Category: Beraishis Ch. 5

זה ספר תולדות אדם – This book is of the developments of Adam.

All of human history, with its ups and downs, all the diverse phenomena of human history, all form one whole. Despite all their striking contrasts, they are all merely the developments of this one Adam who was created in the image of God. The failures of man throughout history indicate man’s greatness. They show that man was given free will and the ability to fail.

The Talmud (Yerushalmi Nedarim 9:4) tells us that  Rabbi Akiva summed up the whole Torah with the verse ואהבת לרעך כמוך, Love your neighbor as yourself, to say that the central goal of the Torah is to teach a person not to be egotistic and selfish. Ben Azai chose the phrase זה ספר תולדות אדם to teach us that the worst criminal and lowest level of degeneration all are included in God’s book as תולדות אדם; everything developed from one Adam, who was created in God’s image. All men bear the name “Adam”. The צלם אלקים in never completely lost.

ביום ברא אלקים אדם בדמות אלקים ברא אתו – On the day that God created Adam, He made him in the likeness of God.

The natural state of man is to be godly. (Take note that the Torah makes this statement after they had sinned and had to leave Gan Eden)
* Man was not created as a savage, mentally and morally deficient.
* Man’s likeness to God is not something supernatural which can be attained only through withdrawing from nature.
Man in his natural state doesn’t need a special education and culture to attain this godliness.
Only because man had stopped calling in the name of Hashem (see above) did man degenerate.

Beraishis 5:1
pages 150-152

זכר ונקבה בראם ויברך אתם ויקרא את שמם אדם ביום הבראם

He created them male and female, and He blessed them and called them Adam, on the day they were created.

The division of roles between man and woman are not arbitrary. From the very beginning “man” – אדם – was created male and female.

Man – אדם- was created male and female. Both were created in the image of God and equal in worth. Both were blessed and together were given the name “Adam”, man resembling God (as stated in the previous verse, בדמות אלקים).

This is the natural state of man –  עיקר שכינה בתחתונים (ב”ר י”ט, י”ג)
(The essential place where the Divine Presence rests is on earth, through “man” אדם who carries out God’s will exercising his free will. Not in upper spheres- GS) The return to blessing and God’s closeness is the goal of all of history.

See RSRH’s explanation of אדם here.

Beraishis 5:2
page 152

ויולד בדמותו כצלמו

From the order of the words here (reversed from the order in 1:26 where it says כצלמנו כדמותנו) RSRH suggests that man’s spiritual resemblance was greater than his physical resemblance. (As a result of man’s degeneration – GS)

Hirsch adds that perhaps all human being are similar spiritually. The differences are in the degree of bodily perfection (the result of man being distant from God – GS)

This explains why the Torah has such a strong emphasis on טהרת הגוף, purity of the body.

To the extent that the body is kept in purity, so is the צלם אלקים realized in the body, and only then does the body submit to the spirit.

Generally, the חוקים (statutes – see here for more on חוקים) (which aim to purify the body, are mentioned before משפטים (civil law). The reason is that Mishpatim can only be upheld by a people born and nourished in accordance with the Chukim.

This theme is developed throughout RSRH’s writings.

Beraishis 5:3
pages 152-153

 

Just as in the fourth chapter the Torah lists the Kayin line, here the Torah lists the line of Shais. The names are quite similar as shown here (The Shais line not in chronological order).

Shais	Kayin
קינן	קין
ירד	ירד
חנוך	חנוך
מהללאל	מחייאל
מתושלח	מתושאל
למך	למך

 

The key difference is that in the Kayin line there was only decline. In the Shais line there is decline followed by a turn for the better followed once again by decline and again back upward. In this way, the generations slowly progress.

(The names given, like those listed above in the Kayin line, do not indicate that the parents were prophetic about who their children would be. It is likely that the names reflected trends of the generation that the children were born into.)

קינן – A generation that idolizes possession.
The next generation tries to be more spiritual.

מהללאל – A generation that praises God.
But knowing of God and praising God is not the same as subordinating one’s life to God’s Will (the basic concept of Judaism). This generation knew of אלקים but not שם השם – God as Master. Superficial מהללאל is always followed by…

ירד – The generation sinks. Lip service of hymns and prayers do not inspire. They are not rooted in action.

חנוך – A better generation emerges through education.
However when all around there is spiritual decline, those who strive to be better remain an elite few. They emerge as….

מתושלח – They abandon the masses (see page 157 for detailed etymology), having no interest or concern for society. (Much more on this in a coming post about isolation)

למך – As in the Kayin line, RSRH does not know how to explain the meaning of this name. However he does point out that in both cases Lemech made a pronouncement.

Lemech, Kayin’s grandchild pronounced his despair, that all man’s efforts were useless.

Lemech, the grandchild of Shais, declares that despite man’s struggle with a world that is cursed, good emerges because man himself is not cursed. There is a bright future through children! (More on this in a coming post about the word בן)

Beraishis 5:4-28
pages 153-160

 

 

ויתהלך חנוך את האלקים ואיננו כי לקח אתו אלקים
Chanoch walked with God and [then] he was no longer, because God had taken him.

Later we see that Noach walked with God and he is praised. However in the case of Chanoch, taken in context of מתושלח, abandoning the masses, walking with God is seen as negative. Noach walked with God as the essence of his life, to live as an איש צדיק תמים בדרתיו. His connection to God was the foundation of his actions, drawing him near to life. In the case of Chanoch, his connection to God lead him away from life.

Hirsch writes the following words:
“This is a misguided aspiration, which at best does nothing to better the world, is quite useless to the world.”

“The Torah opposes ascetic seclusion, which is based on the erroneous notion that godliness lies outside the sphere of ordinary life.”

“התבודדות, secluding oneself from others, is not the Jewish way. Our tzaddikim and chassidim lived among the masses, with the masses and for the masses; they considered it their mission to lift the masses up to them. Abandonment of the masses is symptomatic of a generation’s sickness; it is found in an age in which the concept of God is reduced to a subject  for theoretical speculation, and where the thought of God makes men into fanatics, drives them to eschew and escape  life because they fear its temptations or, in blind arrogance, disdain its problems.”

In the Midrash (ב”ר כ”ה, א) the view of the Tzedukim that Chanoch was a very holy man and similar to Eliyahu HaNavi, never died, is proven wrong. Chanoch was judged on Rosh Hashana, together with all of mankind, to die prematurely.

Beraishis 5:22-24
pages 157-159

ויחי למך שתים ושמנים שנה ומאת שנה ויולד בן
ויקרא את שמו נח לאמר זה ינחמנו ממעשנו ומעצבון ידינו מן האדמה אשר אררה השם

Lemech lived 182 years, then he begot a son. He called him Noach, thereby to say: Only this can give us comfort from our work and from the self-denying toil of our hands, from the earth which God has cursed.

The generations that preceded Lemech sought new trends and qualities. Lemech differed. He wanted to see a continuation of what he started. He says: Our own efforts are thwarted and frustrated by the curse God gave the earth. However, man is not cursed. Through our child (בן, related to build and brick) we shall continue on.

This (child) can give us comfort in the knowledge that despite all that we must renounce of this earth, our efforts in developing and educating our children are not cursed. Our children can reach the loftiest heights.

We direct our children so they can become בוני עולם, eternal builders. They continue to build on the foundations we establish; they finish the work we aren’t privileged to complete.

Beraishis 5:28-29
pages 160-162