Table of Contents

• Opening and the learning context
• The wise man’s question about Adam’s first sin
• Maimonides’ answer: truth and falsehood versus the accepted notions of good and evil
• The difficulty in understanding Maimonides and the distinction between morality and social norms
• Questions about the source of convention and the meaning of the punishment
• A kabbalistic and Hasidic interpretation: the entry of good and evil into the human being
• Moving on to Rabbi Gedalia: the trees in their plain sense and natural properties
• The Tree of Knowledge according to Rabbi Gedalia: mental change and desire-driven living
• Concluding remarks on “and you shall be like divine beings” and the gaps in the explanation

Summary

General overview

The text opens with a reading of Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed I:2 on Adam’s first sin. It presents the question of how it could be that the punishment for the sin grants a human being the elevated status of knowing good and evil, and it brings Maimonides’ answer that the intellect that distinguishes between truth and falsehood was already in man before the sin, whereas knowledge of good and evil is actually a descent into the realm of the “accepted notions” of the disgraceful and the becoming. The speaker then develops a further difficulty with this distinction, because it can sound like moral relativism, and suggests that Maimonides is dealing mainly with norms of what is fitting and disgraceful, such as nakedness, and not with objective morality such as murder and theft. After that, Rabbi Gedalia is brought in, interpreting the trees literally as trees with natural properties, and adopting Maimonides’ basic point that the move to “good and evil” is a mental shift in which a person is drawn after imagination and desire instead of rational judgment. Along the way there are questions, analogies, and passages from the Ari and the Tanya about the entry of a mixture of good and evil into the human being.

Opening and the learning context

The speaker notes that he is now at the section where Rabbi Gedalia discusses Adam’s first sin, and before reading him he wants to read Guide for the Perplexed, Part I, Chapter 2, in the Schwartz edition. He introduces this by saying that the name Elohim is a shared term, used for God, for angels, and for rulers who govern states, and he cites Onkelos, who translates “and you shall be like divine beings” as “and you shall be like nobles,” meaning ministers and judges, not resembling the Holy One, blessed be He. He adds a reservation about the view that political authority necessarily indicates wisdom, and remarks on the connection of this idea to the Greek conception of rule by philosophers.

The wise man’s question about Adam’s first sin

The questioner argues that the plain meaning of Scripture seems to suggest that before the sin, man was like an animal, without any distinction between good and evil, and that only after he disobeyed God was he granted the great perfection of distinguishing between good and evil. He describes this as astonishing, almost like saying that someone who committed a crime became a star in the heavens, because the punishment seems to grant an advantage rather than remove one. The speaker adds a complementary question: if the distinction between good and evil was only given after the sin, then it is hard to understand in what sense there was a sin in the first place.

Maimonides’ answer: truth and falsehood versus the accepted notions of good and evil

Maimonides answers that a hasty understanding of Scripture is misleading, and he asks the reader to study the matter calmly and thoughtfully, not the way one reads chronicles or poetry in one’s spare time. Maimonides states that the intellect bestowed by God upon man, which is his ultimate perfection, was present in man before his rebellion, and because of it Scripture says of him that he was in the image of God and in His likeness, and because of it God addressed him in speech and commanded him, for there is no commandment for animals or for anyone who has no intellect. He distinguishes between the intellectual recognition of truth and falsehood and the realm of the “accepted notions” of the disgraceful and the beautiful, and he states that in ordinary human language what is right and false is called truth and falsehood, while what is beautiful and disgraceful is called good and evil. Maimonides explains that before the sin man did not occupy himself with these accepted notions and felt no shame in nakedness, but when he inclined after his imaginative desires and the pleasures of his senses by eating from the tree, he was punished by losing his intellectual apprehension and entering a world of judgments of good and evil. That is why Scripture says “knowers of good and evil” and not “knowers of truth and falsehood,” and it emphasizes that “the eyes of both of them were opened” does not mean a change in vision but a change in awareness of shame.

The difficulty in understanding Maimonides and the distinction between morality and social norms

The speaker says that on a simple reading, Maimonides’ words are puzzling, because they sound as if judgments of good and evil are social convention, something that seems foreign to Maimonides as an objectivist and does not fit with notions like moral responsibility beyond the laws of society. He gives the Nuremberg trials as an example, and the idea that obeying the law does not exempt a person from responsibility. He argues that Maimonides here is not speaking about the morality of murder and theft, but about a different kind of fitting and disgraceful behavior, and he emphasizes that Maimonides’ example is walking naked, which is not disgraceful in the same sense that murder is disgraceful. He suggests a spectrum: there is objective morality; there are completely arbitrary manners, like those discussed by Hanna Bavli; and there is an intermediate realm of norms that depend on circumstances, where given a certain convention there really is such a thing as right and wrong. He also suggests that the expression “like divine beings” may be interpreted as those who establish norms and wield judicial power.

Questions about the source of convention and the meaning of the punishment

The question is raised how there could be “accepted notions” for Adam and Eve in the absence of any society from which conventions are learned, and the speaker tries to resolve this by suggesting that after the sin, man felt discomfort with nakedness even while still alone, as a kind of prelude to the convention that would later arise in human society. He describes this as a descent, because the purely intellectual person is not troubled by unnecessary matters that are irrelevant to his situation, and the shift toward preoccupation with them is the result of mixing a non-rational dimension into decision-making. He asks again how sin was possible before the sin if man operated only in terms of truth and falsehood, and suggests that there had to be some practical possibility of sinning, since the serpent did tempt him, even if man knew the truth.

A kabbalistic and Hasidic interpretation: the entry of good and evil into the human being

The speaker cites the writings of the Ari of blessed memory, according to which the expression “knowers of good and evil” is connected to kelipat nogah and to “the skin of the serpent,” and he describes how before the sin the serpent was outside, whereas afterward the mixture entered within and became part of the human being. He explains that the problem after the sin is not only acting against the truth, but a deeper corruption in which a person begins to think that matters belonging to the realm of accepted convention are matters of truth and falsehood. That confusion causes the loss of the distinction between intellect and convention. He adds that the author of the Tanya describes the struggle not as a war between good and evil, but between an instinctual dimension, even if it is good, and an intellectual dimension of truth and falsehood, in which a person is supposed to decide rather than be led by impulses.

Moving on to Rabbi Gedalia: the trees in their plain sense and natural properties

The speaker moves on to Rabbi Gedalia on page 101 and presents his view that the trees are literally trees with special properties, not just homiletic ideas. Rabbi Gedalia explains that the Tree of Life is a tree whose fruit is an elixir of life, and that it was not initially forbidden, but only after the expulsion, so that man would not eat from it and cancel the punishment of death. He also adds that “forever” means a very long time, not eternity, as in the verse “and he shall serve him forever,” which means until the Jubilee. The speaker expands on the meaning of “for the world-cycle of the Jubilee” through an article by Henshke and distinctions regarding acquisition for a set term versus royal annulment, and notes that Rabbi Gedalia adopts the interpretation of “a very long time.”

The Tree of Knowledge according to Rabbi Gedalia: mental change and desire-driven living

Rabbi Gedalia states that good and evil are not truth and falsehood, and he adopts Maimonides’ basic point that intellect was already in man before the sin, and that without intellect and free choice it would have been impossible to command him. He describes man before the sin as intellectual and utilitarian, weighing everything on the scales of reason, with emotion and imagination present but not ruling him. By contrast, after eating from the Tree of Knowledge, man is drawn after good and evil as felt experiences without rational basis, and Maimonides calls these the accepted notions. He gives examples such as nakedness, which is not invalid from a rational point of view, and the love of money and lust for power, which, when they become goods in themselves, lose all boundary. He concludes that in eating from the Tree of Knowledge a change took place in mentality, in which man began to follow his imaginings. He adds that even today plants can bring about mental changes, such as drugs, and suggests understanding the properties of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge within the framework of nature.

Concluding remarks on “and you shall be like divine beings” and the gaps in the explanation

In conclusion, Rabbi Gedalia is quoted again from page 184, where Maimonides explains “Elohim” as a shared name, and here in the sense of judges and rulers of states, so that “and you shall be like divine beings, knowers of good and evil” means possessing judicial power in the realm of accepted conventions. The speaker comments that the wording about “a new kind of cleverness” creates tension between decline and ascent, and suggests understanding that cleverness as the intelligence needed to adapt to norms that depend on circumstances, not as an achievement in objective morality. He concludes by saying that gaps and questions still remain in the explanation as presented, especially regarding the nature of the “accepted notions” and the relationship between convention, judgment, and the punishment for the sin.

Basically, right now we’re at the section where Rabbi Gedaliah deals with the sin of the first man, Adam, and before I read Rabbi Gedaliah I want to read a chapter from the Guide for the Perplexed, chapter 2 in Part I, the well-known chapter 2, where Maimonides explains the sin of the first man. I’m reading this from the Schwartz edition, yes, from the Schwartz edition. “A learned man raised before me many years ago a marvelous difficulty, fitting for difficulties and for the answer we gave in resolving it. Before I present the difficulty and its solution, I will say: everyone who speaks Hebrew knows that the term Elohim is equivocal, applying to God, to angels, and to rulers, the leaders of states. Onkelos the convert, peace be upon him, clarified — and what he clarified is correct — that in the verse ‘and you shall be like Elohim, knowing good and evil,’ which is what he’ll be discussing in a moment, the intent is the last meaning.” The last meaning means rulers of states. In other words: you’ll become wise people, important people, and so on. He says, “and you shall be like nobles,” yes, “and you shall be like Elohim” he translates as “and you shall be like nobles,” not “you shall be like the Holy One, blessed be He.” “You shall be like Elohim” doesn’t mean like God. Right? The judges at the beginning of tractate Sanhedrin derive from the fact that the word Elohim appears three times in the passage — so they derive two, and “Elohim” in the court, and from there they learn that you need three judges. Eloah is basically a name for a judge, or someone who holds governmental office or power. For Maimonides, probably also under the influence of the Greek conception, it’s also a name for a wise person — which today I’m not sure all of us would agree with, that someone who has authority or status is probably also a wise person. Rule by philosophers — I don’t know whether it’s good or not good — but the fact is that it doesn’t work that way, whether it would be good or not. Okay, after we’ve introduced that this name is equivocal, let us begin to present the difficulty. The questioner said: “From the plain meaning of Scripture it appears that the original intention was that man should be like the other animals, without intellect and without thought, and should not distinguish between good and evil. And when he rebelled against the command of God, that rebellion necessarily brought him the greatest perfection a human being can possess, namely this distinction found in us, the distinction between good and evil. This distinction is the noblest of all the qualities we possess, and because of it we are substances” — substances, okay — “and it is astonishing that the punishment for his rebellion” — yes, for the rebellion of the first man — “the punishment is that he was given a perfection he did not have, namely intellect.” In other words, before the sin he did not know how to distinguish between good and evil, and then they’re told that if you eat from the Tree of Knowledge you’ll be like Elohim, knowing good and evil. Elohim — he already explained above what that means — knowing good and evil, suddenly you’ll know how to make moral distinctions, you’ll receive moral intellect. How can it be that punishment for a sin brings elevation to a higher level? That’s really the question. Seemingly, punishment is supposed to lower us, to harm us. How can punishment for sin bring elevation? More than that, I would even add: if really before that they did not know how to distinguish between good and evil, then what sin was there? After all, you only make a claim against someone that he sins if he knows how to distinguish between good and evil and he does the evil. But if the ability to distinguish between good and evil was only given to him after the sin, then in what sense did he sin? Why is it a sin at all? Okay, that’s just a supplementary question. “This is no different from someone saying that a certain man rebelled against God and went very far in his crime, and then his form was changed and he was made into a star in the heavens.” Again, for Maimonides, a star in the heavens means separate intellects, some more exalted being, yes, wiser and so on. “This was the intent of the difficulty and its meaning, although it was not phrased in this way.” I’m not used to reading Maimonides in this edition — it’s really modern Hebrew, yes. Anyway, so Maimonides — yes, the question is simple: how can a moral-intellectual virtue like distinguishing between good and evil be given to us only because we sinned? How can such a thing be? Or let’s say, you can maybe understand this in two ways. One way would be: how can it be that the Holy One, blessed be He, upgraded us, right, because we sinned? We don’t deserve a reward — we deserve punishment. Fine, let’s formulate it that way. Okay. “Hear the substance of our answer. We said: you, who consider the first notions that occur to your mind and are rash” — meaning, someone who thinks the first thing that pops into his head must be correct — “and think that you understand a book that is guidance for the first and the last,” the Torah, yes, which is guidance for the first and the last, “do not think that the first thing you understand is the true interpretation. You pass over it in one of your leisure hours between drinking and sexual indulgence, as one passes over a historical chronicle or one of the songs” — again, songs for Maimonides are some lowly kind of thing, meaning reading for leisure time. Today people wouldn’t relate to poetry that way. “Examine with settled mind and reflect, for the matter is not as you thought in your first fleeting notion. Rather it is as will become clear when you reflect on these things. For the intellect that God bestowed upon man, and which is his ultimate perfection, is what man possessed before his rebellion.” This intellect, which is the purpose of man — because we spoke about this, that for Rabbi Kook and for Maimonides, yes, what exactly is the image of God in man — is it the intellect or the will, and maybe they’re actually similar, not all that different. But Maimonides’ view is that the intellect is basically the essence of humanity, yes, that is the image of God in man. So he says: it cannot be that this intellect wasn’t in man before the sin; after all, that’s what it means to be human. To be human means to possess intellect. Obviously before the sin he was also human — maybe even a human on a higher level. So how can he lack the very thing that defines man as man? “Therefore the intellect that God bestowed upon man, and which is his ultimate perfection” — ultimate meaning the highest — “was present in man before his rebellion. Because of it it was said of him that he was in the image of God and in His likeness.” We saw something like this a bit in Abarbanel, that this is the image of God. It was said about Adam before the sin that he was in the image of God and in His likeness. “Because of it he was addressed by speech and commanded.” Here he’s hinting at what I noted earlier: why would the Holy One, blessed be He, command such a being at all? After all, if he has no ability to distinguish between good and evil, if he has no intellect, he is not subject to command. Right? This is Rabbi Chaim Vital — we once spoke about him — who asks why the Torah does not command the correction of character traits. So Rabbi Chaim Vital says that one who doesn’t understand that he needs to correct his traits is not subject to command at all — he’s not even a human being. The Torah speaks to human beings. Someone who isn’t human — there’s nothing to talk to him about. Meaning, you need to be capable of receiving command in order to be commanded. And therefore the condition is that you have intellect, that you have the ability to distinguish between good and evil. Right? Children, or an imbecile, or a deaf person — a deaf person as understood then, meaning also considered mentally incompetent — lacking understanding, these are people who are not commanded, meaning because they don’t have the ability to distinguish between good and evil. “And because of it he was addressed by speech and commanded, as it says: ‘And the Lord God commanded the man, saying: Of every tree of the garden you may surely eat, but of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat from it.’ And beasts are not commanded, nor anyone without intellect. With the intellect one distinguishes between truth and falsehood, and this intellect was present in him complete and perfect even before the sin. But ugly and beautiful belong to the generally accepted, not to the intelligible. For one does not say: ‘The heavens are spherical — beautiful,’ and ‘the earth is flat — ugly.’” We don’t judge claims like “the heavens are spherical” or “the earth is flat” in terms of ugly or beautiful, or fitting — yes, not aesthetically beautiful, but fitting or disgraceful. Rather, we say true or false. In other words, these are factual claims. Factual claims are judged in terms of truth and falsehood, okay? As opposed to command, or yes, good — we’ll see in a moment. “Likewise in our language we say of what is correct and what is false: true and false; and of what is beautiful and ugly: good and evil. And it is by intellect that man knows truth from falsehood, and so it is in all intelligible matters.” Yes, all intelligible matters are judged in terms of truth and falsehood, and the intellect is what is responsible for this activity of distinguishing truth from falsehood — as opposed to the distinction between good and evil. That, basically, is what he wants to claim. The distinction between truth and falsehood was in man beforehand, because that is the structure of man, that is his image of God. What entered him after the sin was the distinction between good and evil — and that is not. “When the first man was in his most complete and perfect state, then, by virtue of his natural constitution and his intellect, because of which it was said of him ‘You have made him but little lower than God,’ he had no faculty directed toward generally accepted notions. He did not even apprehend the most obvious among accepted norms as disgraceful — namely the exposure of nakedness.” To walk around naked. “And this was not disgraceful in his eyes, and he did not apprehend any disgrace in it. But when he rebelled against the command of God and inclined toward the desires of his imagination and the pleasures of his bodily senses” — that is, he ate from the Tree of Knowledge, as it says: “for the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes” — it was not driven by intellect; it was driven by the eyes, by desire. Basically, he was not activated by the intellect. He had intellect, but what activated him there was not intellect. “He was punished in that intellectual apprehension was taken from him.” The punishment is not that the ability was added to him — in a moment we’ll see — to distinguish between, let’s say, moral good and evil. Rather, intellectual apprehension was taken from him. Earlier he said that what was added was the ability to distinguish between the disgraceful and the fitting. So what was taken away? So what was taken away? We’ll still see. “Therefore he disobeyed the command he had been given by virtue of his intellect, and apprehension of accepted norms came to him.” Meaning, when he sinned and followed accepted norms, or desires, or the non-intellectual dimensions in himself, and abandoned what the intellectual dimension told him — that he should obey the Holy One, blessed be He — the punishment was that this was taken from him, and instead following accepted norms entered into him. He became one who knows good and evil. I’ll explain in a moment. Is “accepted norms” something he learns over time? Meaning something acquired? “Accepted norms,” in literal translation, are conventions. Accepted norms — what everybody knows, what we all agree is fitting and what is disgraceful. These are conventions. At least that seems to me to be the literal meaning. “He became immersed in classifying things as ugly or beautiful instead of engaging the question of truth and falsehood. At that moment he knew the measure of what he had lost and from what he had been stripped, and to what state he had come. Therefore it says: ‘and you shall be like Elohim, knowing good and evil,’ and it does not say ‘knowing falsehood and truth’ or ‘apprehending falsehood and truth.’ With respect to necessary things there is no good and evil at all, but only truth and falsehood.” That’s it. With respect to things that are relative — “necessary” here means objective. Meaning, not agreement, not convention, but something necessary. Then it is judged in terms of truth and falsehood. Conventions are good and evil, or disgraceful and fitting. “Reflect on what is said: ‘And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.’ It does not say ‘and the eyes of them both were opened and they saw,’ but ‘and they knew.’ What he saw before is what he saw after. He saw before what he now saw; nothing changed in his sight. It was not that there had been a covering over his eyes and it was removed. Rather a new state came upon him in which he considered disgraceful what he had not considered disgraceful before” — for example, walking naked. Okay, in a moment we’ll continue. I want to explain a bit what he means here. On a simple reading this passage is very puzzling. Very puzzling. And many struggle with these words. This is a very well-known Maimonides, this chapter. Because Maimonides seems to say that the judgment between good and evil is convention, and that the intellect deals only with facts, meaning things that are true or false, not with good and evil. Good and evil are like fitting and disgraceful — conventions, agreements, social norms. Now, the last person I would have expected to hold such a view is Maimonides, the great objectivist who doesn’t want to see different possibilities at all — everything by him is true or false. What, murder being evil is a convention? Or stealing being evil is just an agreement? It’s not something truly evil? Meaning, if there were a society that agreed murder was fine, then it would be fine to murder? That would really be the view of the most extreme relativists, the people who say that basically there’s nothing in morality or in other contexts except social conventions. And they also understand moral obligation simply as responding to the laws of the society in which you live. That’s all. Not that there’s something in itself good or evil in any objective sense. We spoke about this when we discussed morality — not this year maybe, I don’t remember anymore, maybe last year. We did the series on morality last year, I think. So we spoke about the Nuremberg trials, for example. People were prosecuted for obeying laws. Now according to the view that good and evil are accepted norms, meaning convention, then such a prosecution is completely irrelevant. Because the convention there was to kill Jews or take their property. It’s not true that killing is evil. What do you mean? It’s not a social convention to kill. Exactly — I’m saying, I’m asking here. Meaning, according to Maimonides, seemingly what emerges is that good and evil are a matter of convention. Fine, so in Nazi Germany the convention was that it was permitted, or even required, to kill Jews. So what did they want from them? Why were they judged? The whole novelty of the Nuremberg trials was precisely this idea: the fact that there is a social convention in your place does not exempt you from responsibility. And after that this was expanded also to manifestly illegal orders and the black flag doctrine and all the other things. Which basically means: not only does it not exempt you from responsibility, but there is something objective. Yes. It doesn’t exempt you from responsibility because there is something beyond convention that binds all human beings regardless of whether people agree or not agree, and regardless of what society you live in. There are demands simply by virtue of your being human. It makes no difference what society you live in and what is accepted there and what is not accepted there. Now according to the view that seemingly comes out here in Maimonides, that everything is conventional, meaning a matter of social agreement, none of this has any place. And there are many places where you see in Maimonides that it’s not so. Besides the fact that it’s not logical, but in many, many places you see that it’s not so. Now you have to pay close attention: what Maimonides is talking about here, when he gives examples of the fitting and the disgraceful, his examples are things like walking naked. Now walking naked is not disgraceful in the same sense that murder is disgraceful. That, I think, is what Maimonides wants to say. What Maimonides wants to say is: he is not talking here about morality at all. Good and evil in the moral sense, for Maimonides, are truth and falsehood. It is true that murder is forbidden, and false that murder is permitted; same with stealing, striking, any moral transgressions. For Maimonides that belongs to the domain of truth and falsehood. He’s not talking about that here at all. The concepts good and evil are being used here, at least in this context, in the sense of fitting and disgraceful. Fitting and disgraceful means according to accepted decorum. Meaning, in a civilized society people wear clothes. So it is accepted not to walk around without clothes. So what is that? But if there were a society in which no one had any problem with it and it bothered no one, then maybe there really would be no problem at all — one could walk around without clothes. How does that fit with the words “and you shall be like Elohim, knowing good and evil”? God knows what good and evil are? Important people. No, but that’s not right, convention isn’t… No, he already said earlier that Elohim doesn’t mean that. Fine, wait — but it isn’t important people. Go and see what people actually do — it’s not the important people. Okay, I’ll address that remark in a second. Fine? So basically Maimonides’ claim here doesn’t deal with morality at all. One second, I’m going back. Maimonides’ claim doesn’t deal with morality at all; it deals with manners and conduct. Or maybe that term is too weak. We’re not talking about holding the fork in the left hand and the knife in the right, but about not walking around naked. That’s a bit more fundamental, maybe, than driving on the left or right side, or how to hold the knife and fork, or how to arrange them around the plate. Not manners in the sense of Emily Post, but yes in the sense that there are some norms practiced in society that really have no objective dimension — they are social convention. Just one second more. Some of the norms practiced in society truly have no objective dimension; they’re just social convention. Now, you wanted to comment? Where does the convention come from? The first man has no society from which to learn the convention. Ah. There — exactly, one second. Maybe now I can sharpen these two questions together. That’s exactly the point. Look, if we’re talking about arranging the knife and fork on two sides of the plate — Emily Post — then that really is just etiquette. So what does “and you shall be like Elohim, knowing good and evil” mean? Is Emily Post such an important person because she knows some good and evil that we don’t know? Right? And the same as what you asked: in the absence of society, where do conventions come from? There’s something self-contradictory here. If you say it’s convention — convention of whom? If they didn’t know about it, and they are the only people alive, then who exactly is responsible for this convention if not them? Okay? I think there really is an intermediate level here between Emily Post and morality — murder, theft, and so on. Something in between. Because not to walk around naked in our time today is not the same thing as not arranging the knife and fork on the accepted side. Okay? Even though ostensibly both are conventions. There are things where, given a convention — only once there is a convention — but once there is a convention, then there is really something disgraceful in violating it. Meaning, under the present circumstances, maybe if the circumstances were different it would be different. In murder that isn’t relevant. Murder is forbidden in any case, regardless of circumstances. But there are things where, given the circumstances, they become truly disgraceful. Not merely unusual, not merely failing to comply with agreements. It is truly disgraceful under these circumstances. That’s what Maimonides is talking about when he speaks of walking around naked. By contrast, for Emily Post it’s a matter of convention, and you can disregard the convention — there’s nothing grand about recognizing conventions or not recognizing conventions. You don’t have to be like Elohim to understand the disgraceful and the fitting in the Emily Post sense. You do need to be like Elohim — and now I’ll say, maybe your comment made me think that perhaps Elohim here doesn’t mean wise people but ruling people, people with power, because they are the ones who set the conventions. That is exactly the point. Meaning, if I understood there to be some wisdom here, then I would have to say that Elohim means not only a person with office but also a person with wisdom, a greater person. Okay. But now according to this interpretation perhaps we don’t need to say that. Maybe yes, I don’t know, because in Greek philosophy there is the idea that the ruler is a philosopher, yes. But now it’s less significant, because basically you need to ask: who is responsible for conventions? Who determines the binding norms? The Elohim — the judges, the rulers, the important people. So “and you shall be like Elohim, knowing good and evil” means: you know, you understand, just like they do, what is proper to do in the sense of disgraceful and fitting. Okay? Now, true, your remark still remains — it doesn’t fully answer your remark, because this is all still only given a situation. But there, when they were the only two people — it answers your remark, but not yours, or it only softens it somewhat without answering it completely. It seems to me that perhaps there is yet a fourth nuance here, and these nuances need a better definition. I’m not now getting into the whole philosophical level and all the concepts, but I am pointing out that there are several categories here beyond the one simple category of good and evil. Besides the simple category of good and evil, there is objective good and evil; there is Emily Post, which is completely conventional, has no significance at all in the absence of society, not interesting; there is the disgraceful and fitting that Maimonides is speaking about — which I said earlier is an intermediate category — namely that given a certain situation, it is really disgraceful or fitting. Meaning, it’s not something only dependent on convention, but once the convention exists, it becomes very important. Yes, like driving on the left side of the road: if you go to a country where they drive on the left, in England, and you drive on the right, then it’s not only that you violated a convention — you are endangering lives, because given that situation you are committing a very serious offense, even though one could have defined the opposite convention and there would have been no problem. Exactly. Yes. That’s a third category. Maybe there’s also a fourth category. It may be that a person can somehow sense what convention ought to be established. A nuance that’s a little hard to define. Meaning, even if I am alone in the world — Adam and Eve are alone in the world — they still understand that in human society somehow one ought to cover nakedness in some way. It’s not disgraceful, it’s not good and evil like murder or theft, it’s still not there. But maybe it’s a little more than something that merely depends on convention, such that in the absence of convention there is nothing here. There are exactly four. Yes. That’s basically between the middle one and the first one. Yes. But then we’re exposed to the problem: why didn’t his intellect lead him to establish that convention? Wait. So then he became one who knows good and evil only after he sinned and… Ah — meaning, wait, you’re each taking me one step further each time, and that’s fine, because this is exactly the analysis. So what was there before the sin? Before the sin they didn’t understand the disgraceful and the fitting? Why? Because perhaps this fourth level that I defined at the end really is not correct. There is no such level. In our condition today, after the sin, we understand that somehow, in some sense, even on a nudist beach one should still cover something, even though there the convention is that you can go around with nothing on. Fine? But again, that is all because we are already after the sin and have descended from the level where we are basically indifferent to all these conventions and things could have been otherwise. And that fourth level I tried to define there — not for nothing did I fail to define it. I failed because it really isn’t real, it isn’t part of intellect. There really is no such thing in intellect, although in feeling I think today we can sense that there is such a thing. But that very feeling is decline. A decline because we’re already here; there’s nothing to do. But it is decline because we no longer work only with intellect; we also work with relative things, agreed-upon things. So that is decline, deterioration. That is what Maimonides means to say. He is not speaking about good and evil. I’ll maybe give an example that I also brought once before, if you remember we spoke about it. Why is Bach more talented in music than I am? I too can write music that of course none of you would like — I have no talent for it — but I can produce certain creatures, if I could fully program them, for whom my music would be optimal. Theoretically. There could be such a class of creatures. No problem. Arrange the brain structure, the reception apparatus, the audio system of that creature, and for it my composition would be perfect. But Bach is simply suited perfectly to creatures that happen to exist. That’s all. In principle, everyone’s composition would be perfect relative to some kind of theoretical creatures. So is Bach really more talented, or is it just chance? It just so happened that for this reality he came out talented, and therefore he’s known as a genius composer, whereas I was unlucky and the Holy One, blessed be He, did not create people with an audio system that really enjoys my compositions, and that’s why I’m not considered a musical genius. So I said then that I think Bach really is a genius, objectively more of a genius than I am — which is not saying much. But because people say he really was a genius in a completely objective sense — not just more than me but pathologically so, that’s what those who understand say, I don’t know. Bach and so on. So the claim I made then was this: it always depends on the order of operation. Obviously, if you first shoot the arrow and only afterward draw the circle, you will always be a perfect marksman. If the circle is in your hands, then you’re a perfect marksman. But Bach didn’t produce works randomly in the air and then discover, wow, all these people happen to be built exactly so that these works are perfect for them. Right? It didn’t work like that. Rather, he understood very well how human auditory consciousness is built and managed to match it exactly, and to match it in advance — not to draw the circle afterward — but to produce in advance a perfect work for the ear as it exists, or for the ear and the whole audio system. He writes the equations of the bird. Exactly. He’s the true marksman. Exactly. Now that’s genius. That I don’t know how to do. Obviously I know how to make something such that, if it were in my hands, I could create creatures for whom it would be perfect. Thank you very much — everyone can do that by definition. The ability is to do it the other way around: not to create the creatures; the creatures are given — now produce the work. Now that I don’t know how to do. I assume that even if those creatures were here and produced, I still wouldn’t manage to hit the mark for them, unless by chance. Meaning I would produce something and it would happen to suit them very well, but I wouldn’t know how to aim at their very nature and from that produce the perfect work. Meaning there is something objective in Bach’s genius, even though — one second — even though it depends on the situation. Meaning, if human beings were built differently, then he simply wouldn’t be a genius — he’d just be some fool if he wrote these very same pieces. Meaning there is real genius here even though it is circumstance-dependent. You understand the analogy. I’m now talking about good and evil. So I say this: what is the difference between Emily Post and Maimonides’ disgraceful and fitting? Maimonides’ disgraceful and fitting, unlike Emily Post’s disgraceful and fitting, means that given certain circumstances — people with a convention that it’s forbidden to walk around naked or something like that — then when you don’t walk around naked you are really doing something right, or when you do walk around naked you are really doing something wrong, even though it depends on convention. Meaning, if there were another society, another convention, then no issue at all, do whatever you want, there’s no significance to it one way or the other. But given the present situation, then truly it is not right to walk around naked, unlike putting the knife and fork on the opposite sides. Okay? So that means there are many things which, although they depend on circumstances and the circumstances are arbitrary — they could have been totally different — nevertheless, given these circumstances there is a right and a wrong. And to arrive at the right one you need to be a very wise person, a great artist, whatever it is depending on the field, or someone very knowledgeable about good and evil — yes, someone who knows how to understand what is good and what is bad. Okay? But since there was no surrounding environment — it was just the two of them — so basically, if there had been an environment and such a convention, then even before the sin they would have gone around clothed. Because if they have truth and falsehood in mind — after all, the intellect is there — then they would have understood that under those given circumstances it is not right to go without clothes. But there was no environment around them. So basically it really was not wrong — I meant fitting and disgraceful. Fitting and disgraceful given the circumstances is already truth and falsehood. No — I’m saying, fitting and disgraceful given the circumstances is already truth and falsehood. But there were no circumstances. That’s why I say: since there were no circumstances, before the sin they simply didn’t feel anything about the fact that they were naked. Why? Because truly, when there are no circumstances, there is no problem with it at all. What happened after the sin? After the sin a feeling entered into them, although they were still alone. Suddenly some feeling entered into them that it wasn’t okay to walk around naked. They anticipated — with a tet — the convention that would later be formed in the humanity that would descend from them. Now that is decline, because it basically means that they were moved — with an ayin — by motivations that were not purely intellectual, but that a conventional dimension started to form in them, a lower dimension of the human being, not the intellectual one. And therefore this is decline. Does it limit them? Yes. It causes them to do unnecessary things, not necessary things, things that aren’t needed, to be troubled by things that should not trouble them. It’s not bad to be troubled by such a thing — it’s just unnecessary. But a purely intellectual person, Maimonides’ perfect person, doesn’t do unnecessary things. They are not bad things, but they are unnecessary. Why are you bothered by the fact that you have no clothes? So what? There’s no one here, there’s no such convention. So that means you declined. It means that something among what motivates you is not only intellect, not only truth and falsehood. And in that sense this is deterioration. How did they sin at all if they only had the category of truth and falsehood? How is sin possible here at all? Good. That’s another discussion, and really we’d need Nefesh HaChaim for it. I think he completes the picture Maimonides is presenting here. In Nefesh HaChaim there is also an interpretation of the sin of the first man. The claim there is basically that once you have desires, it may be that you won’t act according to intellect. And the ability to sin did exist in the first man before the sin, otherwise there really is no answer to that question. He had to be capable of sin — meaning sin was relevant to him — even though he was an entirely intellectual person. Did he have free will? Yes, not free will in the abstract — you know, I once saw, I think in Ramchal or some other source, that even angels have free will. Except what? It’s so clear to them that they always choose the good, that’s all. But with the first man it was not like that. He had not only the theoretical option of choosing between two possibilities; he had a practical possibility of sinning. The fact is, it happened. How did it happen? Because the serpent — that is the evil inclination — caused him to sin, enticed him, his wife, it doesn’t matter who from outside, and in some sense caused him to sin. What happened when you became one who knows good and evil? He knew he was doing something not good. Maybe he just failed to impose intellect over desire. Yes, but he understood what was right and what was not right. Meaning, he was a completely intellectual person. No, understand: he was a completely intellectual person. It’s like the experience of sin in human beings today. Usually a person today who sins knows that he is sinning; he just can’t withstand it — desire takes him. So from the standpoint of intellect he understood that what he was doing was not okay, but the desire, the serpent standing outside, took him there. What happened in the sin? After the sin he himself decided to do other things not because of desire from outside — he himself decided to do something not according to intellect. That’s a different phase. He was not a perfect person even before, because desire could cause him to sin, but he knew that it was not right when he did it. He knows what truth and falsehood are; it doesn’t get mixed up for him. Okay? But after the sin he himself thinks that this is the truth, that one should wear clothes. Meaning, his truth and falsehood got corrupted. Not that sometimes he acts not according to truth but according to falsehood, but rather truth and falsehood themselves got corrupted. And that is what is called “and you shall be like Elohim, knowing good and evil.” What does “knowing good and evil” mean? In the writings of the Ari, “knowing good and evil” is written as kelipat nogah, or mishkha de-chivya. Mishkha de-chivya means the skin of the serpent. The serpent’s skin, or the serpent’s filth in the language of the Sages — the serpent’s filth entered Adam and Eve. So that is what is called by the Ari mishkha de-chivya, the serpent’s skin, and its filth. And what is this mishkha de-chivya? There are four kelipot in Kabbalah: three evil kelipot and one kelipah that is a mixture of good and evil, called kelipat nogah. Mishkha de-chivya is kelipat nogah. And what entered into the human being was basically this: before the sin the serpent stood outside, and it enticed the human being and Eve to sin even though they knew what the truth was. They knew they were sinning, but they were capable of being enticed — meaning it succeeded in enticing them. Okay? What happened after the sin? After the sin they became knowers of good and evil. “And the man knew Eve his wife.” “Knowing” means the good and evil entered into them, connected, they became joined. It was no longer outside. The world of drives — by the way, both the good inclination and the evil inclination, both are drives — the world of drives was outside; that was the serpent. And after the sin they became knowers of good and evil; the man knew Eve his wife — good and evil entered into them. What happened then? They thought that this was truth and that was falsehood. Not that someone enticed them and managed to make them violate truth and falsehood, but they thought this was the truth — that one should wear clothes — just as we think today. Okay? And that was decline, because they didn’t understand that this was basically something belonging to accepted norms that had gotten mixed into their intelligible judgments, and therefore they no longer knew that they needn’t deal with it. This isn’t desire; it’s just accepted norms. It’s not like the serpent’s temptations, which were really desire. Wearing clothes isn’t bad — it’s simply unnecessary, simply not needed, okay? But still, this “knowing good and evil” — the disgraceful and the fitting, and the good and the fitting, sorry, the disgraceful and the fitting — got mixed together. Now when I want to do something impolite, I already think that intellect says I must not do it, because the good and evil, or the disgraceful and fitting, entered into me. Now it’s all mixed into my intellect, and I no longer distinguish between what is intellect and what is convention. We know — many people, I think this is one of the reasons people arrive at the conclusion that morality is convention — because we have lost the ability to make a sharp distinction between intellect and convention. And good and evil seem to people like mere convention. After all, you can’t see it, there is no observation that yields what is good and what is evil, so people think it’s convention. It’s the same confusion that followed the sin of the first man. There it happened with the disgraceful and the fitting, but with us we already see it even regarding good and evil. Good and evil, or also the evil inclination, also the good inclination — when we describe today the struggle between good and evil inside a person, usually we describe it like this: the good inclination pulls one way, the evil inclination pulls the other way, and whichever one is more of a bully determines whether the person is good or bad, whether his evil inclination is stronger or his good inclination is stronger. Where is the person in all this? These are inclinations wrestling with each other — what does that have to do with me? There are inclinations. I have inclinations. Good ones, bad ones, fine, the Holy One, blessed be He, made them. So He made me with a big good inclination or a big evil inclination — is that why I’m good or bad? Good or bad is what I do, not what was created inside me. Okay? Where am I in this whole story when the inclinations are wrestling with each other? That’s why the author of the Tanya really says — we also spoke about this once — that the struggle is not at all between good and evil, but between the dimension of impulse, whether good or bad makes no difference, and the intellectual dimension of truth and falsehood that says: I have to decide what I do, not be ruled by my inclinations — neither the good inclination nor the evil inclination, neither of them. One shouldn’t submit to any inclination. I have to decide what I do; my inclinations shouldn’t drag me along after them. And in that sense the inclinations, like the disgraceful and the fitting, entered into the human being, and we feel that this is simply us. I want to do the good or I want to do the bad. There isn’t some feeling of: okay, this is the good inclination, this is the evil inclination — now let’s think what is right. It isn’t always right; sometimes you need to be a little harsh, sometimes you need to be kind. But I’m saying, you have to check with the intellect, not let inclination, urge, instinct lead you. And in that sense this is the decline of the sin of the first man: that a person is ruled not by truth and falsehood but by lower dimensions, which once were even external, not only lower. The serpent was outside; afterward it entered into the person. But even inside the person he needs to understand that this is a lower part of him — the part of emotions, the part of instincts. It’s not the cognitive part, not the part in which you decide between truth and falsehood, which is what should lead you. And the sin of the first man began this process. It introduced into intellect, and mixed into intellect, dimensions that are not intellectual. Wait — before the sin there was the good inclination, the evil inclination, and the human being. Correct. And the human being was truth and falsehood, external to the inclinations. The inclinations were entirely outside. Even today the inclinations are not me — only our subjective feeling, and that was the punishment: that the inclinations enter into me and create in me the feeling “I want to do this,” not that someone is tempting me to do it. It’s me. So there’s no feeling of struggle at all. I don’t stop and think: wait, is it right to do this? It’s right — I myself decided that this is what should be done. What do you mean, right? Of course it’s right; I decided it. Okay? There is no feeling that I should critique this decision, because it isn’t a decision — it’s an attraction. I now have to decide whether I go along with that attraction or not. Attraction to good, attraction to evil, both attractions. Okay? That is the sin of the first man. I once brought this story about Dov Sadan — I mentioned it not long ago in Ra’anana. He said that the next person who will make a revolution in the world will be a Jewish orthopedist. So why Jewish? Because only Jews make revolutions in the world. But why an orthopedist? He says: because the first Jew who made a revolution in the world was Abraham our father, Moses our teacher, who taught us to use our head. “Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these.” Okay? Then came that man, Jesus, who told us everything is in the heart — you have to follow the heart, “the Merciful One wants the heart.” The next Jew who made a revolution in the world was Marx, who said everything is in the belly — Capital, yes, the means of production or consumption, those are what drive us. The next Jew who made a revolution in the world was of course Freud, who taught us that everything is below the belt. Okay? So we started with the head, moved to the heart, went down to the belly, moved below the belt. The next one will be an orthopedist. What else is left further down? Or a shoemaker. So this movement of decline — beyond the joke — has something very true in it. It began with the sin of the first man. In the sin of the first man there began this whole business of ceasing to be ruled or guided by truth and falsehood — what goes on up here in the head — and beginning to be guided by lower things. And those lower things not only tempt you from outside, they get mixed into you and broadcast to you as if they are your truth and falsehood. As if that’s you. Yes, as if it’s not something outside trying to tempt you. “And you shall be like Elohim, knowing good and evil.” And that is a punishment. It really is a punishment. It really is deterioration. By contrast, knowing that one must not murder, or that one should help another, or that one must not harm another, or all sorts of things like that — for Maimonides, that is intellect. It isn’t good and evil at all; it isn’t fitting and disgraceful. It isn’t accepted norms. It is truth and falsehood. The truth is that one must not murder, and the falsehood is that one may murder. For Maimonides that is the answer. And we spoke about this last year: it seems that there is really no way out except to relate to good and evil as truth and falsehood, as the result of something like observation. Something objective. Isn’t it conscience? It is, but you also have to understand where conscience comes from. If it comes from me myself, then it’s nothing. You somehow need to understand that there is something outside you that you observe, in some sense the idea of the good, and you say to yourself: this is a good act and this is an evil act. It is the result of observation. It’s truth and falsehood. Because without that, morality really does become accepted norms, or convention. And it can’t be otherwise. Therefore the difficulty — that people don’t understand Maimonides — arises from the very conception that Maimonides came to reject. That’s also why people don’t understand him. Because people who really think good and evil are conventions understand Maimonides as truly talking about good and evil. But Maimonides isn’t talking about that. What we call good and evil is, for Maimonides, truth and falsehood. Here it is disgraceful and fitting. And that’s Emily Post and everything we discussed earlier. Okay? Good. Now let’s look at Rabbi Gedaliah. On page 101: “And the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.” These are trees literally, in the simple sense. First of all, they are trees, yes. That’s Rabbi Gedaliah’s way: don’t make homiletics here. First of all, it says trees — so they are trees. Trees with special properties. The Tree of Life is a tree whose fruits are an elixir of life. Later it says: “And now lest he stretch forth his hand and take also of the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever.” How many trees were forbidden to eat from? One, right? Not two. The Tree of Knowledge. The Tree of Life was forbidden only after he was expelled from the Garden of Eden. After he was expelled from the Garden of Eden they placed there the angel with the turning sword in order to guard, lest he go to the Tree of Life and eat from it, and then his punishment — the punishment of death — would be nullified. From the outset there was no prohibition on eating from the Tree of Life. Good thing he didn’t eat from it at the beginning. What? Yes. If he had eaten from it at the beginning, that probably would also have enabled him to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Exactly. So, okay. “The Tree of Life is a tree whose fruits are an elixir of life. Later it says: ‘And now lest he stretch forth his hand and take also of the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever.’ We know from other places” — yes, that’s Rabbi Gedaliah’s way — “that ‘forever’ does not mean eternity, but a long time. As in: ‘and he shall serve him forever,’ which means until the Jubilee.” Right, because a slave whose ear is pierced remains a slave forever. That’s in the portion of Mishpatim. But in the portion of Behar it says that slaves go free in the Jubilee. Even pierced slaves go free in the Jubilee. So the Sages in Kiddushin expound: here it says “forever” and there it says he goes free in the Jubilee — “forever” means the forever of the Jubilee, meaning until the Jubilee. How does Rabbi Gedaliah explain that? He says it means a long time. That’s called “forever.” It doesn’t mean literally forever, but a long time. As we once discussed, there’s an article by Henochka on plain meaning and rabbinic interpretation in HaMaayan from 5737, and there he offers a beautiful explanation of this rabbinic teaching. He says the pierced slave is a slave forever in the literal sense. He is a slave forever. In both Mishpatim and Behar. In the school of Breuer’s approach to textual perspectives, that in Behar he goes out in the Jubilee. What does this mean? If we understand the slave as a slave until the Jubilee, then he is a slave for a limited time. But there’s another possibility: the slave is an everlasting slave, but the Jubilee comes and terminates it. For example, if I sell you land for a week, then according to most medieval authorities, a sale for a limited period does not confer ownership of the body of the property. You don’t have ownership of the land itself; only usage rights. The body remains mine. Because ownership for a limited time is only ownership of the use. That’s the Ran in Nedarim 29, there are several medieval authorities, most of them take that approach. By contrast, if I sell you land and it reverts in the Jubilee, even though I sold it to you only for some number of years — depending how long before the Jubilee, say ten years — so I sold you land for ten years, so there too it sounds like you only have produce. Then how do you bring first-fruits? In Bava Batra they ask that. How do you bring first-fruits? After all, to bring first-fruits you need to own the land. The answer: because this land is sold to you forever; it is only the Jubilee that terminates it. It isn’t a sale from the outset for ten years. The sale is forever, permanently yours, but then the Jubilee comes and terminates it. Like the king. If I sold you something and now the king comes and confiscates it from you, does that mean I sold it to you only for a limited time? Of course not. I transferred to you my full rights in that item. That’s it — it became yours, the body is yours, everything is yours. You have full ownership and whatever else you want, permanently. Except what? The king came, and that’s his right; he can confiscate the thing from you. So if it is yours from the outset only for ten years, then it’s a temporary ownership, a partial ownership — you don’t have full ownership. But if by the act of transfer it is conveyed to you as permanent ownership, and afterward something comes that was not built into the act of transfer from the outset — there was no time limitation — but rather something external comes and terminates the ownership, that does not change the fact that during those ten years that it was with you, you had full ownership. I transferred you everything; afterward the king came and confiscated it. That’s not temporary ownership; that’s full ownership. That’s what Henochka says. He says “and he shall serve him forever” means that the master owns him in full ownership; he is an everlasting slave. Then the Jubilee comes and terminates it. The Talmud says in the chapter HaZahav that the Jubilee is the king’s annulment. That’s what the Gemara says. It’s the king’s annulment. When you sell land while the Jubilee is in effect, you are not selling it for twenty years, you are selling it forever. The king only comes and terminates it after twenty years. Fine — a king can confiscate property. In this case he also chooses to return it to the seller; he could have taken it for himself. Okay? But it is permanent ownership. And that is the meaning of “the forever of the Jubilee.” “The forever of the Jubilee” means it’s forever, and the Jubilee terminates it. And in Rabbi Breuer’s perspective approach, that basically means that from the laws of slavery you are an everlasting slave; a pierced slave is an everlasting slave. From the laws of the Jubilee you go out when the Jubilee arrives. You are removed. That’s by the laws of Jubilee; it has nothing to do with the sale transaction of the slave. The slave is sold to me forever. Therefore the section that deals with slavery says he is an everlasting slave. The section that deals with Jubilee says he goes out in the Jubilee. But the value changes. What? The value changes because we know the Jubilee will arrive. Fine — that’s just a matter of price, but in terms of the form of ownership, of the legal pattern, you simply pay me what it’s worth to you. And in practice you know it will be with you for twenty years, so why would you pay me the price of land forever? That’s just a matter of business between us. But in terms of the legal definition of the sale, it is a permanent sale. A little like a gift on condition of return — the dispute between Ketzot and Netivot. A gift on condition of return: the Ketzot says that it is a permanent gift, even though, like an etrog that I give you on condition that you return it to me on the first day of the festival so that you fulfill “it shall be yours.” So the Ketzot says this is a permanent gift, except that there is a condition that you return it to me; if you don’t return it, the gift is voided. So it’s not a gift until you return it to me; it’s a gift forever, just with a condition that you return it. The Netivot says no: the moment the condition is to return it to me, it’s not like a condition that rain should fall; rather, a condition to return it to me means you are really saying this is a gift for a limited time, not a permanent gift. According to the Netivot’s conception, what comes out is what Rabbi Gedaliah is saying, I think. According to the Ketzot’s conception, what comes out is what Henochka is saying. Because Henochka understands “and he shall serve him forever” to mean forever literally. Not a long time — forever forever. And the fact that he goes out in the Jubilee is a side law, a different law. Therefore it is permanent ownership, but there is an external law that terminates it in the Jubilee. The same with “an eye for an eye.” Really the law ought to be an eye for an eye. In that same article he also talks about an eye for an eye. Though there, fine, that depends on whether we’re talking practical law; there’s some dispute there. Okay, and in any case Rabbi Gedaliah says it means a long time, not forever. He learns like the Netivot, meaning that the intent is a long time but not forever. Long life. Here too, “forever” means a very long life. So the Tree of Life, in his view, is simply a tree with medicinal properties, very beneficial health properties, such that if you eat its fruit you live a very long time. “Doctors say that most illnesses stem from poor nutrition. One who consistently ate from the fruits of the Tree of Life could greatly lengthen his days. But man was expelled from the Garden of Eden because of the sin, and his days were shortened. What is the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil? Good and evil are not truth and falsehood. Maimonides explains this,” which is what we read. “He recounts that a wise man asked him: how is it possible that following the sin, man attained knowledge — rose in level? And Maimonides explains that there was no rise in level here but a decline. Intellect was already in man before, from the moment he was created in the image of God. If he had not had intellect and free choice, it would have been impossible to command him. Man before the sin was intellectual and utilitarian.” Every single thing he would weigh on the scales of intellect. Will this bring benefit or not? “Benefit” also meaning moral benefit, not only financial utility in the narrow sense. “Will this act bring benefit or not? Obviously he could have erred, thinking that a certain thing was worthwhile for him even though in truth it was not. But his considerations were intellectual.” I think this hints a bit to what I said about the serpent’s role. He knew what was right and what was not right. It’s somewhat different, but it’s the same idea. And I argued that he really knew what was right and wrong. Desires could entice him, but they could not become mixed into his categories of right and wrong. He always knew that what he was doing was not right; he was simply enticed. Okay? So he says he could make a mistake. It doesn’t matter, because if it’s really just a mistake, then that’s not a sin, it’s a mistake. So why are complaints brought against him? That’s why I don’t think the wording is precise. “He also had emotion and imagination, but he did not let them rule him. By contrast, after eating from the Tree of Knowledge he was drawn after good and evil. Good is what feels good without any intellectual reason, and evil is what feels bad. Maimonides calls these accepted norms. Walking around naked is not something invalid from the standpoint of intellect” — as we said, okay? “It’s manners and conduct; it’s not good and evil. Before the sin the human being knew that he was naked and saw that he was naked, and it didn’t bother him. Just as he has a mouth to eat with, he also has other organs. Why hide them? After eating from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, suddenly the person felt uncomfortable because he was naked. Let us take another example: love of money. An intellectual person considers how much money I need for my livelihood and for my children and so on. But when the love of money becomes good in itself, it has no limit. ‘He who loves money will never be satisfied with money.’ And so too with lust for power and the like.” So the moment you no longer make the intellectual calculation but follow desires, then once you lose proportion, that means you are not making the intellectual calculation; you are following desire. “In eating from the Tree of Knowledge, a change occurred in man’s mentality. He began to follow his imaginations. Even before that he was liable to such a thing, predisposed to such a thing, but then he was not drawn after accepted norms. They did not interest him.” Again, this is very unclear. He sort of bypasses all the difficulties we talked about in what we read. Because what does it mean: if he didn’t follow his imaginations but only intellect, and he wasn’t drawn after accepted norms, then how did he sin? He was drawn after accepted norms — it’s just that it didn’t get mixed up for him; he understood that these were accepted norms and not intelligible truths. Meaning, he understood what was good and evil or disgraceful and fitting, and what was truth and falsehood. That he understood. He was just drawn after it — not that he wasn’t drawn. It just didn’t get mixed up in the category of good and evil; he knew what was good and bad, and what was true and false. “After eating from the Tree of Knowledge, something in him changed. We know even today that there are kinds of plants that can cause mental changes, such as narcotic plants and the like. One can understand the properties of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil within the framework of nature.” Okay? Fine. But if so, then why did the Torah mention the Tree of Life if they were all going to die a few hundred years later anyway, and why is this a punishment at all? What is it, just incidental? So why is it a punishment? And all the difficulties. In Maimonides that certainly doesn’t work, because they ask him: how can it be that he declined, received punishment for sin, and yet received elevation? So what does he answer? No, it’s a decline. Then you’d have to say: no, no — this happened to him by itself, it wasn’t punishment, it was just a consequence of eating from the tree. What difference does that make? This reminds me that maybe I once told you: I have a good friend who spent about half a year in the forests of Bolivia, very advanced backpacking in regions where, according to him, no white man had set foot for at least a hundred years. They have records there of when the last white man was there — some German, that’s what they told him; I don’t know exactly how it happened there. There had been some German there; he was the last white man they saw. He sees the chariot. He sees the same vision. Everyone sees the same vision. It doesn’t matter whether you come from the culture of Gentiles, of Jews, from Israel, from Germany, and the Indians — everyone sees the same vision. Meaning that it is dictated, that’s the claim. And he himself tried it. He said he saw it too. Now he has no idea what it is, he’s completely secular. He doesn’t know what a chariot is or anything. He asked me a little about it — and I don’t understand much about it either, certainly not what it looks like. But the claim is that the vision is objective. Meaning everyone who takes these plants sees that. He told what he saw and what he heard from others they saw — the same thing. He said they all see the same thing. Strange. Now in fact after him there was a Jew from Hebrew University named Benny Shanon. He’s a psychologist, a professor there. Judith Ronen’s son did his master’s under him, wrote there on Libet experiments. That’s how I got around to setting up a conversation with him. We met at the funeral of the partner of that friend, and we arranged to talk — and the guy disappeared. I couldn’t figure out what happened; impossible to reach him. Later my friend told me that following what he had told him, he went to Bolivia and lived there for about two years. I met him afterward by chance at some conference and reminded him about the meeting. The chariot? I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to clarify it with him, but he wrote research articles on it. One would have to check what exactly he wrote there, because I no longer remember to what extent he confirmed it. He studied it; he has academic articles on this subject. Meaning this is what he went there to investigate. That’s why he went there. He lived among them for two years, I don’t know how long. He came back for some homeland visit and then I saw him for a moment and he disappeared again, returned there. He was there for a long time. So I’m saying: there are states in which plants can induce some change that is dictated by the nature of the plant — not some change that is the sum of the plant plus your psychic structure, because then it would depend on who you are — but something real: the plant does it, it does the work independently of you. Fine, interesting. In any case, as an interpretation here, it still seems to me to miss the point somewhat. Did only academic work come out of that? I’d have made a huge exit out of it. What kind of exit — experiences of seeing the chariot? By the way, he says it’s not addictive. Not addictive at all. Too bad. It’s hallucinations, but not addictive. You take it when you want, but it’s not… Maybe seeing the chariot doesn’t appeal enough to people for them to get addicted, I don’t know. Anyway, just in conclusion: on the second page, 184, “and your eyes shall be opened and you shall be like Elohim, knowing good and evil,” at the top of 184. “Maimonides explains that Elohim is an equivocal name for the Holy One, blessed be He, who governs the world, and for angels, and for judges and leaders of states. And here it is in the last meaning. You will have the power to judge between good and evil,” meaning judgment in the category of accepted norms, and therefore it probably connects to judges or some sort of judgment. Although it seems to me that in light of what he himself said earlier, accepted norms means things like walking around naked, not murdering, stealing, moral matters. I think one of the footnotes written in chapter 2, in this closing section, says that in Arabic there are words where the same terms “ugly” and “beautiful” are also used for good and evil. That’s true in our language too, many times. “It’s good for me” and “it’s bad for me,” for example, meaning pleasant and less pleasant. These are the words he used in the Arabic original. Yes, but what I’m saying is that his explanation here doesn’t fit with what he himself said earlier. After all, earlier he himself said that accepted norms are only the disgraceful — convention, agreement. So why do I need — as you asked — to be like Elohim in order to judge between good and evil in that sense? So I said, okay, maybe because it’s the perfected person. But he seems to mean judges, not the perfected person. The perfected ones are those who establish the norms, the tastes, the conventions. Judges are those who really determine what is good and what is bad. So here I’m not sure. It seems to me that this doesn’t fit with what he said above. “Not that their eyes were closed and then opened, nor that they knew things they had not known before, but that they would have a new kind of shrewdness.” The shrewdness of knowing good and evil, which had not interested them before — and that too is interesting. What is this shrewdness? So is it an elevation or not an elevation? There are many points here. When we read Maimonides, I think I tried to highlight all this, to fill in those gaps. There are many things here that really remain unfilled. Meaning there are gaps in this explanation. Because if it is a new kind of shrewdness, then in that case they really did improve. So again the question returns: how did they improve as a result of sin? Unless you say it’s just convention — but conventions, no. But according to the way I explained Maimonides earlier, it seems to me that it works exactly like this. The shrewd person is the one who understands, under the given circumstances when there are certain conventions, how one ought to behave. That too requires a certain sensitivity. Sometimes they call it intelligence — I don’t know, maybe not exactly emotional intelligence, but social intelligence. Fine? Social intelligence means understanding what is appropriate, what isn’t appropriate, what fits the conventions, what doesn’t fit the conventions. Okay? That’s this particular kind of shrewdness. But that means these are not conventions like Emily Post, but conventions like walking around naked, as I said earlier. Okay? Good.