Halakhah к Берешит 2:15

Another interpretation: He blessed it with light. When the sun set on the evening of Shabbat, the Holy One Blessed be He sought to hide the light and gave honor to Shabbat, as it is written, “and God blessed it, etc.”²⁸⁹Gen 2:3.With what did He bless it? With light. Everything began to praise the Holy One Blessed be He, as it is written, “Everything under the heavens, He made it sing.”²⁹⁰Job 37:3: Literally, “He lets it loose [yishrehu] beneath the entire heavens; His lightning [oro] to the ends of the earth.” The midrash treats yishrehu as if it were from the word “shirah” – “song.” Why? “His light [spread] to the ends of the earth.”²⁹¹Genesis Rabbah 11:2.

Also it says there:²⁹⁹In Genesis Rabbah 16:8. “And He placed him [Adam] in the Garden of Eden,”³⁰⁰Gen 2:15. the Holy One Blessed be He gave Adam the commandments of Shabbat, since it is written in this verse va-yanhehu – “placed him” and in another verse “va-yanah – and He rested on the seventh day.³⁰¹Gen 2:15: va-yanhehu – literally, “caused him to rest;” Ex 20:11. In other words, the similar diction suggests, by midrashic logic, that Gen 2:15 is in fact an allusion to the rules for Shabbat in Ex 20:8-11 – part of the 10 Commandments. “To work it”³⁰²Gen 2:15. alludes to “six days shall you work”³⁰³Ex 20:9. and “to tend it” – li-shomrah – alludes to “Observe – shamor [the Sabbath day].”³⁰⁴Dt 5:12, i.e., Deuteronomy’s Shabbat commandment in its version of the 10 commandments. So ends the quotation from Genesis Rabba. And you will find in the chapter “Arvei Pesahim” of the Talmud³⁰⁵B. Pesahim 105b. that it said, “One can interrupt for Kiddush, but one does not interrupt for Havdalah. The explanation: If a person interrupts his meal on the eve of Shabbat and says birkat ha-mazon for a regular day, and afterwards says the Kiddush for Shabbat, this is “making an interruption.” But if he were eating on Shabbat and sundown came, he does not interrupt his meal, but rather, completes it. And even though he says birkat ha-mazon for Shabbat when it has become an ordinary day, it doesn’t matter, and then afterwards he makes Havdalah, which is what is meant by “one does not interrupt for Havdalah.” And the reason why is because it is proper for a person to interrupt his meal to honor the King when He enters in order to welcome Him, but on Shabbat one does not interrupt his meal for Havdalah, but rather keeps eating like a person who wants the King to stay and to delay Him from leaving his home. For were he to interrupt the meal, it would seem like he was trying to get rid of the King. And this is like what our rabbis z”l taught in a midrash in Mekhilta: “Remember and Keep!” “Remember” Shabbat at its entrance, so as to welcome it before sunset so that everything is prepared for it. “And Keep!” Keep it as it leaves, like a person watching over the king or his dear friend who is with him, and he doesn’t want him to go; he does what he can the whole time to delay him.³⁰⁶Mekhilta of R. Simon Bar Yohai, Yitro 20:8.

And know that because the body is the “robe” of the soul, for as King Solomon (peace be upon him) spoke about the topic of the resurrection of the dead when he said: “I had taken off my robe; How shall I wear it again?”⁷⁷SS 5:3. he revealed to us explicitly that the soul will be clothed in the same robe. But he said, “How shall I wear it again?” – it is impossible for this to occur in nature, but rather only by a complete, marvelous, profound miracle shall I go back and wear it again after it has been stripped off. And he said this out of astonishment, not out of doubt – God forbid! “I had bathed my feet”⁷⁸Ibid. – that is to say, after I have bathed my feet, how is it possible for me to step back in the same muck!? It is better for me to stay on this level than to go back there.⁷⁹I.e., to stay in the world of souls – as only a soul, rather than return to the body, in the world of the resurrection (Chavel). All this comes from astonishment, but “inasmuch the king’s command is authoritative,”⁸⁰Eccl 8:4. because he promised us this in the Torah that the soul will return to the body at the resurrection of the dead, in order to receive its reward or punishment, according to the judgment coming to it. The explanation of this topic about the matter of the resurrection of the dead I shall complete for you in this Gate. Dig after it, pursue it, and get it!

And the world of souls, this is what is called ‘Garden of Eden’ (gan aden) among the sages, and they called it this by way of an allegory, using the example of how the body takes delight (mitaden) in a garden, and so it is written about the Garden of Eden in the land, ‘He set him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it,’ (Gen 2:5) – this heavenly Garden of Eden is the world of souls comparable but in contrast to it, and it is call ‘Garden of Eden’ too, and it is the reward for doing the mitzvot in which the soul takes delight, using the image of the body taking delight in a garden. And to the extent that the Torah does not specify explicitly anywhere the matter of the Garden of Eden being destined for the soul as a reward for the mitzvot, but does specify the bodily things destined for Israel when they return most certainly to their land, when they will have “all their rains in their season”⁹³Lev 26:4. and with the abundance of blessing and happiness – this matter is because the Torah was given to the masses of all of Israel, and the masses would not be able to understand the destined intellectual things. So even if the Torah would come to tell about this in brief, they would not find in it any way in to understand it, they wouldn’t be up to it, and it would be for them like a dream without an interpretation. And if the story of this went on at length in Scripture, wouldn’t more doubts be raised, the more was written about it? So for this reason, the Torah did not want to go down this road, neither in brief nor at length, because the masses wouldn’t believe in any of it, until they would see a sign or confirmation of it with their own eyes, and therefore the wisdom of the Torah comes in a story about physical rewards destined to come, to go on at length about them since they are preparation for the soul’s recompense, which is her “Garden of Eden,” and since they are a sign and confirmation for what they wouldn’t understand. And for this reason the Torah did not mention it explicitly in the story of the Garden of Eden, and by concealing it lest doubts multiply and confusion in understanding them ensue, but did mention openly what is the sign and confirmation of it. So this reason is correct and sufficient to all who understand and discern that the Torah was given to the masses. However, the “engaged intellectual” [maskil nilvav⁹⁴This expression from R. Bahya ibn Pakuda’s Duties of the Heart -(Hovot ha-Levavot), Sha’ar Yihud Chapter 1, plays on the connection to “heart”, and refers to someone philosophically trained but also “with a heart” – that is, emotionally engaged, not intellectually distant. He says the “maskil nilvav will strive to strip the shells of the words and their materiality from the subject.” In other words, it is out of emotionally longing to connect to God, that he will use philosophy to strip away the linguistic and material obstacles to that connection.] who delves deeply into it, will find everything in the Torah, “as milk under pressure produces butter”⁹⁵Prov 30:33. – whoever is found engaged in the Torah, the milk he suckles from the breast of his mother will produce the “butter” of Torah.⁹⁶Chavel thinks R. Bahya has in mind this midrash on Prov 30:33 in b. Berakhot 63b: “‘As milk under pressure produces butter’ – In whom do find the butter of Torah? In him who spits up the milk he suckled from his mother for it.” And so you who are an engaged intellectual – “Turn it and turn it because everything is in it!”⁹⁷M. Avot 5 (end). I think R. Bahya means by this analogy that the baby “churns” his mother’s milk in his mouth and turns it into butter, and similarly the engaged intellectual “churns” Torah by “turning it and turning it” and so turns it into “the butter of Torah.” Similarly, medieval Christian monastic educators described the active process of reading as “rumination.” You will find in the matter of Enoch that “And Enoch walked with God”⁹⁸Gen 5:24: va-yithalakh Hanokh et ha-elohim. And this “walking with God” is as the Targum translated it into Aramaic, “And Enoch walked in fear of the Lord.”⁹⁹Targum Onkelos Gen 5:24: Ve-halikh hanokh be-dahalta’ d’YHVH. Enoch was a “righteous man who rules in the fear of God,”¹⁰⁰2 Samuel 23:3.as it is said, “for God took him,”¹⁰¹Gen 5:24. – it is known that the “taking” was because of his virtue and goodness, because he was a righteous man. And if so, from here we get the explanation of the matter of “the Garden of Eden” for the soul of the righteous. And you will also find in the Torah in parashat “Im be-hukotai” that it is promise for the future, the world to come, for it is written there, “I will look with favor on you,¹⁰²Lev 26:9.” and this means that “My goodwill [ratzon]will be attached to you,” and the “goodwill” of Ha-Shem (may He be blessed) is the life of the world to come. This is what is referred to in what is written: “hayyim birtzono” – “When He is pleased, there is life,”¹⁰³Ps 30:6. and thus it is also written there, “I shall walk about – hithalakhti – in your midst.”¹⁰⁴Lev 26:12 And what is destined here is not to be understood in the category of things destined for the body, but rather from things destined for the soul in the world to come, which is what is referred to when it is written: “moving about – mithalekh – in the breezy part of the day.”¹⁰⁵Gen 3:8: “They [Adam and Eve] heard the sound of the Lord God moving about [mithalekh] in the garden at the breezy time of the day.” And our sages interpreted this in a midrash:¹⁰⁶Sifra Be-Hukkotai Chapter 3.”‘Va-hithalakhti be-tokhekham -I will walk about in their midst.’ In time to come the Holy One Blessed be He will stroll around with the righteous in the Garden of Eden.” And similarly they said, “In time to come the Holy One Blessed be He will arrange a “greenbelt”¹⁰⁷Mahol- untilled land surrounding a vineyard (Jastrow). However, mahol has the additional connotation of a chorus of singers and dancers, so R. Bahya may also be alluding to the “Mahanayyim dance” he mentioned in the First Gate. In any case, the main point of this image is that it is circular, with God in the center. The “choreography” of the souls of the “Garden of Eden”, is that they will be arranged in a circle with God in the center, as R. Bahya goes on to explain. for the righteous in the Garden of Eden, and His Presence will be among them.”¹⁰⁸B. Ta’anit 3a. The achievement of this joy for the souls is compared to an endless eternal “greenbelt,” because the circle goes around a point, and the point is in the center, which is why the Talmud says “His Presence will be among them –beynahem.” And similarly the Torah specified “in your midst – be-tokhekham,“¹⁰⁹Lev 26:12. because Israel is compared to circle, and He himself to the center point. And after it said, “I will walk about in your midst,” it said, “I will be your God,” ¹¹⁰Ibid. and our sages z”l interpreted this in a midrash,¹¹¹B. Taanit 31a. “And each and every one of them will point to Him with their finger, as it is said, ‘Behold! This is our God!”¹¹²Is 25:9. The word “this” is an allegory for nearing complete intellectual conception, like someone who has knowledge of something that exists and recognizes it clearly, and understands it as distinct from other things. And you should not understand “this” literally, like what you would mean if you were standing in front of a person and pointing them out, but rather, it is like what is meant when the Torah said, “For this man Moses…”¹¹³Ex 32:1: “When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, ‘Come make us a god who shall go before us, for this man Moses, who brought us from the land of Egypt – we do not know what happened to him”who was not standing among them, but about whom they had specific knowledge. From here¹¹⁴From the expression “I shall walk about in your midst” in Lev 26:12. it should be clear to the enlightened that the world of souls is the “Garden of Eden” for the soul, but Scripture mixes it in the general list of things destined for the body, and depended on the intellect of the enlightened to discern it from them, that it would not be hidden from him as it would be from the masses.

And now that I have explained the topic of the world of souls, which is called “Garden of Eden” among our rabbis z”l, and I have revealed to you the reason why the Torah did not mention it explicitly except to the “engaged intellectual” (la–maskil ha-nilvav), I will now expand upon for you my explanation of the matter of the pleasure that will be experienced in the measure it was originally experienced by Adam in the Garden of Eden before the sin, in that you already knew that the nature of the pleasure there was very great and deep, and that the greater part of it was the soul’s pleasure, the lesser the pleasure of the body, which had quiet, ease, and peace of mind unlike any you can imagine, and because he was all intellectual -body and soul in complete agreement to conceive of his Creator, and even the power of the Tree of Life to cause eternal life was at first not kept from him, but after the sin, when he ate from the Tree of Knowledge – it was only after this eating that he was made to follow his desires and strive for the needs of the body more than the needs of the soul, acting “all as we act now here today.”¹³¹Dt 12:8 And therefore he had to have his days limited and for death to hold sway over him. But before the sin, he could take pleasure in the Garden of Eden and delight himself as he wished, and this it what meant by, “And He placed him in the Garden of Eden to till it and tend it,”¹³²Gen 2:15. that He placed him in the Garden of Eden so that he would work the soil of the Garden, and sow in it every kind of produce, and plant all kinds of fruit trees, and his sustenance came from the trees of the Garden, and his drink from the rivers of Eden. And his clothes were “the clouds of glory,” until the ministering angels got jealous of his status, and things changed for the reasons you know.¹³³According to the story in Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 13, it was the angel’s jealousy of Adam that led them to tempt Adam and Eve through the serpent. It is to this status and to this measure of joy that the dead who are resurrected will in time to come return, to take delight in together in both body and soul, and the greater part of the pleasure will be the soul’s, the lesser part the body’s, as it was with Adam before the sin. Therefore, it will be necessary for any one among those raised from the dead to live a long or eternal life, for thus the world will return to its perfection as its Creator (may He be exalted) originally intended.