[Avodah] Original Sin

Professor L. Levine via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Mon Oct 31 08:00:50 PDT 2016


The following is from RSRH's commentary on Bereishis 3.19


By the sweat of your countenance shall you eat bread, until you return to the ground, for from it you
were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.


Great importance is attached to the following further observation:
The Divine judgment directs a curse at the earth and at the serpent, but
this judgment contains not a hint of a curse against man. Man is not
cursed in any way. Nothing was changed in man's lofty calling or in his
ability to fulfill it. Only the external conditions, only the stage on which

he is to fulfill his mission, have been changed - and even this happened
only for his own good. The mission itself, his Divine calling and his
ability to fulfill it, have not changed one iota. To this day, every newborn
infant emerges from God's hand in purity, as did Adam in his time;
every child comes into the world as pure as an angel, to live and become
a man. This is one of the cardinal points in the Torah of Israel and in
Jewish life.

But what a miserable and hopeless picture of man is drawn by those
who err and deny his purity. On the basis of the story of Gan Adin, they
have concocted a lie that undermines the moral future of mankind. We
are referring to the dogma of "original sin," on the basis of which they
have built a spiritual structure against which the Jew must protest with
every fiber of his being.

It is true that, on account of the sin in the Garden of Eden, all of
Adam's descendants inherited the task of living in a world that no longer
smiles at them as it once did, but this is so only because this same sin
is still being committed over and over again. However, the express purpose
of the present conflict between man and earth and of man's resultant
"training by renunciation" is to guide man toward moral perfection,
which will pave the way for his return to Paradise.

But to say that because of "original sin" sinfulness is innate in man,
that man has lost the ability to be good and is now compelled to sin -
these are notions against which Judaism raises its most vigorous protest.


Man as an individual and mankind as a whole can, at any time,
return to God and to Paradise on earth. Toward this end, man needs
no medium other than devotion to duty, which is within the capacity
of every human being. Toward this end, there is no need for an intermediary
who has died and then been resurrected. This is attested to by
all of Jewish history, from which we learn that, in subsequent generations
God drew as near to men of purity as He did to Adom Ha Rishon before
the sin. Avraham, Moshe, Yeshayahu, Yirmeyahu, and others like them
attained God's nearness simply by their faithfulness to duty. The first
principle of Judaism - the one, free God - goes hand in hand with
the second principle, namely, the pure and free man.

The dogma of original sin is a most regrettable error of an alien
faith. They think that, in consequence of this sin, sinfulness is innate
in man, and that man can be saved from the curse of sin, only by virtue
of the belief in a certain fact. In the story of Gan Adin, however, there is

no mention of a curse against man. To this day, every Jew avows before
God: "The soul that you have given me is pure,"
and it is up to me alone to keep it pure and to return it to You in its
original state of purity. As our Sages teach us: There is no age in which people like
Avraham, Ya'akov, Moshe, and Shemuel do not live" (Bereshis Rabbah
56:7). In every age, in every generation, man is capable of ascending to
the highest levels of morality and spirituality.


Let us also note: The earth was cursed for man's sake; and as man's
degeneration increased, so did the curse upon the earth. The earth as
it is today is not the same as it was in the past or as it will be in the
future. Accordingly, any analogy between the earth's present condition
and its condition at the time of its creation is unfounded and is based
on a false premise.


<Snip>


To refine and elevate earthly life, and bring life near to God and to
His Presence - that is the essence of God's Torah and the essence of the
Divine rule.

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