The Agenda of Genesis

By MIKE RAPPEPORT

Used with permission from Sh'ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility (October 2005 www.shma.com).

To be a Jew today — among other things — is to continue the ancient tradition of wrestling with an agenda first set forth in Genesis. What is that agenda, and what questions are articulated and unarticulated in that text?

The agenda becomes clearer if we approach Genesis as a book organized in three somewhat overlapping parts, each based on a question. This three-part structure is a useful schematic whether one believes the Torah to be the literal words of God or if one believes that the Torah is essentially the Talmud of its time (that is, a record of the collective wisdom of a people seeking God). The first of the overlapping parts begins with the Akedah and asks the question: “What is the proper relationship between a Jew and God?” The second section runs through the story of Hagar and Ishmael and the birth of Isaac, and then the family’s history — from the marriage of Rebecca and Isaac to the sale of Joseph into Egypt. It asks the question: “What is the proper relationship between Jew and family, friends, neighbors?” The third part of this schema covers the story of Joseph in Egypt and asks the question: “What is the proper ordering of society as a whole, and what role do we play in that ordering?”

The First Question

The first question is presented initially in the Garden of Eden, then at Babel, then to Lot and Lot’s wife, and then to Abraham, over and over again. In large measure, all these questions can be summarized: “How should a Jew act in relation to God?” In the first scenario posing this question, Eve simply disobeys, thereby putting forward what becomes one authentic Jewish approach to life. For it is not clear whether Eve and Adam are punished or rewarded. Of course, the traditional view is that they are punished — banished from the garden and doomed to labor and the pain of childbirth. However, in the very act of eating they obtain the ability to understand the difference between good and evil, and thus, if they wish, to choose good. The potential reward — a share in the world to come — is necessarily limited to post-garden human beings; that is, to those of God’s creatures capable of understanding and making a choice to do good. Again and again people in Genesis are faced with similar choices. Given Abraham’s willingness to argue with God, Abraham unquestioningly follows God’s command to sacrifice Isaac. But not only modern commentators ask whether in so doing Abraham passes the test or fails it.

The Second Question

Even before the Akedah, in the story of Sarah and Hagar and Ishmael, the text begins to raise questions about how one should treat other humans in one’s immediate circle. The question remains center stage for four generations. While the chronicle depicts love and tenderness, there is also contention, discord, and deceit over birthrights, between parents and children, between brothers, and between sisters. The issues are juxtaposed in the stories of reconciliation between Jacob and Esau and in the stories of revenge when Jacob’s sons slaughter the men of Shechem (for their perception of the harm to Dinah and to their honor).

Taken together, these stories offer two quite different answers to one basic human issue: “What is the best path for addressing perceived or even real harms?” Are we to follow Esau who accepts Jacob’s gifts and falls on his brother’s neck with kisses and crying, or are we to follow the ways of Dinah’s brothers who fall on the Shechemites with stones and swords? The answer is certainly left ambiguous since Levi is one of the two primary attackers and his “punishment” is that his descendants serve in the Temple. Moreover, falling on Dinah’s lover is just a warm-up for the treatment of Joseph.

The Third Question

Joseph is in Egypt advising Pharaoh on running the country. Joseph’s relationship to Pharaoh raises one central problem faced by any organization of society — today just as surely as in the days of Joseph: How do we assure material prosperity and progress and at the same time distribute the fruits of that progress in some reasonably equitable way?

Jacob’s descendants lived during one of the four major upheavals of human history — the transition from the nomadic world to the world of agriculture. That transition is presaged at the end of the story of Esau and Jacob. After reconciliation, the brothers must separate in order to have adequate land for their flocks. And later, when available land becomes scarce, nomadic life becomes less viable, and Egypt — as a farming society — becomes the archetype of a new agricultural world. How a society distributes land fairly is a problem in every farming society — one that the Israelites will eventually address when they reach the promised land by assigning a specific portion of land to each family and prohibiting its long-term sale.

We, too, are living in a period of transition — in our case from the industrial period to a world based on knowledge and the ability to use it. Just as an equitable organization of society led to every family being promised access to the newly critical resource of their time (land), so too equity asks that we provide real access for all to the newly critical resources of our time (education). Land ownership is a zero sum game (one person’s gain is another person’s loss). As a result, if every generation was to have the same guaranteed access to property, the rules had to require giving back land at the Jubilee year, which destroyed the balance between incentives and equity.

However, education is a positive sum game and indeed one in which we all benefit from society’s enhanced productivity. Moreover, by devoting sufficient resources to educating the next generation, we can provide the modern equivalent of land for all in a way that enhances rather than upsets the equity-incentives balance.

Still, questions persist, as well as the tension between two desirable goals — on the one hand giving people incentives to stretch themselves and grow and on the other hand having everyone share equally in society’s resources. Indeed, the beginning of wisdom, or more precisely the wisdom of the beginning, is that important questions usually involve balancing between goods. But for the balancing process to lead to pragmatic, moral results, requires first asking more than one of the right questions.