Eating of the Tree and the Redemption

They gazed at the Forbidden Tree and were silent. The oppressive quiet that hovered a round the two people betrayed their inner nervousness. Their hearts fiercely beat against the walls of their chest. Inside, they yearned for the light of knowledge. They hungered to know! Excitement and anxiety mounted as they continued to look at the Tree as their ultimate liberation.
The Garden was perfect but, they assumed, there had to be something even greater than this. Why else would the Master have placed it in sight? In the center of the Garden? Why would He even have thought to create it?
There was an unspoken agreement that neither one would touch it because of the Master’s decree. Still, they wanted and watched. The desire grew. Glancing sideways, they wondered who would be the first. Adam played feigned disinterest. Pretending to look elsewhere his mind was fixed on the Tree of Knowledge and the great promise it held. Havvah was more openly curious. And brazen. There would be repercussions. How could there not be? If the Master decreed it should not be touched… But the issue of punishment and blame was further away from the tantalizing prospect of complete understanding.
Adding to the pressure were the words of the serpent. The long, narrow creature knew things that Adam and Havvah did not. He used it to his advantage. The serpent promised untold possibilities if they had the courage to step one foot closer. Then all they had to do was touch it. Then…

The ultimate truth revealed was that the knowledge gained was deceptive. To be sure, it held great promise but that promise was illusory. The civilizations spawned gave rise to great tomes of learning. The eyes of humanity tilted upward and imagined what the distant galaxies must hold.
Ideas became theories that were tested. Those theories proved powerful forces that changed the course of human development. Yet, along with all the inventions and unlimited curiosity came death and emptiness. The great and wisest king Solomon lamented, “All is fleeting. All is vapid and barren.”
Eating from the Tree gave powerful external vision at the expense of internal searching and understanding. The brilliant luminaries of every generation since the expulsion seek to find the hidden Eden.
On Yom Kippur, we gaze inward once again. We force our bodies to bring the mind back to the edge of real understanding.
In Leviticus 16 – which we read on Yom Kippur - a verse states that we must “atone our sins so that we can become purified.” Rabbi Eliyahu Munk said that the Day of Yom Kippur is a time when each Jew seeks purification and atonement. The first only happens when we make a move to come closer to what we could be. We know what that means. We must change. We need to become whole in our eyes. The process of purification occurs when we admit that knowledge has not redeemed us. Often time, in fact, it has served to only confound us and obscure what we know to be true in our hearts. Atonement happens at that moment. Purification begins when we initiate the process of change. When the Holy One peers into us and perceives sincerity, we are aided; we are granted atonement.
May the next day’s journey see us walking with God.