No sooner had Eve made the serpent’s acquaintance than she was already telling him the story of the forbidden fruit; she could not refrain from disclosing that which, after all, concerned only herself and her husband. And you really believe this? asked the serpent, looking surprised. You who are so intelligent, so perceptive, you actually believe that it is enough to touch the tree to die? When she did not answer, he walked up to the tree—and legend tells us the tree shouted with anger—and put his arms around it. You see, he said nonchalantly, I touched it and I am alive. Wouldn’t you like to try it? Go ahead, you may, nothing will happen to you . . . Eve remained apprehensive and did not move. She was curious but distrustful. And then the serpent shoved her toward the tree. Eve saw the Angel of Death but stayed alive. Yet it was, for her and for us, the beginning of the end. The first contact with death. Caught in the treadmill, she ventured farther and farther. Too late to turn back, too late to erase what she had seen and experienced.

What Eve did not understand was that she would find in the forbidden fruit not death but the idea and the sensation of death; that it was possible for her to see the angel and not succumb.

She suddenly realized that life and death are not two separate domains; they meet in man, not in God. It is possible to live with death; all one needs to do is turn one’s back on the living. It is possible to be dead and not know it.

But then, why did Eve commit the irreparable? What drove her to the serpent and why was it so important for her to touch the tree? Why didn’t she stop in time? Could she have been—already then—attracted and fascinated by death, by nothingness?

The Midrash advances the following hypothesis: Eve was tempted by the promise of power. If you taste from the tree, the serpent had told her, you shall be like God, who ate from the same tree before creating the world; like Him, you shall have the power to create and destroy, to kill and resurrect. He convinced Eve that that was precisely what God had sought to prevent with his prohibition. She opted for the serpent’s clever arguments over God’s dry commandment. Clearly, she was ripe for seduction, though one may theorize that she considered the serpent an instrument rather than an accomplice and that she collaborated with him in order to establish her power.

Nor was the serpent fooled. His game simply became more sophisticated. Once he obtained a first concession from the woman; namely, that it was possible to touch the tree with impunity, he knew she would want to continue, to push ahead and test God by testing herself. Only now the serpent was saying no, invoking all sorts of pretexts. The more she wanted to bite into the fruit, the more he discouraged her. She pleaded with him, appealed to his feelings, reminded him of their friendship. Her excitement became unbearable. She had to eat this fruit no matter what the cost. Nothing else mattered any more; neither her dignity, her woman’s pride, her fear, her security, nor her loyalty to her God, who was present, or to her husband, who was not. Driven by a passion she could no longer control, she knowingly courted disaster. She could not help herself; her curiosity and her greed were stronger than she.