What Is Paradise?

October 16, 2009
Rabbi Seymour Rossel

     God planted a garden in Eden. God placed in the garden every kind of tree that was pleasing to the sight and good for food. Then God decided to make things difficult. God planted two special trees in the middle of the garden. One was the tree of life and the other was called by a branching name, the tree of knowing good and bad.

     When we think of the Garden of Eden, we often imagine a paradise. We think of Adam and Eve living in the lap of luxury. They only had to reach out to eat all good nuts and fruits. It was Shangri-La. It was Utopia. It was Atlantis before the big flood.

     But that is not what the Torah tells us in tonight's portion about the Garden of Eden. In the second chapter of Genesis, God "took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden, to till it and tend it" (Gen. 2:18). That's a nice way of saying that God built the backbreaking work of farming into the very first paradise.

     It gets worse. The two Hebrew words translated as "till it and tend it" actually have other meanings. The word for "till it" is avdah, which really means "serve it," from the root eved, meaning "slave." It is also the word we use for prayer which we call "the service of the heart" and the word which, in ancient times, was used for bringing sacrifices as in "the service of God's altar." And the word for "tend it" is shamrah, which can be translated as "guard it," from the root shomeir, meaning "guardian." If we translate God's intention using these basic meanings, we get something like this: "God "took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden, to serve the garden and to guard it."

     God now begins the beta testing phase of the new garden. To make things more complex, God creates the woman, then tells the man and the woman that they are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but they may not eat of the tree of knowing good from bad. On the very day you eat of that tree, God says, you will surely die. And, just to be sure that things will get a good testing, God puts a talking smart-aleck serpent in the garden. The deck was stacked against the two naïve simpletons who were literally born yesterday. They never stood a chance. A day later, they found themselves chased out of the garden. So much for the biblical paradise.

     Of course, God realized human beings would do almost anything to get back into the Garden of Eden. That's why God closed the gates and placed a sphinx there to guard them. And, just to be doubly sure, God also put a fiery, ever-turning sword there to guard the gates and guard the sphinx. Nevertheless, our ancient ancestors were still obsessed with the idea that we should somehow use all our talents and all our might to change God's mind, so that we can get back to the good old days in paradise.

     But if you think about Utopia, about Shangri-La, about Atlantis, and about Eden, you will soon realize that every paradise we can conceive always has a slightly menacing side. It is never perfect.

     When I was young, I heard a story that has stuck with me through all the years. The world was one long dirt road that stretched from one horizon to the next. On one side of the road was a parched desert that stretched as far as the eye could see. No one could even conceive of surviving on that desert. On the other side of the road was a hedge of bramble bushes that grew thirteen feet high. The growth was so thick that no one could imagine penetrating it.

     All of the human beings were lined up on that road, headed in the same direction. Only a few human beings were part of the bureaucracy -- they stood like guards all along the road, making sure that no one tried to escape. Most people were forced to walk the road from sunup to sunset. At sunset, they sat on the road in small groups and the guards brought them simple food and water. The next day, the walking began again.

     If anyone asked where the people were walking to, what was their destination, the answer from the guards was always the same. You are walking to paradise. One day you will arrive.

     Now, the hero of our story was a curious kind of fellow. He asked more questions. He wanted to know what paradise was like. They told him, it's a perfect place where you stop walking, where green grass grows from one end of the world to the other, where there are pools of water so fresh that you can just reach in and scoop it up to drink it, where people lounge all day, where the sun always shines by day and the moon and stars are always visible at night, and the weather is always perfect. It sounded like a real goal.

     But one night, he met an old man who said to him, "I was curious like you when I was young. And now I know that you will never reach paradise by walking along this road. This road is endless and useless. But paradise is not far away. It is just the other side of the bramble bushes."

     Could it be true? Our hero asked the old man, "Why don't you just go to paradise if it is so close?" The old man said, "I should have gone when I was young, but now I am too old to break through the brambles."

     So one night, after many days of thinking, our hero slipped away from his group and broke into the bramble bushes. Every step was painful. He tore his skin with every forward motion, but he persisted. It took all night before he broke through the final bushes, wounded and bleeding.

     But there it was, the paradise that was promised! The green grass, the pools of water, the bright sunshine, the food that was everywhere, the people who were just lounging around, laughing and talking. A couple of folks came up to him and brought him to the waterside where they bathed his wounds and congratulated him on making it to paradise.

     Day after day passed in perfect bliss. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go, no walking and no guards to force him to keep on walking. And day after day, he grew more and more restless, until one day he could stand it no longer. He broke into the hedges at the end of paradise and made his way through them until, bloody and wounded, he finally reached the road where all the people were walking. He joined the march again. And he was happy to have a purpose for his life because now, he knew, he was headed to paradise. At least that was a goal worth living for.

     And let us say: Amen.