The Torah of Rochelle Zell
Giving Voice to Women’s Experiences, in the Bible and the Present Day Naomi Scholder, RZJHS 2021 Growing up attending a Conservative day school and synagogue, I saw women’s inclusion in prayer as normal. My grandparents, on the other hand, belong to an Orthodox synagogue that my family and I would sometimes attend. When we would go for Shabbat or the holidays, I never thought to question why there was a mechitza, why women could not lead services or read Torah. While as a child I would think about the divide between women and men’s participation in prayer, I have now come to understand that the distinction between men and women in our religion roots back to the beginning of Torah.
The change that has occurred from my grandparents’ generation to mine, both in Judaism and in every day life, shows how persistence can help to overturn the inequality described in Genesis 2 and restore our world to what once existed, when God simultaneously created male and female.
Genesis Chapter 1 tells the story of the creation of the first humans: Adam and Eve. Based on the grammatical strangeness of the Hebrew verse that describes the creation of humanity in Genesis 1, midrashim have imagined the first human created by God was an androgynous being, a creation with both male and female characteristics, that was then split into two distinct people, each with one gender: male and female. Genesis 1:27 reads “vayivra elohim et ha’adam b’tzalmo, b’tzelem elohim bara oto, zachar v’nekevah bara otam. God created humanity in God’s image; in the image of God, God created him. Male and female he created them.” This androgynous being is then split into Adam and Adam’s first wife, Lilith. As Torah scholar Judy Klitsner notes in her book Subversive Sequels in the Bible, originally man and woman were created equal in every way. “God directly commands and blesses both male and female of the species, addressing them equally in the plural”. However, in Genesis 2, God seems to start over. In His second creation of humans, man is created again and alone, with woman later emerging from his side. So, where did the first woman, created equal to man, go? 20
The midrashim on Lilith come to explain the change from Genesis 1, with humans created equally and simultaneously, to Genesis 2, with man created before woman and subsequently woman created from man to be his helper. Judith Plaskow reworks this midrash as follows. Originally, God created man and his first wife Lilith to be equal, but she grew sick of Adam treating her as his servant, so she decides to leave him and the Garden of Eden. Adam then complains to God that he has no companion and so God creates another wife for him, Eve. This time Eve is created from Adam’s side so that she will be subservient to him. Though, at first, Adam and Eve’s relationship is good, Adam’s connection to God soon became greater than the one with his wife.
Moreover, Lilith, Adam’s first wife, continuously tries to re-enter the Garden, leading Adam to worry that she might influence Eve to reject her role as Adam’s helper. So, he tries to strengthen the Garden walls. However, despite his best efforts, Lilith breaches the Garden walls and Eve, getting a glimpse of a powerful woman who looked similar to her, grows curious to discover who this creature is. Eve decides to climb over the Garden, obtaining “forbidden knowledge” as she converses with Lilith. Through this midrashic story of Lilith, we can redefine the male-dominated narrative of Genesis 1-3. If we are to re-read the first three chapters with this lens, it provides a new role for women role in the Torah. Lilith reminds us that before Eve, men and women were supposed to be equal. But men were not comfortable with female equality. Moreover, Lilith helps us understand that Eve’s reaching for the tree of knowledge was reaching for knowledge that was deliberately banished from her: the knowledge of female equality. See Scholder, page 28
