BONES AND RIBS: Genesis 2:20-

Embedded within the opening stories of Genesis, which both Jews and Christians share, is a profound rendering of what it means to know ourselves through first recognising and naming our Deepest Other. It provides a textual starting point for Jewish-Christian reconciliation as a rediscovery of an Other. In the text, two people emerge from one source. It is only, however, when one ‘sees’ the other and calls out to that other and names that other as distinctly and uniquely female, that the other recognises himself for who he distinctly and uniquely is. This could sound like an 111

‘anti-feminist’ reading of the text, but in many ways it renders sensibilities of just the opposite. Moreover, this first episode of human interaction ruptures illusions of one ‘superseding’ or dominating the other, and provides a scriptural narrative which invites us to consider the inner dimensions of human intimacy.

Genesis 2:23 is the first usage of the words ‘woman’ (ishah) and ‘man’ (ish) in the Torah. The verse reads- This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman (ishah הָּשׁיִא) for from man (ish שׁיִא) she was taken. Until this point in the text, the first man has been referred to as HaAdam ֒םָדאָֽ ָה, literally ‘the Adam’, with the use of the definite article which is not included in most English translations. ‘The Adam’ was formed out of two essential components - the dust of ground, the

adamah המדא, and the breath/wind/spirit of the Creator, the ruach ַחוּ ֫ר. Until the definitive moment when he (I use this pronoun simply as a term of convenience)

See Jonathan Sacks, “Faith Lectures - Creation: Where Did We Come From?”, for more nuances

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on the Hebrew dimensions of this verse. http://rabbisacks.org/faith-lectures-creation-where-did-we- come-from/. Retrieved December 7 2018

stands opposite his Deepest Other, he is known only by the ground out of which he was formed. It is literally like being named ‘earth-ling’ or ‘ground-ling’.

Traditional rabbinic interpretation does not see Adam as either distinctly male or female, but possibly both. There is an androgyny to this primeval state, and yet 112

earlier in the text, prior to his seeing of Eve, we are alerted to the fact that something is missing and needs to be ‘found’. This ‘finding’ of an other is intimately connected to the process of naming - and the Adam gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to all the wild beasts; but for Adam no fitting helper was found, (Gen 2:20). Naming all the life in the garden invites and awakens a conscious search for the other. Avivah Zornberg draws on the commentary of medieval Jewish commentator Ramban in connection to the search for a ‘fitting helper’. Ramban emphasises that being alone 113

and autonomous in the Garden is ‘not good’, because he would live a static, unchanging and unwilled life. Man needs to live face-to-face with the Other, 114

‘dancing to the choreography of his own freedom’. If we read the text closely, it is 115

only after the name of this Other, the ishah, is actually pronounced and spoken out that ‘the-Adam’ becomes aware of his own maleness, conscious of himself as an ish

for the first time. Only now does he identify and name himself as such. He had to

See Elliot R. Wolfson, Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism, (Albany,

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New York: State of New York University Press, 1995), 85

‘Ezer k’negdo’ in Hebrew - a significant term which we will expand on further in this chapter. See

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also Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1995), 15-16

Ramban is an acronym for Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, (1194–1270 CE) also known as Nachmanides,

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an important medieval Jewish philosopher and commentator from Catalonia. Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire, 15

recognise and name his Deepest Other who was formed from the same bone, before he could truly know and name himself.

Franz Rosenzweig writes in his acclaimed work, The Star of Redemption, that ‘only in the discovery of a Thou is it possible to hear an actual I, an I that is not self-evident but emphatic and underlined’. For Christians and Jews, can we discover ourselves 116

more authentically, through rediscovering our Deepest Other? What does this look like? What are the potential ramifications for such rediscovery? The supposition of this project is that through a renewed engagement with one another through sacred text, such a rediscovery of both Other and Self becomes possible. This rediscovery is a necessary tool to reframe the Jewish-Christian relationship in terms which remove the disastrous implications of supersessionism from the conversation. This text from Genesis redefines the parameters of a possible relationship, and provides simultaneously a textual starting point for envisioning the other without supersessionist lenses. It offers a vision of a new beginning.