Imu Shalev: I’m Imu Shalev and this is A Book Like No Other. 

Last time, Rabbi Fohrman turned the Garden of Eden into unfamiliar territory by asking some burning questions about the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. Did Eve misidentify the forbidden tree? Why doesn’t God want us to have knowledge of good and evil? Why is the tree of life even there? And what in the world do these two mysterious special trees have to do with each other? Big picture: what’s the story hiding in the garden’s setting and how does that change the story we thought we knew. So, you know, just the opening to the whole Torah hanging in the balance! But not to worry because when I sat down to learn again with Rabbi Fohrman, he had a clue to share with me. A single verse that would totally reframe how I thought about the trees ever after. And, quite elegantly, Rabbi Fohrman had stumbled across this insight into the beginning of the Torah, while perusing a section all the way at the book’s very end: Deuteronomy, chapter 30.  

Rabbi David Fohrman: Imu, it’s nice to see you again, albeit through Zoom. 

Imu: Lovely to see you too. 

Rabbi Fohrman: I want to just bring you into one of the last things that Moshe says to the people at the very end of Sefer Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy. The context is that Moshe is nearing the end of his farewell speech to the people, and he starts talking about the Torah, and he says: 

כִּי הַמִּצְוָה הַזֹּאת אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם…

 this commandment that I teach you today…

 וְלֹא רְחֹקָה הִוא…לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם הִוא

they're not that far away…they're not in the heaven…

(Deuteronomy 30: 11-12)

Then he comes and he says something else about these mitzvahs. I'm quoting now from Verse 15: 

רְאֵה נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַיּוֹם אֶת־הַחַיִּים וְאֶת־הַטּוֹב וְאֶת־הַמָּוֶת וְאֶת־הָרָע׃

I have put before you today what is life and what is good, what is death and what is evil.

(Deuteronomy 30:15)

Gee, you know, when Moshe talks about these terms of referring to the Torah, he seems to be borrowing from something from the beginning of the Torah. I mean maybe I was just reading the Garden of Eden too much, but here's Moshe talking about life, and he's talking about good. He's talking about evil. He's talking about these themes that seem to emerge from these two trees.

Imu: The two trees in question are, of course, the eitz hachaim, the tree of life, and the eitz hadaas tov v’ra, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So, see what Rabbi Fohrman means: Moshe is referring to Torah when he says I’ve put before life and good, death and evil. But three out of four of those words - life, good, evil - are lifted right from the names of the trees. 

Rabbi Fohrman: So is that just random? Moshe just happened to pick these ideas out of the air that so evoke these trees from the very first part of the Torah? Or is that purposeful. 

Imu: In other words, was Moshe seeing a connection between the two trees that we’d been missing? Something that made him connect both trees to Torah? Rabbi Fohrman was willing to bet that he was. That he wasn’t just throwing fluff into his final speech to the people. Now if we could only see what Moshe was seeing, maybe we could start to understand these strange trees ourselves. But why would Moshe pick these words, these themes from the trees, to describe the Torah? That’s what was puzzling Rabbi Fohrman. 

Rabbi Fohrman: And then I kind of began thinking to myself, okay, you know, how would you describe the Torah?

Like, let me ask you this question, Imu. If I would say, hm, a tree of knowledge of good and evil that you're not supposed to eat from. We know that the people transgressed that command pretty early on. Now, you know, one of the interesting questions is, What would have happened if they didn't transgress on that command? Would God have eventually given it to them? We don't know the answer to that.

Imu:  Right.

Rabbi Fohrman: No way to know. 

Rabbi Fohrman:  Except our intuition tells you that one second, what is this tree of knowledge of good and evil anyway? I mean, if it's as it seems to be, which is just like you get some understanding of good and evil. All of that seems very fundamental to our humanity. -- it sounds like eventually, God maybe would give this to us. Now, there are Midrashim to this effect. if we'd only held out until Shabbos in the Garden, God would have shared this tree of knowledge of good and evil with us.

Knowledge of Good and Evil Outside of Eden

Rabbi Fohrman: But, Imu, can you name me a moment in history when it seems like God did share His understanding of good and evil with us. When would that be?

Imu:  Right, at Sinai He tells us --

Rabbi Fohrman:  That's exactly.

Imu: -- you know, I'm going to tell you all the good things and the bad things. Do the good things, stay away from the bad things.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's totally it, right. So we would identify a tree of knowledge of good and evil at some level with the Torah. Let's just say that that sort of makes sense on an intuitive level.

Imu:  Conceptually, yeah, it makes sense.

Rabbi Fohrman:  You would say, conceptually, like, what is the Torah, but a knowledge of good and evil. It's like, God actually comes out of the clouds and says, here's what to do in these situations. Like, that's a really helpful Google Maps roadmap. It lets you proceed in the world without this aching feeling like I'm doing the wrong thing, because we all have this idea that we want to be moral people, and the Torah helps us understand how.

The Torah and the Tree of Life 

Rabbi Fohrman: So let's say that the tree of knowledge of good and evil sounds intuitively like it should be associated with the Torah. And then I say to you, Imu, what about a tree of life? Is there anything in your religious experience that connects the notion of a tree of life to the Torah?

Imu:  Repeat the question.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Is there anything in your religious experience… 

Imu:  I heard him the first time. I just didn’t know how to answer that. I got the algebra, as Rabbi Fohrman likes to call it, meaning the way the verses are connected. In Devarim, Moshe seemed to connect Torah to the two trees. Play that out with the tree of knowledge and it makes sense: both are sources of knowledge of good and evil. But play that out with the tree of life… this one was trickier. I wasn’t even sure how to think about the tree of life in the first place. Even less so after our discussion last episode. Throwing the Torah into the mix didn’t help… the connection just wasn’t landing. But it did strike me that Rabbi Fohrman wasn’t the first to make this connection. 

Imu: I mean, tree of life is everywhere. It's the name of like a gazillion synagogues. It's written on the aron kodesh (ark) in my shul, and actually, we belt this out every single week in shul. We sing (singing) "etz chaim hee," right? 

Rabbi Fohrman:  (Singing) "Lamachazikim bah." Right. That's what we sing. And why do we sing that? 

Imu:   It has a pretty tune. Just kidding. “ עֵץ־חַיִּים הִיא לַמַּחֲזִיקִים בָּהּ” she’s a tree of life to those who grasp her,” is from Proverbs  (Proverbs 3:17). It’s sung when we return the Torah to the aron (ark) and if you look at the verse in context, it’s pretty clear, Solomon is referring to the Torah.  

Rabbi Fohrman:   You might even wonder, if, when Solomon came up with those words, "etz chaim hee lamchazikim bah," he was looking at Deuteronomy 30. He looks at Moshe using two descriptors for the same thing, the Torah, and says, well, sure the Torah is a tree of knowledge of good and evil, but it's not just a tree of knowledge of good and evil, it's also a tree of life, just like Moshe says, “רְאֵה נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַיּוֹם אֶת־הַחַיִּים וְאֶת־הַטּוֹב”  (Deuteronomy 30:15). 

Imu:   I couldn’t argue with the evidence, but I still didn’t know what to make of it. Scanning Devarim for clues, something caught my eye. 

Imu:  Moshe kind of talks about it and I never noticed this, but in a very intertangled kind of way. He doesn't say life and death, good and bad. He says, I put before you life and good, death and bad. Sort of like intermingling them, almost like --

Rabbi Fohrman:  It is intermingling them. Yeah. That's right.

Imu:  Meaning, I'll tell you how I feel. I read that, and I'm confused. I'm like, which one is it? Which tree is the Torah? Is the Torah, you know --

Rabbi Fohrman:  And notice also that the Torah is one thing, right, and here are these two trees. It's a little weird. 

Imu:  We’ll get back to this weird intermingling a little later. For now, Rabbi Fohrman wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easily. I still hadn’t answered his question.  

Is Torah Really a Tree of Life? 

Rabbi Fohrman:  What would it mean to call the Torah a tree of life? What would that mean to you? 

Imu:   Maybe just this notion of like,  God is the source of life, and if you cleave to His commands, well it's very lifey. That's very good. But now I'm back to using words like good.

Rabbi Fohrman:  So I think maybe a way to make it concrete would be to ask you like, why do people spend so many hours nowadays in yeshiva learning Torah as kind of their central religious quest after high school? So you could say, because everyone else does it. All right, fine. But besides that.

Imu:  You need to get a good shidduch. 

Rabbi Fohrman:  That's how you get married. right. Or let me ask you, -- a more personal question. What do you get about being involved in the company like Aleph Beta? Right, I mean you could just be a lawyer --

Imu:  Money. This is where you go to make the big bucks.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Right. You could just be a lawyer. As a matter of fact, you came here after you already passed the bar, right. You could have gone on to Wall Street. 

Imu:  I actually did not take the bar. I came after I got my JD.

Rabbi Fohrman:  I hear you. Okay, but a guy with your brains, Imu, you could have passed the bar.

Imu:  To the sadness of my mother.

Rabbi Fohrman:  That's right. So what are you doing here, right? 

Imu:  It's actually kind of funny. I was studying for the bar, and my brother shoved your book in my hands on one Shabbos, and I read it from cover to cover. And I felt like, oh, this is Torah learning. So it gave me a really thrilling and exciting feeling, and I felt like I needed to meet you and find out what you were about, and see whether I wanted to throw behind my legal career and actually come and work for you, teaching Torah like that. That's what happened.

A Chance for Immortality

Rabbi Fohrman:  So what I want to suggest to you is that's the tree of life aspect of the Torah.  The chance to connect to the immortal source of all life -- it's a crazy thing that you should be able to do that, right, and he's God. The Creator of your galaxy, with all of its hundred billion stars and he actually speaks your language, and there's words of His that you could understand.Like, you would want to explore that. Why? Not so much because you practically want to know what to do, although that would be great too, but just the fact that I could delve into His words and know something about Him.

Imu:  So where I thought you were going was, Torah gives a person who studies it great chiyus (life force), that actually like it's thrilling and exciting to learn Torah itself. But you're not really saying that. What you're saying is, Torah is basically the words that come from the source of all life, regardless of what is actually being said. Whether God chooses to communicate a knowledge of good and evil, or is choosing to convey to us,  you know, I don't know, the history of Mozart. It doesn't matter what is being said specifically. The fact that it's coming from the Creator and source of all life is an ends in and of itself, right. 

Rabbi Fohrman:  It's the primary way that we can connect to Him. We can't hug Him. We can't touch Him. We can't see Him, but we can breathe in His words. By the way, breathe in His words. It's kind of interesting. If you go back to how God is the source of our life back in Genesis, the language for God becoming the source of our life is, He breathes into our nostrils the breath of life. 

If you think about words, To make spoken words come alive in the world, you have the articulation of the words with the ideas, but you also just have breath behind that. You need to breathe in order for words to come out. It's almost like He gives us life with that initial breath, and a later version of this is the Torah itself. 

Imu:  Wow! So God creates us through breath, and then He expresses words to us which, as you're saying, come as basically, breath that actually forms itself into voice and words. 

Imu: and that’s Torah. And if you look at it that way, it’s really not such a leap to say that Torah is a source of life as much as it’s a source of morality. So, maybe that’s what Moshe had in mind in Devarim. Why he evoked the tree of life along with the tree of knowledge to describe the Torah. Maybe. It was a really beautiful idea. I’d give Rabbi Fohrman that. But, I also couldn’t help wondering: so what? I mean, let's say this was what Moshe had in mind, so he was a poetic person and used the trees as a kind of metaphor for Torah, 

how was that supposed to help us make sense of the problems we’d seen in the Garden? How deep exactly did this metaphor run? While these questions were percolating in my mind, Rabbi Fohrman had a light bulb going off in his. He noticed something. And actually, what he noticed, besides being really cool, would end up helping us answer all those questions I just asked as well. So here is what Rabbi Fohrman noticed. Remember how he was talking about Torah as a source of life? And he asked how exactly is Torah a source of life? Well, it’s made up of God’s words. And God’s words - they're made up of God’s breath. And if you take a look at breath, breath is the same thing that animates us and gives us life. That’s how God creates life into Adam. So we’ve got breath that animates humanity and breath that forms words and Torah. That’s how Torah is a source of life. But how exactly is a tree a source of life? We talked about breath as being a really important way of understanding how the Torah is a source of life. But what does breath have to do with trees? In other words, the same thing that makes Torah a source of life - is it possible that the tree of life has that in common with Torah? 

So what Rabbi Fohrman was noticing is a really interesting link, a link between the verse about how God’s breath animates humanity, a verse back in chapter 2 of Genesis verse 7, and the verse of how the tree of life itself is formed. Those two verses, a verse that describes the creation of man and the creation of the trees, they’re actually pretty much right next to each other. Genesis chapter 2 verse 7, and Genesis chapter 2 verse 9. And not only are they right near each other, they share a nearly identical structure with really interesting implications. So we jump back into the text and take a closer look. 

Trees as a Metaphor for Life

Rabbi Fohrman:  Okay. So come with me into Verse 9 for a moment: 

וַיַּצְמַח יְקוק אֱלֹקים מִן־הָאֲדָמָה כׇּל־עֵץ נֶחְמָד לְמַרְאֶה וְטוֹב לְמַאֲכָל 

 and God caused to grow from the ground all trees that were beautiful to look at and good to eat, 

וְעֵץ הַחַיִּים בְּתוֹךְ הַגָּן 

and there was also a tree of life in the midst of the Garden, 

וְעֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע׃

 and a tree of knowledge of good and evil.

(Genesis 2:9)

Okay, so there's three clauses of this verse. God caused to grow out of the ground all these beautiful trees, and the  there's this tree of life in the midst of the Garden. And then there's this tree of knowledge of good and evil. Okay. But now look at the verse that comes two verses before this. Imu, that verse is going to have three clauses also: 

וַיִּיצֶר יְקוק אלוקים אֶת־הָאָדָם עָפָר מִן־הָאֲדָמָה

and God created man dust from the ground, clause one, 

וַיִּפַּח בְּאַפָּיו נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים 

and He breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, clause two, 

וַיְהִי הָאָדָם לְנֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה׃

 Adam became this living soul, clause three. 

Creation of Man and Creation of Trees

Now, let's play a little game with me for a moment. Do you see any connection between any of these three clauses in the verse we just read having to do with the creation of man, and any of the three clauses in Verse 9 having to do with the trees that are then created afterwards?

Imu:  I was following along with you, comparing the clauses as you read, and I was like, that's pretty cool.  I can definitely see in Verse 9,  “וַיַּצְמַח יְקוק אֱלֹקים מִן־הָאֲדָמָה כׇּל־עֵץ נֶחְמָד לְמַרְאֶה וְטוֹב לְמַאֲכָל,” God is causing to grow from the ground, is perfectly parallel to "וַיִּיצֶר יְקוק אֱלֹקים," God forms. 

Then "אֶת־הָאָדָם עָפָר מִן־הָאֲדָמָה." 

So God is forming man from the earth, and here in Verse 9 God is forming or causing to grow forth again  “מִן־הָאֲדָמָה,”  same exact word, from the earth. This time it's trees. 

Rabbi Fohrman:  Good. Man is created “מִן־הָאֲדָמָה”  there's all these trees that grow “מִן־הָאֲדָמָה.” So much for clause one. 

Let's look at clause two in each verse. Do you see a connection between clause two in the verse that talks about how man is created, and clause two in the verse that talks about the trees?

Imu:  So you have " וַיִּפַּח בְּאַפָּיו נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים," where God blows in man's nostrils, this breath of life. In Verse 9 that would be parallel to "וְעֵץ הַחַיִּים בְּתוֹךְ הַגָּן," and there was a tree of life in the midst of the Garden  (Genesis 2:7-9).

Rabbi Fohrman:  Textually, what's the link between clause two in each thing?

Imu:  Chaim (life). You have “ נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים” versus “וְעֵץ הַחַיִּים.” 

Rabbi Fohrman:  Right, so isn't that fascinating. I have three clauses in one verse and three clauses in another, and the first clause in each one is “מִן־הָאֲדָמָה,” and the second clause in each one is “חַיִּים”?  Now, let's leave aside the third clause of each verse, which is a little bit more complicated, for just a moment. Imu, what would you infer from these connections? What's the point of Verse 9 coming a short two verses after Verse 7, and picking up on the same themes of “מִן־הָאֲדָמָה”  and “חַיִּים”?

Imu:  I mean, the first thing that's coming to my mind right now is that man and tree are cousins.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. They are related to each other, man and tree.. Now, what do I get out of all these trees that are growing from the ground? What does the text tell me in Verse 9: 

Imu: They're “נֶחְמָד לְמַרְאֶה וְטוֹב לְמַאֲכָל” (Genesis 2:9).

Rabbi Fohrman: So what do I get?

Imu: You get beauty and you get food.

Rabbi Fohrman: Now, interestingly, these are two ways that we relate to trees, and both of them nourish us. The more obvious way we're nourished is when we think tree, we think, oh great, oranges, apples. I can eat it. But the more subtle way they nourish us is just being around them. Scientific experiments show that we're better off around trees. Just the beauty of trees. 

Imu:  They call it forest bathing.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Right. There's something about being around the beauty of the natural world that is actually invigorating. So it's part of the way trees nourish us. So now, what do you take  from the fact that man is created from the ground, and there are these cousins of ours that grow from the ground that nourish us in these ways? What is the ground for us in the first verse? The ground is where we come from. The ground is at some level, our Creator. What obligation does a Creator have towards its creature?

Imu:  To nurture it?

Rabbi Fohrman:  Nurture it. You can't just give birth to something. You have to take care of it afterwards. The ground takes care of us through the medium of trees.. if we could, we'd just eat ground. But we can't, because we'd die. So where do we get all those minerals from the ground? Via trees. Because we can't just connect directly to our source. So instead, we've got this tree that's rooted in our source, that provides us all these things that come from the ground. 

So that's how clause one in each verse connects.

Imu:  I happen to have a newborn at home, but it does very much remind me of breastfeeding, of like, this baby came from mother, and mother's not done. She can't just walk away and be like, fend for yourself. Like, from mother, there is a source of nourishment. 

Rabbi Fohrman:  That's right. So Mother Earth, nurturing us through trees is clause one. But the truth is, man doesn't just come from ground, because if we keep on reading Verse 7, we realize he comes from someplace else also:

וַיִּיצֶר יְקוָק אֱלֹקים אֶת־הָאָדָם עָפָר מִן־הָאֲדָמָה 

God formed the Human from the soil

 our body comes from the ground. But, 

וַיִּפַּח בְּאַפָּיו נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים 

 blowing into his nostrils the breath of life:

(Genesis 2:7)

our soul comes from God, from His breath of life. And If God is the creator of our soul, that means that God has an obligation, too, to feed our soul. So how is God going to do that?

What Makes the Tree of Life Special 

The answer is with a special tree. Now let's go back to Verse 9 and look at the second clause. After we hear about the trees that modulate nutrition from the ground, we hear about a tree that modulates nutrition from God. God says, I gave you your breath of life, but you have to keep on breathing, “עֵץ הַחַיִּים בְּתוֹךְ הַגָּן,”

Imu:   you're basically saying, okay, in the same way that the breath of life comes to us from God in Verse 7, there is a tree of life that nurtures our life in some way, in Verse 9. 

That bowled me over because it’s kind of scientifically true. 

Imu:  trees also breathe, right?

Rabbi Fohrman:  Ah, don't they?

Imu:  Right, like trees, they are the source of all of our breath.They're the source of all of our oxygen, right.

Rabbi Fohrman:   Right,  and that's something really important. Imu, if I said like, how long could you go without eating fruit and survive?

Imu:  Probably the rest of my life.

Rabbi Fohrman:  How long can you go without breathing in oxygen from trees and survive?

Imu:  Also, same answer, the rest of my life. But it would be a lot shorter.

Rabbi Fohrman:  It would be a lot shorter. I mean, like, so there's this subtle thing that we get, but boy is that important. Our life comes from trees.

Imu:  Do you think that anyone's seen this in like thousands of years? Because they didn't know that oxygen comes to us from trees, but like here, it almost feels like very clearly in the text, like what's parallel in these verses is breath from God, breath of life from God in Verse 7, and then Verse 9 there's a tree of life. And we know, in the 21st century, that trees actually do breathe. They breathe out.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yeah, it's really wild. 

Imu:  I hope you’re delighting in this as much as we were. It genuinely blew my mind. But here’s the thing. If all the Torah wanted to say was that trees give us oxygen so our cells have the energy they need to grow and reproduce and all that good stuff, well, do we really need a separate clause in the verse for that? We already said trees nourish us physically. Why not just lump breath in with this physical support? Rabbi Fohrman actually had a more subtle point to make. Regular old oxygen, that you could say comes from the trees that grow from the ground. The tree of life was supplying a different kind of breath because it was a different kind of tree.

Rabbi Fohrman:  if you actually look at that verse, something is weird about it because -- in clause number one, we know where the trees come from, “וַיַּצְמַח יְקוק אֱלֹקים מִן־הָאֲדָמָה,” 

they came from the ground, but then "וְעֵץ הַחַיִּים בְּתוֹךְ הַגָּן,” that sounds like, and there was a tree of life in the middle of the Garden, as if, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa  (Genesis 2:9). There was a tree of life in the middle of the Garden ?

Where does the Tree of Life Come From?

Rabbi Fohrman: I mean if I took it seriously, I would say there are all these trees that grow from the ground. But there was a tree of life in the middle of the Garden, as if it didn't grow from the ground, as if it had its source somewhere else. It looks like a tree, but its roots are really in heaven. It modulates breath from God that keeps our soul going. We have breath and nutrition that keeps our body going. That comes from the terrestrial trees, but we have breath and nutrition that keep us going, and that comes from the etz hachaim. Two kinds of breath. There's a terrestrial kind of breath, and then there's a heavenly kind of breath.

Imu:   A heavenly kind of breath… that’s what the tree of life gives us. Seeing this really hit home the connection Rabbi Fohrman made earlier between the tree and Torah. Torah, he said, was the source of life. A wellspring of God’s heavenly breath composed into his words, which allows us to connect with our life source. We immediately made a connection between that and the tree of life, because hey, the name is glaring - the tree of life. But now Rabbi Fohrman was unpacking why the tree of life had that name. how it reflected its very nature. and the similarities with Torah were becoming so much more nuanced. Just like the Torah, the tree was a source of God’s breath. Just like the Torah, its function was to nourish our souls. I was actually starting to see why the tree of life is all over my synagogue. The tree is really the perfect image to represent Torah as a continuous and organic source of life. But I never would have seen that without Rabbi Fohrman’s help. 

Ok so that explains how the first part of Genesis 2:7 and 2:9 are related. But about the tricky part? The ending of the verses. This was the missing puzzle piece, what I needed to answer Rabbi Fohrman’s original question: how is the Torah a tree of life? Earlier, Rabbi Fohrman was saying that Torah is a source of life, a wellspring of God’s heavenly breath composed into words, which allows us to connect with our life source. And now, he was showing that this tree too is a source of life, of heavenly breath, to nourish our souls. It’s amazing how this image is all over my shul, but I’d never actually thought it through before. Torah is a tree of life.  

Ok, so that explains clause one and two of the verses. But it felt like Rabbi Fohrman was still dodging the really tricky part, the end of the verses. Rabbi Fohrman had dodged tackling this earlier but now that we got this far, there was no turning back.  

Rabbi Fohrman:  Look at clause three in the first verse: 

 וַיְהִי הָאָדָם לְנֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה׃

the Human became a living being

(Genesis 2:7)

Man is a composite being. It is a nefesh. It's a soul. Chayah, that's alive in the world, that has a body.

So the first part of the verse says, God gave man a body, from the ground. The second part of the verse says, God gave man a soul. The third says, that's how man became a soul-body, a nefesh chayah. 

Imu:  Now, think about our second verse. The one that describes the creation of trees. First part of that verse says how God nourishes the body. Second part of the verse says how God nourishes the soul. So, do you see where Rabbi Fohrman is going with this?

Rabbi Fohrman:  The third clause is how you nurture a soul-body. A soul that's not just a disembodied soul, but a soul that's actually connected in some weird way with the body that's alive in the world. It walks around. It lives in the practical world. How do you nurture that kind of thing? 

Imu:  You teach it good and evil.

Rabbi Fohrman:  You teach it good and evil. With an etz hada'at tov vara. Because that's how you learn to live in the world. What does it mean for me to be a soul that's alive in the world? I actually have to do things. I actually have to figure out when it's ethical to fire an employee in my company that's not really working well, but has a family to feed, it's not just enough for me to connect to God's words. I actually have to figure out how to live in the world. Practicalities, tachlis. Talk to me about what good and evil is. 

Imu:  What you're saying to me feels almost like, I don't know, like a response to the ascetic. It's sort of like saying, hey ascetic, who tries to deny the body, and is purely spiritual and sort of lives outside of the world, there's this thing called knowledge of good and evil which will allow the ascetic to actually enter the world. You don't have to desist from the physical world, that there's actually morality which governs how that which is spiritual can live with that which is physical. Is that what you're saying?

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes. I make peace with the world through morality. It allows my actions to reflect my soul. The etz ha’chayim is there because I have a soul. My soul needs breath. I have to have or my soul dies. I need to connect to God in that kind of way. Etz hada'at is the merger, is the part of Torah that's there because I'm a soul-body.  Torah has to speak to both parts of us. We need to be nourished in both ways. We need to just connect to God because our being demands it, and we've got to know what to do, because our doing demands it. 

Imu:  Even though Rabbi Fohrman and I had both intuitively seen a connection between Torah and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, this insight took that connection to a whole new level. It pushed me to think about morality, not just as a great gift, but as a source of nourishment. Specially designed for just the sort of creature a human being is. Stepping back, that’s what verses 7 and 9 were all about. Verse 7 was about our creation – physical, then spiritual,  and finally the merger of the two. And verse 9 was about these trees – not random trees, but the exact trees we needed to nourish us as bodies, as souls, and finally, as soul-bodies. 

I asked earlier how deep Moshe’s metaphor between the Torah and the trees ran. I was starting to see, it ran pretty deep. And Rabbi Fohrman was making me question whether metaphor was even the right way to think about it. 

Two Trees and the Torah

Rabbi Fohrman:  So what I want to suggest to you as a possibility is that the answer to that great question we started with last time, which is, how does God create this world with two trees that have nothing to do with each other? The answer is, they have a whole lot to do with each other. These trees are somehow predecessors of the Torah, maybe later on, the Torah is our vehicle for connecting to God, for knowing what to do in God's world.

But before that, we didn't have the Torah in the Garden. We had trees, precursors of the Torah. A tree that was planted in the heavens, right, this tree of life, or this other tree, of knowledge of good and evil  that modulates this nutrition, this breath to nurture our being, but also gives us ways to act in the world, this tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Imu:  It's actually interesting that you say that particular piece, when you took us to Deuteronomy and you talked about the Torah as being a source of life, and of good and evil as well. The text there, if you just read it simply, isn't saying the Torah -- Moshe isn't saying, behold, I've given you this Torah. What he says is, behold, I've given you this mitzvah, right? Which is very interesting because the very first mitzvah that God actually gives us is about these trees. You say it's a precursor to Torah. We don't have to talk about it as a cool idea, a nice idea we're making up. But like, if you are tracing the history of mitzvah, the very first mitzvah is "vayetzav," is right --

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yes. It's possible that the trees are the embodiment of the first mitzvah. It's at least curious that the first mitzvah that we get is all the way back then, and then all of a sudden we're introduced to these trees. But one way or the other, the trees seem to be this precursor to the Torah. Before we ever had a Torah, we had these trees.

Imu:  Beautiful. I really like this. But now I'm having a really hard time, because you just convinced me that we really should be eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yes, exactly. So for some reason, God says, there's an order in which we do things. God puts the tree of knowledge of good and evil behind bars. Now the question is, is that forever, or is it temporary? We don't know the answer to that in the story, because man eats from it quickly. But the question is, what if he didn't eat from it? The Midrash says God would have shared it eventually. God was waiting for something. That's something which I'll have to explore later on in this series. What was God waiting for?

Imu: What was God waiting for? I promise, we will get there. But have patience, because Rabbi Fohrman wasn’t quite done with his reading of Devarim just yet. So far, Moshe’s language opened a pandora’s box that helped us understand the function of the trees in the garden… and of Torah. But remember, we still had some major issues with the text in Genesis, not least of all that Eve seemed to misidentify the tree she wasn’t supposed to eat from. Could Devarim help us solve that one?

Life and Death in the Garden

Rabbi Fohrman:   Now let's actually go to the point you made. When you read Deuteronomy 30, that verse, you noticed something about the intertwining of that language which I think is really interesting. Let's go back to that verse and just revisit that point that you made. What does Moshe say? 

רְאֵה נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַיּוֹם אֶת־הַחַיִּים וְאֶת־הַטּוֹב וְאֶת־הַמָּוֶת וְאֶת־הָרָע׃

See, I set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity.

(Deuteronomy 30:15)

You see, Imu, if you wanted to just tell us there were these two trees and they were very separate, what would you have said?

Imu:  I've given you life and death, and I've given you good and evil.

Rabbi Fohrman:  But he doesn't. He says, I've given you life, and I've given you good, right. He's like intertwining them together. So Imu, I want to share with you a theory that could begin to help us answer the other questions that we had before.  By the way this theory was originally suggested by Eitan Aviner, he’s one of our PC members. Here's this crazy theory. But basically just an Occam's razor point. Occam famously said in philosophy that all things being equal, the simplest explanation is always correct. If you can cut out a step in your logic, and it doesn't make that much of a difference, just cut out the step. Keep it simple. If there's this thing called the Torah, and there's these two ways of relating to the Torah, and the two ways of relating to the Torah express themselves in two trees. But the two trees are really just two aspects of one thing. What if there's only one special tree in the garden? What if the tree of life is the tree of knowledge of good and evil?

Imu:  Why would that help? How does that answer our questions?

The One Tree Theory

Rabbi Fohrman:  If that's true, Eve doesn't misidentify the tree anymore. She was told that she can't eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and all of a sudden we had so many problems the last time, because when she identifies to the snake what tree she can't eat from, she says I can't eat from the tree that's in the midst of the Garden. But we said that's the tree of life. What if they're both the same tree? In other words, going back to that verse that describes the trees, what if I read it this way: 

וַיַּצְמַח יְקוָק אֱלֹקים מִן־הָאֲדָמָה

God caused to grow from the ground, 

 כׇּל־עֵץ נֶחְמָד לְמַרְאֶה וְטוֹב לְמַאֲכָל 

all these trees that were wonderful to eat, that were wonderful to look at. 

But,

וְעֵץ הַחַיִּים בְּתוֹךְ הַגָּן 

 there was a tree of life in the middle of the Garden. 

-Not that grew from the ground. It was just there, it was always there, 

וְעֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע׃

 and  also, you can think of it another way. It's a tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

(Genesis 2:9). 

What if it's one tree? If it is, then Eve doesn't misidentify the tree anymore.

Imu:  So this is actually elegant, because it basically is saying, the tree of life was in the center of the Garden, and parenthetically, you should know this tree of life was also a tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Let me just interject for just a moment. What that's suggesting is, what is the tree most fundamentally, a tree of life or a tree of knowledge of good and evil?

Imu:  Tree Of life.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yes. There's a tree of life in the center of the Garden. By the way, it's also a tree of knowledge of good and evil.

One Tree with Two Aspects 

Imu:  But if it's true, if you're right that it's one tree, why wouldn't the Torah just say that it's one tree? Like, here we are splitting hairs to force this duality to be one thing. But why wouldn't the Torah come out and actually say, hey, this is one tree, and not play with us by making it feel like there are two.

Rabbi Fohrman:  That's a great question. I don't know the answer to that, honestly. But I have a little bit of a theory that I'll share with you. One of the great differences between us and God is that God is one, and we're not. When the philosophers talk about what it means that God is one, Rabbi Bahya ibn Paquda in his famous work, the Chovos Halevavos, what he suggests is, it doesn't just mean there's one God, and not many gods. It's a description of the quality of God. God is a simple oneness. He can't be broken into parts.There's nothing in this world that's like that. Every oneness can be two. I have a shtender, I can take an ax to it, and there'll be two. I have a house, I can take it apart, it'll be two. I have an atom, I can take it apart. There's nothing, there's no oneness that I --

Imu:  And it'll be Eve and Adam.

Rabbi Fohrman:  That's right. It'll be Eve and Adam. There's nothing that I've met in this world that I can't take apart. We live in a world of twos. We don't live in a world of one. Every unity that we have in the world is actually a tension between opposites. The orbit of any planet that goes around the sun is the tension of centrifugal force versus gravity. If I just have centrifugal force, planets go flying off into space. If I only have gravity, planets go crashing into the sun. But I have these two things together, I've got this nice thing called an orbit. I have capillary action, and I have gravity, and I have water going up the stems of leaves. So every --

Imu:  What Rabbinical school did you go to? I'm just curious, like, where did they teach capillary action? I didn't -- that was not in my --

Rabbi Fohrman:  Ninth grade biology. But the bottom line is that every unity that we have in the world is really not a simple unity. It's a tension between opposites. That's how human beings relate to life. We aren't God. We live in a world of duality. And so the Torah concedes that to us in all sorts of ways. We even see it in the creation story. The two creation stories kind of tell two stories of creation from two perspectives of what it's like to be God. God as this sort of doer, and God as this sort of be-er. 

Imu:  Just to give some context here. By two creation stories, Rabbi Fohrman means Genesis chapter 1, which tells the classic seven-days-of-creation creation story, and Genesis chapter 2, which tells the story of creation all over again, but in a somewhat different order and very different style. Another major difference – chapter one refers to God as Elokim, chapter two as Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei-Elokim. A lot of ink has been spilled on what to make of these two stories and God’s mysterious name change. Bible critics will tell you, look, it’s two different origin myths, mashed together. Don’t expect coherence. But a careful reader will tell you that there’s a lot in these two texts to suggest that they’re two sides of a single coin. Rabbi Fohrman is one such careful reader and there’s a phenomenal course on Aleph Beta called a tale of two names that goes into this in depth. It’s linked in the description if you want to check it out. Ok, back to our conversation. 

Rabbi Fohrman:   The two creation stories kind of tell two stories of creation from two perspectives of what it's like to be God. God as this sort of doer, and God as this sort of be-er. God as doer, His name is Elokim. The God who's very, very powerful, who comes up with all these plans, who decides he's going to make this, and then goes about and executes it, That's really the impression that we get from Genesis 1.

Rabbi Fohrman:  But the impression we get from Genesis 2 is God doesn't, sort of, do things. God almost facilitates things by just being around. As a matter of fact, in the second version of creation we hear about other doers, “אֵלֶּה תוֹלְדוֹת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ,”

these are the generations of heaven and earth, as if heaven and earth are father and mother, and God is around to try to facilitate (Genesis 2:4). And then there's this stuff that sprouts and God nurtures these things.God's name in world two is not just Elokim, but Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei Elokim. A word, Yud-Hei and Vav-Hei that has a lot to do with being. Hayah, hoveh, yihiyeh, these words that are about was, is and will be, being. 

The reason why we have these two different creation stories, God as doer, God as be-er. is because it's a concession to how people think of God. What if you thought of God as a doer? Well, then, you would look at creation this way. What if you thought about God as a be-er? Well, then, you would look at creation this way. The truth is a mysterious merger of the two. But the Torah can't talk about that, the reality, in such terms,. In our minds, a planter is a planter and a builder is a builder. These are two separate things. So the Torah helps us out and separates them. At some level, I think God is playing the same game with the trees. There are these two aspects of the Torah. The easiest way to think about them is two trees, but of course there's only one. So God can't lie to us, so God presents it as two trees. But if you're willing to read closely, you begin to see it's one tree. So I think it's the Torah's way of helping a being that lives in a world of duality, comprehend the secrets of unity.

Imu:  I have to tell you, I'm like super excited by what you just said. Because you can see the two names of God, or the two chapters of Genesis, or even the two trees and just say, yep, sloppy editing. Just real sloppy, right? Or you can actually see the spiritual beauty that the text is trying to encode here, which is -- I think it's probably even more than just a concession to humanity which seems to see things in dualities, but maybe even has to do with the spiritual mission of humanity in general, which is to take a world that is seemingly dualistic and unite it. Right, like that there is an Elokim aspect to us. We are creators. There is a Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei aspect to us. We are be-rs. Can you bring those two sides of you together? So the same might be true here with this tree.  Can you look closely at how this book was written and realize that that duality is really a unity. 

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yeah. I think that that's perhaps why the Torah might be playing coy with us. It's supposed to seem like two trees, but it's also supposed to seem, to the careful reader, like maybe the two are really one.  "עֵץ הַחַיִּים בְּתוֹךְ הַגָּן," comma, "וְעֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע" (Genesis 2:9).  Also it's a tree of knowledge of good and evil, and that's the intertwining of the two that Moshe talks about in Deuteronomy 30.

Imu:  Oh, got it. Interesting. That's why Moshe intertwines them. 

The Two Names of God and the Two Trees 

Imu:  That really, really resonated with me.  Because, just to spell it out, the tension we were seeing in the names of God, in human nature, in the Torah, and in the trees — they were all variations of the same tension between doing and being. It was like the tree of knowledge was a bridge between our Elokim side and God’s. The tree of life, a lifeline between our souls and yud kei vav kei. And the thing the Torah seemed to be asking us was – can we see past the duality of that whole elegant structure, to find the unity underneath? And the Torah being coy about it, forcing us to be careful readers and make these discoveries for ourselves – that’s the transformative part of learning. It’s what this podcast is all about.  Plus, philosophy and literary theory aside, it was a huge relief to have an answer to Eve misidentifying the tree. So, maybe Rabbi Fohrman was right. Maybe the two trees were really one. 

Um, no. After a second thought, the honeymoon was over. 

Imu:  something in me is really not okay with this. God says, don't eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He doesn't say, don't eat from the tree of life, right? Like, I feel like -- so what are you trying to pull over on me?

Forbidden Fruit 

Rabbi Fohrman:  Yeah, So, you've just pointed to the great question with this theory. This theory sounds nice. It seems to have this big, gaping, huge hole in it, which is. Why are you just picking on the tree of knowledge being off limits if actually the tree of life and the tree of knowledge are going to be off limits? Why didn't He even tell me about the tree of life? That doesn't make any sense.

Plus, Imu, to make matters worse, there's a verse at the end of the story that really doesn't make any sense. Full disclosure, I wasn't the first person to come up with this. In teaching this, I realized that somebody, almost 1,000 years ago, came up with this idea. The Tur, a great predecessor of the Shulchan Aruch, actually quotes this very theory, the theory which I have just described to you, in the name of Rav Yosef Kimchi. Rav Yosef Kimchi actually says, these two trees, the etz hachaim and the etz hada'at, “Hakol echad,” he says, they're one tree. He actually reads that verse exactly the way we read it, that it's a tree of life, and that it's also a tree of knowledge. It's, like, amazing. But the Tur asks a question that seems to be a theory killer, and it comes from Chapter 3, verses 22 and 23. When God decides to banish us from the Garden after we've eaten from the tree of knowledge, God says: 

הֵן הָאָדָם הָיָה כְּאַחַד מִמֶּנּוּ לָדַעַת טוֹב וָרָע וְעַתָּה  פֶּן־יִשְׁלַח יָדוֹ וְלָקַח גַּם מֵעֵץ הַחַיִּים וְאָכַל וָחַי לְעֹלָם׃

Now that mankind has become like any of us, a knower of good and evil, what if one should stretch out a hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever

(Genesis 3:22)

Now, that really sounds like there are two trees. Meaning, he already ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If it was one tree, How could you have it that he ate from the tree of knowledge but didn't eat from the tree of life? It doesn't seem to make sense. 

Imu:  Yeah, like I'm just like noticing in this verse, It goes out of its way to say, “ וְלָקַח גַּם מֵעֵץ הַחַיִּים,” that gam word, and also, seems to make it really, really, really clear that there are two trees here. a tree of knowledge of good and evil which they've already eaten from, and God is worried that they're going to take also from this tree of life. So thank you for wasting the last hour of my life.

Rabbi Fohrman:  I'm really sorry. It was a very nice theory, but I completely wasted your time, and I apologize to the audience that has given their good time shopping, or on the treadmill, or wherever else you're listening to this, to listen to this complete rabbit hole dead end. Very nice idea. And by the way, that's the Tur. The Tur comes to this conclusion. He says, it's a really nice idea, but there's just no way around this question. That's the end of it. I'm sorry, goodbye Rabbi Yosef Kimchi. The Tur says, I have no idea what he does with this verse, and that's the end of the discussion. 

Imu:  Wait, wait. That's pretty cool. That the answer to what Rabbi Yosef Kimchi does with that verse has been lost to us for the last 1,000 years, until --

Rabbi Fohrman:  Until we come back next time and talk about what Rabbi Yosef Kimchi would say, if he could bat at the bottom of the ninth inning against the Tur. Right? What is the answer to Tur's completely theory-destroying question? I think there's an answer to rescue Rabbi Yosef Kimchi's theory, and once you see it, it opens up not just this story, the great story of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but how we relate to the Torah throughout the rest of the five books of Moshe, and I think in our lives as well.

So Imu, until next time. Thank you for joining me. I really look forward to --

Imu:  Wait, are you really going to leave me on this cliffhanger here?

Rabbi Fohrman:  Oh, I totally am. You're not getting the answer.

Imu:  Wait! Are you serious?

Rabbi Fohrman:  I'm totally serious. There's got to be a next time.

Imu: Well, because this one -- because now I'm stuck. Like, you can't go --

Rabbi Fohrman:  You're totally stuck.

Imu:  One second. No, no, I'm seriously stuck, because on the one hand -- you're either stuck on the Chava  (Eve) verse, and either she's just totally crazy or just, there's an issue which, because she's saying she can't eat from the tree that's b'toch hagan. Which, like we now have an answer for. Or this answer is crazy, because it's basically saying that there is one tree which explains Chava, but then we have this verse which makes it seem like there are two trees. So we're legit stuck.

Rabbi Fohrman:  We're totally stuck. See you next week.

Imu:  Okay, and you're telling me I need to wait.

Rabbi Fohrman:  You need to wait. That's the way the cookie crumbles. That's the way the -- yep.

Imu:  Looking forward. This is exciting. Thank you.

Rabbi Fohrman:  Okay. See you next time. 

Imu:  Man, I really was stuck. If you are too, stay tuned.

Next time on a book like no other: Two trees or one? Rabbi Fohrman tries to save a  thousand year old theory, and in the process, offers a whole new reading of the garden. We get to what God’s plan was, why we had to wait to eat from the tree of knowledge, and how it all went wrong. Basically, all the drama and intrigue we’ve been ignoring comes back in spades. 

Credits

This episode was recorded by Rabbi David Fohrman and Imu Shalev. It was edited by Tikva Hecht, with additional edits by Evan Weiner. Audio editing was done by Hillary Guttman. A Book Like No Other’s editorial director is Tikva Hecht. Adina Blaustein keeps all the parts moving.