But then we have the right to ask the question: Why such a split, such an explosion of the self, which inevitably must lead to endless conflicts and contradictions? Perhaps God intended to begin His work with a question. Perhaps He sought, through Adam, to continuously interrogate His creation. Therefore, in the beginning, there was neither the word, nor love, but the question which has come to bear God’s seal, linking man both to his origins and to his end. Thus the sum of our interrogations reflects the original question, which affected more than Adam, for it did not die with him.

Can we today identify with our first forebear? The Talmud tells us that no man resembles another, yet all men, in every age, resemble Adam: every man recognizes himself in him. Our wishes are rooted in his and so are our sorrows. Our features bear his imprint and so do our gestures. Condemned to imitate him, we are as he was, we behave according to his example. There is but one difference: we have a past, whereas he had none. No memory preceded his own. Born an adult, thrust into a prearranged universe, he was denied the possibility of escaping into childhood dreams or adolescent preoccupations. There was no way out of the present, no refuge in fantasy. The most wretched, the most destitute of mortals comes from somewhere—not Adam. The poorest of men possesses memories torn from yesterday’s world, longings, vantage points—not Adam. To correct this injustice, God gave him . . . a future, the longest in the history of mankind. And He allowed Adam to see it in its totality, to the very last generation: their judges and their kings, their sages and their thieves, their profiteers and their prophets. Thus the first man beheld the image of the last of his descendants and their eyes met. More than the Messiah, Adam is present.

• • •

The man who emerges from the various texts and commentaries is appealing and we take him to our hearts. His problems are ours, we are distressed over his fate, his tense, troubled, inexplicably threatened home. We would like to help him. His every move concerns us, we share his fears, his disappointments. Nobody received as much and nobody lost it as quickly or as brutally. Nor was he to blame in any way. He was pushed and was helpless to resist. No one asked him anything; he was made to obey a will other than his own. Everything belonged to him except his will. He had no choice but to submit. First to God, then to his spouse. Traps were laid for him and he fell into them. Poor man: punished for nothing. And he wasn’t even Jewish.

Embodying man’s eternal quest for meaning, justice and truth, Adam remains the contemporary—and the companion—of all men, of all generations. Every one of us yearns to recapture some lost paradise, every one of us bears the mark of some violated, stolen innocence. All our passions and sorrows, all our failings, Adam already knew. He had to contend with all our inhibitions, manias and complexes, with one exception: the Oedipus complex, thank heaven.