D’var Torah by Rabbi Zischa Shaps
Our refrigerator is covered with pictures, cute sayings and a few select comic strips. One of
them is a Dilbert comic where “the boss” is insisting that Tina has children despite her
clearly letting him know she does not. Finally she exclaims “Be Wrong! Just Be Wrong!”
Human nature has not changed since Creation. To understand “the boss” we can look at
the first and perhaps most impactful story in human history. In the Garden of Eden, the
serpent attempts to entice Chava (Eve) to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. The Torah
describes how the serpent engaged her in conversation and Chava says “But of the fruit of
the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat of it, neither
shall you touch it, lest you die.’” Rashi comments that she added to G-d’s command. He
only prohibited them from eating from the Tree and she said that G-d prohibited touching
the tree as well. When the serpent responds “You will surely not die”, Rashi quotes the
Midrash that the Serpent pushed her into the tree and said – you see you didn’t die from
touching the tree, you won’t die from eating it either. As a result she decides to eat from
the tree and give some to Adam as well. Ultimately, Hashem punishes the serpent, Adam
and Chava and as they say, the rest is history.
Siftei Chachamim asks why would she listen to the serpent and eat from the tree. What is
the proof that she won’t die from eating the fruit just because she didn’t die from touching
the tree when she was pushed. We know the Torah does not hold us accountable for
things that are beyond our control. Here she was pushed, it wasn’t her fault. Maybe she
would have died if she had touched the tree on purpose and certainly if she eats the fruit.
He answers that Chava thought the reason why they would die from eating from the tree
was because the tree was poisonous. She therefore thought that touching it would also
cause death by poison. It would be irrelevant if it was on purpose or by accident. When she
saw that she didn’t die from touching it, she concluded that it wasn’t really true that eating
from the tree would cause death and G-d had lied. Let’s think about that for a moment.
Why would she come to this conclusion? A more logical answer would be that she was
mistaken in thinking the tree was poisonous and there was another reason why eating
from the tree would cause death. She is risking her life by relying on her reasoning. Why
would she assume G-d lied about eating from the tree?
My Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Henoch Leibowitz z”tl explains that it is the nature of a person to
think they are right. Our pride and high self-regard will cause us to not admit our mistakes
and we will invariably look to blame someone else. Chava could not accept the possibility
that her reasoning was wrong. G-d had to be wrong, not her. The drive to be right is so
strong that Chava believed her own made up logic was correct even at the risk of her life. If
she was wrong and G-d was right she would die from eating the fruit. Yet, she ate it
anyway.
A person will come up with all kinds of crazy reasons and logic to explain something in a
way that will allow them to be in the right. How many times has a relationship been
destroyed because one party is unable to accept the possibility they were wrong. How
often does an employer or employee cause discord in the workplace because of an
inability to acknowledge their error. The same applies in our relationship to Hashem.
How different things could be if we allowed ourselves to be wrong sometimes. Imagine if
Chava had been able to see beyond her own reasoning and allow for the possibility that
Hashem knows something that she didn’t.
Shabbat Shalom
The JET Staff
