He used to say:
"From the TAGC of my DNA,
to the ABCs that allow me to pray,
I am a story that generates stories,
Meeting others in my text,
Relieving each other if perplexed."
He would teach the following tale every year before the ceremony of blowing the shofar:
Ahroom With A View
In the beginning was the word.
And the word was imagination.
And imagination begat music.
And music begat the angels.
And from the angels emerged the complexity of God.
And God awoke to a chorus of angels, singing pure songs of praise, for that is all that they knew how to do.
And God discovered the need to create, and so, he created the creative process.
And God said, “Let there be paradox”, and there was light.
And the delight in the waving particles of light inspired God to create air, sea and land, and creatures to inhabit each of them.
And with each act of creation, the chorus of the angelic praise grew louder and louder, until God could no longer hear himself think.
And within that din, a revelation.
God discovered that he did not need to create, for he discovered that he had a choice.
And God saw that freedom of choice could be the most precious of gifts, and so, he offered it to the angels. And some of the angels chose to refuse that gift, while others took it and discovered that they had the choice of singing songs of complaint rather than songs of praise. And within those complaints, God heard the beginnings of stories. So God, inspired by the angels, created stories of awe and wonder for the angels to appreciate. But alas, the angels were seriously deficient in listening skills. They could not understand the music of mathematics or the dance of chemical bonds. And God was not pleased, so he said to the angels, “Come, let us make a creature that will appreciate the power of choosing to hear stories.” And so, God formed Adam and Lilith from the earth, creating the first earthlings. And God asked Adam and Lilith to create a child, so that God could teach it to tell stories of awe and wonder, for the brains of Adam and Lilith lacked the neuroplasticity required for that purpose. And Adam and Lilith proceeded to follow God’s instructions, but something went terribly wrong. Adam and Lilith, instead of being an audience for stories, became stories themselves. The night that they were to conceive a child, they got into a terrible argument. Feeling that they were equal to one another, as they were both created from the same soil, they both felt entitled to be on top during the creative process. Nastiness ensued, and Lilith left the Garden of Eden, leaving Adam all alone in Paradise. Despite living in her self-imposed exile, Lilith never relinquished her sense of entitlement to living in the Garden. She camouflaged herself by transmogrifying into the form of a snake and stalked Adam from a distance, waiting for the right opportunity to reclaim sole possession of the land. Killing Adam was not an option, but she knew that, given enough time, Adam would initiate his own downfall. God too saw that potential, and decided that it was not good for the earthling male to be alone, so he manipulated stem cells from Adam’s rib, and from that created a mate for him with which to procreate. God spoke to Adam, the world’s first taxonomist, and said: “To this human thou shalt cleave, and with her thou shalt conceive, and though she appears quite naïve, you will be surprised at how easily you believe, and for that you will find that you both will grieve.” Adam, feeling his brain somewhat saturated, decided to name his partner Eve, as that sound was all he could process from God’s soliloquy.
God then refocused the male earthling by instructing him on how to tend to the four types of fruit bearing trees that he had created for the purpose of storytelling. One tree was for beauty (nechmad lemareh), so that eating its fruit would enhance one’s sense of appreciation. The fruit of another provided sustenance and neuro-protectors (tov lemaachal), to ensure the brain was operating efficiently. The fruit of the third was for exuberance (etz hachayim), so that eating it would create the enthusiastic desire for a story to continue. God encouraged the humans to eat the fruit from all these trees but forbade them from eating of the tree of knowledge of creative potential (daat tov verah), because its fruit was to be reserved for their child. God entrusted Adam with the objective of transmitting his instructions to Eve so that she too could understand the purpose of the trees. In order to fulfill God’s request, Adam pointed out the forbidden fruit to Eve, wagged his index finger while making some “tsk, tsk” sounds and convinced himself that he did a good job in communicating God’s wishes. Lilith, witnessing a significant milestone in the history of male-female communication, smelled opportunity and pounced. Eve believed that the fruit was forbidden to touch based on the signals that Adam had conveyed to her, so Lilith manipulated that misunderstanding to get Eve to just touch the fruit. From there, it was not that far of a leap to get her to eat it. Adam, seeing that there was no obvious negative consequence from eating the forbidden fruit, succumbed to the temptation of scientific curiosity and joined his partner in partaking of the mystery. And with the eating of that fruit, Adam and Eve achieved a state of awareness, the awareness of vulnerability, a state referred to biblically as ahroom. Predator and prey both understand vulnerability, each from its own perspective, and the human inhabitants of Eden understood at that moment that either possibility was now open to them. Furthermore, they were aware that they became aware of their vulnerability to each other and to all the dangers that lay outside the protection of the Garden, where God eventually exiled them for breaching his rule.
After the exile, Adam and Eve’s eyes became open to the telling of their own stories. Soon, they began sharing drama-filled stories of their personal struggles with their vulnerabilities, tales of tragedy and comedy and romance and adventure. The art of storytelling was born, and they looked forward with excitement to sharing this art with their sons, Cain and Abel. But that is a story for another day.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve exiled God from the storytelling process. Since that time, to this very day, God still struggles to regain his rightful place in the story of each and every human animal. If you pay attention, you can hear God’s still, soft voice revealing itself in moments of awe, wonder or gratitude. All you have to do is put your own vulnerabilities on hold, and listen.
And if you do not hear anything within those moments, do not despair. The obstacle might be that you are actually an angel.
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