I am constantly amazed at what ideas come out of my Torah discussion group with Esther and Laura.  We were looking at the beginning of what is commonly refered to as the second creation story in the book of Breisheit/Genesis, specifically chapter 2, verse 4 to verse 7.  This part of the story starts by telling us that we are looking at a time before anything is made because there was no water and no human to serve the land.  This struck us as odd because in chapter 1, verse 28 we read that humans were blessed to conquer and tyrannize the land.  And now we read that nothing is made because there are no humans to serve the land?  We seemed to have a contradiction here.

Now, before we started reading these verses, we had learned a little bit of Hebrew grammar. Specifically, we  learned the grammatical structure of ownership.  In English I would say, “This is mine,” or, “that is yours.”  In Hebrew, the literal translation would be, “This is to me,” or, “That is to you.”  After we learned this, we started to read from the Torah, and we came to verse 7.  Verse 7 says:  And god formed the adam/human of dust from the earth, and blew into his nostrils the breath/soul of life; and…

And we suddenly found ourselves staring at a perfect example of the Hebrew possessive structure we had just learned!  The common English translation is:  And man became a living soul.  The literal translation is that man/adam is now owned by the animals.  (the words for living soul in the common translation, nefesh chayah, is also the phrase used earlier in the Torah to mean the animals).   So, what we suddenly saw is that adam/man is blessed to tyrannize the animal kingdom, but the animal kingdom is not made until adam is made to serve the land, AND furthermore, adam is the property of the animals.  So, how do we reconcile these two seemingly opposite ideas?

The answer came to us when we stripped away the connotations of the word tyranny.  The word tyranny literally means to have complete control.  It has connotations of exploitation and abuse, after all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  However, these are connotations that our culture has added.  Who is to say that they hold for the culture that the Torah is written for?  Maybe, all it is saying is that god is giving complete control of what happens to the animals over to adam, as opposed to adam just being a clerk with god being the boss looking over adam’s shoulder.  This definition alone does not preclude that adam will not exploit the animals, however it does not say it HAS to be be that way.  If we now look at the other meaning of the Hebrew word for tyrannize (yorayd), we see that it means to come down. If we add this definition to what we saw in the verses we read in chapter two, it seemed to us that god was telling us that yes, we (humans) have complete control to do what we want with the world, but we should not abuse our charge.  Rather we should reign in our ego by remembering that not only is our purpose to serve, and even though we are in charge, we are really nothing more than the property of what we are in charge of.  Therefore, what we humans really have is nothing more than the complete power to do what is best for our owners, the animal kingdom.

Thank you Esther, Laura, and haShem(god/dess) for helping to reveal this teaching and allowing me to share it with you.

Shmuel Shalom Cohen

About the Author

Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.