ADAM, OR
THE MYSTERY OF
THE BEGINNING

IN THE BEGINNING, man is alone. Alone as God is alone. As he opens his eyes he does not ask: Who am I? He asks: Who are you? In the beginning, man oriented himself solely in relation to God—and all of creation defined itself in relation to man. Before man, things were there, yet did not really exist; under his gaze, they began to be. Before man, time flowed, but it acquired its true dimension only as it penetrated man’s consciousness.

Adam: the first being to have a name, to experience joy, surprise and agony; the first man to live both his life and his death; the first creature to discover both the attraction and danger of secrets and knowledge.

To evoke Adam is to evoke the awesome mystery of the beginning, which we are forbidden to do, at least in public. Ein dorshim maase breshit bishnayim, says the Talmud. The secret of creation may be dwelled upon only when one is alone—as Adam was alone. It is a subject which transcends language and understanding. He who delves into it risks finding himself cut off from the present and remaining isolated and silenced forever.

And yet, Adam is part of us to the extent that man recognizes that he is both point of departure and fulfillment. He knows where he is heading but not whence he comes. Yet he would like to know: the past intrigues him more than death. He is obsessed more by Adam than by the Messiah. Adam frightens him, and his fear resists the most glowing of hopes.

• • •

A philosopher once taunted Rabban Gamliel: Your God is indeed a great artist, His Adam was a masterpiece; but you must admit that He had excellent ingredients at His disposal. What were they? asked the sage. The philosopher named some basic elements in nature: fire, wind, dust; and added chaos, the abyss and darkness, without which no work of art is possible.

All these elements are indeed present in Adam’s personality, the most complex and colorful in Jewish legend. Adam is impulsive like fire, fickle like the wind and as unpredictable as those romantic characters, bearers of turmoil and eternal remorse, whom only God could console and only God refuses to console.

The Bible devotes no more than a chapter and a half to his life: a few facts, a few encounters with God, the adventure with Eve, exile. His story, in Genesis, is contained in forty verses. His life spanned nine hundred thirty years— we can survey it in a matter of minutes.

As always, the Midrash tries to compensate for Biblical terseness and offers a portrait both elliptical and striking. Adam: the first living contradiction. Humble yet arrogant, saint and sinner, strong and yet terribly weak. It is for him and because of him that God manifested Himself in creation, and it is because of him and through him that death entered into it as well. One source describes him as having two faces, thus stressing his ambivalence, not to say ambiguity. Why do Scriptures offer us two different versions of Adam’s birth? Were there two “first men” at the beginning of history? Or are we to understand that even in the early days of his solitude Adam was already two—as though to warn us that while man aspires to oneness, he will never attain it.